Diagnosis class!!!!!=)

Time to teach!!!!

Practicum 1 is not just about theory, we have drawn all the theories mentioned in the previous entries with the intention of putting into practice all those knowledge gotten with real kids. Now, the time has come to truly experience. In this manner, let me take you in a walk through the first contact with children that we have conveniently called “Diagnosis Class”.

Ø  Diagnosis class:
 v Objective: 

Get to know the children who will be part of a series of lessons imparted by the students of teaching practicum one, and at the same time, elicit the background English knowledge that they have, so that the next lessons can be oriented to the needs that these kids present.

This first contact was divided into 5 students who gladly volunteered to participate in the activities of this first reach.

This is the order that the class followed.

Student in charge

Activity

Luiz Amaya

Hot potato

Ileana Escobar

 Saving my friend Peter

Gisselt Romero

Balloons party

Cristela Rubio

Telling a tale

Ingrid Giron

Wool web

Ø Every activity took 10 minutes of the class.

Ø The complete class was 50 minutes.

Ø Snacks where shared out at the end of the class.

Results:

·        As it is mentioned at the beginning of this post, the intention of this diagnosis class was to elicit the background English knowledge that the kids had. However, in a surprising way; kids did better that expected because in my personal opinion, I thought that the children were not going to know much about English; nevertheless, it happened the other way around. The students are not level zero, they have already been in touch with the language, and this was demonstrated through some activities in which they showed knowledge of some English numbers, colors, words to describe feelings such as happy, sad, angry, and the like; resulting in a group of students that will not be taught from level zero.

·        Another important fact to mention is that the ages of students vary from 6 years old to 9 years old which at the beginning was seen as a limitation when teaching, but, in a second thought, it is been discussed in the class that this difference will actually make us work harder so that we as teachers can look for solutions to integrate everyone in the classroom activities, no matter the age.

·        We could also observe that not all the kids have the same style to learn. For example, most of the kids were very active; they wanted to perform all the activities involving their whole bodies. This means that they learn in a kinesthetic way (needs to move around and act out while playing). However, a few of them did not want to participate in such lively activities, but they did a good job in activities that involved writing that is, tactile style (use their hands to move or write something). To sum up. All these activities helped us to clarify all the diversity that kids have regarding learning styles.

My case of study:

Now, about my case of study, you could see in my video that was presented in a previous post, the psychosocial, physical, and cognitive development of three kids. However, henceforth; my case of study video will be concentrated on just one Kid. This will be Jefferson Alejandro Zelada Blanco who is 7 years old and who is also part of our experimental-group class.  

More of Jefferson will be known soon.

In conclusion, this diagnosis class was completely successful and the goal of eliciting the children’s background English knowledge was completely achieved, thus, from now on; we will base our lessons in relation to the previous English knowledge  that we could brought out from the already mentioned “Diagnosis class”.