Creating Lesson Plans

During our last class we had the opportunity to create a lesson plan for children between the ages of 7 to 11 years old. Before creating the lesson plan I felt very excited since I have always wanted to to learn how to create a good lesson plan, I started to think about the activities to include and I thought it was not going to be very challenging. However, while creating my lesson plan I realized that it is actually very challenging, since we have to think carefully about the activities we will include and the time we will give to each activity to make it apropriate for out students. After creating the lesson plan we had the chance to receive feedback from our teacher, and I had the chance to identify the areas that I can improve to create excelent lesson plans.

Here is the lesson plan I created:

Don Bosco University

Teaching Practicum I “Teaching English to Young Learners”

Teacher: Bryan Stanley Melgar Rodríguez. Date: August, 26th / 2015.

Topic: What’s your name?

Objective: By the end of this lesson SWBAT identify the letters of the alphabet in order to spell their names, and introduce themselves using basic greetings.

Target skill: Listening Planning Framework: PDP

Time	Stage	Activities/Procedure	Details
5 - 7  min.	Warm-up	- Students will play a memory game using small cards with some of the letters of the alphabet. - The class will be divided in two groups, and after planning among them their own strategy, each group will send a different member per turn to try to match a pair of cards. - The group with more pairs of cards will win.	Aim of activity: Introduce the topic. Break the ice. Materials: Cards with letters. Type of learner: Vi, K. Interaction: T-S, S-S.
15 – 19 min.	Pre-Listening	- Using the same cards from the warm-up, students will be shown the sound of each letter. (5 min) - Students will be presented with the questions they need to ask to have someone telling and spelling their names, and how to answer those questions. (5 – 7 min) -Students will be introduced with greetings. (5 – 7 min)	Aim of activity: Present the topic. Materials: Flashcards, whiteboard. Type of learner: Vi, A, K Interaction: T-S.
17 min.	During-Listening	- Students and Teacher will practice and sing the song “Bingo” a few times. [The word “dog” will be replaced with the word “son”](5 min) - Students will sing the song replacing the word “Bingo” for their names, in order to practice spelling. This activity will be repeated with different students. (7 min) - Students will listen to a short “real” conversation of two persons introducing themselves and using greetings. (5 min)	Aim of activity: Practice the lesson. Materials: MP3 or CD Player. Type of learner: A, Ve Interaction: T-S.
12 – 17 min.	Post-Listening	-Students will play “sharks are coming” the person who is left out in every turn will have to spell their first name. (5 – 7 min) - Students will chose a partner and role-play a very short conversation similar to the one they listened in the previous stage to introduce themselves. (7 – 10 min)	Aim of activity: Produce language. Materials: Students’ notebooks to plan conversation. Type of learner: K, A, Ve Interaction: S-S

Case of Study

Santiago Melendez
Subject of Study

After having studied the different theories about child development, we can easily identify each of the stages stated in them by observing the way children behave. In order to probe this, I performed a few experiments with my three-year-old nephew, Santiago. Besides the experiments, I also took the time to observe his behaviour in his natural environment. In this entry you will find the information about this study, including the profile of the child I worked with, a brief description of the experiments we performed, the conclusions and results of this study, and also pictures (which you can click to enlarge) that evidence such results.

Santiago Melendez was the subject of this study, he just turned 3 years old a few weeks ago on July, 30th. He lives with his mother, and his grandparents. Despite not having any siblings, and not going to school yet, he has a lot of interaction with children of different ages that live near his house. Of course I know my nephew very well, I am very aware of the things he is capable to do, and the activities he can easily perform. However, in order to get the most accurate and detailed results, I studied him for a couple of days, trying not to interfere with his regular development. Thanks to this, I realized that he is capable to do many things by himself, and he prefers to perform those activities without any help. Just to mention a few, he can eat by himself; in fact, he uses a fork and a spoon in a very decent way. Moreover, he is capable of driving his bicycle with training wheels very well, and he can go up and down stairs alone. However, there are many activities that he is not able to perform without external help yet; he does not go to the bathroom alone, he is not capable of getting dressed by himself, and he needs help to take showers. Nonetheless, he shows an autonomous attitude towards everything he does, trying to learn those things he stills struggles with, and trying not to ask for help whenever is posible.

Santiago eating by himself

Besides observing Santiago in a discrete way, I also decided to perform a couple of direct experiments to prove some of the theories we have studied. In the first experiment, I presented him two different towels, and I hid a toy under one of them. He was able to tell me where the toy was very easily. Then, I hid the toy under the second towel to see if his answer changed, and it did. He was aware that the toy was not under the same towel.
 
I also performed a second experiment with him. I placed to glasses with an exact amount of water in them, when I asked him which one had more water, he told me that they had the same amount since the water reached the same point in both of the glasses. After that, and in front of him, I poured the water from one of the glasses into a shorter and wider bowl, and I asked him the same question. He told me that the glass had more water, because the water inside of it reached a higher point than the water inside the bowl.

As a conclusion, I realized that Santiago has reached a point in which he starts to feel the necesity to be more independent. Erik Erikson describes this stage as "Autonomy vs. Shame", something that occurs between the age of 18 months and 3 years. He starts to build his self-esteem as he learns new skills, and he feels proud when he accomplish things on his own. Furthermore, by being able to tell where the toy was hidden in the first experiment, he demonstrated his awareness of the environment around him, showing that he is no longer in the "Sensorimotor" stage, a term presented by Jean Piaget and that lasts from birth to approximately 2 years old. On the other hand, by not being able to tell that the amount of water was the same in the bowl as in the glass in the second experiment, he showed that he cannot use logic to understand certain ideas and abstract concepts like amounts, speed, or weight. This behaviour belongs to the stage Piaget named "Preoperational" and that ranges from ages 2 to 7. 

It has been very interesting to observe how this theories apply to the development of children, and how they resulted very accurate, at least in my case of study.

Experiment 1

Experiment 2

Learning Disabilities and Disorders

During this week we had the opportunity to attend to a workshop conducted by a psychologist, who talked to us about the different learning disabilities and disorders that we might find in the classroom. I believe it is important for teachers to know and understand about this topic, since our students are human beings, just like us, and not all of them will learn and behave in the same way.

I would like to share with you what I have learned about this topic in the last workshop. First of all, I learned that learning disabilities and disorders are not related with intelligence at all. We cannot say that a kid is lazy or less smart than the rest, just because they have a learning disability. On the contrary, we must learn how to deal with that situation and help them develop their abilities.

I also learned that a learning disability is not the same as a learning difficulty. A learning difficulty is an obstacle, any external factor that might affect the capacity of students to learn, such as emotional problems to mention an example. On the other hand, a learning disability is a condition that students have and cannot be simply ignored, they will need help and treatment to learn to develop in the best way.

In conclusion, I believe it is important to learn how to identify that one of our students is having a learning disability or disorder, so that we can find the best way to deal with them and teach them.