I have mentioned several times the complexity of teaching the children because of the language and explaining things to them. Then last week teaching 20 kids with 1 book my colleague who cannot speak English nevertheless managed to convey to me." Is there really only one book". Such a sensible question. Next day I went into the class with the 5 books so one for each table. Boy did it make a difference and with the book I presented little flash cards. I have a stack of cards that I was provided with some A5, which I have used extensively, and some small which I have used a bit but not consistently. Then after her comment I went back to these cards and realised a bit more about the connection between the books and the cards. They match. So thereby helping the children match the words, pictures in books and cards. Year 1 children really enjoyed working with them. So today I thought let me try them with the year 2. I will not even bother to teach them the words as I know some they know and I will see what happens. The two boys who can already read a bit turned them over so that they could not see them but then tried to match them, the boys who cannot read, just worked out how to pair them. And the girls who really worked as a team, got it and got it pretty quickly and matched all the words with no help from me what so ever. The kids had taught themselves in effect, using what they knew from before, and only at times did they check with me and then work out the right answer by eliminating the wrong answer. They are beginning to really use all their skills Well done kids and sorry it took me so long to fathom it out. It will not always work so well as half the words the kids had been pre taught, grandma, grandpa and they know family words Brat for brother for example is very similar, sister is almost the same as the Russian too, but a model for self learning may be emerging.
My head has been talking with me about assessing the students. Of course it happpened all the time in the UK, so I understand the pressure to demonstrate learning, however, I also know sometimes it is useful for student to have a bench mark, but so far I have not really assessed or checked any of the after school class student and in the big classes, although I always try and get them to work in pairs, groups and individually, the "keen" ones always shout over hesistating individuals so by giving them the answers on the rare occasions that they are listening to each other, so even I felt perhaps it would be useful to see where they are up to, so spent the weekend preparing a quiz that covers the whole of the Headway Book. As I am not that familiar yet with the book, then actually also helped me focus on the content, and then getting a bit stuck at Chapter 7 as to how to phrase my question I suddenly thought hang on a minute, how come there is not a test provided with t book. And of course there is, in fact there is one for every chapter. So today at Chapter four I gave it to the students. None of them complained, I did not make it tough, some worked in pairs, some worked individually, but it did show some of the gaps, that some are doing much better than I realised and that those who usually shine in class, may have more problems when working in exam situations. So definitely a worth while activity and something I will do again as today I was very very coldy and very very happy to just come home, stuff my face with the food I had been left then tuck myself up in bed and watch a movie on You Tube.
No comments:
Post a Comment