PURPOSE
When I was seven years old I received one of the best gifts of my life: a preciously hardbound French language book for children equipped with a series of audio-cassettes full of music, dialogues and songs, and a special pen that would light up when I selected the right images and words on the page! Every afternoon, as soon as I got home from school I would open that magic book and I would be transported into a beautifully different world, full of exotic words, memorable jingles, baguettes and funny hats :)
I still perfectly remember all the stories, the songs and the little characters that populated its pages! In fact, even now, more than three decades later, I do more than just remember them fondly, I USE some of the knowledge those pages taught me almost daily! For example, every time I have to remember where the “special letters” W, X, J, K, Y, which we don’t have in the Italian alphabet, are positioned in the English alphabet, my mind goes automatically back to the alphabet song from my French book and I instantly know the right order. It’s a magical mix of semantic memory and episodic memory, acquired without any effort and still so easy to access after all these years!
As a children language teacher my goal is to create EXPERIENCES that support and actively encourage the formation of such memories: my stories, characters and activities promote learning of language forms and structures, while supporting the development of the students’ cognitive and physical skills in a fun, exciting and memorable way.
In the long term, through my lessons, I strive to offer my young learners not only the practical skills that will physically broaden their work and life (horizons?) possibilities, but also, and possibly even more importantly, a wider worldview, a deeper acceptance of “the other” and “the different”, and the understanding that “our way” is only one of many possible and wonderful ways of speaking, thinking and being.
TEACHING STYLE
In my teaching career I have had the amazing opportunity to teach students from all walks of life and age groups (from 1 years olds, to university students, to seniors), and in many different settings (from private language academies, to community colleges, to international schools) and, while I absolutely enjoy each setting and age group, the peculiarities and immense rewards of teaching very young learners (from 1 to 5 years old) profoundly excite my intellect and nourish my soul, motivating me to constantly choose the best approaches and techniques and be the best teacher I can possibly be.
In my teaching I draw from different pedagogical theories and approaches according to the setting, topic and students.
Having the mindset of a scientist, I love studying and applying to my lessons all the invaluable knowledge that the Cognitive approach and the modern research on child development and language pedagogy give us.
However being a guru/healer/empath at heart, the Affective Humanistic approach is what most closely represents my natural teaching proclivities. In fact, what I want first and foremost is for my students to feel comfortable, happy and free to experiment and play with the language, to enjoy the process of discovering a new culture and to leave my classes with a smile, and I love doing anything I can to make that happen.
In addition, having taught full immersion language classes to children for many years it has become second nature for me to adopt and utilize the principles and techniques of the Comprehension approach to make every word and every sentence spoken in class understandable to my students. Such approach allows students to ACTIVELY UNDERSTAND meaning, and engages all their senses in the process of discovery as they look for visual, auditory and even tactile clues - because as Leonardo Da Vinci eloquently put it: “Il piacere più nobile è la gioia della comprensione!” - The most noble of pleasures is the joy of understanding!
Finally, I apply the elements I adopt from all three of these approaches toward the Communicative goal of creating “meaningful communication to connect people and cultures”, unmistakably creating a new kind of hybrid mythological creature: a communicative teacher with an affective-humanistic heart, a cognitive brain and a comprehension body! :)
TEACHING TECHNIQUES
“I never teach my pupils, I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” - Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein’s motto is never more true than when teaching children, they are in fact PERFECT LEARNING MACHINES and my top priority designing curriculums and lesson plans is to create the best conditions for them to naturally learn.
Such conditions include:
Since most of my students are in a pre-literacy stage, orality is the main form of input, therefore to facilitate language processing I adopt a series of strategies and techniques such as chants, songs, rhythm and rhyme in addition to Teacher Talk (vocabulary selection - slower speed - better enunciation) and typical techniques from the Comprehension approach like miming, physical actions, body language and visual aids of all kinds (realia, flashcards etc.)
Furthermore, to help language understanding, memorization and production, I carefully organize my curriculums so that each lesson is strongly connected to, and coherent with the previous and following ones so that students will continuously find themself exposed to the right level of challenge in the area of proximal development (Vygotsky, Krashen i+1).
Moreover, during the delivery of the lessons I constantly utilize techniques like the retrieval of previous knowledge (Cognitive approach) to connect each lesson to the rest of the curriculum.
My lifelong love and passion for figurative and performing arts also give me a series of tools (from puppetry, to clowning, juggling, drawing, painting, singing, storytelling, writing original songs, poems and stories...) which I can draw from to make my lessons engaging and grab and maintain student’s attention, which is a priority when teaching young children, and simultaneously lower the emotional filter of my students and their caregivers (Affective-Humanistic Approach).
My classroom (in person or online) is a safe space to play and experiment with the language and I make sure to embody such philosophy by having fun, acting silly and showing my fallible side to make my students (and their caregivers) feel that making mistakes is normal and even beneficial!
In fact, I always see mistakes as windows into the students’ mental processes and an indication of their current INTERLANGUAGE; correction, when necessary, is done implicitly through reframing.
Grammar is always presented inductively, in context, and with a lot of built in repetition through varied input.
Adopting the communicative and the affective-humanistic approaches means making sure that the input and the activities I offer are relevant to my young students’ wholistic (not just linguistic) needs and I achieve that goal through tailored games and meaningful multi-sensory activities appropriate to their age and skills.
And, finally, I always make sure to bring a generous dose of FLEXIBILITY in my teacher toolbox to accommodate my very young learners’ ever-changing needs, curiosity and learning styles.
Ok, enough reading, are you ready to join in the fun? Come out and play, draw, sing, dance and learn with us! :)
When I was seven years old I received one of the best gifts of my life: a preciously hardbound French language book for children equipped with a series of audio-cassettes full of music, dialogues and songs, and a special pen that would light up when I selected the right images and words on the page! Every afternoon, as soon as I got home from school I would open that magic book and I would be transported into a beautifully different world, full of exotic words, memorable jingles, baguettes and funny hats :)
I still perfectly remember all the stories, the songs and the little characters that populated its pages! In fact, even now, more than three decades later, I do more than just remember them fondly, I USE some of the knowledge those pages taught me almost daily! For example, every time I have to remember where the “special letters” W, X, J, K, Y, which we don’t have in the Italian alphabet, are positioned in the English alphabet, my mind goes automatically back to the alphabet song from my French book and I instantly know the right order. It’s a magical mix of semantic memory and episodic memory, acquired without any effort and still so easy to access after all these years!
As a children language teacher my goal is to create EXPERIENCES that support and actively encourage the formation of such memories: my stories, characters and activities promote learning of language forms and structures, while supporting the development of the students’ cognitive and physical skills in a fun, exciting and memorable way.
In the long term, through my lessons, I strive to offer my young learners not only the practical skills that will physically broaden their work and life (horizons?) possibilities, but also, and possibly even more importantly, a wider worldview, a deeper acceptance of “the other” and “the different”, and the understanding that “our way” is only one of many possible and wonderful ways of speaking, thinking and being.
TEACHING STYLE
In my teaching career I have had the amazing opportunity to teach students from all walks of life and age groups (from 1 years olds, to university students, to seniors), and in many different settings (from private language academies, to community colleges, to international schools) and, while I absolutely enjoy each setting and age group, the peculiarities and immense rewards of teaching very young learners (from 1 to 5 years old) profoundly excite my intellect and nourish my soul, motivating me to constantly choose the best approaches and techniques and be the best teacher I can possibly be.
In my teaching I draw from different pedagogical theories and approaches according to the setting, topic and students.
Having the mindset of a scientist, I love studying and applying to my lessons all the invaluable knowledge that the Cognitive approach and the modern research on child development and language pedagogy give us.
However being a guru/healer/empath at heart, the Affective Humanistic approach is what most closely represents my natural teaching proclivities. In fact, what I want first and foremost is for my students to feel comfortable, happy and free to experiment and play with the language, to enjoy the process of discovering a new culture and to leave my classes with a smile, and I love doing anything I can to make that happen.
In addition, having taught full immersion language classes to children for many years it has become second nature for me to adopt and utilize the principles and techniques of the Comprehension approach to make every word and every sentence spoken in class understandable to my students. Such approach allows students to ACTIVELY UNDERSTAND meaning, and engages all their senses in the process of discovery as they look for visual, auditory and even tactile clues - because as Leonardo Da Vinci eloquently put it: “Il piacere più nobile è la gioia della comprensione!” - The most noble of pleasures is the joy of understanding!
Finally, I apply the elements I adopt from all three of these approaches toward the Communicative goal of creating “meaningful communication to connect people and cultures”, unmistakably creating a new kind of hybrid mythological creature: a communicative teacher with an affective-humanistic heart, a cognitive brain and a comprehension body! :)
TEACHING TECHNIQUES
“I never teach my pupils, I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” - Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein’s motto is never more true than when teaching children, they are in fact PERFECT LEARNING MACHINES and my top priority designing curriculums and lesson plans is to create the best conditions for them to naturally learn.
Such conditions include:
- a safe and welcoming environment that will stimulate their curiosity and that they can explore and interact with (be that in person, or, more recently, online)
- an optimal routine which aligns with the Information Processing Theory principles (Robert Gagne’s Instructional Events)
- engaging activities which encourage the production of meaningful language useful to THEIR PRACTICAL CONVERSATIONAL NEEDS.
Since most of my students are in a pre-literacy stage, orality is the main form of input, therefore to facilitate language processing I adopt a series of strategies and techniques such as chants, songs, rhythm and rhyme in addition to Teacher Talk (vocabulary selection - slower speed - better enunciation) and typical techniques from the Comprehension approach like miming, physical actions, body language and visual aids of all kinds (realia, flashcards etc.)
Furthermore, to help language understanding, memorization and production, I carefully organize my curriculums so that each lesson is strongly connected to, and coherent with the previous and following ones so that students will continuously find themself exposed to the right level of challenge in the area of proximal development (Vygotsky, Krashen i+1).
Moreover, during the delivery of the lessons I constantly utilize techniques like the retrieval of previous knowledge (Cognitive approach) to connect each lesson to the rest of the curriculum.
My lifelong love and passion for figurative and performing arts also give me a series of tools (from puppetry, to clowning, juggling, drawing, painting, singing, storytelling, writing original songs, poems and stories...) which I can draw from to make my lessons engaging and grab and maintain student’s attention, which is a priority when teaching young children, and simultaneously lower the emotional filter of my students and their caregivers (Affective-Humanistic Approach).
My classroom (in person or online) is a safe space to play and experiment with the language and I make sure to embody such philosophy by having fun, acting silly and showing my fallible side to make my students (and their caregivers) feel that making mistakes is normal and even beneficial!
In fact, I always see mistakes as windows into the students’ mental processes and an indication of their current INTERLANGUAGE; correction, when necessary, is done implicitly through reframing.
Grammar is always presented inductively, in context, and with a lot of built in repetition through varied input.
Adopting the communicative and the affective-humanistic approaches means making sure that the input and the activities I offer are relevant to my young students’ wholistic (not just linguistic) needs and I achieve that goal through tailored games and meaningful multi-sensory activities appropriate to their age and skills.
And, finally, I always make sure to bring a generous dose of FLEXIBILITY in my teacher toolbox to accommodate my very young learners’ ever-changing needs, curiosity and learning styles.
Ok, enough reading, are you ready to join in the fun? Come out and play, draw, sing, dance and learn with us! :)
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