Colombo Practicum Journal

Effective Strategies for Kids in PT Classes 👧👦 ✨ What strategies, techniques, or ideas from the session on teaching kids could be adapted to your own classes with teens or pre-teens? There are several strategies that can be adapted to different populations. However, considering the courses I am currently assigned, I find these to be the most useful: 🔔 Attention Grabbers – “1-2-3, Eyes on Me” This strategy is effective to regain students’ attention when they are either hyperfocused on an activity and I need to give an extra instruction, or when they are distracted and need to refocus. 📜 Classroom Rules & Contract A valuable lesson I learned from my co-teacher was the importance of setting rules from the first class. She made sure students understood them, and in later sessions she reinforced them. Eventually, students themselves began to remind each other of the rules. This encouraged students to take responsibility while giving her a fair and consistent way to address disc...

Effective Communication ☝ How did I guide my learners through the stages of the language cycle (exposure, noticing, practice, and production), and which stage might need more support next time? ⏳ This class was shorter than usual because we had to hand in the tests, talk about students’ performance, and answer their questions about the activities. 🌐 Language Cycle Exposure  🎥  Students had already watched a video (homework) about past simple vs. past continuous . Noticing  ✍️  Some students completed a fill-in-the-gap exercise to identify when to use each tense in front of the whole class. Then, they shared examples in affirmative, negative, and interrogative forms. Practice  🎮  We played a Wordwall game in pairs or groups of three, where students completed sentences. This activity helped check their understanding of the difference between while and when , and how these connect to past simple and past continuous. Production  🍿  To finish, stu...