Practicum V

Our Co-teaching session designed is entitled “How are the seven dwarfs like?”.  As the name indicates, this session is based on the traditional characters of the story “Snow White and the seven dwarfs”.

The main objectives we had were to get students to identify the different personality traits and learn them through the seven dwarfs characters. Besides that, the other objective that we had was to comprehend a full story in English.

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We started the lesson by introducing the main personality traits with some flashcards of images that showed personality traits posted on the blackboard. First of all, we read them, then we asked pupils what they thought they meant, and afterwards, we made pupils repeat twice with us the vocabulary related to personality traits as for them to learn how to properly pronounce them. Moreover, by repeating the words they also assimilated the vocabulary that had to be learnt.

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The next activity consisted on listening to a story told by us. For it, we created a presentation with several slides that illustrated a story related to “Snow White and the seven dwarfs” called “Snow White’s birthday”. A part from the presentation, we relied on several images printed out and we showed them while telling the story in order to ease pupils’ comprehension. We also did a little bit of drama and theatricalization of some actions that occured in the story to help learners understand the message of the story, by gestures and facial expressions.

After this activity and having reviewed the adjectives multiple times, we made students play the bingo game, using bingo cards that contained distinct dwarfs. The activity was quite successful as the students of both schools are familiar with this game and they enjoy it. Conclusively, the last activity served as an assessment task. It had a good outcome, as students didn’t realize they were being assessed.

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Results of the activities

In regards to Antoni Balmanya school, when we first came into the classroom we thought that perhaps we would be short in time for properly carrying out all the activities. The reality though, is that we stated to the timing we had and the lesson finished just in time for the following lesson. Thus, we had plenty of time to do all the activities planned and pupils were able to really enjoy the dynamics.

It is relevant to mention that we implemented the session in a 2nd grade classroom. One advantage was that the first time we implemented the lesson the target group splitted up, so that we first had one session with 12 students and then another session with 13 students. Hence, the lesson was implemented smoothly, as we were able to give more personal attention to the students and a calmer environment was created during its development.

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Besides that, considering that we were in a 2nd grade classroom and we told a story completely in English, we believe that we can feel proud of having achieved the goal of getting the students to really understand the message. We consider that telling a story in which appeared characters that learners already knew helped the students to focus on the task, and it raised their attention. Moreover, the idea of assigning to each dwarf a personality trait helped students understand the meaning of the adjectives, as when the characters were introduced in the story, learners were able to see the correlation between the dwarfs’ actions and the personality adjectives that they had previously learned. The dwarfs’ flashcards were shown when each of the characters appeared and the name of the character was also mentioned out loud. Thus, this was helpful for students to internalize the vocabulary. Moreover, the use of pictures that illustrated the vocabulary that emerged in the story as a support really aided us and students, as they received different inputs, not only oral but also visual.

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When telling the story, in a concrete moment the word “diamond” appeared and we had some diamonds printed out. Consequently, when introducing the “Generous” dwarf, we instinctively gave some diamonds to the students as if they were the other dwarfs, and this fact really engaged them into the follow-up of the story and help to maintain their attention. We were able to display that in some way, their participation made them feel part of the story and this was a key element to get them to actively get involved into the comprehension of the story. It also awoke their intrinsic motivation towards the task. This action was not planned this way, and instead we were supposed to give the diamonds to each other of the teachers involved, pretending one to be the “Generous” dwarf and the “Lazy” dwarf the other. Nevertheless, after seeing that with the first group this part of the story was effective, we decided to do the same dynamic with the following group. This action showed us that it is important to rest flexible in co-teaching activities and generally in all teaching activities, because it usually has benefits for students. This is due to the fact that as teachers we can plan activities with precision and trying to fit the students’ needs at home, but it is only when we implement them on the classroom that we are able to observe what are the immediate needs of students. Hence, we can slightly modify the lesson to attend these necessities. Therefore, in our case, we were seeing that some students had difficulties centering their attention on the activity, so that we instinctively searched for an strategy to make them focus on the task. Conclusively, it is important to be open to modifications and new ideas when teaching, as thusly some new amazing ideas and results can emerge.

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Regarding the Bingo activity, when we planned it, we hadn’t thought about the “line” word when playing the typical game. For this reason, intuitively, we explained them to shout “line” whenever they got to get one, insisting on the English pronunciation. Some images of the Bigo game can be seen here and it needs to be considered the last example, where it can be seen how students took this activity very seriously and worked properly. Furthermore, we really liked the fact that when one pair won, we told them to come to the blackboard to check the result, and we made them read aloud their ticked dwarfs. This action was useful to work the pronunciation of the words learnt. One student surprised us in reading “Funny” in accurate pronunciation. Somehow for us that meant that pupils learnt the pronunciation of these words during the session when reviewing the names and making them pronounce them.

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At last, we would like to make reference to the fact that we planned the activity taking into consideration the time that we could spent in classroom management issues. Wherefore, with both groups some children had difficulties to stay quiet and they needed to move around constantly. Moreover, since it is almost the end of the school course, learners get easily distracted so that we had to call their attention multiple times. This fact influenced the rhythm of the lesson but since we had already thought about these unforeseen circumstances, we were able to stick to the timing.

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Overall, we can state that students got engaged in the activity and they really learned new lexicon. Moreover, it seems that they had fun in this special session prepared and we, as teachers, also enjoyed its implementation.

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In relation to Sant Frutiós school, when we entered the classroom, we were able to observe some differences in comparison to the students from Antoni Balmanya school. Children appeared to be quieter at first sight, as they were not making noise and most of them were sitting on the table talking quietly with their classmates. Moreover, since Sant Frutiós school is in a village, there are fewer children who attend this school. Hence, 2nd grade A was a classroom with 18 students approximately. Thus, we thought that this fact would also help create a pacific environment in the implementation.

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Indeed, when we implemented the lesson, we were able to observe that we were right about our first thoughts. Pupils were quiet most of the time and we believe that this is due to the fact that they are used to listen to the teachers’ instructions and make silence every time that a task is being developed. This should not be regarded as a surprising fact, but since we live in an era in which kids are accustomed to receive a lot of visual inputs, it is unusual to display children who are able to listen to instructions without getting distracted.

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We developed the lesson similarly to the ones implemented in Antoni Balmanya school. Nonetheless, we changed some elements so as to adapt to the context in which we we carrying out the activity. Therefore, since we knew that the English level of students was lower, especially regarding the English comprehension, a few parts of the instructions had to be explained in Catalan. We explained the instructions in English but since we observed that in some key parts they got lost, we instinctively repeated them in Catalan so that they could understand properly what we were asking them to do, or at least some key words to ensure their comprehension.

Nonetheless, we believe that at the beginning of the lesson, they were a bit shocked by the fact that we were talking in English the whole time and they are not that used to listen to English that much. Nevertheless, since we saw that they were able to comprehend what we were saying, as the lesson advanced, we increased the use of English when giving instructions so that by the end of the lesson we were not saying not even a word in Catalan.

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Thus, in regards to the first part of the session, when we were asking them for the meaning of the vocabulary of the flashcards, students had some difficulties on guessing the meaning of the words but they managed to guess them at the end. We helped them by defining the characteristics of people that have these personal traits (e.g: This person doesn’t want to do anything. He is always laying on the sofa, he is always like this -body gestures-). This way, they were able to associate the definition to a word in Catalan and consequently, we were able to discern that this strategy was effective. Moreover, we accompanied these definitions with gestures, so that the kids were able to guess the meaning of the adjective easily. Hence, this part of the session was unplanned but as it has been commented before, by making room for improvisation, useful strategies arise and great results are usually obtained.

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During the introduction of the vocabulary and the What’s missing game?, we could see that pupils usually confuse feelings with personality traits. This was especially the case of the adjective “funny”, which was usually confused by “happy”. Therefore, we had to emphasize the meaning of “funny” multiple times so that they understood that this is a trait of a person, not a feeling like “happy”. Furthermore, during the implementation of the tasks, we saw that some concrete students were good at English and they were able to assimilate the vocabulary pretty fast. Hence, these students were key for the adequate development of the session and especially during the storytelling, in which we asked students to tell us how the dwarfs were. Besides that, we also took those fast learners, who we knew for sure that they were comprehending the storytelling, to recap and explain their classmates, what had happened in that part of the story or up till that point. This way, we ensure that everybody was following the story. Hence, these pupils were able to say the names of the adjectives in English without troubles, conversely to the other students. Nevertheless, the other pupils were also willing to participate and it was easier for them to answer to the meaning of the words that were appearing during the story as we showed them visual support (e.g: an image of a meal to illustrate the word “dinner”).

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Throughout the storytelling, learners got a bit distracted with the “diamonds” scene. They all wanted to have the diamonds images so that we had to pick them up in order for them to not lose track of the story. However, being two teachers in the classroom, eased this task of classroom management and we could relatively quickly control the situation. After we told the story, we were surprised by the fact that the students were able to comprehend it without any kind of difficulty so that we were really satisfied with the results.

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In addition, concerning the assessment activity, the students did not have problems when comprehending the definitions of the dwarfs and circling the images of the dwarfs that suited the definitions. Wherefore, this was rewarding for us due to the fact that they do not usually receive so many inputs in English. Some images of this activity can be seen Here.

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Finally, when we finished all the activities, we realised that we still had some minutes left. These minutes were the ones that we had planned for classroom management problems. Therefore, since these students were quiet and listening most of the time, the task could be developed in a dynamic way and without management troubles. Thus, we dedicated these last minutes to reviewing the pronunciation of the vocabulary learnt. Therefore, we were able to recap the main traits learned and emphasised on their pronounciation.

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To conclude, we were satisfied with how the lesson went. The vast majority wanted to participate and were engaged in the activities so that the learning that took place was meaningful for them. Furthermore, we could see evidence of their enjoyment as after our session, one student ask to the tutor if she could do the next lesson in English. Hence, we could see that at least for that student, our session awake his motivation towards learning English.