Times asked to interview and demonstrate a lesson: 4
Today was my second chance to give a demonstration lesson at a kindergarten since my TEFL course ended.
Once I got to the school, I sat in on a lesson given by the outgoing teacher, where the kindergarten teacher performed brilliantly to a class who gave every indication of being very capable and well-behaved.
The topic given for my half hour lesson was transport. I chose six vehicles (car, plane, bicycle, boat, train, and bus), I gave each vehicle one of six colours (black, red, green, yellow, blue, and orange) and gave each vehicle a size (big or small).
Then I put them into a story called, "A Little Transport Story". After my warm-up song, I then sat down in front of the class and began to read. The story went along these lines: "What's this? It's a car. What colour is it? It's black. Black. It's a black car. How big is it? Is it big or small? It's small. Small. It's a small car. It's a small black car. What noise does it make? Brm, brm! Brm, brm! It goes brm, brm! It's a small black car which goes, 'Brm, brm!' The small black car which goes 'Brm, brm!' is friends with...What's this? It's a boat. Etc." Then at the very end of each vehicle bit I would say "The small black car which goes 'Brm, brm!' is friends with the big yellow boat which goes 'Honk, honk!' who's friends with the big blue train which goes 'Woo, woo!' etc." My only props were a piece of future board with the six colours on it, and the book which contained two vehicles on each page and no writing on the side visible to the children.
Unfortunately, I think I lost the rhythm of the story and instead of building up momentum and excitement as I went, I kept going back on myself to reinforce what the children had already learnt but not with any consistency.
What the teacher who was observing me suggested was that when one of the children gave the correct answer to a question in the story I could have got up and given that child a high five and said "Well done!" This would have encouraged the other children to give responses in turn. Another possibility would be to encourage the children to all have a go at making the vehicle noise and see who was loudest and then praise them with a high five or a "Well done!". The story in itself must have taken 20 minutes which was too long. The teacher suggested that this story was something I could have got the children to work towards over a 2 week period.
The second part of my lesson which was a song based on the story was again too long and I did not get a chance to finish it as my half hour was nearly up. Again the teacher suggested that this might have caught on given a longer period of time.
I finished the lesson with a warm-down song to the same tune as the warm-up song with hand waving the first time through and clapping the second time through. These songs were received positively by the teacher in my feedback and he said again this is something that the children with grow to enjoy and participate in more if I was here for a longer period of time.
In my feedback, the general response from the teacher was that I had good ideas but had included too much for one lesson. As for personality, I was told I had good presence, but needed to engage with the children more when I sensed they were getting bored; we discussed the need to keep the class having fun without tipping their energy over into hyperactivity where nothing of value would be learned.
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