final project - teaching english through the arts in 1st grade
Art is something that has always driven me and a passion for any form of creativity is what I strive to pass on to my students. It can be tedious to learn another language, but I think the trick to get students enthused about a new language is to engage their hearts as well as their minds.
Topic
For this reason, I decided to give a lesson on American Thanksgiving in my 1st grade arts class on the week of said holiday, which falls on the last week of November.
Objectives
My objective was to teach the students a bit about my country and my culture and have them make a craft that pretty much any given American kid at a primary school would be doing at the same time - painting hand turkeys!
Another main objective of mine was to explain the act of thankfulness in the context of Thanksgiving to my students. This goes hand in hand with the idea that it is important to capture students' hearts and minds when trying to teach them a second language.
Lastly, I wanted to get them enthused about Thanksgiving through song. I taught them a Thanksgiving song with the assistance of a YouTube video that they then had to sing and dance along to.
The materials needed included:
Paper
Tempera paint (red, orange, yellow, green)
Crayons or markers
Plastic stick-on eyeballs
Shape stickers
Lesson plan
The lesson plan went as followed: I started off giving a brief presentation on Thanksgiving. I explained what thankfulness is and why we celebrate the holiday. My role as an LA was to serve as the cultural ambassador in this situation. I kept the lesson very simple but I tried to incorporate as many English vocabulary words of theirs as possible. For example, they had recently learned the names of the members of a family in English, so as my example of what I was thankful for I said my mom, my dad, my brother, and my sister. This is where the main teacher's role was crucial - as first graders do not always have a deep understanding of what I am saying in English, the teacher would translate or put into other words what I had said while also repeating and reinforcing the English words that I had used. We complemented each other strongly in this way and I believe this contributed to the students' enjoyment of the activity. We then went around the classroom asking the students what they were thankful for in order to get into the spirit of Thanksgiving. Following this short lesson came the activities.
Activities
The main activity was to create the hand turkeys. The teacher and I set up a station at the front of the classroom where we had children come up to us one by one and we would paint their hands and help them place it on the paper properly to create their hand turkeys. During this part, we had the children tells us the name of the colors in English as we painted their hands, for further practice. There would not be enough time in one class period to finish the whole project, so in the next class they were able to add the eyeball and draw the legs. Additionally, they had recently learned basic shapes in English so my teacher had the idea to cut out shapes to decorate the background of the hand turkey to reinforce recognition of the shapes. Below is a photo of an example of a finished project made by one of my students in this class!
Topic
For this reason, I decided to give a lesson on American Thanksgiving in my 1st grade arts class on the week of said holiday, which falls on the last week of November.
Objectives
My objective was to teach the students a bit about my country and my culture and have them make a craft that pretty much any given American kid at a primary school would be doing at the same time - painting hand turkeys!
Another main objective of mine was to explain the act of thankfulness in the context of Thanksgiving to my students. This goes hand in hand with the idea that it is important to capture students' hearts and minds when trying to teach them a second language.
Lastly, I wanted to get them enthused about Thanksgiving through song. I taught them a Thanksgiving song with the assistance of a YouTube video that they then had to sing and dance along to.
The materials needed included:
Paper
Tempera paint (red, orange, yellow, green)
Crayons or markers
Plastic stick-on eyeballs
Shape stickers
Lesson plan
The lesson plan went as followed: I started off giving a brief presentation on Thanksgiving. I explained what thankfulness is and why we celebrate the holiday. My role as an LA was to serve as the cultural ambassador in this situation. I kept the lesson very simple but I tried to incorporate as many English vocabulary words of theirs as possible. For example, they had recently learned the names of the members of a family in English, so as my example of what I was thankful for I said my mom, my dad, my brother, and my sister. This is where the main teacher's role was crucial - as first graders do not always have a deep understanding of what I am saying in English, the teacher would translate or put into other words what I had said while also repeating and reinforcing the English words that I had used. We complemented each other strongly in this way and I believe this contributed to the students' enjoyment of the activity. We then went around the classroom asking the students what they were thankful for in order to get into the spirit of Thanksgiving. Following this short lesson came the activities.
Activities
The main activity was to create the hand turkeys. The teacher and I set up a station at the front of the classroom where we had children come up to us one by one and we would paint their hands and help them place it on the paper properly to create their hand turkeys. During this part, we had the children tells us the name of the colors in English as we painted their hands, for further practice. There would not be enough time in one class period to finish the whole project, so in the next class they were able to add the eyeball and draw the legs. Additionally, they had recently learned basic shapes in English so my teacher had the idea to cut out shapes to decorate the background of the hand turkey to reinforce recognition of the shapes. Below is a photo of an example of a finished project made by one of my students in this class!
Below is the YouTube video that I used to teach the students a Thanksgiving song. They stood up out of their chairs and sang and danced along to this song. The purpose of this was to get them enthused about the holiday and practice signing in English.
Evaluation of the Activities
We evaluated the activity based on two criteria. The first was completion of the hand turkey art project and participation in the song. The second criteria was based on their deeper understanding of the topic - we evaluated this by asking them to tell us something for which they were thankful. If they gave an adequate and appropriate answer in regards to the question, then we knew that the students had understood the purpose of the activity.
How will the students know if they have achieved the learning objectives?
We responded to them verbally to tell them if their answers were appropriate responses to the question of "What are you thankful for?". This is where the main teacher of the classroom was an extremely necessary complement to the activity, because she could rephrase the question and the answers in Spanish if they hadn't understood the concept originally in English. With a verbal confirmation the students knew if they had achieved the learning objective. We also reaffirmed them verbally if their hand turkey was completed appropriately.
How will you be responding to diverse learning styles and levels of achievement among your students?
The key is patience, as well as making sure every student feels included in the activity. This means giving every student the opportunity to talk, even if it is not during the group discussion. Sometimes students do not feel inclined to raise their hand and talk in front of the entire class. If this is the case, I make the effort to go speak with them individually while they are working on their activity to make sure they feel heard and understood and give them an opportunity to speak and practice their English.
Summary
Overall, the activity was a great success with my Spanish first graders. I would definitely recommend any other American auxiliar to give it a shot!
We evaluated the activity based on two criteria. The first was completion of the hand turkey art project and participation in the song. The second criteria was based on their deeper understanding of the topic - we evaluated this by asking them to tell us something for which they were thankful. If they gave an adequate and appropriate answer in regards to the question, then we knew that the students had understood the purpose of the activity.
How will the students know if they have achieved the learning objectives?
We responded to them verbally to tell them if their answers were appropriate responses to the question of "What are you thankful for?". This is where the main teacher of the classroom was an extremely necessary complement to the activity, because she could rephrase the question and the answers in Spanish if they hadn't understood the concept originally in English. With a verbal confirmation the students knew if they had achieved the learning objective. We also reaffirmed them verbally if their hand turkey was completed appropriately.
How will you be responding to diverse learning styles and levels of achievement among your students?
The key is patience, as well as making sure every student feels included in the activity. This means giving every student the opportunity to talk, even if it is not during the group discussion. Sometimes students do not feel inclined to raise their hand and talk in front of the entire class. If this is the case, I make the effort to go speak with them individually while they are working on their activity to make sure they feel heard and understood and give them an opportunity to speak and practice their English.
Summary
Overall, the activity was a great success with my Spanish first graders. I would definitely recommend any other American auxiliar to give it a shot!