Students' Needs

I have chosen the first grade of ESO because, as you know, I’m a primary school teacher and I think that the official requirements in first of ESO are a summary of all the things studied in the subject of English in primary education.

In one hand, if we talk about the required grammar and language functions we will see that children at this grade must know how to use the basic structures and functions related to everyday situations.

For greeting, asking and understanding personal information, describing and comparing places, things, people, expressing physical states, habits, obligation and suggestions, children must know some basic grammar: the verb to be, have got, can, present simple and continuous, as well personal pronouns, adjectives, possessive, prepositions, connectors, numbers, etc. Also, they are expected to talk about future and past situations using will and the past simple as well adverbs related to the time referred.

In the other hand the lexicon, as is obvious, is related with common expressions and vocabulary related to everyday contexts, for instance: days of the week, months, seasons, whether, family and school environment, places, countries…

Related to phonetics they must produce the basic patrons of rhythm, intonation and accentuation of sentences and words. Also, they should recognize some phonetics symbols specifically in the pronunciation of plurals.

To carry this out we will have to create a daily routine in our classes. First of all we would begin the class greeting and asking question such as ‘How are you?’, ‘How old are you?’, ‘Where do you live?’… Secondly we would ask ‘What’s the weather like today?’. Furthermore children would have to talk about their daily life, ‘What are you going to do tomorrow?’, ‘What did you do yesterday?’. Basic communication and exchanges in class must be in English, for instance when making suggestion, asking, requiring things… trying to create and understand short simple messages.