Module 1

Teaching and Learning

26511 ENGLISH IN NURSERY SCHOOL I

Curso 2022-2023
Facultad de Ciencias Humanas y de la Educación
TABLE OF CONTENTS

1.1. LEARNING LANGUAGES ................................................................... 5

1.2. WHOLE BRAIN TEACHING ........................................................... 10

1.3. VOWELS: THE FIVE RULES .......................................................... 14

1.4. READING: TEACHING ANECDOTES .............................................. 19

1.1.
Learning Languages

Watching a video: Learning languages

Pre-task: Watch the commercial paying attention

to the general idea or gist.

Watch it a second time and list the things that

happen to Dave because he is trying to learn a
foreign language “the traditional way”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEuh17Uik7k

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

1. How does the commercial make you feel about traditional language learning? How
is this effect produced? Try to identify and describe the specific elements that are
used to produce the effect.

2. Watch it again with subtitles in English in order to focus on specific words and
expressions (“language chunks”). Takes notes of the ones you want to remember,
including their pronunciation.

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Learning to learn: How languages are learned

1. What is the best way to learn English? Think about your own experience and
then, with a small group (your shoulder partners and your face partners),
discuss whether you agree or disagree with these claims and say why.

The best way to learn English is …

1. in class with a professional English teacher

2. joining a speaking group outside the class (i.e., at a(n) (online)
speaking club or English conversation circle)
3. living in a country where people speak English
4. watching films, videos and TV series in English
5. repeating what the teacher says in class
6. keeping a notebook of new words
7. doing some English homework (writing or reading) very often
8. having lots of tests in class to help us remember
9. using a bilingual dictionary all the time
10. reading books, comics, blog posts, webpages… in English
11. speaking English with other students in the class
12. memorising vocabulary lists
13. planning to get a certification test
14. imitating other speakers, repeating words and sentences and
talking to yourself (private talk or self-directed speech)

With your group decide which the top three ways from the list are. Can you think of other possible
ways?

other
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 2. The situations in Activity 1 are based on popular views about language learning and teaching.
Some of these views are formally stated below. Do you agree or disagree with each view? Try to
explain what makes you say this by thinking about your own experience.

HOW DO WE LEARN A FOREIGN A. Agree strongly

B. Agree
LANGUAGE? C. Don’t know What makes you say this? Think of your own
D.
E.
Don’t really agree
Totally disagree
experience

1. Languages are learned mainly

through imitation.

2. You can learn to speak a language

simply by listening to people using
that language and/or reading in that
language.

3. You can learn to speak a foreign

language correctly simply by
interacting with other speakers,
without receiving formal lessons.
Studying grammar is unnecessary.

4. If you want to be able to use a

grammatical rule in conversation, you
need to know the rule and practise it
with exercises.

5. You have to learn simple language

structures before learning complex
ones.

6. When you make a mistake when

speaking English, you don’t need to
be corrected if the message is clear.

7. We don’t all learn in the same

way.

3. Listen to your teacher giving a short lecture on how foreign languages are learned. Make notes as you
listen. The lecture will help you understand key ideas on learning languages and the principles on which
this course is based.

4. Go through your notes with a classmate and try to complete them. Then draw 2 or 3 principles or
guidelines that you would like to keep in mind to help you learn better during this course.
1.
2.
3.

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 26511 INGLÉS EN EDUCACIÓN INFANTIL I

5. Do you think you are a good language learner? You can find
out by applying Oxford’s (1990) Strategy Inventory for
Language Learning (SILL).

6. When you get the score, at least once a week try to focus on one or two strategies
that you “never or almost never” use or “usually not” use and try to start using
them regularly.

Strategic Investment in language learning:

The learning of any skill involves a certain degree of “investment” of one’s time and
effort. Every complex set of skills (like learning to play a musical instrument or tennis) is
acquired through a combination of observing, focusing, practicing, monitoring,
correcting and redirecting. A language is probably the most complex set of skills one
could ever seek to acquire; therefore, an investment is necessary in the form of
developing multiple layers of strategies for getting that language into one’s brain.

H. D. Brown. 2007. Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. White Plains, NY:
Pearson Longman.

What does “strategic investment” mean? Get in pairs and compare your
understanding.

8
my wordlist

can you pronounce these words?

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 26511 INGLÉS EN EDUCACIÓN INFANTIL I

1.2.
Whole
Brain
Teaching

Listening: Whole Brain Teaching

1. Pre-listening
Get in groups and talk about the pictures above. Complete the see, think,
wonder! chart with your ideas.

What I See What I Think What I Wonder

Whole Brain Teaching is a philosophy of teaching and learning that aims to

activate students' brains for maximal involvement in the learning process. It is
based on seven core components, referred to as The Big Seven:
1. Attention getting
2. Motivation
3. Unifying the class
4. Activating
5. Rules
6. Getting the students more involved
7. Focusing

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2. While listening
Watch the video available on Moodle to understand how
whole brain teaching works in practice.
Can you make any connections between this video and the
pictures you described in the See-Think-Wonder chart?
Revise the chart with what you have learnt from watching
the video.

3.Post-listening: You can now learn more about whole brain teaching. Get in groups of 4:
Student 1 reads routines 1 and 2.
Student 2 reads routines 3 and 5.
Student 3 reads routine 4.
Student 4 reads routines 6 and 7.
Explain the routine you read about to your classmates. If possible, give an example, model
or demonstrate it.
1. Attention-Getting  Class-Yes: Our primary attention-getter activates the prefrontal
Nuestro principal captador de atención activa la corteza prefrontal.
cortex, the brain’s boss. The prefrontal cortex controls decision making, planning and focus of
attention. Little if any learning can take place if the prefrontal cortex is not engaged. We
think of the Class-Yes as a brain switch that readies students for instruction.
The Teacher gets his/her students' attention by saying the word, Class! (or Class! Class!)
Students are expected to respond, Yes! (or Yes Yes!).

2. Motivation  the Scoreboard: We believe our Scoreboard is the fastest, most

entertaining and, for limited teaching budgets, the cheapest motivational system in
elementary education. The Scoreboard replaces marbles in a jar, candy, table points, play
money and other classroom reward strategies. When an instructor marks a Smiley or a
Frowny on the Scoreboard, students experiment a small, positive or negative, feeling. To
avoid habituation, the Scoreboard is set up in levels, like a video game. November’s Level
Two Scoreboard presents challenges not dreamed of in September’s Level One… and oh no!
What’s coming in December’s Level Three?! The Scoreboard is very useful as well to create
peer pressure and to encourage all but the most rebellious kids to participate in learning
activities.
When students are doing well, he/she marks a point on the smiling side of a smiley/frowny
face diagram, claps his/her hands, and says, Oh yeah! When students are doing poorly,
he/she marks something near the frown and says, Aw! The Teacher is mindful never to let
the difference between good and bad points exceed three. He/she gives the students a
reward like a learning game if they receive 25 smiley points.
Arriba Científicos
3. Unifying the class  Mirror: As mentioned above, many brain scientists believe that we
Repetir en espejo Neuronas
learn by mirroring the gestures and activities of others. They have identified mirror neurons in
Mímica
the brain that are activated by mimicking the behavior we observe. When a class mirrors the
teachers’ gestures and, when appropriate, repeats our words, a Poderoso
powerful vínculo
learningde aprendizaje
bond is
created as the teacher and students’ visual and motor cortex engage each other.
Corteza motora se involucra entre otros.
The teacher uses a strategy called the mirror to get the class very involved. He/she holds up
his/her hands and says, Mirror! Then the class repeats, Mirror! and imitates the Teacher’s
gestures as he/she teaches. This maximizes their engagement.
Esto maximiza su compromiso
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4. Activating  Teach-Okay: Brain and learning research indicates that students learn the most
when they are involved in teaching each others. By emphasizing energetic, instructional
gesturing we engage, during Teach-Okay sessions, five of students’ brain areas: visual cortex
(seeing gestures), motor cortex (making gestures), Broca’s area (verbalizing a lesson),
Wernicke’s area (hearing a lesson), and the limbic system, (giving emotional content to a
lesson.) As you will see, a key component of our Teach-Okay method is that teachers must
Como verás
speak briefly, often not more than 30 seconds, before asking students to rehearse the lesson
Brevemente Ensayar
with each other. Remember that short term memory has limited capacity, three to seven items.
La memoria a corto plazo tiene una capacidad limitada.
The longer teachers talk, the more students we lose.
Cuanto más hablan los profesores, más estudiantes perdemos
Conversely, the more students repeat lessons to each other, especially while using descriptive
gestures, the more students are engaged… and the more lessons are embedded in long term
Incorporado
memory.
After the Teacher has used direct instruction or taught his/her students something directly and
explicitly, he/she claps his/her hands several times and says the word, Teach! He/she asks
his/her students to repeat his/her precise clapping pattern and say, Okay! Then, they turn to a
neighbor and teach each other whatever the Teacher has just taught them, using hand
gestures to incorporate their understanding into their body as well as their mind.

5. The five classroom rules: Our classroom rules not only efficiently activate five areas of every
student’s brain (visual cortex, motor cortex, Broca’s area, Wernicke’s area, and limbic system)
but also, because they are frequently rehearsed, involve the brain’s mirror neurons. Orderly
behavior creates the mirroring of orderly behavior… which causes teachers and students to
mirror each other’s happy faces.
Each day, the Teacher practices his/her classroom rules along with gestures. More on the
exact rules will follow, but the purpose of repeating rules is to make them an active part of
classroom exchanges rather than just something that stays passively on the wall.

6. Getting students more involved  Switch: Some students talk easily, often too easily! Other
students fall into the role of passive listeners. In terms of brain structure, classes are often
divided between those who are Brocaians (speakers) and Wernikites (listeners). By using
Switch, an instructor can easily teach listening skills to the speakers and speaking skills to the
listeners.
Sometimes, when the students are doing Teach-Okay, the Teacher calls out Switch! This way,
he/she makes sure that the Students who are more likely to do the teaching, stop and do the
listening as well, and vice versa.

7. Focusing  Hands and Eyes: When we are making an important point, we want students o
focus intensely on what we are saying. Hands and Eyes creates instant silence, eliminating all
learning distractions; the prefrontal cortex takes control of brain activity focusing the visual
cortex and the auditory cortex on the instructor’s lesson.

When the Teacher has an especially important point to make, he/she says, Hands and Eyes!
The students understand that they should repeat Hands and Eyes! Then, they should fold their
hands and stare at him/her very intently.

Suggested homework:
Watch a second video on Whole Brain Teaching and revise the chart again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yygIwC3PSvk
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my wordlist

can you pronounce these words?

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 26511 INGLÉS EN EDUCACIÓN INFANTIL I

1.3. Vowels:
The Five Rules
1. Have a look at the language sounds (phonemes) of English. Can you identify all the words
in the pictures? Compare the sounds to those of other languages you know and to the letters
of the alphabet.

FISH TREE CAT KEY

CAR CLOCK HORSE GIRL FLOWER

BOAT COMPUTER T´SHIRT Dog Snake

BULL

Zebra Shower Television

BIRD EGG UP

TRAIN THELEPHONE BIKE

OWL BOY EAR

CHAIR TOURIST 14
Listen to the sounds: https://elt.oup.com/student/englishfile/advanced3/pronunciation?cc=us&selLanguage=en
 2. Look at the table below. What is the relationship
between vowel letters and vowel phonemes?

To each vowel letter correspond two vowel sounds: one long, one short.

This allows for generalizations or “rules” as to

how a vowel is pronounced depending on its spelling context.

Rule 1 (…CV� C): A single vowel followed

by a consonant in a final stressed syllable
will have a short pronunciation:
Consonant(s) + single vowel + consonant(s)
(first column on the table above).

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 26511 INGLÉS EN EDUCACIÓN INFANTIL I

Rule 2 (…CV� C+e): A single vowel followed by a consonant + E in a

final stressed syllable will have a long pronunciation.
Consonant + single vowel + consonant + E (second column
on the table above).

Children know this rule as the rule of “The Magic E”.

Try to guess the pronunciation of the following vowels:

map LONG hole (punch) LONG
tape LONG notes LONG

lab SHORT huge LONG

revise LONG lunch (box) SHORT

Rule 3 (…CV� C(C)V…): This rule does not refer to final stressed syllables but
to penultimate stressed syllables. A stressed single vowel will have a long
pronunciation if it is followed by a single consonant (e.g. 'music, /ju:/), and
it will have a short pronunciation if it is followed by several consonants
(e.g. 'subject /ʌ /).

Try to guess the pronunciation of the following vowels (there are 2 exceptions):
crayons LONG bones LONG title SHORT/EXCEPCION
happen SHORT meter LONG skipping (rope) SHORT
pencil SHORT rubber SHORT writer LONG

poster LONG/EXCEPCIÓN pupil LONG written SHORT

socket SHORT student LONG

This rule is also quite useful to know when double consonants should be used after adding a
suffix:e.g., run  runner (the n has to be doubled to maintain the short pronunciation of the
letter U.
Otherwise, what would be the pronunciation of the letter U?
rub -> rubber
plug -> plugging
stop -> stopped

The above three rules apply to the pronunciation of a single stressed vowel. Rule 4 refers to the
pronunciation of vowel digraphs (two written vowels together):
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 Rule 4 (V� V): A vowel diagraph in a stressed syllable will have a long
pronunciation. This long pronunciation tends to be that of the first vowel
(e.g. load, Spain). For kids to learn this rule, they are asked to memorize this
rhyme: “When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking”.

According to this rule, how are then the following words

pronounced?
coach trainer
beamer cheat

Rule 5 (V� +r): Please note that when a vowel is followed by an R in a stressed
syllable the pronunciation of that vowel changes, depending on whether it’s
short- or long-outcome context according to the other four rules.

Try to guess the pronunciation of the following vowels:

hard LONG curve LONG
circle LONG verb LONG
person LONG third LONG

Have a look at the full table incorporating the effects of Rule 5:

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 26511 INGLÉS EN EDUCACIÓN INFANTIL I

my wordlist

can you pronounce these words?

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1.4. Reading:
Teaching
Experiences

Activation: A teacher’s daily routine

Pre-reading: Watch this BBC video in which
three teachers talk about their daily routines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq0CQhCZ2jk
Whose life would you prefer to live when you become a
teacher, 7Kim’s, Sam’s or Claire’s? Why? Give at least
two reasons.

Reading skills

1. Read the following funny classroom stories and match them with one of the titles in
the box below. If you need to find the meaning of some words use a dictionary or
ask a classmate.

….. a. Rock Me, Amadeus ….. b. Why, Thank You ….. c. Alphabet Insight
….. d. Let’s Ask the Professor ….. e. Cheeky teacher! ….. f. Problem Solvers

Out of the Ordinary: Hilarious Real-Life Teacher Stories

1. The kids were painting a project for social studies and got some paint
on the floor. Fearing someone might slip, I asked a student to take care
of it. A few minutes later, a piece of paper appeared on the floor with
the words Caution—Wet Paint.
—Christy Knopp, Fairfield, Ohio

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 26511 INGLÉS EN EDUCACIÓN INFANTIL I

2. As I welcomed my first-grade students into the classroom, one little girl

noticed my polka-dot blouse and paid me the ultimate first-grade
compliment: “Oh, you look so beautiful—just like a clown.”
—Priscilla Sawicki, Charlotte, North Carolina

3. During snack time in the morning, a kindergartner asked why some raisins
were yellow while others were black. I didn’t know the answer, so I asked my
friend, a first-grade teacher, if she knew. “Yellow raisins are made from
green grapes, and black raisins are made from red grapes,” she explained.
One little boy suggested, “Maybe that’s why she teaches first grade, because
she’s just a little bit smarter than you.”
—Erica Coles, Watertown, Tennessee

4. Performing Mozart should have been the highlight of my middle school

chorus class. But after a few uninspired attempts, an exasperated student
raised her hand and said, “Mrs. Willis, we want to sing music from our
generation, not yours.”
—Wendy Willis, Naples, Florida

5. My first-grade class was learning about the letter “p”. As the children
brainstormed a list of “p” words, I recorded them on chart paper and drew a
picture to match. I then asked each child to draw a picture of something
from our chart to create a class book. The children quickly got started. I
noticed, however, that Patrick was having trouble. He soon came over to my
desk and asked me how to draw a ‘couch’. I said, ‘I’m sorry but ‘couch’
doesn’t start with a ‘p’. He quickly responded, “I know! I’m trying to draw my
dad on the couch getting some PEACE and quiet!!!'
—Holly Sanders, Indianapolis, Indiana

6. Every year at the beginning of the school year, my husband comes in and I
introduce him to my first-grade class. I tell them how long we have been
married and show them a picture of our family. My husband will usually take
a few minutes to talk to them, also. On this particular occasion, after the
short introduction, I told him goodbye and gave him a quick peck on the lips.
As he turned to leave, one of my little girls sitting in the front turns to her
friend and says “Do you think she kisses all the parents?!” I just about died
laughing.
http://www.rd.com/funny-stuff/funny-school-stories/

Why are they funny? In pairs, try to explain.

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 Many stories follow a basic 3-stage story pattern:
2. Can you see this pattern
1. Setting the scene in the six funny stories?
you introduce some or all of these elements Underline the words that
time, place, situation, and people that appear in the story correspond to each
stage.
2. Events
some kind of conflict or problem

3. Resolution
some surprise, reaction or feelings of the people in the story

3. Read the stories again and underline (using a different colour) the language and expressions
used for time or sequence of events. Write here three of your choice:

1.

2.

3.

4. Do you remember the five rules? Fill in the table below with words from the anecdotes. If you
find exceptions, try to explain what the irregularity is about:

 SWL (Short When Long): Short pronunciation in a spelling

context where it should be long.
 LWS (Long When Short): Long pronunciation where it
should be short.
 RD (Reverse Digraph): The second vowel does the talking.
 RD+SWL: A reverse digraph with the short pronunciation
of the second vowel.
 SW (Sight Words): Very common irregular words that
children learn to read at a glance.
 CS (Continental Spelling): A = /ɑː/, E= /eɪ/, I = /iː/ in
loanwords from European languages.
 WW (Weird Words): The pronunciation cannot be
explained by the above exceptions.

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 26511 INGLÉS EN EDUCACIÓN INFANTIL I

Rule 1 Rule 2 Rule 3

…CV� C …CV� C-e …CV� C(C)V…
Examples Examples Examples

Exceptions Exceptions Exceptions

Rule 4 Rule 5
V� V V� +r
Examples Examples

Exceptions Exceptions

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my wordlist

can you pronounce these words?

23