6. The tools of the trade

 

a)    From this chapter, choose the tools that you would use in your class, and describe the activities that you would use them for.

    As you have to know, there are many tools that we can use when we teach children. Some of them are the following:

•  Slides: we would use slides because it is a very essential tool in the 21th century because it shows the topic in a very clear way, children understand  it better using this way and can be shared, so that they can continue reading the topic.
•  Toys: can be of great benefit to children´s learning because if they see the toys, they can guide  in a better way. Exampple: If children are learning the body parts, teacher could  point to the body part of the toy, and children could learn faster.
• Posters: are very important in explaining a topic since teacher may show students in a different way. Posters can greatly influence children´s learning because it is a less boring way to children learn. Moreover, teacher may use image related to a specific topic.
• Concept maps: may help children understand better since they would not have to study a lot of  pages because they find it very difficult to learn a lot of information just to reading. Concept maps: may help children´s learning because a concept maps are short summaries of a topic, Children learn faster.
• Dynamics: can greatly influence children´s learning because it is a form of practice with them. Sometimes, children feel very  bored, teacher must carry out a dynamic, so children could feel comfortable. Also, the dynamic helps children to better understand a topic that could be complicated.

b)    Classify all the tools in this chapter into useful and useless in our environment. Write the reason why you made such distinction.

TOOLS OF THE TRADE	USEFUL	USELESS	REASON OF THIS DISTINCTION
Puppets	X		Puppets can be an important tool for teaching the English language since they can help the English teachers to teach pedagogical content in a fun and engaging way.
Class mascot	X		The classroom mascot can also be a useful tool in the classroom as it would help children to be responsible.
Paper dolls	X		Paper dolls can also be very useful to teach English since they can help us to teach children about colors and clothes
English corners		X	The English corners is a useless tool in our context due to we don have enough space in our classrooms to put learning corners.
Cardboard boxes		X	This is another of the things that is useless in our context due to the little space that we have in the classrooms
Picture cards	X		This can be useful in the classroom to teach children to classify pictures according to their names in English.
Board games		X	The board game can be a useful tool for teaching English since the teacher can form work groups and put students to interact with each other.
Word/sentence       cards	X		Sentence cards can be very useful as well since we can give the child disordered sentences so that he or she orders them in a correctly way .
Calendar	X		The calendar is another of the important tools that we as teachers should have in in the classrooms since in this way, the teacher and student have at hand the dates of delivery of work, exams, days off, etc.
Clock	X		The clock is also necessary in the classroom since it allows both the teacher and the students to know when class time ends, exit time, exams, etc,

 C) Reflect upon the top three chapters you would incorporate in your own            
     practicum.

From our point of view, we only need to take into account three chapters of the book "Teaching English to children" to carry out a practice in a classroom, which are: The tools of trade, the young language learner and planning your work. These three chapters would help us to get to a classroom with basic elements to teach pedagogical content since we would have experience with planning, teaching tools and knowledge about the behavior of average children, which is fundamental in all teaching. However, this would only be three basic things that any teacher should use to develop a class effectively, but there are many more that you should know since they are just as important as these.