The first task is focused on interactive listening. The teacher will tell the pupils two different stories where she in the first story has all the content planned out in front of her. The teacher will in the first story read out loudly to the pupils so that they can hear the speaker pronouncing the words correctly, not just by hearing but also looking at how the teacher pronounces it from the mouth-movements. Something to avoid here is to think that the teacher is the only one who has a role in this task by reading out and expecting that the students will absorb all the information. The teacher has to make something in order to make the students feel as they have a role in this task and feel like they’re being seen. If the teacher wants active listeners then she has to make them active in this task, that’s why in this first story part she will read and ask the students different questions about the story. She can ask them about what they think is going to happen next , or what the character is going to say, how it will end or why they think that it turned out that way in the story. This will keep them focused and alert when listening , they will also feel as they have a part in this task. The teacher already knows the answers to this first story but she has to ask them questions in order to make things more fun and motivate them to listen more actively.
The other story will be more different because now the teacher doesn’t have her content and task planned out right in front of her. In this story part she will make her pupils create an own story, and that’s why she does not know how the story will turn out and how it ends. In this story part she will not do the same as the first one where she was reading out of a paper without and support to the story. There will be support in this story part where the teacher might change the classroom brightness to a darker lightning , put on a soundtrack and show pictures on the whiteboard or on the display. When doing this you as a teacher is helping your pupils broaden their imaginative capability. The pupils will here expand their ability to pronounce words correctly and expand their vocabulary by speaking up and creating their own story. The teacher will be giving the opportunity to give the first sentence of the story, for example by saying : ‘’Maria was a shy and fragile girl at the age of 18 when she moved out from the house’’ and then the students will feel the mood of the story with the help of music and aura of the classroom. This will make every student participate in the class activity and build up their self-esteem. A problem here is that the speaker might say something that was maybe not pronounced correctly and that the person listening did not understand the sentence correctly, an other this is that a word might not seem familiar to another student if for an example the speaker might end up saying ‘’ the cheetah was chasing a lion’’ , but the one listening heard it as ‘’ the teacher was chasing a lion’’. But this is not a problem that we should put to much weight on, because it can easily be solved with practices and help. A good development here is that the students will start using their own words and creating their own story line.
With the help of these story tasks we can say that we’ve focused on something from Lgr11 that we as a teacher needs to make our pupils do and learn :
“Teaching of English should aim at helping the pupils to develop knowledge of the English language and of the areas and contexts where English is used, and also pupils’ confidence in their ability to use the language in different situations and for different purposes (Lgr11, 32).”
Some words looks the same and sounds almost the same in the english language , this is therefore hard for students from class 4-6 and that is why it is very important to bring up in the classroom, by putting words side by side of each other and showing them the differences on how to pronounce some kind of words and how to say them. Vowels are therefore very hard and common mistakes when it comes to the english language , it’s difficult to know with letter to use when spelling because they almost sound the same. I would begin with giving them small sentences or words in order to make the pupils spot the differences , such as :
a slOW cOW, a brOWn hOUse .
Before heading ahead to this stage you have as a teacher explain to the students what vowels are and that there are consonants. The teacher begins by putting up the english vowels in front of the pupils. The english vowels a, e, i, o, u and sometime y should not just be written on the whiteboard but the teacher should also tell the letters out loudly so that they can hear what they sound like, the teacher also needs to explain that the other letters in the alphabet are consonants. You have to explain that these letters can form a word and that there is always a consonant and a vowel, you need therefore as a teacher point out clearly where the vowel is in the word, for example : cow, where the O in cow is the vowel and the other letters surrounding it are consonants. After that you need to make the students read the letter ;a , out loudly to make them notice that they can say the letter A in different ways , for example the word cat which the sound a as an æ. This will make the students notice that the letters around the vowel will change the sound of it.Here in Lgr11 it is said that this is something that the pupils have to fulfill:
“Language phenomena such as pronunciation, intonation, grammatical structures, spelling and also fixed language expressions in the language pupils encounter (Lgr11, 34).”
A problem that can occur here is that not all the students can absorb the same information and knowledge in the same way as other students and therefore need more help than others. The most common pupil who needs who has these struggles is someone with ADHD. It is often said that the students can make it on their own in school without the teacher’s influence which is absurd. The teacher is there for the student in all situations in order for the students to learn in the best way possible and how they should fit in the society they are in.
Task 2
This second task is going to focused on free writing in forms of groups of 4-5. Here the students will be given from the teacher one picture to each group , but each group will have different pictures from each other. Before handing out these pictures i will give them clear instructions to them so they know what to do exactly before leaving the class for group studies. The teacher explains clearly that they will make a story with their imagination with help of the picture that they got and make a story out of that picture. The story will be written in maximum A4 paper with the help of the group. Every student in the group have to take a part of the group work because they will later be prepared for questions from the teacher and the other students. They will be given 20 minutes writing their own story and then they have to return to the class. The pictures from each group will be shown on the whiteboard or on another display with different letters on them, A-B-C-D. Each group has to hand in the stories to the teacher because now the teacher will have to read them out loudly. The other groups will have to guess what picture it suits best with the text, they chose with saying out the letter that’s on the picture. The teacher will get the students attention and keep them focused when telling the students that they will have to guess the picture to the letter. That will give the pupils curiosity and give them motivation to keep them focused during the whole task. They will as before learn interactive listening but now they will be able to have the opportunity to write and create an own story in forms of groups. They are developing their language by writing a full text and b
eing a part on creatin
g a story along with the group. They will also focus on the past and present tenses in english and develop that as well. The spelling is not the important task here it’s their development of the english language and speaking , as well as working in groups and discussing in english. The students and the teacher will later on ask questions such as ‘’ What made you and your group write this kind of story?’’ , ‘’ how did you feel when writing this story?’’, ‘’what did the picture tell you and what did you feel about the picture?’’. Here the teacher will see an insight of how the group work was made , and who was more active and cooperating. The teacher will give every student in the group the opportunity to speak up. “ Language strategies to understand and make oneself understood when language skills are lacking, such as through reformulations (Lgr11, 34).” A problem here in this task is that a student in the group can get less active in the group work compared to the others in the group, that will give the others to cut him/her out of the group and that will give the student less motivation and less confidence about the english language. This is why the teacher has so go out and see that everyone has a part in this group work when they are working outside the class for 20 minutes. The teacher should not just be checking on them but to praise them and give them some kind of encouragement and motivation. The students in this task will be given the opportunity to communicate (by asking questions to each other) and will feel more comfortable using the english language in their everyday life.
Task 3
In this last task the teacher will be making the students focus on the english grammar. They will be working with different texts individually where they will have to fill-in the gap and correct grammatical errors. The students will be given a A4 text where there will be gaps in the text which they have to fill in with a word in order to complete the sentence. They will also stumble upon grammatical error that they have to underline and change it to the correct form. One problem that may occur is that the texts given may be to difficult to some student, if this happens the benefits of the task will be lost. The teacher could therefore use texts with different levels of english vocabulary in it. In order for pupils to understand the rules of the english language they must be exposed to the english language in different ways, they need to speak it more, write it more, read it more and listen more. In this way they are fully exposed to all the important ways of learning a language and will implicitly broaden their vocabulary, understand the build-up of meanings and the pronunciation may also be affected in a positive way
Part 2
-task 1
Due to my first task being interactive listening while speaking one necessity would be to use what is refereed to as child-directed speech. This means that I as a teacher need to make the learning language comprehensible and clear to pupils at a young age, this will work with the use of such things as a slower rate when speaking or focusing on meaningful error corrections. Further on, the teacher needs to create opportunities of utterances. this will as stated earlier only work if the child feels comfortable in the classroom environment. Lastly if a teacher’s aim is to encourage pupils to talk and express themselves, the teacher can not single out pupils when an error is made due to it often leads to embarrassment and shyness amongst students.One of the difficulties in a classroom is always to involve all of the pupils, but with the composition of the tasks I want to make sure that not only the pupils who “dare” to answer the question do, but to make sure that there is involvement from all the pupils in the classroom. therefore the first part where I ask the questions, there will only be a couple of students who answer. For the second part I want to assure myself that all pupils have understood the meaning of my lecture. The second story which the students had to create on their own in some kind of chain work is some kind of activity for the students to work with the english structure and vocabulary (Scott & Ytreberg, 2013, s. 38).
-Task 2
In task two I want the pupils to show some sort of abstractical thinking.Therefore i choose to put them in smaller groups to encourage social interactions between pupils. This can have a positive effect on students who are embarrassed or to afraid to talk in class. The first task is to, as a group write some sentences to accompany one image that is given to the group by the teacher. Something that a great deal of experts emphasize is the importance of children being involved in creative activities by themselves or in the company of a group. Secondly the teacher will ask the pupils one by one what they personally thought when they looked at the image. This will show me as a teacher, how much each student understood and to what extent they can express themselves,(Vannestål & Lundberg, 2010, s. 21).
Task 3
There is a consensus within the field of didactics, a teacher should not teach grammar explicitly, there should be a great deal of indirect grammar learning with the help of task three. A direct approach of grammar to young pupils will not have the same effect as if you give them questions in a “fill-in the gap” formula. In this way pupils will not feel as they are studying grammar but only filling in the word in the questionnaire. This has been shown to be a implicit way of learning grammar and expanding one’s english vocabulary. Some students may find this task more “fun” than the other two, this goes to show that not every task is for everybody. Therefor to be a teacher means that you have to be flexible with what tasks to use and how to do follow-ups on students that are weaker on the english subject. (Scott & Ytreberg, 2013, s. 24).
Reference list
Class notes, Ahlquist 2017
Engelska för yngre åldrar, Vannestål, Lundberg (RED), 2010
Lgr11 in English
Teaching English to Children, Scott, Ytreberg 2013