Task 10: Ongoing observation task
Strategies to make very young learners or
primary students to speak.
First of all, I think that it is important to know why students do not interact inside the classroom, why are they not speaking. Are they avoiding interaction because they are shy or because they feel less interested?
Depending on the reasons the students have to not interact with the teacher can use some strategies or others.
An important strategy is to not push your students to talk, they have to feel comfortable or they will refuse to interact completely. Tell students that you are going to request their specific participation beforehand and in that way, they can prepare and relax. Also, ask them questions when you know they know the answer, sometimes, in my school the teacher wants for the student to feel proud of him or herself and that is why the teachers looked for their participation when the questions those students knew for them to answer out loud without worrying about their shyness or their lack of interest. Being able to answer a question correctly can motivate a student to feel confident enough to interact.
One of the first strategies to use inside the classroom is to create small groups and make them bigger little by little. This can get students to use to talk inside the classroom and gain self-confidence. The groups should be mixed but they should not have more than one or two talkative people from the class and they could take the opportunity to lead the discussion or talk and the students who are usually less talkative could be left behind and do not interact as much. This is something that is done in my school, the discussion groups start as couples, the trios and little by little trey gradually grow for students to be able to adapt better and, in the end, lose all fear of talking in class.
Sometimes teachers plan tasks that end up in an oral presentation and the students who prefer not to talk step aside because they feel shy when they have to speak in front of all the class, maybe, one strategy could be using a camera to record the presentation and create a video, in that way the student can feel more relaxed and, at the same time, speak and use the target language. They could also use videos with voiceovers, recording their voices can make them feel quite more comfortable.
Use interesting topics, a lot of times students do not interact because the topic does not motivate them, of course sometimes the teacher cannot choose a topic but, when possible, the teacher could try to look for an interesting topic and that students like in order to make them participate much more in the class and in the conversation. Moreover, if the topics change students can feel more engage and willing to participate in the activities or discussions. Moreover, teachers could ask students to bring something from their homes to the class, something they love and they are interested in to talk about in the class for the rest of the pupils to get to know about it, that could be a super engaging activity to promote communication and make students want to talk. For example, in the school I did my practicum, when the 5th grade students were developing their prototypes for their cooperative business project they all brought something they had designed and made at home to sell in their shop and even the shy students were very excited and motivated to talk and explain what their product was and how they made it.
Another strategy that they use in the school and it was also used by my teacher when I was a kid is to change the classroom setting. For example, depending on the activity changing the space of the classroom can make students feel engaged with the activity but a teacher can also change the setting of the tables to provide a better interaction or conversation between different members of the class who might not sit next to each other. Also, making seat changes could be good for students to get used to talk with different people in the class inside the class, and in that way, develop language skills and get confident about talking for the whole class to listen as they might have talked to different members of the class in a discussions and they may feel better when having to be alone while talking.
Of course there are many more strategies but these are some of the ones I was able to experience myself and the ones I found really interesting.
Strategies for checking comprehension
Checking comprehension is something that was a bit difficult for me, because sometimes I felt I had so little time that I could not “lose” time repeating myself, during this last practicum I felt I had no time as the competències bàsiques needed to be worked and my teacher could not give me more time. I know that re-explain something again is not a waste of time, I am well aware of that but it was also really complicated manage everything without having the freedom of timing. That is why I consider that finding different ways of checking students' understanding is so important.
One strategy we used in my school was the colour cards, like in a football game but adding the green card. They were very easy to use when the teacher asked us if we had understood what she explained we just had to take one of those cards to indicate whether if we did or not. Green meant yes, yellow meant that you were in the middle and red meant no.
That was an easy way to say how we found ourselves during the session and the teacher could see, more or less the level of understanding of the class in a really visual way.
Another great thing to check pupils' comprehension are exit tickets, their drawback is that they are used at the end of the class and a teacher cannot know it immediately but he or she can take a picture if her or his students had understood the session and he or she can plan what to do for the next session in order to provide students with a complete understanding of the topic.
A learning journal is great too, when I was little I used to do it very often, it takes more time than an exit ticket but it is a way to show your understanding and, also, practice language skills and strategies to summarize or make mind maps of different topics. Students can point out the important aspects of the session, in a short way and keep it to revise when they feel they need to or when they have an exam (if they do exams). The teacher can revise the journal periodically to make sure students are following the sessions. Of course, it is not immediate but it is really effective.
The strategy of teaching each other is another one that is quite interesting and useful. To be able to teach someone you had to understand the topic previously, because, if this first step does not happen, the teaching and learning of your partner cannot be acquired. It is also not immediate because the teacher is not able to check comprehension immediately but it is a good way to make kids work hard to understand a topic and make them interact between each other and they can help one another by assessing their “teacher” or correct them when they make some kind of mistake. The roles can be exchanged and both students on the couple can be both of the roles depending on the situation or the topic.
These are only some strategies I have experienced whether it was when I was a student or during my practicums.
