Frankly, I never feel satisfied teaching children, not because I don’t have enough patience but I just don’t feel that I transfer knowledge to them. To my concern, they look comfortable with them so that they could talk anything, but the problem is I enjoy listening to them and forget about the lesson. LOL. To my surprise, this term (Term 3/ 2010) I got children class, EC 6A. Mmmm … I think I need to improve myself and be strict to myself in controlling the students’ desire to tell about them. Another this is I need to brainwash myself in teaching children since I last taught the level more than 3 years ago. All I know that children like moving a lot and can’t sit still. Well, then, TPR (Total Physical Response) must be good for them.
First, I have to search what TPR is. According to James. J Asher who developed TPR, Total Physical Response is to aid learning second language. The method relies on the assumption that when learning a second or additional language, language is internalized through a process of codebreaking similar to first language development and that the process allows for a long period of listening and developing comprehension prior to production. Students respond to commands that require physical movement (Wikipedia). Therefore, it suits to my EC 6A. And this is what I did in my class.
The lesson is about meeting favorite celebrity—especially singer (we can take any other famous people; actress, actors, etc). In the book, there’s a dialog about a fan meeting her favorite singer and shaking his hand. During motivating strategy, I elicited what the students would do if they meet their favorite celebrity. Mostly they said that they’d like to take pictures and ask his/ her autograph. None of them said that they would at least shake hands with their favorite celebrity. That’s why, I showed them a-one-minute-video I took from youtube. Then I listed down what verbs/ actions from the video. They came up with some Indonesian actions and asked me what they are in English. The actions I found were smiling, waving (hand), walking, bowing, standing, posing, screaming, clapping, giving (flower) and falling (the actor fell when he was walking on the red carpet).
After I explained the meaning and they followed the gestures/ actions, I asked them to stand up to do the actions. First I was the one to give them instructions, then in turns, some students came to front giving their friends instructions. It was really exhilarating, especially because I put a camera to videotape them. Some of them were enthusiastic to be in front of the camera. And this is the result of the videotape
Well, overall, teaching children is exhausting yet awesome.
this is a great site!
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