I am slowly becoming more familiar with the school, both the building itself and the staff, so I know my way around a bit better now. I also got to know another part of the “community”, the microbial one, and as a result I caught a nice cold. I guess it is the price you have to pay in exchange for the school placement.
This week I have continued attending my English lessons and I have just begun reading the Hocus and Lotus teacher’s guide for LH1 and LH2. Amagoia, my reader, and I are attending different grades in LH, so we will be able to complement each other, but we will not have a chance to contrast ways of applying the same methodology in the same grade but in different schools, which is a shame.
Well, this week I want to talk mainly about what I have seen so far in the LH lessons. One thing I like a lot about the ways of doing of my tutor is the treatment of error, for example when they use flashcards to review vocabulary. She will ask one child what the image in the flashcard represents, and if they don’t know, they are simply asked to give the chance to somebody else to guess. It is a neutral treatment of error, and that is good.
During these two weeks several activities performed in the LH lessons have reminded me of the task feedback circle by Jim Scrinever, which we learned about during the first term in our Minor. Sometimes the teacher has explained the task clearly before starting, especially in LH1 and LH2, but there was a reading task in LH4 where there was no explanation whatsoever on the task which was going to be done afterwards which left me thinking on this issue.
This is what we did in class: the teacher explained that we were going to read the story (Sorry, I’m late!) aloud taking turns. The week before we had listened to the story on the CD, and students had been working on the story previously too. So, children started reading one page each (each page has a short paragraph and sometimes a dialogue inserted in the drawing that goes with it), following the class list, while the teacher took her notebook to take notes as they read (I am sure children notice such things, because the teacher doesn’t usually hold her notebook, and I think it helped to create an “exam atmosphere”). When they finished reading, the teacher said: “now that we have the story fresh in our minds, we will do the essay activity”. This is an activity where students have to summarise the whole story in four blocks. Each of the blocks has one drawing taken from the book and some lines underneath for students to write, as well as a couple of balloons for dialogues in the drawing. The students have a draft copy in their books to do a group draft, and after the teacher corrects it, each one of them copies the final draft on their book. They had already done this activity for the previous story, and the teacher had told me that it was the most difficult activity.
So, children started writing their summary and the teacher and I monitored to give help. When they asked me for help, I realised that although I had been following the story as they read, I hadn't focused my attention in the way that this task required. So, in order to be able to help them, I had to take one of the books in my hands and read over it. Children were confused because the first block included the image in the first page of the story, where the two main characters were walking on the street with no balloons for dialogues, but in the summary block, this image had balloons. They kept on saying that they didn't know what to put there, because in that picture the characters weren't speaking. I tried to explain that in that first block they had to summarise several pages of the story, showing them the pages concerned; and that they understood.
The problem is that we did the reading without knowing what to listen to, what to look for, and we weren't prepared for the task.
One thing that struck me about the listening activity we did the previous week on this same story was the following: the CD recording has a tic-tac sound which alerts students that they have to turn the page, so they receive a guide while they are reading. Still, I would find it helpful if they actually followed the text with their fingers as they listened, because I noticed that some of them get lost and are only listening to the tic-tac sound to know when to turn the page. I must ask I tutor why they don't use that resource.
Another thing I like a lot about the ways of doing my tutor uses is the fact that students correct each other when the helper does the daily routines. The helper writes the date on the board, and the rest of students spot mistakes and correct them.
I already talked about the short role plays they perform in class, 2 to 5 students at a time while the rest watch. The teacher uses the same procedure always: after having decided who plays which role, the teacher performs the part of each character, and then she plays the CD while students perform. Children usually have masks to get into their character. What I find strange is that children only do the gestures, but don't say the dialogue along with the voice in the CD, which is a shame. Sometimes, after they have finished the role play, as students go back to their seats, they will say their dialogue, but the teacher doesn't acknowledge it. I wonder what could be done in order to promote a more active role by students in these sort of activities.
During these first weeks, as I mainly observe, even though I also monitor and give help, I have been trying to spot things which work and thing which don't work, and thinking of why that is. There was an activity in LH2 where children had to write a short dialogue between two characters of their story (the lion and the rat). The teacher performed the dialogue and she wrote it on the board (“I’m a lion. I like meat”, “Please, don’t eat me!”), but she said she would erase it in a short while (which got students very upset, by the way). After she erased it, children started writing it on their books. When they said they didn’t know how to write lion and meat, she reminded them that they had those words in their dictionary. The dictionary is a task they had done the previous week, when they cut out several images from one page and glued them on another page, which had some squares drawn, with the names of each image. Children had to match each image with the right text, and glue it. I think that part of the reason why children didn’t memorise the words has to do with the way we did the activity: first, the teacher asked them to number each square, and then she went through the images in the other page, so with the help of all we worked out which number they had to write on the back of each image. Then, children just had to match numbers. Their attention was focused on form, but not on words, but on numbers; therefore, they didn’t work on memorising words.
The last words will be on myself. I have also been trying to observe myself and reflect on that, although it is much harder to do it on myself than on others if I don’t record it. This week, one of the days I was with the LH4 class, I realised that during the monitoring of their activity writing the summary of the story, I spelled “together” twice to two members of the same group, I spelled “wave” in another group, and did some more spelling for others. When we finished, I asked to myself what I had been doing that day, and I realised it was very far from what I think I should be doing as an English teacher. I can’t be a walking dictionary, giving answers; I should find ways for students to sort out their own answers and help them on that. So, I had done no scaffolding at all (other than trying to create a good atmosphere and positive interaction). So, in the next class I had with that group I tried to change my way of helping them, while they were learning to tell the hour in English, and pointed them to using the examples they already had in the book to find out their own answers.
Well, that’s it for this week. Next week I want to talk about something which bothers my tutor: even though she asks students to do some tasks in group, they do them individually. I have been watching them and trying to think of reasons why that happens and things that could be done to change it. Oh, and I will also talk about my first lesson: I will be performing a lesson in HH4 this coming week. I have already designed it and prepared the material I need, and I plan on recording it to analyse it afterwards.
iruzkinik ez:
Argitaratu iruzkina