INTRODUCTION

In this site, you wil find things related with process of teaching and learning. Attending some essential points, we want to show you the beautiful things about teaching little kids. To be more specific, you can find strategies that you can apply at the moment of teaching. In this way, you are going to be able to distinguish between the things you can do and the ones that you cannot because as future teachers we have to keep in mind that teachers have to inspire their students.

I. THE CHANGING WORLD OF ENGLISH.

-Why did English become such an important language?

English became such an important language because first it became a lingua franca that was a language used widely for communications between people who do not share the same first language. So they needed to communicate with someone else.

After developing for almost a millennium on the British Isles, English was taken around the world by the sailors, soldiers, pilgrims, traders and missionaries of the British Empire. By the time anything resembling a language policy was introduced, English had already reached all corners of the globe. For example, English-speaking puritans were not the only Europeans to arrive in North America: Spanish, French, Dutch and German were also widely spoken. All of the languages were reinforced by waves of immigration from Europe in the following centuries in which

But in the process of designing a “United” States, the USA’s founders knew the importance of language for national identity. English was the majority language and had to be encouraged. As recently as the start of the 20^th Century, several states banned the teaching of foreign languages in private schools and homes. The U.S. Supreme Court only struck down restrictions on private language education in 1923.

Some important things to consider in the important of the English language were.

The economics because militaries prowess may account for initial establishment of language, as we have seen, but it is economic power that ensures its survival and growth. A major factor in the growth of English has been the spread of global commerce, pushed on by the dominance of the United States as world economic power.

Information exchange a great deal of academic discourse around the world tales place in English. It is often a lingua franca of conferences, for example, and may journal articles in fields as diverse as astrophysics and zoology have English as a default language.

Travel. Much travel and tourism is carried on, around the world, in English. Of course this is not always the case, as the multilingualism of many tourism workers in different countries demonstrates.

Popular culture. In the western world, at least, English is a dominating language in popular culture. Pop music in English saturates the planets airwaves. Thus many people who are not English speakers can sing words from their favorite’s English-medium songs.

-Why do you consider it continues being so important?

Today’s economy is increasingly globalized, and this means that many of us are interacting across cultures in a way we never did before. In such an economy, the importance of learning English becomes self-evident. Learning English helps you to communicate across cultures and to conduct business in lands you may never have previously considered viable markets. It also helps you to address customers in the language that they understand best and in which they are most comfortable communicating. Additionally, the importance of learning English is emphasized every day when we see the diversity of earth’s cultures and the amazing array of people that make up our global community.

That said, there is another reason supporting the importance of learning English. Scientific studies have shown that learning English improves brain function and stimulates creativity. When you know a new language, you start to see connections you didn’t see before because every language approaches the world in a slightly different way. As a result, you have the opportunity to understand the world from the perspective of another culture and gain a greater appreciation of human society in all its diversity. As a consequence, the importance of learning English is again reinforced. You become not just equipped to communicate across cultures but empowered to understand others’ points of view.

-How do you predict the future of English?

We have noticed that the English is spoken by at least a quarter of the world’s population. It is important, too, to realize that this is not spoken by three quarters of that same population. However, it is clear from the way its use has grown in the last decade that this situation is about to change.

One way of predicting the future is to look back at the past. The global role English plays today as a lingua franca – used as a means of communication by speakers of different languages – has parallels in the Latin of pre-modern Europe.

Having been spread by the success of the Roman Empire, Classical Latin was kept alive as a standard written medium throughout Europe long after the fall of Rome. But the Vulgar Latin used in speech continued to change, forming new dialects, which in time gave rise to the modern Romance languages: French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian and Italian.

Similar developments may be traced today in the use of English around the globe, especially in countries where it functions as a second language. New “interlanguages” are emerging, in which features of English are mingled with those of other native tongues and their pronunciations. The English language will take the main language in the whole word to communicate and to share the different opinions that the people have.

What we think is that English grow and native speakers are becoming less and less powerful in the daily use of the language, we will have to adjust the way in which both native and non-native experts have traditionally thought learning and teaching English around the word.

II. LESSON PLAN AS A SUCCESS TOOL FOR TEACHERS.

-How useful is lesson planning for teachers?

Lesson planning is useful because it helps teacher ensure the activities that go on in the classroom. Many times some teachers forget the activity that he has to do where they miss out educational target, so lesson planning has the advantage that remain you each step of the class. But also lesson planning has more advantages that make it useful for teachers, for example:

1-It inspires the teacher to improve the further lessons, and to ask proper and important questions.

2. It helps the teacher in evaluating his or her teaching and in creating the interest of students towards the lesson.

3. It develops self confidence in the teacher.

4.  Proper care is taken on take into consideration, the level and previous knowledge of students.

5. It stimulates the teacher to think in an organized manner.

6. It helps the teacher to understand to objectives properly.

-What are the most useful parts in the lesson plan when teaching very young learners (VYL)?

 It is important to have the learning objectives in mind because those should drive the development and implementation of all activities in the classroom. Teacher must be focus in the objectives because they are the goals that we set ourselves to achieve at the end of the class. But also when teachers teach VYL is important to be focus in the activities, but you will ask why activities are important. Let me tell you that in this age 3-6 years children learn quick, and have so much fun with learning. They are such active learners, processing new experiences, asking questions, trying things out, experimenting, practicing over and over until they master new skills.They find difficult to sit still; that´s why, the teacher must create activities according to the topic. It will help students to learn in a funny way.

Lesson planning at the beginning can be confuse because we only think in the activities we want to develop, but we must think in the objectives. Teacher Natalia did not do it. She got confuse when she would do her first class; fortunately, she had a friend that was a teacher. The friend teacher explained all about lesson planning. This kind of problem occur when someone does not have a guide. But teacher Natalia share her experience with lesson planning saying that always we think that lesson planning is not important because every people have the intelligence to remember every part of the class without lesson planning, that is wrong. The teacher also share that when she was giving the class, she saw how important lesson planning is. The lesson planning was used in every activity, every step of the class something that helps teacher and students. Students learn more when the teacher followed her guide because they got their classes according their level and in chronological way. 

III. COMPARE TRADITIONAL TEACHING AND 21st CENTURY TEACHING.

-Top ten traits of the 21st century ELT practitioner (teacher’s profile)

1.    Adapting

Teachers must know about new technologies, and they should use them in order to make the class better. The knowledge they have about technologies should be used in the classroom with new techniques for the students learning.

2.    Being Visionary

Teachers must have a big imagination in order to use the technologies in the class, and make the students work and learn with this tools.

3.    Collaborating

As teachers we must share, contribute, adapt and invent new ways to teach for making a better class; this must be a priority for us.

4.    Taking Risks

The teacher must take risks with the new technologies and devices, and plan the class integrating these tools knowing that there is so much to learn.

5.    Learning

Teachers expect students to le life-long learners, so teachers must keep learning new things for teaching their students and make them better through the time.

6.    Communicating

Teachers should have a good rapport with their students, but they should keep a good control and management of the class. The good communication among teacher and students should be inside and outside the class.

7.    Modelling Behaviour

This means that teachers must behave and be a role model for their students; we must show them a good way to behave with values and tolerance for making them see a good way to become better people.

8.    Leading

Teachers know how to leader the class using new technologies and making the class even better from before.

9.    “Can Do” Attitude

Practitioners must to believe in what they are doing; they are looking betters ways to teach. 

Also, they are making a good rapport with the students.

10. Effective Communicator

Teachers must be excellent communicators; this mean they have to know how to communicate in either oral or written form.

-The teacher of the 21st century must be able to:

1. Create and edit digital audio. (songs, activities)

2. Exploit some digital images for classroom use.

3. Use video content to engage students.

4. Use social networking sites to connect with colleagues and grow professionally.

5. Create and deliver asynchronous presentations and training sessions.

6. Have knowledge about online security.

7. Create screen capture videos and tutorials.

8.Use and provide students with task management tools to organize their work and plan their learning.

9.Exploit computer games for pedagogical purposes.

10 Use digital assessment tools to create quizzes.

-The salient traits between NESTs and non-NESTs

There are big differences between NESTs and non-NESTs, and the language learning process can be affected by this reason.  NESTs are the teachers that have English as their mother tongue and non-NESTs are the ones that have English as their second language; also, non-NESTs have the advantage of understand and be aware of the mistakes the students can make. NESTs focus more in fluency, but non-NESTs focus more in grammar rules.

Everybody says that native speakers teachers are better than  non native speakers teachers because they were born in a country which they use the mother tongue, and they are the gold standard of spoken and written language, whereas the non nests are inferior educators because they lack this innate linguistic skill.

Non Nests:

-They are perceived as good teachers of grammar. ( its true because they are focus on grammar structures.)

-They are able to help the students on their first language. When is necessary teachers can explain  to the students in the first language.)

-Students find class with them easier.( students have confidence.)

-They don’t take care about pronunciation.

Nests:

-They are the ideal model for language production.(they have the perfect pronunciation.)

-Their speech is held up as the gold standard of grammatical correctness.

-They have the correct pronunciation.

-They are able to share a new culture.(students are expose to learn from them a new culture.)

I have noticed everything I wrote in this page because Students are able to ask the teaches in a good way, but sometimes they pushing you to have a better pronunciation even when they are not native speakers.

IV. THE YOUNG LEARNER.

Teaching to very young learners was an amazing experience that taught us how to deal with little kids. Since we we were teaching to very young learners, we faced some challenging situations that made us understand the world of kindergarten students. Those students we were teaching to were among 4 and 6 years old who are considered to be in the level one or the beginner stage. They have different attention spans because they are not the same, and as it happens with adults and children as well, we have to pay special attention to their special needs.

Let’s talk about the attention span of the children we were teaching to. As explained before, children do not learn all the same. But what does it mean? It means that every child is a complete world that need individual attention. It happened in our experience as kindergarten teachers; we observed while we were teaching and developing different activities that some children seem to learn in an easier way. Something all of us could see, for example, while teaching the colors, is that some students were very good at remembering the new words, and some other could remember but with the teacher help. Some of them used to associate the new words with things that they have seen in television, for example, when a classmate was teaching the colors, a little kid raised his hand and said “ blue teacher?.. Like in the “ Blue’s clues”.”The teacher was fascinated and said that the dog was called Blue because it was indeed blue. Children do not like to share their things, and we all could notice that, for example, when it came to a coloring activity, they used to fight for the color pencils and did not let anybody take them until the task was already finished.

Sometimes we all got frustrated because they did not pay attention to the activities we were developing to them. What we did not know until that moment is that children get bored easily if the activity is not well prepared to their level or if it seems boring to them. They have lots of energy; they like to make a lot of noise that is why some activities that make them lose their energies seemed to work better; however, in some instances, we could not manged well the whole group, for many reasons. But when it came to sing a song related to the topic, we got the attention of all the children in the classroom. It worked better than explaining them word by word in a mechanic way.

They were respectful and good listeners; every day that we arrived to the classroom all of them were expecting what the new topic was going to be about . But that energy did not last much longer if we did not use to develop an activity that could make them feel comfortable and entertained. They used to love warm up activities, that is why we learned that a very suitable warm up activity was really necessary to have their attention during the whole class.

  

The book “Teaching English to Children by Wendy A Scott and Lisbeth H Ytreberg“ categorizes very young learners into two categories: the ones in the level one or beginner stage ( five to 6 years old) and the ones in the level two ( 8 to 10). We were teaching to children in the beginner stage, so we are going to contrast the characteristics the book talks about with the ones we saw in our children:

As the book says “ they can talk about what they are doing”, we could see that; in some cases the students were taking the leader role and used to tell other classmates what the activity was about if they classmates did not understand. Also it says that they can tell you what they have done or heard; it used to happen very often, for example, when playing them a video, they were all talking and telling what they saw in that video, and if it was a fairy tell, told by the teacher, they could retail the story or give some ideas about it.

They can plan activities, argue for something and tell you why they tink what think. These points seemed not to occur in our teaching practicum, but while we were discussing about it, we noticed that it happens indeed, but it is not that much notoriously. For example, some of us faced some students that did not like to participate, and they simply answer that they did not want to do that kind of activity or that they wanted to continue playing and not just coloring pictures and repeating words.

We noticed that they use they logical reasoning. A clear example is like the one that happened to one of our classmates: He gave them some pictures about the body parts in order to color them, but the bodies did not have hands, eyes, mouth, ears and so on; the children did not think twice to draw the missing parts of the body. The teacher was going to explain them that they had to draw the missing parts, but they were almost finishing with the eyes or the mouth.

V. LISTENING,ORAL WORK,READING AND WRITING.

The  experiences that the teacher had  during her teaching practices were claimant.The teaching listening's experience was difficult to deal but successful since the students understood and responded as the way that the teacher said. Although it was hard in the beginning of the teaching practice, the teacher improved her teaching .For example , kids responded in a good way when they were asked to sing the song , and also when they were asked to repeat the word in English after hearing it.

It did work out the theory that the book mentioned about the listening skills.Specially the repeat practice and singing songs .The students were very excited when the teacher told them that they were going to sing a song in English and that they would memorize the lyrics.

About the oral work skills , this skill was more demanding than the listening skills because it required more participation of the students, but not all the students were able to participate in the time that was established in the lesson plan.The reason was the number of students that were in the class. But the teacher tried to  make that all the students tell something during the time it was required .

Even though the students did not have a wide vocabulary , they were excited to talk with the few words that they knew in English.This was a big contrary of what the book said  because the book mentioned that because of the lack of vocabulary that student might have in English ,they are not disposed to an oral work.

One disadvantage that the student teacher had , and not only her , is that her students only practice the English inside the classroom, so they did not put into practice the new vocabulary that they learned , so it put extra difficulty for some  students to be more confidence as the book mentioned.

On the reading skill, this was not an area in where the teaching worked  because the students were starting to read in Spanish , so it was not effective that the teacher worked in this area since the students did not respond good when the teacher tried to make them learned the words in English.

On another hand ,the writing skill had the same problem as in the reading skill.As the students ere coping with the troubles of reading and writing in Spanish, the English learning was more difficult to deal with .But students did try to identify the letter of each words and try to recognized them .

Even thought the book said that oral work and writing skill are combined, kids responded better in oral work skill than writing skills.This unusual event may happen because of the culture that Salvadoreans have and without noticing that young pupils copy this since a very young age.

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- One of the activity that the teacher did was the repeating exercise  since this one was the most effective and worked out perfectly in teaching for young learners .This activity make the learning process from students easier.But one thing that the teacher changed is the way the students would say it .For example, if they were going to repeat the name of the fruits( apple and watermelon ), they would repeat the word "apple" with a sad gesture , and with sadness sorrow ,and the word "watermelon" with a happy and cheerful face. This kind of activity worked very good in the students, and the teacher achieved her goal.

Another activity that the teacher applied was singing a song.This activity did not have a changed since the students had fun with it in every class.

VI- WHEN THINGS GO WRONG IN CLASS

Many problems associated with in-class group work can be prevented with careful preparation, specific instructions, and appropriate facilitation. Consult teaching tips sheet “Implementing Group Work in the Classroom” for important guidelines and suggestions on these issues. However, when your students do not respond as you had hoped they would, here are some ways to respond.

The class went out of control.

 It was one day when I was explaining the new topic of color. Some children asked me about the colors, but they spoke too loud and in the same time that I couldn’t understand what they said. To control that moment I realized that I had to use one activity in order to involve them, and I changed the dynamic.

An activity took too long.

 I remember that day; I started to talk about family members. So I did a dynamic called the hot potatoes because it was one of the most favorites for the children. It was planning for around 15 minutes, but it took me more than 25 minutes as many children were participating and asking much about the names of the member. At the end, I gave them a homework assignment to finish at home.   

An activity did not work.

It is difficult to control or to have the idea that every activity is going to have a good result. I would like to share with you that in one occasion I was doing an activity with the students, and I decided to create groups of five. So they created the groups with some of their friends even though they met each other’s, but they started to do a big disorder, it was awful to see everybody in that position. I changed the dynamic.

An activity was too difficult.

The children were so intelligent that they caught easily the activities, but in that occasion they could not understand the activity. The activity was to draw their families, so they did not have the idea what a family member are?

Did you follow any tips presented of chapter 8? Do you think could have worked for you?

Yes, I found and included some tips that has the chapter panning your work, and it was very useful for me to face some problems by using some of the tips, for example, when some activities did not have the result that I expected. I evaluated what it was wrong in order to have a good result for the next one.(Natalia Muñoz)

It is commonly for every teacher to use a specific guide lines for some different reasons, for example, it makes life much easier for the teacher in classroom, it saves time, and so on. But what happen when it does not work.

You had extra time.

 Most of the time, I planned my lesson plan to control the time in which included the different activities in order to develop the class in a good way.

An internal disturbance:

The environment in classroom is very important for understanding the class. One day I explained the topic of different transportations, suddenly two children were fighting one toy. It was difficult for me because I was alone in the classroom because the principal teacher was sick; I took the toy. I talked with them about that, and I explained that the action was bad.

 There was an external disturbance.

One day, I was doing some activity suddenly I heard a strange sound out of the room and it was difficult for me to explain the class; it was a show of dancing for a specific event. I tried to talk with the teacher about it, and he understood the problem. Finally I could give the class to teach.

Did you follow any tips presented of chapter 8? Do you think could have worked for you?

 Yes, I follow some important information because I know that children are usually full of enthusiasm and energy, and the language lessons will be full of variety and changes of activity. 

These tools helped me a lot because I could know what I need for my lesson every classes, and could notice how to balance my lesson, for doing or obtaining a good result at the end of the class. Also, it allowed me to use more of my energy and enthusiasm to enjoy what I am doing. (Gabriela Gonzalez)

During all my practitioner’s classes only one day the class went out of control because some of them did not like the activity that I had prepared. Therefore, I started to work with them in other things, and they became quiet again.

I had prepare a very interesting activity by the time I realized that it would take so much time, so the children started to become anxious and boring. They were hungry; that is why, we make the activity into two parts.

Finally, an activity was a little bit difficult for the little kids, so all of them started to ask many question. At the end of the class, I was very tired, but the activity was already finished. 

I tried to follow some of the tips that the book presents, but some of them do not work at all because some activities were a little bit difficult for them. However, I consider that they will work if we adjust the activities according to the age, level and the interest of the students. Once we move from boring or maybe common activities, our students will learn more that they do. One thing that helped me a lot was the activity based on learning new vocabulary because I use not only pictures but also things related to their first language.

 There was an external disturbance.

I really suffered with the external disturbance because the school was small place and the classrooms were one next to the other, so I could hear everything that was happening in the next room. What I did was to talk with the teacher and we got in agreement to have a specific time to give the class for each teacher and to take turns. So, when I was giving classes, the next classroom was having a break and so on.

The class went out of control.

I remember just one time when I almost lost the control of the class because I made a game, and two students were fighting for being the first one when participating. I stopped the music and told them that if they were going to fight, I was going to leave the classroom; for them to realized that what they were doing was wrong, I adapted a serious mood position and showed myself disappointed by what they were doing. That was the first and last time the class almost went out of control. (Antonio Siciliano)

An activity took too long.

One day, I brought a cut and paste activity. I remember that they were excited because they almost never do activities like those; I brought a three-page cut and place pictures activity and I gave them it. It took one hour, but it was planned to be 20 minutes. What I did is to leave them homework for the next class and told them to finished coloring, cutting and paste at home.

An activity did not work.

Once, I tried to make them read in English, but I realized that not all the students can work or understand in the same way. What I did is to change the instruction of the game; I decided to read myself and asked them to pay attention to me in order to they answer the questions that I was going to asked them and in that way I caught their attention and help them to develop their understanding skill.

An activity was too difficult.

I discovered that for they reading was too difficult. Every time I pretended to make them read, at the beginning they were no able to read, but by practicing I could help them to improve a little bit their reading skill. Even though for them it is difficult to read well, I teach them to never give up, and if they do not know how to pronounce a word or its meaning, to ask for information.

Which of this situations did you face in your teaching practicum? Describe what happened and how you dealt with it.

Well, I used one tip when mi class was out of control, and made a calming activity: reading a book for them. Also, when an activity took too long, I decided to tell them to do it as a homework and then I moved into another activity. Of course, they worked in my teaching context, and I think they work excellent.

Did you follow any tips presented of chapter 8? Do you think could have worked for you?

Well, first I followed some tips in which I could use to create my lessons planning, and I included when and how to use group of work because is one way to make the organization of my children as easy as possible.

The importance of the time to indicate how much time I think each activity will take

And always have more activities than I think I will need. (Blanca Bolaños)

(Elmer Rodriguez)

An internal disturbance:

The situation that happened to me was that the class went out of control. 

I prepared a beautiful activity for the kids because I wanted to do something different for them. I prepared a day before my class, and I decided to teach them the parts of the body. I bought a poster with the parts of the body, and I downloaded a song. I started to teach them how to say the parts. Everything was good in that moment; then, the teacher sad me that she has to go out. So I was alone with the kids at the moment that I put the song they started to sing and dance. All of them were happy; however, I don´t Know what happened that in one moment the kids were out of control, they felt to the flow, they started to scream. I sad behave and they didn´t listen me, suddenly a girl was crying because another girl hit her.

I didn´t know what to do. I started to say in a good way that they had to behave well. And I sad to the girl that hit the other that she has to apologize fortunaly she did. Then, the teacher came back to the classroom, and I said to her what had happened.
Yes, I think that it could work because that I can use these techniques for continuing the class. For example, with the girls fighting, I took them outside, and I talked with them.

There was an external disturbance: it was because of the school was too small, so the classrooms were much closed to the playground.  Sometimes I was trying to give the class and there was an external disturbance from the other students.

What I did to solve this was close the door and speak lauder; I also tried to catch the pupil’s attention as much as I could because in that way they did not pay attention to the external disturbance.

An activity took too long:  Once I made with my pupils an activity where they had to paint some figures, and it was too difficult that they finish.

I helped the pupils to complete the activity, and they could finish more quickly.

I had extra time: Once the teacher left me with the pupils for 3 hours because she had to attend some activities. So it was pretty difficult to take care of the pupils and to try that they did not get bored.

Basically, I gave the pupils the class, and then, I made some activities but entertainment ones. Through the activities I made with them I tried to teach them some words.

Yes, I did; for example, when I had extra time in my class. I used like ¨emergency activities¨, and I did it in the way that chapter number eight mentions. It means that I made the activity according to what I had been teaching before.  That definitely worked for me because it was also useful for the pupils had like a review, and they also had a good moment.

Also, when one of the activities I made with them took too long I not only helped them to finish but also I left them that activity as homework. As clearly the chapter eight says, and it worked very well.

And activity took too long: when I was teach about the furniture of the house, then I did an activity for made a review that activity was, I drew in some pages the different parts of the house, and I made groups of five and I give them some pieces of paper with the name of the furniture, and they had to put the name in the correct place, but the student had some problems and I didn’t have much time, so I used one step that is in chapter 8, I said to my classmates that we are going to finish that activity the next class

Did you follow any tips presented of chapter 8? Do you think could have worked for you?

Yes, I followed some tips and it helped me a lot in my classes, for example to ask did the pupils learn what I wanted them to learn?, this can be difficult question to answer since learning takes place over a period of time, but a good time to task the question is after a whole period of time.