Lyndsey's Reflective Diary

I must admit I didn't arrive for the lesson in the best frame of mind. After the usual mad dash to get out of the house (after sorting the puppy out), getting on the ring-road (after sorting the horse out) and finding a parking space near Culverhay I was running about 10 minutes late. I was dreading walking into class and interrupting everyone in full flow but to my immense relief people were up and about finishing off their language story displays. Phew! This gave me a chance to pick up what was going on and calm down from the stress of the journey.

The Language Task for secondary children looked really interesting. Lesson planning and goals are still very new to me and I was surprisd and impressed at the amount of thought that had obviously gone into it. We had to discuss if it would work for primary children and myself, Kay and Amanda decided the idea would work very well, but maybe focus more on the simple aspects of it such as their names and different words they use for things. I though perhaps they could all write a short poem each about their family and we could compare the different words each child uses for the same things, such as Mum, Dad, Grandma etc. I thought Jo's idea (I'm sure it was Jo but apologies if it was someone else!) of using audio tapes of stories in different dialects was a really good idea as it would definately help them to understand the language. I also thought that younger children could think back to when they've been told off for using incorrect English or not pronouncing words properly such as 'butter' or the 't's at the end of words.
I think it was during this time that I had to go and record myself saying a short poem. I didn't feel nervous about this at all as I was on my own, although I still felt fairly calm when we passed it around the class to recite the Thief story. Hopefully I didn't sound too Bristolian!
By the time we sat down to listen to The Red-Headed Thief I was enjoying myself as usual. Upon hearing that we were to recite the story to eachother I was a little concerned as it was quite long and had to think for a moment to get the story straight in my mind, but I think I did okay. I actually quite enjoyed reciting my version of it to Kay and Amanda and was concious not to just speak in a boring monotone as they were hearing it for the second time, so I hope I didn't do that! It was really funny listening to everyone's different parts of the story - there were some interesting changes - but I think everyone did really well to remember it. It's a shame the recording didn't work although I would have cringed when I hear my voice I'm sure!
I found the work we did on Child Language Acquisition very interesting. It really makes you think about how you make the sounds of letters and words. The 'Guess the Word' game was great fun and it would probably be interesting to try that out with primary children. I tended to speak a sentance replacing the real word with the new one and the others always guessed quickly. We discovered that it works best if you use lots of emotion in your facial expression and your body language to emphasise the feeling associated with the word. I spent 10 minutes or so 'being teacher' and asking the class for feedback. I really enjoyed this and felt the whole class was really absorbed with the idea of how children learn language. It came to light quickly that what children see is just as important as what they hear.
I felt we all really enjoyed this session and I'm looking forward to doing more on the subject.