workshop 1

Tuesday, November 8^th, 2016.

Teacher: Gabriela Nicole Hernández.

Topic: Kindergarten?

This was an unusual class in which T Orlando invited one kindergarten teacher to give us a presentation about how is it work with kindergarten students. She started greeting us and asking everybody to stand up. We made a circle and introduced ourselves. Then, she asked us to choose a fruit and wrote it in ta piece of paper that was going to be paste in our desks. She was going to call us as the fruit we selected.

 To start with, she asked 4 students what they know about kindergarten. They said that it might be difficult because of the kids. They are usually very hyperactive and it’s difficult to catch their attention. After they answer, we sat down some minutes in the floor and she continued explaining about working with those kids, how they parents are and also what kind of policies do institutions could have when working with kids.onether activity she asked us to do was that she was going to say a message and we had to played the broken telephone. then, she explained that communication is really important with kids, parents and other people. 

Later we return to our desks and she explain that she was going to talk normally, but that we have to be concentrated because suddenly she was going to be saying mix up, and we have to change positions quickly, if we are the last one to sit we would have a penalty. When she started to talk she said that it is important when working with little kids is the organization and the planning. While explaining about how to catch the attention of kids, she mentioned that some ways to do it is singing a song at the beginning of the class or having an interactive activity that help teachers to keep students’ attention. 

Suddenly, she said “mixed up” and we change positions. She started to talk about the planning and how that help us to have control of the lesson. She said that it is an important point due to the fact that almost all the institutions supervise the work that teachers do in classes. They usually asked for the planning and teachers have to be ready to show their planning, and explained why they apply the different activities and methodologies in the classroom. 

Moreover, she asked Roxana how she would plan a lesson, what criteria she would apply, and what she would focused on when planning the lesson for children. Then, she asked Yansi to go to the front and share the opinion of how would she taught or present the colors to little kids. Yansi told us that she might use flashcards, do some activities and sing a chant to present that topic and have a meaningful lesson. 

Teacher gave a lot of examples and said that we need to praise Ss with expressions such as excellent, congratulations, very good, etc. to encourage Ss to participate in all those activities. Also, teachers need to asked children to repeat greetings or words that they use in their daily routines as many times as necessary for Ss to acquire more vocabulary.

Furthermore, she presented some situations that she experienced and that may happen with kids. She explained the reactions that kids usually have in different environments or situations. They could be manipulative when they know how the teacher is, if she is calm or strict with them.The expositor also mentioned that when teaching young learners we have to model the actions or things we want Ss to do because they are always imitating everything that teachers do. To illustrate that part, she asked me to stand up she whispered the word airplane and I had to mimic the airplane and my classmates had to guess what I was mimicking. Then, she asked everybody to do the actions she said. For example, jump, shake our shoulders, touch or nose, shoulders or moth, shake our legs, etc. and while doing that she explained that if we as teachers do not model what we want Ss to do they won’t do it because they need a guide, someone who show them how to do it.

Then, she asked Charlie, one of the students who lose when exchanging desks to perform a chant as a penalty, and also Adriana, Gabriela and Guillermo were asked to help him. They dance the hokey pokey and sing as well. It was really nice because that gave us one idea of what to do with kids.

Besides, she showed the way she planned lessons and plenty of exams she had created in order to evaluate her Ss. she told us that where she works she is required to evaluate Ss one by one to had a more detail perspective about each Ss. Also, She does not grade her Ss from 1 to 10, instead of that, she used criteria such as S= SI LO HACE, P= EN PROCESO, or T= TODAVIA NO LO HACE to grade her Ss evaluations. She mentioned some activities that are really helpful in order to evaluate Ss such as bingo games and storytelling activities in which Ss can order the scenes of a fairy tale.

Finally, she asked us to sit on the floor. She said that she was glad to be there giving us some ideas and advices of working with kindergarten students, and that she hoped we didn’t realize about time because that was one of the purposes, not to realize about the time as it happens when teaching kids. 

Then, she asked us to lay on the floor and try to relieve the stress that we might have from other 

classes or activities that we did. She told us that it is important to take time in order to enjoy our life and reduce the pressure from work or studies. 

I really enjoyed that presentation from T Gabriela. It was significant because I could get more ideas of materials or activities, and also to know more about this teaching field.