A Successful Lesson: Speaking Practice Through Prompts - Mariano Moreno School 4th Grade

 One of the most surprising and successful classes took place on October the 5th, when I had the pleasure of putting a lesson plan into practice which aims to develop speaking abilities in primary school level. The idea was sugggested by Professor Estela Braun who encouraged me to invite students to talk more in the classroom using L2. At first, I felt frightened, because I was  not sure whether my pupils would be abl to understand it and do it correctly. But they surprised me, as usual. 

First, I explained students the purpose of the activity, by providing an example on the board with flashcards and prompts you can see below.

Then, students were divided into four groups and given a set of pictures and prompts so they were able able to answer questions referred to the furniture of a room of the house, such as:

- Is there a table in the kitchen?

- What colour is it?

- How many chairs are there? 

Pupils showed me how quick they grasped the vocabulary learned, which they linked  with their background knowledge in order to communicate in an understading and fluent manner. Even though some students were shy and had trouble formulating an answer, their classmates´support and the prompts were of great help They felt confident so as to develop a skill which is very challenging. 

Regarding my work as guide, I felt confident when explaining, trying to speak as little spanish as possible, so as to invite them to use english more. My greatest challenge though, was to manage time appropietly so all groups could do the task, be recorded and receive feedback; expecially given the fact that 4D only has around 15 minutes to solve a task since 5´ are used for the warm up activity. That was the reason why a group could not be recorded, since I did not have the time. 

On the one hand, I wanted to be able to work with students without a rush, since it was the first time  they did an activity of this sort, but on the other hand Ifelt constrained by time so thought I had to put some kind of boundary so they could all participate. Thankfully, I received assitance from my professor, who worked and evaluated some of the groups while I was working with others. She also offered her help so I could record the experience giving the absence of my mentor teacher, who was observing a trainee.

All in all, I found this experience fullfilling and encouraging, not only for students but for myself as well. It taught me that our own fears act as a blockade which does not allow us to try new activties or methods. Consequently we should observe ourselves as well as our students in order to improve our work and provide students with challenging and engaging tasks that will develop their macro skills in context. Besides, professor´s feedback was useful in order to set goals for improvement. Although I feel I need more field experience in order to be better at managing time with kids , that age. In spite of that, I feel content since thanks to my professor´s idea, I tackled my insecurities and tried a new way of putting speaking into practice.

Here is a recording of one of the groups speaking practice. 😆

Planificación semanal