DIDÁCTICA: Videos

British Council - Teaching Speaking Techniques (John Kay)

I've found this video quite interesting although it is focussed in older students than the ones I will have. In this video the teachers try to develop speaking skills and I have found some important ideas that for sure will help me as an english teacher in the future:

- It is very important that teacher and students are relaxed at class.

- When you decide to organise group activities, you must think carefully on the groups you want to form, so that the children can help each other.

- When you give some instructions, you must observe that children have understood you, if not, repeat the instructions again.

- The instructions have to be very simple and easy to understand.

- The teacher shouldn’t speak at the same time as the children, so that she can hear what they say and how they say it.

- It is a good idea for the children to be surrounded by the language we are trying them to learn: posters, sentences, etc. 

Teaching Activities - British Council - BBC

As the previous video, this one shows us different english lessons in Thailand, and we have an expert giving us several tips to develop speaking skills in second language speakers.

A lot of things that the video mentions, I have learnt them in my English studies at La Salle, such as the importance of giving the children the opportunity to make predictions, storytelling, information gap. But I have learnt a new idea about debate. It is true that my students will be too young to participate in one, but maybe when they are 5 years olf, if we give them useful language and we choose a topic that it is really interesting for them, and above all, we let them practice what they want to say, maybe we can try to do one. 

Carol Read: The secret of working with children

It has been the video I liked the most although it is quite long. I really love Carol Read's enthusiasm, I think it is contagious and that's the real secret of her interesting spechees.

The video start with her encouraging the assistants to give their opinion about what is the difficult things about working with children (they move a lot, talkative, it is difficult to make them pay attention, they constantly demand new things...) and also she demonstrate with a practical activity how to do it in an attractive way. It is really funny the moment where they are all singin about the fruits in the flashcards.

As the video is very long, what I will like to outline is the important tips Carol gaves us along all the video. If we want to be good teachers, and we want to prepare good activities, we should take into consideration:

1. Make all the children participate

2. Always with visual support

3. We must encourage the children all the time, if not they are not learning

4. The children have to understand what they are doing.

5. All the things we do with them, have to be conected to real life situations.

6. It is important that the children have enough time to respond.

7. We must be careful about our body language, sometimes when we give a message, we give it from our expressions/body language and not from our words,

Carol Read: Ideas for using flashcards

I've found this video really useful because, althoug it is very common to use flashcards to teach a second language to children,  I have learnt a lot of new ideas I will like to put into practice with my preschool students.

It is true that we have studied some of the techniques in class, like the "What's missing?" and the "Flashcards riddles" ones. But, for example, I have never heard before about the "Flash" technique, but for sure children will find it really funny and they will pay a lot of attention to the teacher. I have also like the "Magic eyes" activities, it is a good way to train the children memories and to make them to associate visual and mental representation to words. In my opinion it is a good idea to combine movement and learning, so the "Hands on heads" are accurated for very young learners. Above all I have liked the "Flash chain" activity where children can practice with very simple interaction patterns such as "Do yo like zebras" "Yes, I do" "No, I don't". It is really important from the very beginning to make them practice the new language they are discovering.