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