Teaching materials

At 22.11 I was at my practice at school and I would like to share with you what I observed about teaching materials. 

*Grade 7: poster, recording, a map of the centre of London.
*Grade 4: flashcards, course book
*Grade 2: song, papers
*Grade 5: course book.

The first class that I saw was with grade 7. It was a project lesson about moving around London. The lesson began with a warm-up, thanks to which the teacher revised the material from a previous lesson. The teacher used a poster with numbers. Under each number, she had a question about the previous lesson. In class, there were seven teens and teacher also had seven questions. Thanks to that each pupil could answer one question. After the warm-up, kids were listening to the same recording that they had on a previous lesson. The teacher used for this a laptop with speakers. The recording is available on https://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/skills/listening/elementary-a2-listening/tour-london. After listening, the teacher asked questions, to check what they remember. Subsequently, the teacher gave pupils a map of the centre of London and asked them to find some places. The teacher used a board to write phrases that will be useful for kids while asking for directions and she asked them to work in pairs and ask each other for directions. The teacher was walking around the classroom and was giving feedback to pupils. At the end of the lesson, the teacher told children what she wants them to remember and asked them what topic they want to do at their next meeting. 

English lesson in grade four was the second lesson that I saw. The teacher started the lesson with a revision, she asked questions connected with the activities from the former lesson. In that lesson, we participated with the teacher in activities on the carpet. The teacher used colourful flashcards with pictures of shops. The teacher showed pictures and told the names of shops and kids needed to repeat them in different ways for example by saying them silently or with clapping. Then we played "what's missing" with flashcards. Next, we played charades with a division into two groups. We needed to mime words. The group with the highest score won. Subsequently, kids got back to their seats and they were doing exercises from the book (matching pictures with words) and short speaking in front of the whole class, about the shops in their town.

The third class was in class 2. It was also a project lesson like in class 7. At this lesson, we also participated in the exercises. At the beginning we were sitting in a circle on the carpet, we needed to introduce ourselves to kids and kids also introduced themselves to us.  Then kids told us what they were doing at the previous lesson, they showed us posters that they made and they wanted to teach as a cowboy dance. We went to the corridor, the teacher used their laptop with speakers to play the recordings and we were dancing with kids in pairs. Children were so happy when they could teach us something. After that, we came back to class, and we were split into groups. I worked with three kids. We needed to write on a piece of paper that the teacher gave us, what we would like to put on the postcard to kids from schools in different countries. The postcard was connected with 100 years of Polish independence. After that, the teacher read what each group wrote.

The last lesson was in class 5. It was an English lesson. I need to admit that I do not like this lesson much. This lesson wasn't with our mentor teacher and it looked a little bit boring for me. Teacher here only used a course book and she made with kids exercises from the book. The one thing that I liked was that the teacher explained kids, new vocabulary by giving them sentences so they needed to guess the meaning from the context. 

Teaching materials are very important when it comes to the process of learning. Thanks to materials the teacher can motivate students. When the teacher chooses activities that are fun and interesting for pupils they are more engaged in learning. We can see that in the lessons in which the teacher had good materials like flashcards, posters, recordings children were more active in a lesson. They weren't bored and they didn't violate discipline. On the last lesson, when I was sitting in the back of the class I saw that some of the kids fidgeted and they were talking to each other and they didn't do the exercises. Also on that lesson, the teacher needed to reprimand kids more often than the teachers on the other lessons. When the teacher wants to introduce new words to kids it is good to use visuals like in grade 4, thanks to this kids remember new vocabulary better. Use of multimedia like recordings and songs are also fantastic. Songs are good for warm-up, they get kids into the class mood, and recordings give children the opportunity to hear different people than the teacher. In my opinion, the worst thing that a teacher can do in a lesson is only focusing on the activities from the course books. It doesn't encourage students to learn and it is the most boring way of acquiring knowledge.