Teaching Practice
Inbound students were deployed for teaching demonstrations
Procedures of Teaching
In early childhood, routine is a crucial part of their learning. Thus, I mainly followed the flow the children were already familiar with. Starting with afternoon greetings, short attendance, then introduction & motivation. For the first week, I used the "Hello" song - then the next week, I switched to "Mr. Golden Sun" to at least subtly help them practice their "s" sound, following the tip given to us by the supervising teacher since the children have trouble producing the "s" sound. Then, followed by the lesson proper-for the first sessions of the week, I used visual aids (traditional and tech-based) of Animals Pets/Farm Animals to teach the difference between with and without /s/. For the second sessions, we were assigned to prepare related games and activities. I came up with make-your-own pet and line-up activity, respectively. Although, the processing of the first activity may be too advanced for them. The second one, I made it more appropriate for them. The generalization mostly goes over everything but with minimal to no prompts. For the evaluation, as advised, since English is not the actual second language of the students, it was suggested to incorporate individual or pair evaluation.
Time Management &
Organizing Activities
Personally, there was a bit of a struggle with the time allotment, classes in kindergarten (ranging from 14-16 kids/class) are only alloted 30 minutes. Thinking about it, it is developmentally appropriate as children have shorter attention spans; it is just that in my home country, kindergarten classes typically last 45 minutes. To help organize my activities, I write my lesson plans on a separate sheet and jot down all the materials I need for each part (e.g., cutouts, glue, tape, etc.) so I can prepare everything in advance. I sometimes run over the allotted time or don't finish all my activities. But I'm learning to adapt—I try to do partner evaluations first and keep transitions brief.
Classroom Management
I mainly used These two calls and responses during my demonstrations. When I introduced this, I had help from my friend to translate it to the class and copy my actions. I find this effective because when the class starts to get distracted, I would say one or both of these to get their attention, and they would copy me, and most of the time, it is enough to get them on track again.
Problem Solving
While Teaching
While teaching, especially during the first couple of sessions, I had trouble getting responses from the kids; either they would be unresponsive or too excited. To address that, I incorporated the classroom management technique mentioned above and used transitions such as "roll up, roll down," and "shake your hands" whenever we needed to go from sitting to standing or vice versa. I also learned to adjust my instructions to simpler and fewer words because kids tend to reiterate what I would say; for instance, instead of saying, "What animal is this" I should have asked them, "What's this" (while pointing to the picture).