My Task Design Project

Rationale

At Claretiano School, some of my students of second grade tend to confuse the demonstratives: This/that/these/those. For this reason the activity design here, pretends to reinforce this topic using the vocabulary related to sea world animals, vocabulary which has been previously taught.

Learner’s profile

There are 32 nice and clever students, their ages vary from 7 to 8 years old.

All of them are from Colombia and live in Neiva.

It’s a coed population

18 boys & 14 girls

All students have 2 years of English previous knowledge since transition grade.
A Student’s book and a Work book are used in the course.

Time
3 hours a week
2 sessions a week
2 hours of 55 minutes and 1 of 50 minutes


Specific Objectives
• Students speak about relative distance, using the sea world vocabulary and demonstratives in singular forms.
•Establish differences between singular and plural forms (This/that/these/those)

• Promote Cooperative Learning through the elaboration of a sea aquarium.

Procedure

Phase 1: All the activities are carried out in the classroom if children behave well, they will have a surprise next class…

To start, printed pictures of different animals of the sea world are given to all students (just one animal per picture), the teacher starts narrating a story. When children hear the name of the animals on the picture, they must stand up.
Later, the teacher models what students have to do: describe their own pictures, orally in pairs, using the expression: This is a/an _____. (They must touch the animal).

After the practice the teacher starts pointing different pictures saying that is a ______. (Students answer chorally); to reinforce the task, the teacher points and touch an octopus toy very quickly saying: this is / that is.

Next, students move around the classroom looking for classmates with the same picture, once the groups are conformed the teacher moves far and near the children with the pictures saying: these are or those are, later some students will do the same procedure, according to teacher movements. Children must return the pictures with their names on it.
Finally, children develop a photocopy guide.

Phase 2: Children get what they want, working outside the classroom! But before that, they must listen to the instructions…

Again pictures are given back to students, this time they have to color the animals and cut them out, then each one ties a nylon string on the top of the animal. To hang it on the box.

Children, who finish first, help the teacher to paint a big box with blue paint inside and paste some extra decorations that the teacher has brought.
Finally the teacher hangs the strings from the upper part of the box.

Now boys and girls are ready to swim in the ocean!!!

Evaluation of task implementation

It was a successful task. On phase 1, when students gave me the guide I could detect just 3 students who didn’t do what was required. But apart from that, the whole group really enjoyed all the activities. Sometimes I had to repeat the oral instructions twice or three times when they were participating because most of them were excited and generated certain noise.

On phase 2 they were more excited than before, hands on work requires lots of teacher’s patience and dedication. Perhaps you will finish many of the crafts, because not all children have the same motor skills and sometimes students feel frustrated if they can’t cut well or tie a string. By the end of the class I had some students saying help me!

But after all it was a beautiful experience because we helped each other, and something very important: they pronounced the name of the animals in English all the time and the aquarium stills in the classroom to remember the topic.

 

References

Animal internet-o-pedia(2002) [Graph illustration about crabs]. Retrieved on September 3rd from www.homewood.k12.al.us/.../animal/crab.jpg

Animal internet-o-pedia(2002) [Graph illustration about sharks]. Retrieved on September 4th from www.homewood.k12.al.us/.../animal/shark.jpg

Colorear gratis (2008) [Graph illustration about sea animals]. Retrieved on September 5th from http://coloreargratis.com/2008/04/dibujos-para-colorear-de-animales.html