Teaching Practice and Rationale

The aim of the 5th grade English course is to ensure that each student has a clear understanding of the English language. The course should be multilevel in nature, taking into account students’ various levels of English language preparation as well as the various levels of growth of their individual psychological characteristics, which decide their capacity to learn some form of foreign speaking behavior.

The lesson will last 45 minutes. It starts with a greeting from the teacher, followed by a homework search and a random survey of students. Then the teacher introduces the new topic, explains the material of the new lesson and themed games, and later pupils read the texts. At the end of the lesson, students receive homework.

Teacher Standard: Teacher should have a higher or secondary vocational education, be able to analyze and plan lessons, organize excursions, maintain a friendly atmosphere in the children’s team, objectively assess the knowledge of students, and protect their interests and dignity. Functional literacy is a must to reach the decent level; competencies fixed in general requirements to a teacher. That is knowledge of the subject, curricula, child psychology, qualification, patience and tolerance. Culture means a lot. It is necessary not only to educate pupils programs of increased complexity, but also teacher’s awareness of his or her place in culture.

Lesson Objective: development of communicative competence and research training activities, as well as the ability to clearly define the areas of the known and the unknown. It is also the ability to determine the tasks that are necessary to achieve the set goals, plan actions, predict results, analyze the results of activities, draw conclusions, make adjustments, and define new goals and objectives based on the results of the work. Additional goals are to exercise self-observation, self-control, self-esteem in the process of communicative activity in English.

Key questions of the lesson:

- How many family members do you have?

- What is the relationship between family members in your family?

- What are the responsibilities of each member of the family?

Teaching style: The teacher considers his students to be objects of influence, not equal partners in activities. The teacher separates himself from both the teaching team and each child individually. The approach is democratic. Democratic style implies the teacher’s benevolence towards his pupils, being patient and tolerant, as well as the desire to build a subject-subject relationship. The teacher tries to create a businesslike and at the same time a warm, calm atmosphere at the lessons.

Teacher’s notes: pupils can play a game. Each participant is asked a word in English, which he must spell, while the teacher writes it on the blackboard. If the student made a mistake in the word, he is eliminated from the game. Also, there is another task. Each pupil will have to describe his or her family, using 4-5 simple sentences, and the rest must guess who it is. It is a great game for the practice of English speaking, as well as training for the use of grammatical constructions and learned vocabulary in English.

General Notes

The keywords are: mother, father, sister, brother, grandmother, grandfather, uncle, aunt, cousin, tall, short, slim, fat, light-hair, dark-haired. The planned result of this lesson is the repetition of the basic vocabulary on “family members”, ”appearance” and ”character”. Also, pupils should be able to describe the appearance and character of people. The goal is the formation of educational and cognitive interest in new teaching material and ways of solving a new problem, developing skills for cooperation with peers.

Greetings from the teacher:

Teacher: Good morning, children.

Children: Good morning, teacher.

Teacher: Sit down, please.

Children: Thank you.

A task for students: everyone should describe their family members, as well as their profession and age.

Pupils of the fifth grade prefer games to competitions. In the lessons, interest in the new material increases, there is an incentive for doing homework, because only deep knowledge gives the students the opportunity to prove themselves, to defeat the opponent. The spirit of competitiveness and the desire to assert themselves is excellent motivations for learning languages (Heo et al., 2011, 2.). Quizzes, competitions, travel; these are the game forms that you can use for this. At this age, students have a need for communication, for close contact with each other, and playing moments destroy the barriers between them, create conditions for equality in the speech partnership.

The task: the group is divided into two teams. Representatives of the teams take turns performing some kind of action. Opponents call this action, comment on what the participant of the game is doing, in Present Continuous Tense. For example, a pupil of one of the teams goes to the blackboard. The opponent comments on what the participant of the game does: ”He is going to the board”. If he or she failed to correctly formulate the proposal, then drop out of the game. A certain team wins if by the end of the game there are more participants left in this one.

The task ”Pairs of words”. Players are informed that this game was invented by the author of the book ”Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”. Any word is written on a sheet of paper. Below on the same page another word with exactly the same number of letters is spelled. Players should gradually turn the upper word into the lower one. To do it, one first needs to come up with another word that is written just like the first one, with the exception of one or two letters, and write it under the first word. Then, in the same way, this word turns into another word. Each time one can change only one or two letters. One will need to continue until you get a word that he or she can turn a single letter into a lower word.

The Rationale

The main purpose of learning a foreign language as a subject area of school education is seen in mastering pupils’ ability to communicate in that language. Formation of communicative competence is the main and leading goal of education. Upbringing and developing reserves of a foreign language as a subject of the school curriculum are most fully revealed in conditions of active learning. In such conditions, the goal of learning is the independent acquisition of knowledge, the formation of creative thinking of students; they become not the object, but the subject of educational activity, and thus, its active initiator, agent and controller.

Thus, the process of learning a foreign culture, built on a communicative basis, expands the possibility of the subject in solving these problems. Communicative learning is personality-oriented and constructed in such a way that the direct activity of pupils, their experience, worldview, academic and after-hour interests and inclinations, their feelings do not remain outside the threshold of the school, but are taken into account when organizing communication in the lesson (Rebecca, 2003, 2). When learning a foreign language, most of them experience difficulties in applying their knowledge in practice. Having a sufficient vocabulary on the topic, owning certain grammatical structures of the language, children do not know where to start and in what sequence to speak. It is because it is difficult for pupils to start speaking without any visual support.

Learning possibilities for using the game method have been known for a long time. It is due to the fact that the game is particularly full and sometimes unexpected abilities of any person, and the child in particular. The features of the game are considered from different points of view. However, despite all differences, it is agreed on the presence of positive features of the game. Game form of the lesson is created in the lesson with the help of gaming techniques and situations, which act as a means of motivating and stimulating students. Situation can resemble a dramatic work with its plot, conflict and actors. During a game, the situation can be played several times and at the same time each time in a new version.

Nonetheless, at the same time, the situation of a game is the situation of real life. Reality is determined by the main conflict, competition. The desire to take part in such a game mobilizes the thought and energy of the players, creates an atmosphere of emotional tension. Despite the clear conditions of the game situation and the limited use of language material, there must be an element of surprise in it. Games are characterized by spontaneity of speech. Speech communication, which includes not only the actual speech, but also gestures and facial expressions have a pronounced purposefulness.

Implementation of gaming techniques and situations in the form of lessons takes place in the main areas. First of all, it is a didactic goal, which is put before the students in the form of a game task, and also that the learning activity is subject to the rules of the game. The teaching material is used as its means; an element of competition is introduced into educational activity, which translates the didactic task into a game task. Additionally, the successful completion of the didactic task is associated with the gaming result (Foriˇsek & Steinova, 2017, 2).

The place of play in the lesson and the time allotted to the game depends on a number of factors. It is the preparation of pupils, the studied material, the specific goals and conditions of the lesson (Iten & Petko, 2016, 2). Games can be grammatical, lexical, phonetic, spelling. All of them contribute to the formation of speech skills (”Language Development and Literacy”, 2010, 8). Mastering grammatical material, first of all, creates an opportunity for transition to active speech of students. It is known that the training of students in the use of grammatical structures, requiring their repeated repetition, tires schoolchildren with their monotony, and the efforts often do not bring quick satisfaction. The use of gaming learning methods will help make boring work more interesting and exciting. For example, a number of grammatical games can be effective when introducing new material. The formation and development of lexical and pronunciation skills to some extent contribute to spelling games, the main purpose of which is the development of the spelling of the studied vocabulary. Most games can be used as training exercises in the stage of both primary and secondary fastening.

References

Foriˇsek M. & Steinova M. 2017. Didactic Games for Teaching Information Theory. Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia. pdfs.semanticscholar.org/883f/38427262068e29e1bff0fb9fa1149e0bf1b8.pdf. Accessed on 2 January, 2017.

Heo, J., Han, S., Koch, C., Aydin, H. 2011. Piaget’s Egocentrism and Language Learning: Language Egocentrism (LE) and Language Differentiation (LD). Journal of Language Teaching and Research, v. 2(4), pp. 733-739.

Iten, N. & Petko, D. 2016. Learning with serious games: Is fun playing the game a predictor of learning success? British Journal of Educational Technology, v. 47(1), pp. 151–163.

Language Development and Literacy. 2010. Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development. www.child-encyclopedia.com/sites/default/files/dossiers-complets/en/language-development-and-literacy.pdf. Accessed on 2 January, 2017.

Rebecca, L. 2003. Language Learning Styles and Strategies: an Overview. Learning Styles & Strategies/Oxford, GALA.