Lesson reflections- ESL lesson in Knurów (Kindergarten class)

 

I would like to share my opinions about the ESL lesson taught in a kindergarten class. The topic of the lesson was fruits and numbers (1-6). The head teacher overall did a great job in this specific lesson. First of all, I enjoyed that the children were seated in a circle. As I have mentioned in my previous blog posts, this is a great strategy for younger learners. It is a nice way to engage the whole class in a choral activity and they provide ample opportunities for vocabulary practice, such as speaking and drilling. It also a good way to satisfy young learners who need to move and play.

The educator did just that by preparing activities on the carpet. It was enjoyable that she took the necessary steps in teaching vocabulary such as pre-teaching words and drilling them. She included various multisensory activities, including: kinesthetic, visual, auditory and olfactory. For instance, she blind-folded a pupil and asked them to guess which fruit one was touching through the size, smell and shape of the fruit. Although one should be careful with it, the sense of smell can be a powerful tool as an odor can trigger one’s memory. But in this case, she used smell in order to trigger a given word. She also incorporated air-drawing of numbers to improve motor skills, hand-eye coordination and concentration. To help students count, she merged counting with jumping. Her lesson also had a great structure. She reviewed past vocabulary, introduced new words and drilled them so that the students would be able to recognize the lexicon. The final task was about recalling the given lexicon from students’ memory such as a colour and the students had to think or recall the corresponding fruit.

There were a few things that I could possibly change in the lesson. For instance, I reckon that the children should have practiced the song a bit more before singing it. When they were supposed to be singing in a circle, a lot of them were not singing – this is possibly due to the song being too fast and the students not knowing the lyrics well enough. To avoid this the teacher could practice the lyrics more or allow students to hear the song in silence, practice and then sing the song together as a class.

Overall, I do think it was a successful lesson. Share your thoughts down below.

Sara