We begin with our real lessons

The most outstanding news this past week was the beginning of our lessons with real children coming to university. We have been working in small groups all year long, and during the last term we have the opportunity to put together a lesson for a group of children.

Our group was first. We enjoyed a 35 minute lesson with a group of 12 children in the first grade of Primary. In our first term, we had designed a lesson and performed it in front of our classmates and teachers, with some of us university students acting as children (at least, trying to). We were given the chance to either adapt and improve that proposal for this lesson with rela children, or think of a new lesson from scratch. Our group went for the second choice, because our first lesson was based on an idea of an exchange project with a foreign school, and we couldn't adapt it.

We also devoted some time to collectively create a kind of a rubric to prepare and assess our lessons. That was a very interesting idea. Other years, when we have performed lessons in front of our teachers and classmates, we have used assessment rubrics given to us by our teachers, so we could assess the work of our classmates. Even part of our mark came from the assessment of our classmates. Developing the rubric ourselves is an even better way to get involved in assessment, and I think that it would have been nice to round up the work we did this week producing a proper rubric. We almost finished it, but maybe some of us will see it just as a set of criteria or guidelines to take into account at the time of designing the lesson, and not as a tool for assessment.

Furthermore, thinking of part of the reading I have done for my undergraduate dissertation, it would have been a good idea to combine our ideas with observation tools that have been developed and are widely used, like the COLT. I know we have a very tight schedule, and our teachers must leave out many things they feel are important, but it would have been good to reflect a bit on tools to observe our lessons, because that could have a great impact on our future career.

Coming back to our lesson, we were very pleased with the way things developed. We were a bit tight when it came to preparing it, and we had to start with part of the work when we were still in our school placement, but we were lucky to receive help from other classmates when it came to creating the English version of the story, so we had time to rehearse and plan well. We also checked beforehand that we had followed the criteria we had outlined during the week collectively. In my opinion, these are the main strengths of our proposal for the lesson:

• It was a good example of the importance of grading the task, and not the text. We had a difficult-ish story, in the sense that we knew children wouldn't understand all that was said on the first time they would watch it, but the task itself was achievable. Besides, we had prepared questions of a varying degree of difficulty, so we could adapt the challenges to the group. Still, during the lesson we didn't need to use our "easiest" questions.
• It had a balanced combination of quieter and more dynamic activities; enough to give it a structure and a securing sense of "order", but not static enough to be boring and uncomfortable, especially for those students who need movement.
• The activities we planned were coherent with the contents we wanted to work on. The story was about multiple intelligences and cooperative learning, and we proposed some challenges to solve cooperatively in order to achieve a common goal for the whole class. Besides, in the end, we asked them to teach us a song, as an example of what the story means when it says that "we all have something to learn from our friends, and something to teach them".
• Students had an encouraging beginning, in the sense that they felt competent. We started naming animals, and they knew most of them, so we provided a welcoming start.
• We thought of students' goals, and not just the teacher's goals. The activities had a purpose for them, and not only for us. As a matter of fact, we didn't pay much attention to specific teaching objectives while we were designing the activities. We mostly thought from the students' point of view, and the main concern from the teaching point of view was not to try to be too ambitious in the amount of new structures, or vocabulary; trying to keep it simple.
• We modelled clearly the key structure that was introduced in the lesson (to be good at something), so children would understand its meaning, but we didn't try to make them understand everything that would be said, leaving plenty of space for inference.
• We also tried to activate prior knowledge and introduce the story in a short discussion with the whole group before watching the cartoon with the story, in order to improve its understanding.
• We designed the lesson in a way that would promote participation by all of them, because we had some activities in the large group, but the game was done in pairs, and all children had their opportunity to be in the focus of attention. At the same time, doing the game in pairs provided some shelter and support to the shyest students, in order to promote their participation. We also tried to encourage participation by splitting between the two of us who conducted the lesson the dual role of the teacher as helper and supporter, on the one hand, and as the one who always pushes you a but further in your learning, in the other hand.
• We provided for opportunities to produce output during the lesson, in the large group, in pairs and in small groups.
• We used rhymes and songs, as well as the mystery factor of the pockets in the skirt, to attract and maintain attention and increase interest.
• Finally, we used animals in a different and richer context than what they are usually used in school.

Then came the lesson of another three of our classmates with the same group of children, after a break. Our classmates prepared a lesson about emotions, namely happiness, anger and sadness. The beginning of the lesson was very good; they introduced the three emotions very clearly, and asked children to choose the one they related to at that moment. 

They performed a very nice story with the whole group, in a very dynamic way, with teachers saying sentences and children repeating. I don't know why, but I am always a bit wary of activities that sound too audiolingual, but the truth is children really loved it and repeated all that was said with no hesitation. 

Then, they did a game in three groups. I liked very much the idea of taking advantage of the three teachers and having group work going on simultaneously; that way all children were engaged in an activity at the same time. It was good to see an alternative proposal to the one we chose in that sense. The group work ended with each performing a situation, so the rest would guess the emotion. Maybe it was a bit too ambitious to improvise a dramatisation in such a short time, but children enjoyed it.

Finally, the lesson ended with a dancing activity, where there were parts of songs which evoked one of the emotions.

When it comes to suggestions for improvement, I would point out these:

• Considering a different choice of colours for the emotion stickers. We tend to associate green with good and red with danger, and I don't think it is a good idea to use colours which suggest that we should be happy at all times. In English, linking sadness with blue could be an idea, so one could introduce the idea of feeling blue, for example.
• The flashcard used as visual support on the shop being closed could have been more clear, showing a shop door with the sign on it, instead of just the word.
• It could have been a god idea to have a formal ending for the lesson. Finishing with the dance gave a feeling of strange ending, but maybe it is just a matter of getting used to it.