Workshop Day! Activities and Techniques to implement in English Classes!

WORKSHOP DAY! 

Hello everybody! 

It is my pleasure to continue writing and sharing with you something not new maybe for you, but it is very important in any class to incorpore them and use them for the children you teach. Well, at my practicum I, teacher Yanni wanted us to create or innovate some of the activities or techniques that she listed and we had to developped it. In the group we are eleven students, so each of us explained how to do it and implement it in a stage of the planning (English Class). 
Let's start:

1. Recycled Shaker

The activity was explained by Juan Carlos aka JC. He explained that we can use an empty drink can, pebbles, colored papers and some other things you wanted to put in to can to decorate it. 
The steps were very easy to do and he created one while he explained how to make it. The can was no longer a simple, cilindric can, he made it shine with bright foamy and some other prompts that were pasted around the can. It was so cute, of course the pebbles give it the sense that it is a musical instrument, so you can use it to sing with the students and move around, to call their attention when they are making noise or fooling around the class...endless posibilities! :D To me the greatest part was when the can was finished, it was so creative and colourful!! 

2. Clay

Well, when I saw Cristela with the material she had with her I thought that it is a great material to work with! She decided to make a snail from the clay, she used green, yellow, blue and red, a pencil and two little sticks to form the animal. 
She initiated the activity and I inmediately wanted to copy her! Since it is a technique that it needs your hands, you feel really comfortable to manipulate it and start to remember those amazing days from kinder garden! Stop! Let's continue... So, our teacher requested her to give a bit of the clay to everybody, so we can experieced it. We had fun and it is very easy to do! You just roll pieces of clay into long tails, let's say and that will be the body. Then, we made the body and you repeat the first step and then you press the clay to make it plain. Then, the snail body is put on the plain part  of the snail! You make the head and use the sticks to put the eyes of the snail up. I really liked it! Kids love to manipulate things and they can see how easy is to create or learn in your classroom. 

3. Spinning Wheel Technique

This activity was chosen by Monica. She brought to the class a greaaaaat example of her to show off! It was a iron construction of the spinning wheel, and she created a styrofoam rulette with activities in each section of the wheel! The example included some of the topics our children had learned. It think that it is a great activity for kids to review everyday. Teachers can use it with differents contents, like: Any grammar content, vocabulary, reading , listening comprehension, questions about other topics. It is for me one useful and magnific tool to create! The cost of this activity in our country, cost around $6.50 and I know that some other people will be interested in applying it. The kids will love continue playing with it and since it is based on a game, Monica adapted to learn English! What a great idea! 

4. Telling a story

Raul made a story of a mouse and some other characters in a platform made of carton paper and some white sheets of papers. The story, he mentioned, only contained pictures of the story. This is timelined so everything is told in a sequencial way... This is so helpful to children because they can imagine the story with your body movements, your voice, the drama you incorpore in how you tell it, so they can live it! Raul shared with us some of the facts that we can count on at the moment of telling a story:
1. Have an interesting story to tell
2. Memorize the basic story
3. Use your hands to emphasize the story
4. Use facial expressions
5. Allow your voice to be expressive.
6. Add details (the students can even tell how the story ends, or participate in the middle of it) 
7. Practice in advance! 

All of these steps will help you so much if you happen to have a nice story and want to share it with the class!!! This helps so much, I think that when the teachers incorpore anecdotes, stories of any genre and transform the into something learnable, then children will get the best of it! 

5. Chants and songs

This activity was carried by Juan. He wanted to show a song, it was "Days of the Week". He made us stand up and he started to model it for us. We all enjoyed it and he gave us a tip for a new rythim to use in other songs or lyrics. Also, teacher Yanni taught us another song, with the military intonation using the "Alphabet song". The classical one but with the military sound of the pitch at the end. We must use at least two songs in our classes, because we all know that children love to sing in their L1, and why not to incorporate one in L2? With patience and modeling, we have noticed that they are so capable of singing!

6. Boxes

In here, Gisselt transform simple boxes into a nice idea to copy! She covered simple shoes boxes into a something that we can use to revise how our children had acquired the vocabulary or other items. The teacher shouts out the names of the animals, for example and students wil have balls to throw into the boxes. If they got what words was, the box will have on the top the image only. So, the teacher says "ruler" the child will throw the ball into the "ruler box", and so on. She gave us a nice idea and it is cheap, useful and great for the children because in here it is observable if they got the vocabulary or not. You can use it to review topics, vocabulary and see how much students need to practice your lessons!!


7. Disposable Plates

I liked this activity that Mercy explained. Disposable plates are easy for children to manipulate and they can enjoy any activity with this material. She made for us a bag using disposable plates. We even saw her making one bag and it is easy to make. She put some glitter on to be more attractive to children. She wanted this idea to be used with the "clothes" topic. She explained that we can give our students pieces of the clothes to children so they can dress a picture! What a nice idea! Children will only use glue and their pencil colours. 

8. Memory Game
Iliana made three sets of memory games, so we can see how to construct them. It is basicaly cheap to make and if we think about the possibilities of the memory game, well you can see it if we put this in an activity! 
It is so nice that they can play and at the same time learn words and the correspondant pictures! We can even designed one bigger so that everyone in the class can participate at the same time! Teacher Yanni explained it and I think that it is a great idea, too! It is again, unexpensive and great to do with children.


9. Puppets

I liked this activity very much! I like when Luis pretended to be the puppet, well he softened his voice and talked like a little mouse! This activity is great to put in an activity for the students! Luis explained us three kids of ways to make puppets:
The 2D puppet, sock and finger puppet. I liked the sock puppet because you can personalize it and use it like your friend, helper, assistant, etc with the kids! 

10. Hat and Crowns
Gloria made us think about how hat can be part of the class. She thought of moods hats. Each children will create one, reflecting how they feel at that moment, sad, happy, angry, etc. Instead of creating it, children can easily create one and have fun in the process.  
This also helps the teacher and the children to know more about each other. Feelings are also important! She used foamy and showed us a template of a party hat, that we can copy from. It is so good to know that a simple hat can demostrate other things in a class. They can be decorated as much as they want! 

11. Name Tags

This activity was carried by me! I will develop it in here for you: 

First, design a name tag with a double color paper with the form of a face (boy and girl) and it would be better if you use a hard paper, that way it will not be weak to use. The faces will have the children's name on. Then, it is important to ake sure that thses faces have doucle portion of paper, so the child can open the face and see what is inside. They will either find the word of the vocabulary target or the picture. Depending on how much studens you have, that will depend how much faces of name tags you will need. Make sure they match. For example: Banana the word, and Banana the picture. You can then say that they have to look for the matching word or picture to continue working. After this, teacher can use the grammar point or other topics to ask and work with them. 
I selected the topic "Food and Drinks" and printed the images in pasted inside the name tag. I created this activity to be used in a practice stage. 

Stage of planning:
Practice
Students will get in pairs by looking for their partners (using the name tags). Then, the teacher will show them the vocabulary they have in their name tags. These are: banana, candy, soda, water, pizza, hamburger, melon, donut (whatever your selection of these words). After this, the teacher will ask the whole group: Is soda good for you? this will be ask to the whole group, but the teacher can decide if to ask like that or just one pair at a time. Also, the negative counterpart: Is water bad for you? 
Also, to make this clear, the teacher will use, thumbs up or down for the good and bad words. 

Cost of materials:

-For the two pliegos of hard paper (cartoncillo): $0.80 cents. 
-Fabriano paper type: $2.25 each
-Glue
-Printed images: $0.80 approximately. 


See you!!