In my final blog entry I will tell and show you how I start each and every one of my lessons. So, without further ado, let's take a look.
As you saw in the video, I start the lesson with the children spelling out the day (to which I sometimes add the verb "to be" chant as discussed in my first entry), followed by roll call and identifying the subject, unit and topic of the coming lesson (which I forgot to include in the video).
I start with the day in order to review spelling, ordinal numbers (focus on pronunciation), the months of the year and finally big numbers. Another reason for doing it this way is to try and teach things that are not part of the curriculum (we only learn numbers up to 100 in grade 1), but that are useful for them.
I follow it up with a roll call to teach the words "boys", "girls", "present" and "absent" as well as to give the children a sense of responsibility and the need to observe the world - in this case to be able to see which of their friends are missing. I sometimes use this opportunity to also teach addition and subtraction, also with the aim to make the students see that there is often more than one way to solve a problem.
My final routine before starting the lesson is meanwhile naming the subject, unit and topic. This is not done just for the sake of vocabulary. Because we switch units after every exam it also teaches the children how a teaching year is structured, hopefully making them better at anticipating the change.
As you might imagine, the students' proficiency to answer the questions that you saw in the video did not come overnight. It required repetition and patience, but I think it paid off, hopefully expanding my students' horizons and teaching them the value of learning.
Thank you very much for reading through these thoughts of mine and let me know what you think in the comments below.
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