* UNIDAD DIDÁCTICA elaborada
por la profesora SUSAN REES
* DIDACTIC UNIT made by the teacher
SUSAN REES.
LITTLE
RED RIDING HOOD.
DESCRIPTION
OF CLASS.
CLASS:
1st
year early years education.(Age 3)
NOVEMBER:
Topic – “Little Red Riding Hood”.
LESSON
TIME SPAN:
45 minutes.
General topic web for Goldilocks and the three bears.
In
this class the Spanish and English teacher designed the class around the
children’s own needs and interests while trying to foster their enjoyment of
using language for communication. This method is particularly propitious when
for nearly half of the school day the children are with the English teacher.
Topic led work allows for close coordination between the two languages and for
continuity in the children’s learning process. It also shows the children that
English is a means of communication and that it can be a vehicle through which
they learn other things.
Our
main aim in the English class is to provide the children with exposure to a wide
range of language through stories, songs, videos, games etc., and thus build up
a varied passive knowledge. It is also necessary to make the classes as
enjoyable as possible to promote a positive attitude towards English for the
rest of their lives.
It
is important to take into account how much small children can reasonably be
expected to learn in one lesson. Just because they seem to understand and are
able to use the language being presented, it doesn’t mean that they have
actually learnt it. Therefore, it is necessary to have a clear idea in one’s
lesson and topic plan what items we want children to learn, or at least the more
important items. Only through
repeated exposure and recycling can we be sure that they are able to use the
language independently. It is to our advantage that children like what is
familiar and want the same song, story etc., over and over again.
This
lesson plan covers a time span of 30 minutes, which makes it necessary to keep
the children’s interest by changing activities. We also spend time on our
established daily (morning) routine, saying what day it is, what the weather is
like etc. This helps to give the children a sense of security as they know what
to expect. Most mornings are then dedicated to story telling or drama activities
as a whole group activity. In this lesson the children listen to the story of
“Little Red Riding Hood”, not for the first time, and join in wherever and
whenever they want to. To bring the story alive it is necessary to use visual
aids, dramatic tone of voice, mimicry, gesture and mime. The children have read
the story in Spanish, using many different versions, which means that they
already understand the story and know more or less what happens.
In
the English class we use a mural for the background and cut out mobile figures
to tell the story. This mural is left in the class so that the children can play
with it whenever they want to, making them the story tellers or simply allowing
them to enjoy being in control of where the figures go.
One
of the most important things to do when telling a story is to create a relaxed
atmosphere. One way to do this is to get the children to sit in semicircles on
the carpet making sure that the teachers’ face, hands and visual aids are
visible to all the children. At this stage in their learning it is also
preferable to tell the children the story rather than read it from a book as it
allows for making eye contact with them and thus create better interaction. The
use of mobile figures also allows the children to actively participate in the
story telling in other sessions when they have to place them in the correct area
of the forest mural according to where we are in the story.
The
language used to tell the story is not over simplified as it is important to
expose children to fluent and natural English, while the story is not so
complicated as to hinder their understanding of it. Much of what happens in the
story is in the past tense, which doesn’t mean that the children are expected
to know how to form the past tenses, but that in the context of the story they
will hear them and understand them naturally, which is a good preparation for
active use when the children are older.
To
end the class we to a TPR chant which breaks from the story telling activity and
lets the children know that they are going to do something different. By this
time they have been sitting down for about 15 minutes, which is a long time for
them to spend on listening activities
without getting restless.
COLEGIO
PÚBLICO
ESPAÑOL-INGLÉS ACOGIDO AL CONVENIO CON EL BRITISH COUNCIL
