#11 Conclusion

During the last 4 months the idea that I had of what is a good English teacher has changed significantly. Thanks to the class topics, the articles read and the discussions in class, now I think that I have a solid and cultivated notion of how to manage a language classroom. 

This is what i wrote at the begining of the course of what in my opinion was a succesful English class for Preschool: 

A successful English class in pre-school:

To represent what a successful English class is for me, I have drawn a situation in which the role play is the center on interest. I think this kind of situation, with children from 3 to 6, is a perfect way to learn a lot of vocabulary of different topics, for example, of animals, as it’s shown on the drawing.

First of all, because children can experiment with their own bodies and absorb everything that surrounds them during the elaboration of the costumes and the representation of each animal. From my point of view it’s of vital importance that the teacher speaks English all the time, emphasizing those concepts that he/she considers are more significant (depending on the topic).

Secondly, because roleplaying gives children the possibility to choose between many characters, so, in this case, they can feel secure with the animal they decide to represent in front of their partners. This freedom motivates them to participate and to learn, feeling protagonists of their own learning. Moreover, the motivation can be higher if they create the costumes themselves, giving relevance to the elements they consider more important.

In my opinion, an English class is a place where children have fun, in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere where English is spoken constantly. Teachers have to create this environment so little children feel safe and ready to learn. If it’s possible, it’s always better to work with small groups (half of the class), so the communication between teacher and pupils is easier and everyone has the opportunity to speak in front of the others.

Considering the characteristics of the language, that has many differences between oral and written ways, it can be useful to have a board where the teacher can write down the words he/she wants children to learn. 

Personally I think that a pre-school English class is successful if children have a positive time in contact with this foreign language and if they learn about 3 or 4 new words each time. There are a lot of English songs that can help us, as teachers, to create enjoyable learning moments, so we have the possibility to end up each class with one of them, helping children to memorize new vocabulary through music.

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I have to say that I continue thinking all that I wrote 4 months ago, but at this moment I can add some more ideas, most of them referring to the teacher's task:

During these 4 months we have discussed about Personal Learning Environments and the importance of being connected with other teachers and education professionals, recycling ourselves as teachers; we have discovered  many internet tools that can be helpful for our daily tasks and resources that we surely will use with our future class.

We have reflected about children's characteristics depending on their age and discovered what child centered classrooms are. We have also discussed about multiple literacies and how important it is to take them into account, and also about connecting everything that's done in class with students' homes to obtain the better results possible. Obviously we cannot forget the classroom management and all the ways to get children's attention that we have learned, and neither the importance of having the habit to reflect  about our job. Finally, we have also spoken about how to assess pupils properly, using different technics as observation and rubrics. 

With all this information and resources, I feel that I'm starting to be prepared to be an English teacher. Although I know that I still have a lot to learn and that I will learn the most in practice, I can say that it has been a very dynamic and interesting way to acquire knowledge and to share our believes and opinions about teaching with the rest of the class. I'm really happy with the progress I have made during this course. 

#10 Original ideas for teaching English to young learners

A couple of days ago I found this video on the net and I found it absolutely cute. I think it is a great and original idea to make videos like this with Preschool children for the following reasons: 

- It's an engaging way to practice talking in English. Each child learns a part of the text and its correct pronunciation and intonation. 

- It's a cooperative task and all the class is involved, everyone has a role and is important for the final result.

- It's an extremly atractive project for children. There are a lot of different thing to do (write the story, elaborate the dresses and the scenery, record the voice, act...)

- Children will be proud of the result, they will be incredibly happy to see or to hear themselves in the video and they will show it to their friends and parents too. 

- It's an interesting way of using new technologies in the classroom.

So, as a future teacher, I would like to do a project like this with my students. I'm sure they would enjoy it  a lot and learn English at the same time!

#9 Using CLIL Units in Preschool

It's demonstrated that very young children have an enormous capacity to learn new languages. The earlier you start teaching them, the more they will dominate the foraign language. These language learning skills disappear over the years and that's the reason why it's our commitment, as teachers, to take profit of them. CLIL is the perfect tool for doing it. As Do Coyle says in his article "Developing CLIL: Towards a theory of practice", this system has the capacity to integrate varied, dynamic and innovative learning environments, so important nowadays. 

CLIL promotes language as a medium for learning any subject (mathematics, art, history,...), so its purpose is that kids learn the foreign language but also learn new content. Both are equally important. Moreover, and as the article's writer affirms, CLIL also has the following benefits for children: 

-Raise learner linguistic competence and confidence

-Raise teacher and learner expectations

-Increasing vocabulary learning skills and grammatical awareness

-Motivate and encourage student independence

-Encourage linguistic spontaneity if students are enabled to learn through the language rather than in the language

-Develop study skills, concentration, learning how to learn

-Generate positive attitudes 

For all of this, I personally think that CLIL is a great and helpful tool to be used in Preschool, when children are really susceptible to learn. Learning content through a foreign language will give them strong skills to be used during the Primary Education years.

#8 Engaging children in a Preschool classroom

Engaging little learners can be a really difficult task, and even more with the young ones. It is known that children have short attention spans, so here are some tricks that can help us, as teachers, to get their attention:

- Go to class with the lesson properly prepared: if not, it's possible that you make pauses and that is the moment when children disconnect and start playing around. Don't give them the opportunity to do it when it's not the time. Keep them occupied.

- Create routines to catch their attention: in the English class it can be a song, a rhyme, a jazz chant... just a clue to make them react and listen to us. It has to be done everyday, kids love repetition and it's perfect as warm up.

- Involve students in the action: the more they do the more they'll learn. So, never sit down and read the lesson, because that will bore them a lot. To engage them make them act, think, speak (in the foreign language class even more! make them repeat to memorize new words and give them opportunities to use the language in class). If they experiment with their own bodies they will be motivated and they will learn for sure!

- Keep it short and use variety: Just remember that less is more in Preschool Education, so, activities don't need to last more than 15-20 minutes each. Activities done in the same lesson have to develop different learning areas and some of them have to allow children to move.

- Teach with enthusiasm: kids notice if the teacher is enjoying what he/she does or not, even the young ones. So, use all of your energy in your explanations and demonstrations; they need to feel that what they are doing is really important and useful, and the teacher has to believe it too.

#7 Rethinking classroom management

Every classroom needs to have an elaborated management to assure children’s learning and improvement. As N. Maldonado says in her article “Rethinking classroom management”, there are 3 different but interrelated areas in which teachers have to focus to succeed teaching.

First of all the organizational issues, that refer, a part of the activities design, to the rights and duties that kids need to elaborate, negotiate with the teacher and keep in mind in order to achieve the class’s desired way of behaving. The point is to make students feel like a group, in which everyone has different and significant roles, but in which all cooperate with the same goals. That’s called collective action and in my opinion is one of the most useful ways to promote empathy and solidarity among students, two values that seem to be disappearing with the years.

Second, she talks about the curriculum issues, which teachers can never forget. In this case, the writer remarks the importance of engaging students with the correct planning and choice of the activities. It is known that to get children’s attention the teacher has to present content related to their real lives and personal interests, and at the same time find strategies to keep them motivated during long periods of time (and this is even more difficult with Preschool kids, that’s why I have decided to write the next blog entry reflecting on this topic). Giving children equal opportunities and designing tasks that require participation can help us achieve our purpose.  

And finally, as the writer says, we can’t forget about the social issues when thinking about classroom management. Creating a good climate in the classroom, full of trust and respect it’s vital to obtain satisfactory results. We have to remember also to appreciate always students work, because that’s the way we help them to get security and self-esteem, so important in the early years when they create their self-image.  

#6 The home-school connection

It is research based that having a constant connection between school and home improves children's results. It helps teachers to get information about their students backgrounds and acting consequently, adapting their daily work to them. The situation at home is going to affect kids perfoming in class in a certain way, so i think that it is crucial to be informed about it for the child's benefit.

Working together (family and school) will create a synergy in the students learning that will increase their possibilities of acquiring knowledge. Linking the 2 most important worlds of kids will surely motivate them and make them feel secure and protected. Additionally, showing what they do in the English class (or in the others) will help them to absorb and memorize the content, besides of making them feel proud of their own work and evolution. If children explain at home their class experiencies, parents can give their oppinions of our work as teachers and children can send them to us. It is also an invitation to parents to participate in their son's learning, seeing them as partners in this exiting work that is teaching. 

In conclusion, what children learn in school (including English) hasn't have to end in the classroom. The more we promote the putting into practice of the acquired knowledge the more we will be fostering children's personal enrichement and learning. 

#5 Meeting individual needs

After reading the article written by Peter Westwood and Wendy Arnold, I would like to remark the following ideas concearning the diferentiated instruction: 

As is known, each student has a different background (social, emocional and cognitive) that surely influences on his/her behaviour in school and even more his/her learning process.

It is totally necessary to look at the students as individualls, trying to addapt our teacher tasks to their personal strengths and possibilities, to ensure that everybody in the class learns and evolves at it's own pace.

There is no master handbook on how to do it, it depends on the teacher and his/her ways to approach each learning situation, but there are several studies on this topic, that can be helpful and give us some ideas on how to manage the class and attend everyone's needs. 

As it's said in the text, there are some issues that have to be considered to assure the responsability with all kid's learnig processes, these are: the materials used in class, that have to be chosen consciously and with care; the grouping of students, that should promote the participation of everyone; the projects, that have to respond to student's motivations and the interactions between teacher and students, that have to be constant and significant.