Miss Cristina’s Classroom

  We went back to school for the last weeks of this school cycle, while some students struggled with keeping their masks, I was happy to see my students and most of them were happy to be at the school again, we had to adapt all of our activities to teach in a distance social classroom, so there were lots of games and activities that we were not able to do but we managed to find others or adapt some of them.  I could play pictionary, guess what, hangman and spelling with my students, I noticed that for those students are in first grade of primary, they were struggling with spelling, so I would say that we're a little behind of what we normally were at this point of the year, though they recognize all of the words spoken, they have problems writing the words, so I focused my activities on reinforcing their spellings, at the end, students did know the alphabet in English, they could follow the dictation and they were able to write the CVC words. 

 We're changing to another program so I was observed by a teacher.  This is the rubric that she used and the feedback because of the school, I can't share the logo but I'm sharing some of the things that she wrote.  I was observed in all the groups I teach, therefore the feedback is different for some groups.  I got higher points with kindergarten, her only suggestion it was to correct the students immediately and talk with parents that sometimes were trying to get their children repeat the words with a bad pronunciation.  With primary and secondary, the suggestions were to remember students to put their cameras on, otherwise they would lose their attendance, to introduce the vocabulary and focus on speaking, listening and other activities and leave the book's activities as homework, so the time in class would be more "practical" giving students the opportunity to put their skills into practice. 

 Hi! Something that I discovered by teaching online is that you have to look for new things and change your activities, as students have more freedom about what to do, teachers have to be more creative and do things that will grab their attention.  I like working with positive reinforcement so every week if they're fast, meet the deadlines and pay attention, they get to choose a game to play on Fridays after we're done with a little vocabulary quiz and review that we do every Friday, some of the activities that they love are: Playing bingo, it has been a sucess, even with students from preschool, they love playing this and is one of their favorite games. I use this website: https://myfreebingocards.com/virtual-bingo and depending on the group, I can create my own cards and choose the words or numbers I want to practice for that day.  Playing pictionary, I found this website that allows to practice a lot range of vocabulary, my students love it and they've even invite...

 As the COVID-19 came, education changed and I had to adapt my lessons as we gave online classes using Zoom, every week I created Google Slides to give my lessons, students had access to those slides and could work alone in case that they had any difficulty with the Internet.  This was one of the first changes that I had to do in order to teach in a more efficient way.