Lesson Plan 1

December 16's session was the last for the year before the Christmas vacation. This was also our first lesson plan, which will be followed by more lesson plans next year. For our first lesson, we tackled the letter 'M'. The order of the letters in the Filipino Alphabet with which we will teach our students is actually based on the Marungko Approach, aptly named after a professor who researched and arranged the letters by their degree of ease in a child's learning process.

A Story of Marie

One of the first activities of note was a story session. I pointed to my student the different pictures in a given set, and provided with a guide on the story, began to narrate the food "Marie" ate. Some of the words used to aid the lesson of pronouncing 'M' were 'Marie', 'mamon' (Filipino sponge cake), 'mangga' (mango), and 'masaya' (cheerful; happy). I think that making the lessons into stories is a very practical, creative and fun approach to helping the students learn and review the concepts of the letters and their sounds.

Practice and Coloring

The next activity had a few cut-out pictures, and my student Arvin had to group them into two: Merong Mm (Does have an Mm) and Walang Mm (Does not have an Mm).

Another activity worth noting was the coloring activity towards the end of the lesson. Handing Arvin a yellow crayon, I asked him to color the pictures that started with the letter 'M'.

Pre-Assessment Day

The Monday after our screening test, we were assigned our students. I got assigned to an 8-year old named Arvin. He recently celebrated his birthday, and is taller and healthier than most of the kids in his year. We had several activities that constituted the pre-assessment, including reading comprehension and writing exercises that pretty much gave me an idea of his level of learning and how to pace the lessons.

I'm really excited to handle Arvin in the months to come!