My very first class

Hi there! I present you my first class planning for the first level of English:

Class: #1

Level: Basic 1

Length: 2 hours

CLASS PLANNING

Topics: English Basics – The alphabet (sounds and letters), the colours and the verb “To be”.

General objective:  The student will be introduced to the English language, its sounds, vocabulary and the first irregular verb.

Specific objective 1: The student will be able to emulate the correct sound of the words in a specific accent. He / She will study the letters of the English alphabet and will be able to spell easy words and their names correctly.

Specific objective 2: The student will be able to recognise the name of the basic colours and will be able to spell their names correctly.

Specific objective 3: The student will be able to recognise and use the conjugation of the verb “to be” in simple present, describing himself / herself or describing others with simple adjectives.

Dynamics:

1.    Introducing the students to the alphabet by writing it on the blackboard. The teacher pronounces the letter and shortly after that the students reply on one voice.

2.    The teacher selects one student to read out loud some of the letters.

3.    The teacher reaffirms the sound of each letter and then the students repeat the sound of every letter.

4.    The teacher asks one student to pass to the front and then the teacher spells the first name of a colour and the students will write down either in their notebooks or in the whiteboard.

5.    The teacher selects another students and spells another colour to the student.

6.    The teacher explains the importance of the first verb, the verb “to be”, to the students and explains the general idea of the use.

7.    The teacher explains the dynamics of the simple sentence and its parts: personal pronoun / noun, verb, complement.

8.    The teacher explains the components of a simple sentence: noun, substantive, verb, adjective, object and article.

9.    The teacher explain a single round of adjectives and objects (common daily vocabulary) to the students so they can create simple sentences.

10. The teacher spells his/ her e-mail address so the students can send them the homework.

Homework:

1.    Send a mail to the teacher to the given address in order to explain in their mother tong why they are interested on learning English.

2.    Investigate the following adjectives: Short, long, dark, light, good, bad, pretty, handsome, ugly, tall and small.

3.    Write 10 times in their notebooks the vocabulary seen in cla

This were the problems I noticed:
1. Since I arrived late to my first class, I was only able to give just one hour. This will not happen again –I hope. So, I only fulfilled two of the three specific objectives and as far as dynamics, I only got until point 5.
2. The pronunciation is a vey hard problem to eradicate, even if the students are basic-level-students. The problem gets bigger when they are older because in my experience as a classmate of this kind of people, they tend not to change their voice of faking sounds while younger students (generally) are more comfortable changing their voice tone.
3. The problem with the sound of letter A, E, I, Y and Z. Most of the times my students forgot what sound was for E and I since they are used to their sound in Spanish.

Possible solutions:
1. As for the sound of the letters A, E, I, Y and Z, I am asking them to spell every new word I teach them and I think the problem will disappear sooner this way.
2. As for the pronunciation, I ask them to repeat several times the same word so they get used to that strange and new sound.