The materials for 3rd grade- Yazoo 3

The materials for 3rd grade- Yazoo 3

In my second post about the books and materials in general I'll describe weakness and strengths I noticed in the Yazoo series using the third part.

This is how the book looks from the inside. There is a comic at the beginning of first two lessons of each units. The comics always have four parts, the characters are regular, there is not much text. The recordings of the dialogs are very good quality, you can easily distinguish which character is talking at the moment. The comics goal is to introduce new grammar structure without naming it. The one on the picture is about negative present continuous form. This is first, enormous strength of this book. It is not a grammar translation way of teaching and learning. For third graders this would be the worst method I assume.

Next repetitive feature of the book is that first task is always about new vocabulary. There are six new words each time. Second advantage of the whole series are big pictures without names on them to every topic. They are identical but bigger version of the ones students see in their books. I find it highly important there is no confusion between the two. For sure some verbs are more difficult to be illustrated than nouns but I need to say that the authors did great job.

On the next page there is short description of the grammar structure which appeared in the comic given with model sentences. Under that you'll find one or two exercises, totally enough as students have more work in the workbook.

 

This is an example of the test from the book. Tests are always on one page, five teen points maximum, three tasks. No listening, only exercises like you se above. I attached this test as one of the worst I conducted so far. I believe students in third grade don't feel secure with reading and writing in their native language yet. That's why I find giving them tasks on a test to write words by themselves without any help pointless. Especially when the pronunciation of the words is different.

Every time I chem tests like this one it hurts me to give zero points because there were two letters missing or some were put in incorrect order. As a teacher I want to be fair and equitable towards students, their parents and my superior at the same time. Still, I fell bad when I knocked the student is familiar with the word, he or she just wrote it the way he or she can hear it. Nevertheless, sometimes I give one more coin for two or three almost perfect words. 

To sum up, I enjoy working with my students using this series. There are some drawbacks but much more advantages. The book is colorful and fun to use, which helps me to make learning English fun for my students.

Teacher, parent, student and misbehavior

Teacher, parent, student and misbehavior

Some professionals working with kids claim the most challenging part of their job is not dealing with kids but with their parents. This is partly true for sure, but today I'd like to share different experience.

Firstly I need to write about my group. In November there were five third graders, three boys and two girls. All of them are full of energy, ideas and with plenty to say. I enjoyed every lesson with that group, even when they were like a unbridled power. I did my best to give each of them attention equally conducting the lesson at the same time. Meeting after meeting, I've got the feeling that I'm getting better at my job with them and they've made progress.

On one of the first days of December my superior came to me and informed me that on our next classes we'll have a new student (there is maximum six in a group so I would have a complete now). She said his name is, let's call him, "A" and he was in a younger group so far with less advanced level. His mom and A himself asked with much hope if he can be moved to a higher group. Mine was just perfect, with one free spot. Of course I agreed and curiously waited for our first meeting.

The lesson begun, I found out that A is a friend of one of my students as they talked loudly before the lesson and sat next to each other. I introduced myself to A, then I asked A to introduce himself to the group, so he did. It was going well. A sometimes mentioned that now he is in higher level because he wants to learn. After few times it annoyed me and I told A that it's great he wants to learn, so he can repeat the vocabulary with us. On our next lesson A and his friend laughed a lot, they laughed so hard they ever cried. I couldn't get my head around them nor find any way to calm them down. The lesson didn't went the way i planned it at all. Time after time it was only worst. When I asked A to do anything he would ignore me completely. It was very frustrating.

I decided to tell my superior about the situation because I felt sorry and angry that I no longer can teach the other kids like I did before. She accepted my story and told me to try again next time and if nothing changes to come to her again and she'll ask his mother to come to have the conversation about her son's behavior.

As you can imagine, nothing changed. That led us to last Wednesday when the three of us settled to meet after the lesson. From the very start A was like a changed child. He didn't talk to his friend, he did was I asked the group to do, he did the excercises first. It amazed me, I couldn't believe it was the same A.

After this long introduction my story get's to its essence. We sat in the office, I introduced myself and shook the mother's hand. We sat down. My superior started the conversation with brief description of the situation and asked me to give more details. So I did, including the fact that today nothing from what I say happened and I'm confused why. It all was clear when the mum informed us after she got the message with a request to meet and talk about her son behavior she knew there was something going on. She already spoke to A, told him she's sorry he disturb the whole group and the teacher. We spoke for few more minutes and settled to keep each other informed how things are going on.

What amazed me was the mothers attitude. She told us "I know my son, I know how he can be. I'm sorry for the situation, I hope he'll be better, I'll do my best talking to him". That was all I needed to her. No "you are the teacher, you should be able to control the group" or "my boy? no way, this must be a misunderstanding!". Probably I was quite lucky to have a conversation with this kind of parent but still now I know not all the parent are unbearable and worst to work with. Some can actually be openminded and accept the problem. The key to a succes is cooperation from all sides.

My classroom

My classroom

Welcome to my virtual classroom. Here I meet my students every week and we do our best to polish up their English.

The picture below shows one of the classrooms from my linguistic school. The others are similar but there are few differences.

I'll start with  a description of the room you can see above, classroom no. five. There is a big, rectangular table in the middle. There are six chairs for students (mi biggest group is of six, my smallest of four) and one for the teacher. The chairs are the same now, but they used to be plastic for students two month ago. I'm very pleased that my superiors took care of buying more comfortable chairs for my students as I know it was an issue for some of them. I also find it reasonable that both me and students have the same type of chair as I don't feel I should have any better conditions than them.

In the room there are few posters as you can see. They present pictures of Spain, I don't know why but I suppose it might have been a Spanish room once. There is a cork board on the right, you can see drawings hanged, for example Christmas trees from December. There is also interactive board with special pens, but they don't work now unfortunately. Nevertheless, I use the computer and projector instead of usual white board I just write the topic and notes in a Word document. It's very easy way to write, I don't use any markers or sponges and the students immediately see what I write and have no problem with my handwriting. In the other classrooms there are whiteboards and screens but I've already learned how to manage both options.

Therefore, massive flaw of using the screen as a whiteboard is that we need to switch off one of the lights to see the screen well. Sometimes we even turn it off completely when we watch something or look at some pictures. That makes is impossible for students to write in their notebooks or books at the same time. I need to take it under consideration while planning the lesson and knowing we'll study in this room. Moreover, my students as any other human being are in a sleepy mood after the whole day at school, and if they come to extra classes in a dark room, sitting in a soft chair it's no surprise they just want to sleep. I had enough situations like this to remember not to turn off the lights for more than few minutes and to keep the students as active as possible at that time.

With younger students, third graders, the board and electronically pens are quite problematic. They are interested in their functions and the exact reason why we don't use them. It often happens that one of the boys suddenly stands up and tries to activate the pen without my permission.

To give you whole picture, there are three windows in the room and one fan so it's ready to keep us comfortable any time of the year. We also have hangers so that students have their coats with them all the time and don't need to worry about that, they just left it in the classroom and take them after the lesson. I as a teacher also leave my coat there as I have three lessons in a row in the same room.

With such a small groups of students I enjoy working in the classroom you can see on the picture. The table like in a conference room is well situated for me and my students and it's big enough for them not to bother one another. Plus the room's size is big enough to make the learning- teaching process comfortable. I'm able to come to every student and check their work, every student is free to go to the bathroom if he or she needs to. Colors and interior of the school is pleasing and calm. Orange is the color of the school and you can see it in every room. I like it, it makes the impression of coherent space. If it was my school maybe I would establish some changes but not much.