Ceyda Cengiz Reflection 3

Here I am going to talk about my role in the institution, what I have done and how I interacted with the kids. Before starting, there is one thing that needs to be made clear. Our institution Anaçev differed from other Anaçevs in that it was a private institution and had a fixed schedule for the teaching time. Every class had their teachers and the days and hours for any lesson or activity were fixed and strict. The director of Anaçev told us in the first day that the kids had their own English teachers, and had two days: wednesday and friday for English classes. Therefore, our duty was not to teach English but to help the teacher carry out the activities. However, despite the strict attitude of the director, the general teacher of my class and the English teacher had a very positive attitude towards me and when I told them that I wanted to experience working with young learners and prepare activities for them, they were very understanding and they allowed me to do it. Therefore, I tried to do my best in order to benefit from such a chance.
I have been to Anaçev for seven weeeks and I am going to summarise the activities that I have carried out in my class every week. The orders may be wrong, but the activities were done in the way I describe. In the first three weeks, the class made their rehearsal for the show on friday and had their English classes on Wednesday. In the first week, I taught them: Hello, hi, My name is……, Nice to meet you..,etc. I have modeled these and then I wanted them to introduce themselves in this way to the person next to them. I gave all the instructions in English in a simple way, by using English very little, but my body language a lot. I monitored them, by going to every kid, and helping them when they needed help. In the second week, I taught them the colors. Actually, some kids knew the colors, some were familiar with them but some did not know anything. Since their levels were varied, I felt the need to teach them from the beginning. I started with a song in order to take kids’ attention and to make them familiar with the words. Then I selected one kid and we showed the colors of the clothes he wore and remembered the color and then we played a game. In the third week, we learnt ‘days’’, in the fourth ‘seasons’, in the fifth ‘fruits’, in the sixth ‘animals’ and, in the seventh ‘on, in, under,etc.’ I have not specified which activities I have prepared for them here, but I can say that they were built mostly on songs, games, competitions and physical activities.