1. PRACTICE II, DIDACTICS OF ELT and Practicum Primary School level.
Adjunto Regular a/c Prof. Estela N. Braun (2018). Teacher Assistants:
Prof. Vanesa Cabral. Prof. Lis Luján Ramos.
ANALYSIS AND FEEDBACK ON OBSERVATION FOLDERS,
SEPTEMBER 2018.
TRAINEE:
Lucrecia Corral -Legajo Nª 7940
Green card presented: 12 observations, 2 of them participatory.
Project: My house.
● Observations presented in a tidy, attractive and well-organized folder.
● ​PLANIFICACION ANUAL : ​​Yes
● ​PROYECTO INSTITUCIONAL : ​​Yes
● Accompanying journal: ​​There is a journal accompanying the
observations and there are photographs and the lesson plan for the
participatory observations​.
●
● SCHOOL number 180- 4​​th​​
C and 4​​th​​
D
● Docente co-formadora: Prof.Joana Herràn.
● Topic​​: Houses and furniture.
Reflect:​​ Write a text (minimum 250 words) supporting your answers
from what you observed and theory in our modules.
● Which do you think is the importance of correcting altogether?
(puesta en común, page 2)
● In your observations you mention that the teacher makes all
the students participate. How does she manage to do so? Do
pupils speak a lot of English in class?
● How does Joana sustain students’ motivation? How can you
help the students who are less motivated to learn?
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2. ● Why do you think the students liked the House project
designed and carried out by you so much? Add pictures,
please. What kind of language (lexis, structures, functions)
could they put into use? ​You should use the article below to
support your answers with theory​​.
Comment:
There is an informed analysis of teacher’s methodology, linguistic
and functional objectives, and steps in each lesson.
Furthermore, she reflected on their own performance about the
House project.
Congratulations: You seem to have learnt a lot from your mentor
teacher.
​Grade: Excellent.
Project work with Young Learners
31 October 2012​ by ​Oxford University Press ELT​ ​9 Comments
To celebrate the launch of ​Project fourth edition​​,
author of ​Projects with Young Learners​, Diane Phillips considers the benefits of
using projects in the upper primary classroom.
What don’t children like?
If I asked you to list some of the thing that children don’t like you might
say: – learning stuff of no immediate or obvious relevance e.g.
grammar rules or lists of vocabulary; having to read about topics they
have no interest in; being told to ‘be quiet’, to stop talking to their
friends; being passive; never being asked for their view or about topics
they know about; never seeing an end or a point to the work they have
to do; always being told what to do!
Yet, this is exactly the way many classrooms work.
What do children like doing?
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3. One way to get children doing what they like while still learning is
through projects. Children enjoy using their imagination – making up
characters, stories; being creative – making things, drawing, colouring,
cutting and gluing, using multimedia; finding out about interesting stuff;
sharing, chatting, working together; talking about themselves, their
friends and family, their interests; making choices, deciding for
themselves, trying new things out; ​showing off!
What are Projects?
Experiential learning or ‘learning through projects’ is a tried and tested
way of motivating children – by doing what they naturally like doing and
avoiding what they don’t like.
It’s an approach founded on sound pedagogic principles. It addresses
the needs of the ‘whole child’ to develop a number of different skills
▪ the intellectual skills
▪ physical/motor and ICT skills
▪ social skills
▪ learner independence skills
Children are given an opportunity to produce work which is personal
and individual, which reflects their own ideas and interests, and their
opinions are asked for and valued.
It gives the children an opportunity to bring their knowledge of the
world into the classroom and can be cross-curricular – linked to other
subjects the children are studying in school.
So what’s special about Project Work?
▪ It integrates language. Target language – grammar and vocabulary,
can be planned to fit naturally into the project. The challenge is to
identify the target language and language skills you want to practise
and incorporate them into something which the children produce. For
example: grammar – present tense; vocabulary – family members/
name/age? The children can each make a family tree mobile out of a
wire coat hanger and pieces of card tied to the coat hanger by string; a
card for each family member on which there are drawings or photos,
and examples of target language: ​This is my sister. Her name is Jessica. She is 8​.
Each mobile is different but practises the same language.
▪ Specific outcome or end product. It’s important that the children have
something to show at the end of the project, e.g. the family mobile –
there are some more ideas below.
▪ Real – published, public audience, used/ read by others. Try to make
the end product as real, personal and ‘special’ as possible so the
children feel their project work is valued.
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4. ▪ Planned by teacher but students’ ideas and interests – and students’
work. The teacher plans but the children do! It’s their end product not
the teacher’s.
What kind of end products can the children produce?
There are lots of ideas. Here are just a few.
▪ a wall display e.g. posters or collages. Children all contribute a part to
making a whole class end product.
▪ a report or presentation e.g. on a survey conducted by the children, or
research conducted via the Internet.
▪ an invention e.g. a new form or transport, a futuristic city, a new gadget
etc (depending on the target vocabulary)
▪ a booklet or guide e.g. to their town or to an imaginary place
▪ a model e.g. of an imaginary island
▪ a photo story or video e.g. of a story made up by the children, or about
a subject researched by them – perhaps ‘leisure opportunities in our
town’.
▪ a magazine or newspaper
▪ an event e.g. a show/pantomime, a fashion show, a party, an art
exhibition –
the possibilities are endless.
Are there any problems with classroom management?
Certainly, project work is more challenging to organise than going
through set exercises all together. You have to be organised and plan
carefully, especially if children are working on different things –
individually or in small groups.
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5. Time has to be allowed to set up activities and to tidy up at the end of
the lesson.
You have to think about how and where you are going to store half
completed work, and how you are going to display or show off the
completed end product.
You have to be tolerant of noise as children talk about and do their
work together. In monolingual groups quite a bit may be in L1, which I
think is fine so long as the target language is learned and practised
through the project work.
It’s hard work but worth it for the enjoyment and sense of achievement!
Here are some ideas for a project on animals: –
The children can (individually or in pairs/groups) do one of more of
these activities: choose an animal to research; draw a picture; write a
caption; write an article about its habitat, food, etc; create a joint
collage; make up a class ‘book’ about the different animals; make a
model zoo or wildlife park; do a survey about who has which pets –
with a bar chart poster display; write simple poems to make up into (an
illustrated) class poetry book.
I’m sure lots of you have done project work – perhaps without realising
it! What sort of projects have worked well in your class room? Can you
share any ideas for projects?
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