Reflections on Week 10

Teaching English with technology implies a great challenge and requires effort and dedication. There’s no single teaching method but rather a wide range of active learning strategies. Children learn globally and not always do they learn everything we teach but they learn better when they are motivated and find activities interesting and  meaningful. They learn quickly but they also forget quickly so permanent recycling and repetition are extremely important.  One way to do that is through tech-exercises and activities they can do at home and at school

There are some nice ideas when teaching a foreign language. Teachers have to generate a nice environment and develop an intellectual one to grow in language learning. They have to promote a positive attitude towards language learning in general and to form a good basis for later development of reading and writing towards effective communication. To do this we can use technology. 

Little children are not interested in the language itself but in what they can do through that language if we promote interesting activities like site to play and study at the same time.

Teaching of a foreign language should be easy, enjoyable and engaging for students. It is enjoyable when it is dynamic and activities are varied and require action. It is easy when the activities are short and within the scope of ability of the pupils. Tech activities  cater for a varied level of proficiency in students. Each student can work at his pace and difficulty.

But teaching English with tech allows students to use the language in a purposeful way. It is motivating and. Memorable as students get involved and participate actively in the activities. And when they go home they will talk about what they have done and learnt.

Elena

Reflections on Week 9

Things are slowly coming to an end it seems. I think I will miss everybody. Well, this is life. Nevertheless we have worked hard and learnt many things. Some still remain to be read as I couldn’t read everything. But that would be without pressure.

This week I have remembered and re-read about Gardner. I like his ideas and try to use it at school with my students. Providing different type of activities for everybody is sometimes difficult as I cannot cater for all. But I always try to do my best on that.

Of course there are different styles of learning, thanks God. It means there are different types of people. Otherwise we will all be alike and the world will be boring. There are different strategies used to make our students learn but the one you choose will have to be in accordance with the kind of intelligence he/ she has if you want to be successful as a teacher.

I love thinking different types of activities and as I am creative I always find a way to get an interesting activity for them. Well, at least that is what I think.

Not everybody likes everything but learning English can be a pain or fun. Let us make it this way for us and for our students. I bore when the activities are not attractive. I think my students do the same.

Elena

REFLECTIONS ON WEEK 8

This week I have found it particularly interesting because it provided us with different kind of tools such as sites for building up exercises, tasks, tests and the like. I always appreciate a tool that helps me to reduce my effort on building up my plan for the week. Once you get to know the tool it is easy to work on as it is manual and handy and easy to construct.

I particularly liked Anvil and was thrilled at the fact that I could record my students’ voices or can picture a short dialogue for others to watch or listen to. I feel my students would like the idea of working with this. I feel they will be delighted as they like to be seen on the screen or heard on the net. It adds spoken language to discussion and you can practice pronunciation. Besides it encourages multimedia communication. It is a form of oral language that is been introduced and with that students and teachers can profit out of it.

But the project took me most of the time as I had to read it and re-read it in order to hand it in. I also read Mustafa’s work and found it interesting, appealing to the students’ interests and motivating.  Then I had to check and write about the project. I liked the idea and got some interesting ideas for my job at school. One always profits from somebody else’s job. I hope I can read all the others but it is a busy week and will have to postpone it for later time.

Elena

 

SECOND IDEA ON AUTONOMY

Many people think that when teachers promote learner autonomy they are in fact promoting students work in a lonely environment away from the teachrers’ job. In fact this is not so as teachers’ work is much more complicated. They have to assign tests, rubrics for students to evaluate themselves and they have to provide activities that generally always demand too much reading on the part of the teacher.

But I think that the most thing is that it prepares students for future life as it helps them to learn about the core of democracy where everyone has to be responsible for the decisions he/ she takes. Students learn to take charge of their own learning and they accept the responsibility of their job. If somebody decides not to do  homework, he knows what the result will be.

In the same way when you vote somebody then you have to learn that if your decision was not right next time you will have to learn better about candidates before voting.  

One interesting activity I generally organize to develop their autonomy is to assign homework and through this you foster responsibility on the students. But it is not only that. It helps students to choose their own learning activities and it involves students in activities where they can discuss a topic, analyse it and then present it to the rest of the class for them to judge.

Moreover students can do collaborative work in small groups and they can keep a record of the job done. They can even engage in their own evaluation progress and be respected by teachers in reference to their decisions.

I believe that learner autonomy helps students to grow up and become responsible adults.

 

Elena

Reflections on Week 7- learner autonomy

You can visit my wallwisher and see what I think about it


http://padlet.com/wall/ftk5qjyq45

I really liked this tool. I see that it is very useful and handy for children. They can enjoy from it and they can set their own projects on it.

At schools learner autonomy helps students to grow up as they become less dependent on teachers and rely more on themselves. Of course the autonomy a student has largely depends on what the student can do with language. At early stages students will be more dependent on the teacher but as timer goes by things will change easily and so they will grow less dependent on her.

But learner autonomy depends on using the type of language the student can understand because if like Krashen said i+1 is instead i+10 then the student will not be able to do it and drop out of the activity.

The activities proposed have to be interesting enough so that they like the idea of doing them and so they become motivated.  Besides these activities have to allow students to think critically and so activities like those include discussions, opinions, etc. In this way they will be able to learn more and learn how to be an adult

Elena

PROJECT WORK

Dear all, sorry to dissapoint you Robert but classes have not started yet. They do on Monday 18th so I will keep the record for next week

But to show you that I am not wasting my time I decided to come to a spa because after so much work ahead and so much work done I thought I needed a rest and as a way to celebrate my birthday . Thus I will take the card you have sent us as a birhday present.

Regards

Elena

Reflections on Week 6

I find power points particularly useful for reading in the case of students as this allows them to deal with stories. It sometimes happens in Argentina that not all students can buy two or three readers for the English class. They buy the textbooks and activities and so teachers cannot ask parents to spend more money on a subject when they have other subjects to buy things for.

So this way of dealing with Power Points was fine for me and proved to be very useful as children can enjoy themselves with them.  When they enjoy themselves they are absorbed by the activity, they want to go on and they are not always aware that they are learning language.

Moreover, through grouping in case of large classes, students will get more exposure to the language and more chances to practice it. They will develop more positive attitudes towards learning English since they will associate it with something pleasant and enjoyable.

Children are curious and active. They like to interact with people. This helps them to construct their understanding of the world in which they live. They do this through physical activities and experiencing things at first hand. So activities like making things, action songs and the like provide excellent contexts for language learning. They learn through doing. There is also a clear purpose for them in using the language. The listen and do activities are very useful for young learners. These activities allow pupils to be actively learning and participating. They are also being exposed to meaningful input.

 Bye,

Elena

 

Reflections on Week 5

I have been reading about project work and I feel happy about that because I like them a lot. Projects allow us to integrate all language that has been learnt throughout a period of time.

PBL help students to develop their four macro skills and at the same time allow them to develop other skills through the use of tools like the internet and other abilities such as cooperative and collaborative learning.

Through PBL work students are constantly recycling, using the knowledge they have acquired and the one they already have. It is a looping way of learning things. Students get academic and social benefits. Academic benefits include knowledge of the language and social ones include the ability to exchange ideas with others and at the same time respect other people’s ideas and ways of learning.

The social interactions among students are not simple. The children are educating themselves. They are creating strong, extended, meaningful, positive interpersonal relationships between teachers and students that foster increased student motivation and, in turn, stimulate improved learning outcomes for students.

In groups students learn more as they can help each other and can solve problems. The teacher is no longer the center of the class or of the activities. It is a student centered development when each person learns from the other. And this is how it is in real life as well.

These projects allow us, teachers, to provide with another way of evaluating students, a much more relaxed way of testing our students. And at the same all the skills are integrated and evaluated at the same time.

Assessment takes an active role in the teaching and learning process but it is far away from the way traditional assessment was carried out as there are no formal tests.

Connected with it, rubrics also find another way of doing things. Students can measure their performances, their drawbacks and their abilities. Moreover, parents through the net can have a direct access to their children’s performance and so they are more aware of how their children are learning.

But the most wonderful experience was about reading Web-quests. On we-quest students learn by doing, that is to say, they do things like learning in a different way and so our lessons improve in quality and motivation. They can be long term projects or simple ones. Moreover, they involve group work and so there is division of work among students in the same way as it is in society. And children spend more time on activities rather than on looking for information.

Elena

REFLECTIONS ON WEEK 4

 

One of the main things I have learnt this week is about integrating skills: reading, writing and vocabulary. They can go all together through the internet and be taught in such a way that students can easily understand the whole thing.

 
Skills are used according to the aim of the interaction that takes place. I mean  that in real communication skills are naturally integrated no matter which comes first. For example:
 

1-      It is impossible to take part in a conversation if you do not listen to what the other person is saying. The same goes for writing. People seldom write without reading (even to check what they have written).

Thus the same subject or experience leads to the use of different skills. 

It is fairly improbable that skills are used isolated in real life interaction. In order to replicate its mechanisms to make the teaching and learning processes more communicative teachers will try to think of different possibilities to make pupils feel that the foreign language they are learning is useful.

 

 On the other hand, in textbooks, for the sake of methodological organization, we generally find a pre-established pattern provided for integrating skills. Thus, the lesson opens with a text or dialogue to be listened to or read, followed by the practice of the oral skill through conversation or discussion and afterwards the written one.

 

 But on the internet the skills are integrated per se. We do not need a textbook to find the context, the context is there and the glorious thing about it is that we can share this context at any time. 

What the teacher desires is to see children do things with language. She wants them to perceive the usefulness of language and get to know the world and share their findings with others. She encourages reflection on values, cultural identity, teamwork, diversity, friendship, and so on. Language, then, is meant to be a tool for teachers to make students grow up, to explore the value of learning and to foster language development. In fact, learning a language becomes an educational project. 

But above all, teachers find that cross-curricula activities through the internet are possible and allows students to get knowledge not only in the language but also on the other areas (science, history, etc.) he is reading, writing or listening. Still, its acquisition has to be a natural process, not an unnatural and farfetched process.

As Claudia Ferradas Moi said:

“When we teach a language we do not aim only at the acquisition of the language system, we contribute to educating the whole person. With this educational objective in mind, we explore different topics and ideas helping pupils develop learner autonomy and critical thinking from a very early stage”

 

Elena Rivas

 

 

ANOTHER IDEA ON THE THIRD WEEK

Well, I see that many people have many places to search things and I find them interesting to surf but I cannot surf them all. It is a real pity.

I have learnt how to organize the project too and see that all of them have worked hard and had given a deep analysis of their teaching environment and problems.

I hope that when times comes I will be able to do the same, at least to do something worth-reading, be up to their level.

But what I like most was the teacher from Romania and her thoughs on Gardner's ideas about the Multiple Intelligence Theory. It is something in vogue in Argentina but difficult to achieve.

First to have to know your students a lot to be able to cater for all the abilities she mentions and then you have to prepare your plan well as to balance all the activities. I see this teacher does a great job when it comes to teaching.

Elena

Reflections on the Third Week

Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials

 

by Lindsay Miller

 

After  reading Mrs Miller I should say that I completly agree. Here in Argentina we always go about reading, listening and writing with these three stages: pre-while and after.

In the case of reading, we exploit the material that the book or novel provides: pictures, headings, author's biography and so on. Then we go about the paragraph, chapter or book and deal with general comprehension questions and after that we go to a deeper reading stage where the students is supposed to read the article in details (before we have done skimming and scanning- Krashen's ideas). After everybody has read the whole thing, then we go about much deeper activities which may involve the changing of the ending, beginning,describing a character, etc.

 

In the case of listening, we do the same. Generally we use CD players as it is useful and practical in classes but we also use the net, the video and the radio, specially for older kids.

 

But let me provide you some information about what we do with storytelling. We use storytelling for little children. We retell the story orally and then we provide the students with exercises. I mainly do this because I work with little kids and so they are fond of them. I also love stories too.

Sometimes I deal with traditional stories like The SnowWhite and at other times with adapted stories or even authentic stories like "The Very Hungry Catterpillar", a useful book to deal not only with the story but also with food and health as well as the growing process of a warm.

But let me tell you the way I do and many of the teachers in Argentina go about the stories in order to develop listening and comprehension skills in their students. Thus, I will, in some way paraphrase the Miller's ideas.

Storytelling is the art of using language, vocalization, and/or physical movement and gesture to reveal the elements and images of a story to a specific, live audience.

What is a Story?

Most dictionaries define a story as a narrative account of a real or imagined event or events. A story is more generally agreed to be a specific structure of narrative with a sense of completeness. It comprises a specific style and a set of characters

What is a telling?

It is the live, person-to-person oral and physical presentation of a story to an audience. “Telling" involves direct contact between teller and listener.  Both have different roles

1. The teller's role is to prepare and present the necessary language, vocalization, and disposition to communicate the images of a story in an effective and efficient way.
2. The listener's role is to create the vivid, multi-sensory images, actions, characters, and events of the story in their mind.

Why Storytelling?

It may become a useful learning tool. It may help teachers to remind children that spoken words are as important as written words.

There are several reasons why storytelling may become an important tool in the teaching of English:

1. Storytelling is accessible to all ages and abilities.
2. Storytelling is especially suited for student exploration
3. No special equipment is needed; only imagination and the ability of listening and speaking.
4. Storytelling can encourage students to communicate thoughts and feelings in an interesting manner
5. Storytelling fosters interaction
6. Storytelling is a co-creative process.
7. Storytelling is, personal, interpretive, and uniquely human.
8. Storytelling is a process, a medium for sharing, interpreting, offering the content and meaning of a story to an audience.

How to retell a story in the class:

BEFORE RETELLING:

• Show the front page of the book to the students
• Introduce predictions about the story content
• Discuss the pictures that can be seen
• Allow the students to discuss about their own experiences and relate them to the book
• Talk to the children about the type of text they are going to listen to (fairy tale, fable, etc)
• Present the main characters and setting to the audience

WHILE RETELLING:

• Retell the story with the pictures (big books if possible). Remember to use gestures and tone of voice
• Promote the reaction of the students while you are retelling the story.
• Make occasional questions to monitor comprehension
• Retell the story again when you realize that the students didn’t understand a scene
• At certain times, ask children to predict what is going to happen
• Allow them to express their own interpretation of the story

AFTER RETELLING:

• Promote the revision of certain parts of the story to realize they have fully understood it
• Relate the events told in the story with the ones in their own lives
• If it has a moral, ask them for it.
• Promote general comprehension questions to see they have understood.
• Introduce activities connected with the story (change the ending, beginning; act out a scene; set a similar situation and role-play it, etc)

ANOTHER IDEA ON THE 2ND WEEK

When reading about the Writing Objectives from the Penn Universtiy, I feel that the way we teach in Argentina, through the Communicative Approach, is connected with Cognitivism. We use Problem Solving Situations, Role Play Activities and Pair Work. We intend to reproduce as much as we can the outside world to give a sense to learning a language, otherwise, it is a repetition of sentences that have no meaning at all.

I thing that the affective stage mentioned is also important because as we have people from many other countries who are not so European. So there are customs that have to learn and respect. And there are also our customs to teach. They are different and students should learn that difference does not necessarily mean wrong. It means different and worthy of knowing and getting to understand.

What do you think? Elena

REFLECTIONS ON THE 2ND WEEK

I have been reading Bloom’s taxonomy and truly believe that it is the way students have to learn a second language. In our country we teach English as a foreign language. This means that they have a different environment that does not promote the use of English outside the class.

I am very worried as Supervisor that the job is done well. I find many teachers that as Bloom says remain on the Remembering stage, that is to say they simple feel that exercises like “filling the blanks” or “matching” are elements that will make the students learn how to speak the language. And that is not so.

I focus on the Communicative Approach and as such I believe like Bloom that the first stage (Remembering)   is the beginning but that each student should go about each one of the stages and to finally understand and speak a language.

 As Widdowson said I believe that a student learns by doing. If he can fill in a blank that is Ok but it is the first step to learning. I hope the student gets to the Creating Stage as the article on “Classifying Objectives” develops. I expect students be able to change the ending of a story, invent a new beginning,  pretend  they police-officers in the street and be able to give directions to a tourists, etc.

Of course this is a process and students should be able to get to that stage after getting through the other stages in their learning experience (understanding, applying, analyzing and evaluating and creating).

The Psychomotor domain is present  in the class too. I feel that students should be taught the phonetics, the difference between the vowels in Spanish and in English. They are taught the difference in the position of the tongue for “d” and “t” and so on.

And finally but not least I teach the students the Affective Domain which implies a respect to values and other cultures. This is present in our Curriculum Design, a pedagogical basis for the teaching of any subject at our schools in Argentina.

Teachers should place special interest to organize groups to make the learning process a social one, that is to say, students should socialize and learn through others when the teacher develops his or her subject.

Teachers, too, should place special emphasis on culture. As we have many immigrants from countries like Paraguay, Bolivia and Peru w are supposed to integrate them to the other children, respecting their culture at the same time.

ELENA

 

 

WHAT ELEMENTS AND HOW TO USE ?

In my home city, many schools have blogs and use it to show the projects they have done to parents, other schools and students.

It is also used to provide assignments to students though as I said before we are using Edmodo now as it is safer and we can provide rubrics to our students.

Some teachers provide pages or activities on the blogs for the students to do at home or else in  class
Others give links mainly to the British Council so that students can play and learn at the same time.

During many years I used Groups from Yahoo but now I have changed to Edmodo because it is safer for students and for me.

Elena

Reflections on Week 1

Dear all,

I feel happy and learn much more about blogs, things which because of time or fear I have never tried before. I feel the group is  organizing and getting bigger whic makes me feel happy. I hink we will make a nice group.

I have never tried Nicenet or heard about it and I find it useful and thinking of passing it over to my teachers so that they can profit from it.

I am not an expert in the field and know that I can learn more. But I feel that  when we are on technology everybody has the same problems, doubts, queries and anxiety. So I don't I am a dumb.

Well if this is the first week, the others will be much better. Besides Robert is really kind, helpful and answers all our questions.

XXX

Elena

HOW IT WORKED WHEN CREATING A BLOG

I felt rather afraid first. I thought I was going to make a mess but I succeed so far. Hope it will be the same after some hours.

As regards blogs, let me tell you that I find them very useful as I can get my teachers' work by their blogs. Many teachers in my country use it, some with simple ones but others with much more sophisticated.

Still, I don´t like them much as I see that not all the parents, or their companions see it. I feel it is a hard effort on their part but I seem to be the only one who post things praising their job.

What we use as activities for students in CABA (Buenos Aires City) is WWW.EDMODO.COM
It is a safer place for our students as teachers have the power to allow students to get into their course or not.  Parents have a code and they can use their children´s job.

Legally we have many problems when setting students´photos. We first have to ask permission to show their photos in internet. The blog or You tube doesn´t allow us this so we are using Edmodo.