Introduction

In this portfolio I will summarize the different works and activities I did throughout the semester. It's always important to have a compilation of different works and activities that is easy to access later on. This can be a great support when doing classes, because I can look back and see the different activities I did, and the different methods and techniques in order to see how I managed to use them, which mistakes I did and how can I do it better next time. 

Characteristics of Young Learners

This was the first assignment we had to do for the course. We had to read an article about characteristics of young learners and come up with one activity for the different types. This activity helped us visualize how we can approach the main aspects of young learner we will have to face in the classroom. It is extremely important to know how students behave and how what to do in order to get their attention and keep them concentrated on the activities and tasks we give them. Since it was something we did at the beginning of the course, sometimes I forgot about these aspects, or I only remembered a few, but in the end I tried thinking about how to apply this for my lesson plans. I tried to keep everything I saw during the semester in mind and remember how important it is know your students and to create diverse activities in order to reach all the types of students.

Characteristics of Young Learners

Phonics Activity

This activity was done using a technique mentioned within reading techniques. It explained that when young learners are beginning to read, it is important for them to understand the different way letters are produced; how the sounds for the letters work. This activity was an example of that. The idea was to use distinctive sounds  that young ESL learners might have trouble with such as the sounds corresponding to the "sh" and "ch." Since in Spanish there is no difference between this two sounds, it is important for young learners to get familiar with the difference that exists in English. So we created this activity by using a song that makes this contrast easy to understand. The idea was to associate each sound to a more familiar idea the students already knew, so the "ch" was associated with how a train sounds and the "sh" as the sound to be quiet. I think the activity was good, we also worked with other words to make sure students notice the difference, and we also worked with repetition of the sounds so they can get a grasp of the contrast. 

These types of activities are quite useful because they can help you prepare a class for different aspects of teaching a language. In this case, teaching how to differentiate the sounds is really important in English, because there are many sound that are key when speaking that might not be that important in our language (Spanish).

Reading and Writing for Young Learners

Creating reading and writing activities for young learners is not that simple. We have to take into account different aspects and sue different techniques to get students attention and interest. When we had to design the lesson plan for these, I had some problems understanding the key aspects to do so. 

READING 

For the reading lesson plan, at first I was a bit confused because the reading part of the book mentioned the used of songs and chants to start working with reading activities. So a took it too literal and worked with a song, but I failed to explain that I was also working with the lyrics. I focused too much on the listening part and left the reading part not developed enough. I tried following what the book said about using songs for reading purposes, but I'm not sure if my approach was entirely correct. I fixed it so that there would be a better focus on the reading aspects but maybe I could have used an activity completely focused on it.

WRITING

As for the writing activity, I went with something more traditional that was also mentioned in the book. Writing some simple sentences following a model using things that are related to them. I used fruits as my content, and I make the students get familiar with using the phrase "I like...." By  doing this I get the students to practice their writing. Then to make something a bit more interesting, I make them do an acrostic with fruits using their own names. That way I can take into account the need for students to talk and do activities that are focused on them, and they can choose what they like from the content. That way, we go back to the characteristics of young learners by saying they are self-centered. With this, the students can practice writing their names and the lexical (fruits) and linguistics (phrase "I like..") contents.

Guided Lesson Plan

This was a conjoint activity between both methodology teachers. Since we still had some doubts and most of us were not performing that great, the teachers decided to work on a lesson plan from beginning to end with us.
This was a good chance for us to understand the correct way of doing a lesson plan. I think a lot the class still had doubts about how to do a lesson plan the right way. I myself had many doubts, or better put, insecurities about doing a lesson plan. This guided lesson plan with both teachers really helped me understand much better the process of creating a lesson plan. I could understand much better how to match my learning outcomes to my activities and then to the indicators of assessment. I worked this lesson plan together with a classmate (Marlon) and we worked on writing all the possible details since that was also part of our shortcomings.
I think the finished lesson plan was rather good, in part because the teachers checked it a couple of times indicating the different mistakes. I felt confident that it was a good work, something that had not happened before. I think, that the fact that the teachers could check and point out our mistakes on the spot was something that really helped us to worked on it faster. I think this lesson plan marked a point where I started to feel more secured about my lesson plans. Although working completely on my own still proves somewhat difficult, this task helped me get more confidence and feel a bit more secure when I create a lessen plan.

Micro-Teaching

The Micro-Teaching was an interesting and challenging experience. Some of the difficulties we had has to create a lesson plan for a class that we didn't really know. We knew the grade and the content they were reviewing; we also knew amount of students and the teacher mentioned some conduct problems. However, since we never saw the class ourselves, we didn't know how they were in real life, so we prepared a lesson plan with the information we had. We got feedback from the teacher to correct it, so we did.

When we got to the classroom, we had a problem with the laptop and the projector, so we had to improvise the first part of the class. Instead of showing the sentences with the projector I had to write them on the board, which took a little more time. The main problem for me was that I was too nervous that day. I was still sick, with a cough, and I felt eve more pressured when I started the class. I don't think I did that good of a job. It was really hard to control the classroom and get the students attention.  Some of them were more interested in following the class, other were less so, but were still listening, and finally, there were some that weren't interested and disrupted the class. This is clearly a display of my own lack of experience. Despite the difficulties the class had already, I couldn't get the class going the way I wanted it to. Although at some point I believed I got through to the students, it was really hard to keep their concentration on the lesson.

When I look back and I think of the content, it wasn't wrong, most of the students could understand the main idea of it, the problem was that most of them had a hard time understanding English. I tried my  best to explain everything without using Spanish, and sometimes I would use what a couple of the students who understood said for the rest to get what I was saying. I didn't want to use Spanish, because that was the instruction, but also because I had to be able to make myself understood only in English. I wasn't easy, and I think I could have done better. 

In the end, I think the most difficult part was to confront the class and try and show confidence. I didn't have the right attitude that day. I felt off for the most part of the class, but I tried to make it work and I tried to present the lesson that we prepared the best way possible. Nevertheless, the experience was great, and despite the shortcomings, I learned a lot from it. I have a lot of things that I still need to improve, and I really want to get better at this, I think that when I was there in the class I could really grasp the idea that working a class with young learner is really challenging and you have to make a really great effort. It really is harder and it takes much more from you, but I want to continue learning and improving myself so that when I have to face a class of my own, I can stand there with confidence and provide the best learning experience I can give. 

Final Exam Lesson Plan

The Final exam was a lesson plan that we had to present. The lesson plan had to be for young learner and we had to choose a content from another subject (e.g. maths, history, etc). Then we had to present a part of the development. This was something of a challenge because we had to choose what to use from the different techniques seen throughout the semester.  I think that the core of most of our presentations was to present some content and then use a bit of repetition to then give place to the activities themselves. We have come to understand that repetition work well when you can do it in addition to something else. Making the students repeat helps them to remember those words better, but only if it is accompanied with other meaningful activities that can help them remember. 

For this particular lesson plan, I chose shapes (from maths) because it is something that is part of the MINEDUC programs at the grade I wanted to teach (2nd grade). I tried to make something that would be interesting for the students, and that could work for that grade. I chose to start simple with a song, because that is a great way to get their attention. Yet my main focus of the lesson, was for them to practice and identify the different shapes. I prepared different activities for that purpose. They were all simple and not that difficult, but they were different. I tried to  take into account the multiple intelligences. I used the song and video to get the attention of those who prefer visual and auditory. Then I draw the shapes and wrote the names with the class to help them recognize the shapes better. After that I used the shapes and the names again and made them write the name of the shape for each of them, since at 2nd grade they are still practicing writing and I needed to take into account those who can learn better by writing. Then I asked them to color a drawing of different shapes using a color for each shape, in order to see if they can recognize the shape correctly. Finally, I thought of making them draw using the shapes. Following the example from the drawing they colored, this time they could do their own drawing using the different shapes, which could help the ones with a more artistic style of learning. The ideas was for them to work with the shapes in different ways so they didn't get bored by doing only one type of activity, since students at this stage tend to get bored easily.

I tried to make the best use of what I had learnt, and I can only hope that all of that came across in my lesson plan.  I still need  improve but I feel that I have advanced a little bit. Making a lesson plan that is perfect or that at least I feel like it is perfect it is really hard. I tried to make it so that everything works fine, but I still need to work on that. Sometimes I fail to write enough details, or sometimes I misunderstand some techniques or activities according to what I want to achieve. During the making of this lesson plan I realized I still have trouble thinking about what to do as I tend to over-think too much about what to do and how to make it work. However, I know feel a bit more confidence when writing a lesson plan, I just want to keep on working to get better.

Conclusion

Throughout this semester and this course I have seen different aspects involved in teaching young learners. I have seen the different characteristics and intelligences that must be taken into account in order to prepare a lesson for them. I have also seen different methods and techniques used when teaching young learners, which help in getting their attention and working with them in a better way. There are a lot of things I would have to consider to create a lesson that would make the students learn in a meaningful way. I think, that everything we had seen in this course is essential to guide the learning process of the students correctly and effectively.

As a personal note, I have not given my best effort for different reasons. I feel as if I am in debt to myself for not being able to do things the right way as I would have liked to. That does not mean that I wanted to do things in the wrong way or that I worked poorly because I wanted to, but I know that I could have done better and I feel like I owe that to the course, the program and, most of all, myself. I just need to keep on learning from my mistakes and keep on improving myself in order to get to the point where I want to be; to become the good teacher I aspire to be. 

This whole year has been a learning process for me in different aspects. This course in particular proved a bit difficult because I wasn't completely focused, but also because working with young learner has different complexities and difficulties. There are a lot of things to take into account and sometimes we forget that we need to include everything in what we do, not just some part of it.

Creating a lesson plan has been one of the most difficult tings to get right. There are a lot of details in a lesson plan that are important. At first, I was a bit confused and somewhat frustrated with doing the lesson plans, because I had a hard time thinking of activities and how to do it correctly; thinking "what does the teacher expects from this?" and "how can I make this lesson plan a good one that can actually work well?" I think that I have improved in this regard, although I still feel a little insecure when doing one, at least I know a lot of things for certain that I didn't before. 

Finally, I think that, through the course, I have gained a lot of experience, thanks to all the activities I had to do and thanks to the micro-teaching which made me face the reality of a classroom. Planning ahead is really important, but it almost impossible to do without really knowing your students. This learning experience made me realized that regardless of all the  theory we might know or understand, in the end what's important is how can we apply all that to the classroom effectively, in a way that will help our students really learn. That is something that we can only gain by giving our best effort and by facing the classroom lessons head on and with confidence. This course has given us different tools to do so, and has pushed us to apply and practice them in different settings. Although it has been hard in many ways, it is something we needed to do in order to improve, and, in the end, what we need now is to continue working towards becoming great teachers and complement everything we have learn in order to ensure we are providing the best learning experience for our students.