Running head: Promise Presentation 1

Promise School Teaching Presentation Paper

Thuy Vuong C. Nguyen, WCNS

Westminster College
 Promise School Teaching Reflection 2

Kearns St. Ann’s Promise School Teaching Reflection

Promise school is an afterschool program designed for school age children to be taken

care of after school hours [CITATION Placeholder1 \l 1033 ]. Majority of the student population

comes from families of lower socioeconomic status. The program would provide academic tutor,

dinner, and activities for the students to participate in during the time that their parents are still at

work or is unable to be with the students. Our task as nursing students is to teach the students a

lesson that would benefit them. We decided on providing education about effective

communication because it is a skill that everyone needs regardless of their social economic status

or age. We presented to the students the definition and requirements to effectively communicate

with other peers as well as other people they will meet.

Education Needs of the Target Population

The ages of the students we taught ranged from second grade to eighth grade at Kearns

St. Ann Catholic School. As noted previously the students are coming from lower socioeconomic

backgrounds. Before beginning to form our outline and purpose for the teaching we did research

to understand the developmental levels of our students. We also conducted a research to find

effective teaching techniques appropriate for the student’s developmental levels and techniques

to keeping them engage during the presentation.

Age and Development

Our students are all school age children youngest being seven years old and the oldest

being fourteen years old. Upon first impression the kids were every active and friendly, for the

first week interacting with them they were excited to play games with me and interact with one

another. Since the group varied so much in age, they tend to group with other children in their
 Promise School Teaching Reflection 3

age. The younger kids were more willing to play board games and finding activities to entertain

themselves while the older kids like to sit and talk to one another or use their cellular devices.

During our research we discovered that children coming from lower socioeconomic

status display higher levels of emotion, behavioral, and social difficulties [ CITATION Chi18 \l

1033 ]. To address social difficulties, we want to teach the students the foundation of

communication. It is also better to talk to the children and encourage them to relate the lesson

back into their personal lives to develop a better understanding of the lesson [ CITATION Ada05

\l 1033 ]. For these reasons, we decided the best way to present our communication lesson is by

open discussion. We will first present the ideas and provide examples of communication

situation then have the kids relate it to similar situations they have experience. This way, as the

educators, we can evaluate their understanding of the subject and we can also identify problems

that the students can improve.

Erikson’s Stage of Development

In Erikson’s developmental theory most of our students are at the Industry vs. Inferiority

stage of life. Industry is defined as the sense of accomplishment in activities and relationships,

the sense of accomplishment and self-esteem depends greatly on the child’s peer groups

[ CITATION McL18 \l 1033 ]. At this stage the children also start recognizing values,

expectations of success, and motivations to perform specific actions (Cross & Cross, 2017).

Identifying signs of bad communication and introducing the concept of good communication

technics will establish expectations that the student could continue to use throughout their lives.

Friendships are important at this phase; therefore, it is important for the students to learn the

proper way of communicating with others and be mindful of their behaviors as it will affect the

way the communication is perceived.

 Promise School Teaching Reflection 4

We also had two to three kids at the Identity vs Role Confusion stage. For these

students we wanted them to recognize that communication will be needed for everyone they

interact with. At this stage it is important for the children to build strong identity and develop a

sense of direction in life. Communication will play role in successfully building identity, it is

important for the child to express themselves to others and good communications will allow

more opportunities later in life, such as maintaining relationships or obtaining job opportunities.

Topic: Effective Communication

Communication is a skill used throughout all ages and stages of life. Our goal is to teach

the students the basic foundation and techniques required to deliver effective communication.

We will discuss how emotional status could alter communication perception with the goal that

the kids can become more aware of these emotional factors in their day to day communication.

We will also be having the children telling us their communication experiences and having them

identify situations that they were the sender of the message or the receiver of the message, and

their interpretation of the message. We want to have the students interact with us and participle

as much as possible so they can relate the lesson to situations that they have and will encounter.

Goals and Objectives

We outline the following goals prior to the presentation and the techniques we will use to

address each goal:

1. Students will be able to define communication and purpose of communication.

2. Students will be able to identify the three things necessary for communication to take

place: Sender, message, and receiver.

 Promise School Teaching Reflection 5

3. Students will be able to explain the roles of the sender, message, and receiver. They will

be able to identify criteria needed in each of these roles for effective communication to

take place.

4. Students will understand and able to identify bad techniques of communication.

Defining Purpose of communication

Communication is the interaction of sending messages, verbal or nonverbal, from oneself

to another being [ CITATION Her15 \l 1033 ]. We will present this information the students

through examples of situations that require communication. We had the students tell us what

they would do when they want to a toy or go play with friends. The answer would be to

communicate with their parents to express their wants and needs. We also explained that

communication is necessary to build interpersonal relationships. We had the students explain the

first step to approaching someone to become friends with them.

Necessary components to communication

The three main components we will be introducing the students are the sender, the

message, and the receiver [ CITATION Her15 \l 1033 ]. The sender will be the person

transmitting the message, they are typically the person who starts the communication process.

The message could be verbal or nonverbal. The provided examples of nonverbal messages such

as notes, letter, or text messages. The receiver is the person who interprets the message.

Techniques for Communication to be Effective

To truly understand the roles of the sender, message, and listener discussed details of

things each role needs to have for the message to be perceived correctly. To be a good sender of

the message you need to direct a clear message to the listener. The first thing the sender needs to

identify is their audience or the listener. Is the listener a close friend, an adult, or a stranger. The
 Promise School Teaching Reflection 6

tone the sender has while sending the message will also affect the perception of the message. I

used the example of “I am fine”, if the sender says that in a happy tone then the message would

be clear that the person is doing okay, but if the sender is saying the message with a monotone or

has other signs of sadness or pain, the perception of the message would indicate the person is not

okay. Next the message needs to be sent with context. For better understanding of this we used

the example of inside jokes and secret codes used between friends. Finally, to become an

effective listener you must do two things, first you need to display signs of attention to the sender

of the message, next you need to interpret the message.

Identify and Avoid Bad Communication

To teach this section of the presentation we want to provide examples of bad

communication techniques. Eye contact between the sender and receiver is one of the most

crucial steps of communication [ CITATION Her15 \l 1033 ]. If eye contact is not made the

message does not have a clear destination and listeners will not know they need to respond to it.

An example of this is asking for the time without directing the message to anyone and getting no

response. It is also important for the listener to maintain eye contact because it shows signs of

respect and establish attentiveness to the person speaking. Here we would also discuss emotional

alterations of the message and becoming mindful of the other person’s emotion during

communication.

Evaluation of learning

The kids will display their understanding by playing zip-zap-zop and being able to pass

the message to one another for at least three cycles of zip-zap-zop. The purpose of this game is to

pass “energy”, in our case the message, to another person. In order to pass the message, you need

to have eye contact with the person you are passing the energy to. You need to pass the energy in
 Promise School Teaching Reflection 7

the order of zip-zap-zop. This means the first person that passes the message will pass zip,

second person will pass zap, third will pass zop, and they cycle continues until a person breaks

the chain by losing the order of zip-zap-zop or not paying attention to when the energy was

passed to them and does not pass the energy to another person. This is attainable because this is a

game that does not require complex thinking skill, the hardest component to this game is paying

attention to others. This game will require the students to be sender and receiver, and practice

passing message to each other. It also requires the students to display the techniques the kids

need to effectively communicate with one another. We will give the students five to ten minutes

playing the game and observing if our teaching was effective.

Outline of Teaching Strategies

Before beginning our lesson, we would assess the student’s ability to differentiate

emotional expression. We will do this through having the students identify expressions of

cartoon emotional animations we pass out. The kids will tell us what the emotions are and act out

what the emotion looks like on themselves. Next, we would like to teach them the components

needed for communication to take place. This will be the sender, the person sending the message,

the message, verbal or nonverbal, and the receiver, the person interpreting the message. Our

group decided that the best way to keep the students focused is by engaging them in the lesson.

We wanted to teach the kids in way that the lesson did not feel like a lecture, therefore we will

have open discussion lesson rather than having a PowerPoint or having a poster board. During

the teaching of this we will also identify how feelings and emotions can change the interpretation

of the message. Next, we would like to apply it to the student’s lives and experiences with

communication and when they will need to communicate. We will do this though asking the kids

and listening their experiences, as a group we will discuss good techniques they used and bad
 Promise School Teaching Reflection 8

techniques that could be changed in the future. For this portion of the presentation, if the kids are

not expressing interest in discussing their stories. We will do a role play with the presenter of bad

communication techniques and having the students identify them as well as suggest methods to

improve the communication the next time. At the end of our lesson we will teach them a game

called Zip-Zap-Zop. The objective of this game is to pass an imaginary message to another

person without breaking the chain of zip-zap-zop.

Goals and Outcomes

Defining Purpose of communication

Most of the students we taught responded very well to this area of the teaching. One of

the girls we taught shared her experiences with communicating to make new friends. Another

student told us how he uses communication to talk to his parents to get him a new toy.

Necessary components to communication & Techniques for Communication to be

Effective

We evaluated the success in this part of the presentation through the game of zip-zap-zop.

At first there was a bit of struggle as the kids remembered the order of the zip-zap-zop chain and

they put a lot of thought into who they should pass the energy to. We played two practice rounds

before playing to get other players out. Once we were able to get players out everyone became

more attentive and there was also more participation from the students. They successfully passed

the more than three rounds cycles of zip-zap-zop.

Identify and Avoid Bad Communication

During the teaching there was two kids in particular that did not display any interest in

the presentation. It was ironic because we were teaching effective communication and they were

displaying signs of ineffective communication. To address this, I stepped between the kids and
 Promise School Teaching Reflection 9

tried to get their participation. The response I got from the one of the students was “We already

know how communicate”, I challenged the kid to show me their communication skills by playing

the game and winning. After that the two students showed more interest in the activity to show

they know how to communicate and was motivated to win the game.
 Promise School Teaching Reflection 10

References

Adams, C. (2005, Aug). Social Communication Intervention for School-Age Children: Rationale

and Description. Seminars in Speech & Language, p.181-188.

Children, Youth, Families and Socioeconomic Status . (2018, September 14). Retrieved from

http://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/children-families.aspx

Cross, T. L., & Cross, J. R. (2017, June). Maximizing potential: A school-based conception of

psychosocial development. High Ability Studies, p.43-58.

Guralnick, M. J., & Connor, R. T. (1996, April). The Peer Relations of Preschool Children with

Communication Disorders. Child Development, p.471-489.

Hertz, H. (2015, October). Effective Communciation Requires Caring, Explaining, Listening,

and Living the Role. Retrieved from NIST: https://www.nist.gov/baldrige/effective-

communication-requires-caring-explaining-listening-and-living-role

Lofland, K. B. (2008). Helping Your Child to Develop Communication SKills . Retrieved from

Indiana University Bloomington: https://www.iidc.indiana.edu/pages/helping-your-child-

develop-communication-skills

McLeod, S. (2018, 03 may ). Erik Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development . Retrieved

from https://www.simplypsychology.org/Erik-Erikson.html

Promise Schools . (2018).

Promise Schools. (2018). Retrieved from

http://www.southsaltlakecity.com/uploads/documents/PRINT%20READY%20Promise

%20Afterschool%20Report%202014_9_16(1).pdf
Promise School Teaching Reflection 11