Post
by Roger » Thu Aug 21, 2003 10:58 am
Ideally, you should be assisted by their head teacher. Kindergarten classes are a whole lot different from "real" school - kids here learn how to learn, and many activities are geared to develop their various skills, including fine motor skills (motion etc.). So, you cannot simply "teach" and watch as they acquire "knowledge'. Much of what you are teaching you have to demonstrate, and discipline and obedience are prerequisites that an assistant can better maintain than you.
I teach in Chinese kindergartens, and I manage my class in English entirely, although I might make a concession to Chinese once in a while. What's important is that you must establish a routine from the outset, so kids know what is going to happen. There should be the greeting ritual with the pupils standing up and formally welcoming you to their classroom.
Next i suggest a well-structured teaching plan. Try to think 3, 6 months ahead, and where your learners should be by that time; how are you going to teach them the necessary expressions and vocabulary? I assure you you can do it without translation - provided you do not overestimate your kids' brain power.
The translation approach presupposes that the kid "knows" the concept and the word(s) in his/her first language; this is not always the case. Kids may "know" "adult" words such as "coffee" or "go shopping", but in the kids' own lives, these concepts have not arrived yet. Thus, these kids might "know" that 'coffee' is a kind of funny black drink that some adults drink; translating is easy - but understanding???
Understanding comes from experience, and that means you should put yourself in the kids' shoes.
You need to help them explore the physical world, themselves, and experience whatever they can experience. Physical activities are very helpful - doing exercises (naming body parts involved in the exercises), for example. I staged running, jumping and other races - and both the activity as such as well as the competitive nature of the event were highly motivating for my kids.
Drawing is another way of learning to conceptualise the world in a new medium. They love drawing and writing, and this stimulates their imagination. You can draw animals, objects, people, letters and numbers.
Don't forget your kids are still learning their first tongue too. That's why it is not the best idea to use a bilingual approach! They are still learning how to come to grips with such abstract notions as "I, you, he, she, we, you, they", the plural and singular, tenses (yes, I successfully introduced grammar on the sly, not in a formal way, but through training).
As a rough indication, let's say you need to teach your kids a few hundred words (no more than 500), but don't forget, they come in different shapes, thus the actual number they have to learn to handle is several times this number.
Add to this some grammar and syntax elements:
- Simple present tense; present continuous tense ("we are going to run");
- singular versus plural;
- SVA (I, you, we, they have/give/do versus he/she/it has/gives/does).
Topics:
- I and my body;
- boy(s)(, girl(s);
- action, movements: Run, jump, go, come, walk, go forward/backward;
- numbers;
- notion of time: Weekdays, birthdays, yesterday, tomorrow (plus
appropriate tenses); months;
- colours (best taught by showing objects);
- home and family; household appliances;
- animals (best taught via the teaching of the ABC!);
and so on. Think of reading aloud stories for young children! Use illustrated books!
And a word of advice:
Always plan for a lesson of revision once in a while!
That said, I think you have to use a little common sense here. In my over 30 years of teaching, I have come to the conclusion that the eclectic approach is the best one, that anything the teacher feels enthusiastic about will probably work, and that you have to follow your teacher's intuition. If telling them to be quiet in their native language saves you ten minutes, it's worth it. If speaking their native language to comfort them if they fall makes them feel better, do it. I can't imagine following the "rules" to such an extent as to make the students feel ill-at-ease or unhappy. You can follow an "English only" approach 85% of the time and be very successful. I'm sure there are plenty of things you can do using the language that will work just fine. And five-year-olds should learn a lot faster than adults, which are the students I usually teach!