Speaking Activities

Speaking is a 'huge' activity that describes so much of what we do in the classroom, from oral drills, to quick discussions, role play, problem slving and even board games. These ativities may have different aims: from very controlled practice on grmmar, vocabulary, functional language or pronunciation, to freer practice and the development of other skills such as critical thinking. Speaking activities are one of the biggest challenges. Here you'll find a selection of activities I collected from the web which worked in my varied classrooms

Taboo

In this game, one player has a card containing four words:

a. The first word is the secret word, which has to be guessed. The aim of the game is to get the other players to say this word so the student with the card needs to describe this word until another student discovers what the secret word is.

b. The other three words are the “taboo” words that can’t be used to describe the secret word since they are the most obvious options.

You can play this game can be played in two teams or in small groups. You can create your own sets of words based on the content your students have been studying, or you can find sets in your textbook and on the Internet.

Variations

1. Create a PowerPoint presentation with a noun on each slide, and the “taboo words”. Have one student come to the front of the room and sit giving his/her back to the PowerPoint. The rest of the students take turns describing the word on the slides, and the student at the front has to guess it.

2. Separate the students into groups of four or five. Place a pile of cards with content words in the centre of each group. Students take turns describing a noun for their group members to guess. The group member who guesses correctly keeps the card. The winner is the student who keeps most of the cards!

3. Separate the class into two teams. Students are given a word to describe to their partners, and a list of “Taboo” words they cannot use in their description. Each student should have two to three minutes to see how many words their teammates can guess

Retrieved from https://www.fluentu.com/blog/educator-english/esl-speaking-activities-for-adults/

Descriptive drawing activity
Pair up the students and give each student a picture, placing it face down so partners cannot see each other’s cards. They must describe the picture for their partner to draw.


Comic strip descriptions

Give each student a portion of a comic strip. Without showing their pictures to one another, the students should attempt to describe their image, and put the comic strip into the correct order. After about 10 minutes, the students can guess the order, show one another their portion, and see if they were correct.

Find a friend bingo

This activity is a variation of Find someone who.

It can be adapted easily to different levels

Prepare a handout with a 3 x 3 grid of squares. In each square, write a phrase that is likely to apply to at least one of the students, e.g. has a birthday in March, went on vacation to the beach, loves the “Star Wars” movies.

Give a copy of the handout to each student. Tell them to ask questions and find a friend who answers yes to one square in the grid, crossing out the square when they find someone. They should then move on to a different friend.

The winner is the first person to cross out all the squares.

Tip: For higher levels, make the grid larger. Alternatively, ask students to write their own ideas in the grid. For lower levels, use pictures instead of words and stick to Do you like …? questions.

Retrieved from https://www.english.com/blog/speaking-activities-for-your-new-primary-class/


Are we the same or different?

Students do this speaking and writing activity in pairs. They ask each other questions to find out what they have in common and what is different about them.

Before the lesson, prepare a handout with a large Venn diagram for each pair of students. Alternatively, you could have students draw their own diagrams in their notebooks.

Retrieved from https://www.english.com/blog/speaking-activities-for-your-new-primary-class/

Other ideas:

https://www.edutopia.org/discussion/12-fun-speaking-games-language-learners

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/motivating-speaking-activities-lower-levels

https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/teaching-speaking-unit-6-activities

Final Reflection 2015

I was asked to think about strengths and weaknesses of the year, just like Crónica, TN and other channels do at the end of the year. There are thousands of moments that can be considered strong or weak enough to be mentioned in this post. Maybe I rather choose things that I want to do or have again next year and things from which I have learnt so as not to repeat them.

And now that I come to think again, at this time of the year, it sounds like a Christmas wish or plead to Santa!! I know I will have it, but I want to insist on this, just in case! I want to work with Clau again. That has been my strength this year, my support when I felt I was falling to pieces. So practical, she always has the exact words to make you feel better after the Tsunami. Always willing to work, always willing to make changes and to make things more interesting and funnier. She led me through the tangled world of 6th form, full of extra activities and responsibilities. I think we became a good team, with lots of ideas and open to suggestions.

Now, regarding the things I consider that I need to change for next year, I must mention first “communication” in general. Communication at school is not flowing fluently all the time. We are lacking moments in which we can sit down and reflect upon our work throughout the year. Fridays are not enough and the focus of our attention gets diverted to other aspects which are also important but may not be fundamental. I think we need to tackle obstacles when they occur, not at the end of the year when nothing can be done. We need to talk things over collaboratively, so as to find solutions to situations as a team. If I am to be specific, I’m referring to parent’s meetings. I take responsibility for the communication that failed between parents and me. I am responsible for the misunderstandings that occurred for things that I took for granted. Yet, the amount of things we are asked to bear in mind during the year is overwhelming if we consider the little time for reflection we have.  

This year has been a hard one for me, as I couldn’t reach the main objective: help students work their differences out, help them develop empathy for others. I know I failed. Today I came across a blog post which mentioned the 4 principles which should be present in the XXI century education: learning to know, learning to do, learning to be, learning to live together. (Delors, 1996). I feel I could develop the first two, but I couldn’t accomplish anything valuable regarding the other two. Thus, these four pillars will be taken into consideration when planning lessons next year.

Delors, Jaques et al. (1996). "The Four Pillars of Education". Unesco. Retrieved 17/12/2015 from: 

http://www.uni-kassel.de/wz1/mahe/course/module4_1/01_delors96.pdf

How to Teach Computing

This second learning diary was prepared for another MOOC

Created with Padlet

Creative use of Tablets in Schools

This is the learning diary which I prepared for the MOOC.

Created with Padlet

21st century skills - Final Reflection

5th forms project have been designed and developed to enhance some of the skills necessary for a 21st century learner.

- Summarizing skills: when dealing with summarizing skills, students worked really hard reading webpages, books and cards which had information about the different projects. They read paragraphs and they had to obtain the main ideas, summarizing them in one or two sentences. Then, they created collaborative presentations with the information they gathered. They also designed mind maps which helped them study.

- Logical & Creative thinking: in our first project Helping Hands students analysed the situation of children in different parts of the world, they connected the place where they lived with their needs. They also read about children's rights and the extent to which they are respected or not around the world. They created a comparative chart collaboratively and they drew conclusions regarding this issue. During Green Helping Hands project students analysed the impact our actions have had on the environment. They investigated about energy & environmental issues. For this they had to find reliable sources, select relevant information, summarize the ideas and show them in a creative way. 

- Communicative skills: during assemblies students trained their skills for communication. They were asked to share their ideas and thoughts about the topics both fluently and accurately. They were given different functions which helped them develop their ideas further as well as specific vocabulary to be more precise when they expressed their beliefs. Besides students had various situations in which they made informal presentations during the projects.

They also developed their communicative skills in writing when they created different pieces of work such as comics, stories, descriptions, presentations, reports.

During the videocalls, students faced the challenge of communicating with both native and non-native speakers from different parts of the world, sometimes with unknown accent or with technological difficulties, but always achieving a successful exchange of messages.

- Reflective thinking (reflective moments): All of our projects contributed to the development of reflective skills as students used their knowledge of the world, their feelings and their perceptions to consider the different themes we worked with. Not only did they reflect upon their social commitment to people in need or the environment, but also about the role of ancient civilizations in shaping our culture and heritage. Furthermore, during the project The Time Machine they also implemented a journal in which they reflected upon their learning and the process carried out in the lesson. 

- Bringing the world into the classroom: 5th form students have connected with different classes from around the world, both synchronically and asynchronously. They have enjoyed learning about other cultures, sharing their interests and guessing the locations while developing geographic skills. They also used social media to report what was going on in real time, they used online browsers and maps to locate geographical features and monuments, as well as books, encyclopaedias and atlas.

- Collaborating with other teachers? (bilingual projects / cross cultural content / global themes) 

Even though it has not been agreed on during the teacher’s meeting, we worked on a bilingual content when we studied Ancient Greeks. We profited from the fact that students studied Greek myths and legends in Spanish at the beginning of the year, in order to build in knowledge regarding this ancient civilization. 

As far as cross cultural content is concerned, we have already mentioned that each of our projects dealt with topics that bridged gaps and expanded students’ view of the world.

5th form Projects took into account global themes such as children's rights, the environment, pollution, poverty etc; which aimed at raising social awareness and building global citizenship. 

Evidence of Reflection Class III

Finally, I delivered a second class to put all the concepts in bilingual education together, my reflections....

It has been an effective lesson as I could notice students’ active involvement and desire to speak. Most of them raised their hands and asked their own questions as the video we watched offered ideas and inquiries as well as fun. During the lesson there was a slight change in the sequence of plan. The language focus was carried out before expected as a couple of students noticed that the sentences they were given to read had “two verbs, one in the present and the other like in the past” (student’ sic). The previous day we worked on the changes a fictional city suffered and students described the way it looked in the past and the way it is nowadays. So, when the lesson began I reminded students of the two cities and asked them the following question: “In your opinion, what has happened? (making reference to a space left between the two pictures). Later, every time a student shared a “human action” I asked him/her if it was performed in the past and if we stopped doing it or if we continued doing it. Finally, I elicited from students the fact that there are actions that we did in the past but still have an effect in the present. Students participated actively because they felt they discovered how to use and frame this new item of language.

As far as formative assessment to monitor learners’ progress is concerned, several aspects were considered so as to engage students in an active participation and productive language skills. Each student was given the time to read the slips of paper, match them and think of the consequences individually. I have two students who feel threatened when they have to speak in front of the class, so they generally write what they are planning to say before exposing themselves and their ideas. Besides, different interaction patterns were used so that students could think on their own but also enrich their beliefs with their partners’ ideas in order to build up the information together. For example, after watching the video, students were given some minutes to think of some questions individually. After that, they discussed their thoughts in small groups and finally they shared their ideas as a whole class. They thought individually, they discussed in small groups and finally they shared to the classroom. In the end, traffic lights were used so that students evaluated their own understanding of the topic. Through this self-evaluation technique I could gather information regarding the student’s feelings in relation to the language item. Most of them agreed that the content was not difficult but that they needed more time and activities to process it since they felt like “yellow”. Only two students demanded a new explanation because they couldn’t grasp the idea of the lesson and other seven students gave “green light” to the lesson because they felt confident enough to use present perfect to talk about human impact on the environment.

Having participated in this course offered me a range of new possibilities to explore in the bilingual classroom. Even though I have been teaching for 10 years I always find I have got new things to learn. I have been using learning targets and success criteria for a few years and this course has strengthened the idea that they are crucial for students’ betterment since they clearly show them what they are expected to do, say and how to reach the desire outcome. This year I have also started working with the four C’s and they provide my lessons with a variety of tasks and skills which make them more meaningful. I have slightly developed my understanding of the triptych, I found the use of it interesting and hard at the same time as I had never heard of it before. I generally have a functional language routine at the beginning of the lessons and sometimes it is not related to the tasks of the day or it relates back to the previous day’s activities. Yet, if I think of it as the language for, it might be useful as I give students the chance to use an item of language accurately which is contextualised. I still think I need to continue being trained as there are things I could not grasp in these three months and which are crucial such as language through. As I have not sufficiently developed my ability to implement language through in my lesson plan, I consider I need to investigate more about it. Having read about essential questions and the revised version of Bloom’s taxonomy, I realise I both are useful to plan my lessons so I consider I need to keep them  at hand to make sure I include activities that cater for these cognitive demands.

Evidence of Reflection Class II

When I participated in the course of Teaching Bilingual Education I delivered a lesson taking into consideration the theory analysed in class. Here I share my reflection on that lesson.

I consider that the lesson was effective in terms of students understanding of content. The most significant aspect which helped students understand the information better was the activation of prior knowledge. As Petty (2006) claims, “to make progress in ‘understanding’ means linking to prior knowledge”. Because there were so many instances in which students worked on content, it was easier for them to comprehend how to use it in the main tasks. First of all, the video gave them an idea on the topic and offered them more information about water. Then, the use of pictures and labels triggered students’ knowledge of vocabulary which was known or stored somewhere in their minds. Together, they worked out the lexical items they needed for the lesson. Besides, they had to think of the links of those concepts to the topic in question. After all these interventions, students were ready to tackle the texts without difficulties and to use the data included to understand maps, which also gave them more information to build their own conclusions and hypotheses. I think that the lesson run smoothly because there had been enough activation of prior knowledge and scaffolding so that students could work out the text autonomously. Mehisto, Frigols & Marsh (2008) consider that we need to anchor the information into our prior knowledge in order to move it into our long-term memory so that it can be recalled at a later time.

However, I think that time constrains have been an issue in this first lesson I was observed. I was so concerned about giving students opportunities to access prior knowledge that there were many questions students asked and time was not enough. Then I had to rush through language, so content and language focus had not been properly balanced. This understanding is essential to me as a practitioner because I think that next lesson needs to have fewer activities, but more effective ones so that there is no need to activate knowledge with three different tasks and there is more time to dedicate to the comprehension and production of language. Because I was not yet confident about the lesson format I couldn’t handle timing properly. I will now need to organize the activities coherently, bearing in mind time sequences so that I can work on both content and language simultaneously, since content and language acquisition go “hand in hand”. (Mehisto, Frigols & Marsh). This could be important to students because it could have a better impact on their learning of both content and language progressively and systematically, in a meaningful way.

Another aspect I would like to improve for the next lesson is the kind of questions I ask students during the lesson. I noticed that most of the questions I pose are questions that guide, questions that lead and, in a smaller degree, questions that hook. Yet, I did not include enough essential questions, which are open-ended, thought provoking and intellectually engaging (Mc Tighe & Wiggins). Acquiring this skill is significant for me as a practitioner since essential questions aim at stimulating thought, provoking inquiry, sparking more questions, thus, demanding for higher order thinking skills. Because I am not yet confident about this topic, I will need to plan thoroughly the type of questions that might be asked to trigger students understanding.

Some Reflections on Teacher Development & Learning

Excellence in teaching is what most educators pursue. In order to become a better teacher, training is needed so as to deepen our knowledge and refine our skills, and to be considered professionals of education. A professional can account for their decisions theoretically and improve their practices after reflection. According to Timperley (2008), there are four important issues regarding our role as teachers which need to be accounted for:

a)      What our students learn is directly related to what and how we teach,

b)      Teachers decisions are crucial in this complex activity of teaching,

c)       Teachers are responsible for setting the appropriate conditions for students to learn, conditions in which we engage our students’ background knowledge to be associated to the new knowledge in organized frameworks which can be retrieved and used.

d)      Teachers and students context shape reality, their understandings of it and their experiences.

For me, the most relevant issue that teachers need to consider is related to the integration of knowledge and skills, i.e.: the link among particular teaching activities, students’ responses to those activities and what they actually learn. Teachers need to have acquired knowledge of the curriculum, how to teach it and how to assess it. Besides, the ability to identify what exactly students know and can do is a prerequisite for teaching that is responsive to students’ needs. When teachers are aware of how the decisions they take in the lessons may affect their students’ performance either positively or negatively, they can start improving those practices in order to guarantee an effective learning environment. Teachers should take greater responsibility for the learning of all students. Additionally, teachers need a variety of ways to assess the students’ outcomes and progress, ways that include but go beyond standardised testing such as interviews, analysis of students’ written work, classroom observations, among others. Thus, a theoretical understanding of teaching is the basis for making ongoing principled decisions about practice.

However, the aforementioned issues can be reached if certain conditions are assured. Teachers need to have the possibility of belonging to professional learning communities with other colleagues in order to acquire new knowledge and skills to become more effective educators. External experts (within the school or from outside) may offer new possibilities to challenge the assumptions and the social norms in which the group operates. Yet, there is a need to promote sustainability in education in order to develop skills, knowledge and values that promote behaviour in support of professional teaching. Schools need to have an organizational infrastructure which supports professional self-regulatory inquiry skills and teacher learning. Furthermore, all learning activities require trust and challenge. Change involves risk taking, and before teachers take risks they need to trust that their efforts will be supported, not belittled.

Timperley H. (2008). Teacher professional learning and development. ImprImerie Nouvelle Gonnet. France: Belley. 

Aprendizaje Basado en Proyectos - MOOC

En esta oportunidad estoy participando de un curso masivo online y abierto sobre el "Aprendizaje Basado en Proyectos" (ABP) en el cual conoceremos proyectos de referencia, los analizaremos, y hasta diseñaremos nuestros propios proyectos. Además tendré la oportunidad de contactar otros docentes, y profesionales de la educación con quienes podré debatir y conocer sus puntos de vista en relación a esta metodología.

Para comenzar, preparé una breve presentación asi mis compañeros y profesores me conocen!

21st Century Learning - Part 4: Context

This year, after our head's recommendation, we changed the books from the home reading programme as the context was not student friendly. It was not related to their realities so students found it hard to grasp meaning. As they were classics, the characters and the plot were difficult to relate to their daily life or their knowledge of the world. As a result interaction between student was not very successful because they could only reproduce the main ideas in the text without getting involved or feeling identified with characters or situations. However, the topics dealt with during the projects are related to the students' context so they felt motivated and engaged to interact and communicate their ideas and thoughts.naturally.

Teaching Listening Strategies III

Some tips to consider before planning a listening task:

ü  Establish the purpose:

-       Listen to remember important information / learn

-       Listen for details (lexical items, grammatical units, functional languge)

-       Listen for general idea

-       Listen for implied meaning

 

ü  Teach 5 to 10 words before listening. You can use a chart like this one

Words I know	Words I don’t know	Words a bit familiar to me

ü  While listening encourage students to carry out note taking to identify main idea and find details. Different tools can be used: rough outline, graphic organizer, chart, story map.

ü  How to help students identify main idea? In listening activities speakers use:

-       Direct statements

-       Repetitive words and phrases

-       Pacing: pauses, Increased volume, Change in pitch of voice.

-       In a video, body gestures and mood.

ü  Ask general questions to follow the listening taks.

ü  Don't focus on gramar too much (1 grammatical point per time)

ü  1 listening activity a day (15’
 

Teaching Listening Strategies II

Abbott & Godinho (2004) suggest a collaborative learning strategy to carry out listening tasks. They built a framework for listening comprised of four units:


1. Tuning In-concentrates on developing individual and small-group communication skills that provide a foundation for learning and working cooperatively in any situation.

2. Tell Me the Story-explores narrative frameworks and strategies for engaging an audience.

3. So What’s New?-promotes dynamic performance and presentation skills

4. Let Me Change Your Mind-investigates provocative ways of developing and contesting points of view.


Through these activities, students will find significant aspects of the language through cooperative learning, such as the identification of the message, the understanding of the category, the understanding of the higher-order ideas in the text, the implied meaning, and the justification or persuasion within the discussion.

Abbott & Godinho (2004) Speak, Listen, and Learn. Stenhouse Publishers

Retrieved from "Listening Strategies and Applications in EFL Classroom" By Sella Liao.

Keelung Municipal ZhongShan Senior High School  

Teaching Listening Strategies

Acquiring listening skills has been a concern since I was a child. I’ve always found difficult to understand tapes teachers used to play in the lessons. I even find it hard today, when learning another language, to grasp the general idea that is presented in the audio. I think that the problem stems from the fact that teachers and students carry out ineffective actions when dealing with listening activities. I consider that students may not be well prepared before the task as there seems to be no specific training of listening strategies or preparation of pre listening activities which may ease the task and lower the anxieties produced with the unknown. Besides, I think that we as students acquired ineffective listening habits which do no foster the understanding of oral texts or the acquisition of strategies that might prove helpful.

 

There seems to be two ineffective practices that teachers use when dealing with listening tasks which restrain students from reaching proficiency in listening skills. The first one is that teachers tend to start the audio without setting objectives, without predicting content thought previous activity, without reading the task to check understanding and comprehension. As there is not previous involvement with the text to came, and no guidance through the process of understanding oral texts, students get lost in the waves of spoken information and end up feeling disappointed and frustrated.

 

The second deals with the fact that teachers organise the listening task in such a way that it prevents students from thinking. In general, students rush through the task without using higher order thinking skills as they seem to be more concerned about getting at least one word which may get them back to the lost line. Besides, most of the tasks designed deal with basic listening survival skills such as, complete the word in a song or place the chorus in order.

 

However, to be an effective learner, students need to carry out several activities which are not always fostered:

• Establish a reason for learning and the objectives.
• Pedict information expected to find in the message
• Gather the raw speech and create an image of it in the short term memory.
• Organize the information by identifying the speech event (dialogue, lecture, radio) and the function of it.
• Recall background information.
• Assign meaning to the message
• Check if the message is understood
• Determine the information to be stored in the long term memory.

 

Brown, H. (2001). Teaching by Principles. New York: Longman.

 

21st Century Learning - Part 3: Tools

"Standing still is not an option". We agree with this statement and because of this we try implement digital tools either for reflection, such as this blog, for training for instance courses or seminars, and for fun such as the use of social networks.

It doesn't matter weather teacher or students feel more at ease with technology, as learning is a two way Street. Besides, technology should be a means to an end, not the end in itself. Both teachers and students can teach and learn at any momento using the technology available, and profiting from each other's expertise.

21st Century Learning - Part 2: Content

 

We agree that language itself is not enough for our 21st century students. In fact the three main areas of content covered in the video are considered within 5th form projects: cross curricular, cross cultural content and global themes. There are some instances that still need to be polished such as bilingual Project, but we still work across the curriculum collaborating with teachers from other groups in primary and secondary.

 

What we consider to be unacceptable is to expect everybody to be the same as we are, not to acknowledge diversity. We would like to include cross cultural activities this year, communicating with schools from other countries within the connecting classroom framework. It would be interesting to share different points of view regarding the same topic globally, in order to reflect on our own culture and to discover how it differs from others.

 

5th form Projects take into account global themes sucha as children's righs, the environment, pollution, poverty etc; which aim at raising social awareness and building global citizenship. In this way we pretend to expand their view of the world.

21st Century Learning - Part 1: Skills

After having watched the video from Pearson ELT on the importance of developing 21st Century skills, here are our reflections.

 

Even though we do not belong to the same generation as our students, we do not consider ourselves digital immigrants, we are not outsiders. We feel comfortable with using technology in the classroom and we consider ourselves flexible enough to adapt to what the situation requires. We accept the challenge to help our students develop the digital skills they need to process the huge amount of information available to them. We are conscious that there is a need to add into our plans instances in which they filter and summarise the data the Internet has to offer.

 

Summarising skills can be implemented from the very beginning. We can train our students to summarise key points from texts read, songs, any given topic, and we can even have a "Summary of the lesson" activity at the end of the day.

 

In relation to our first project, Helping Hands, we could include logical thinking strategies when gathering data about the situation of children in Argentina, and about the process of collecting items for donation. This is an aspect we need to go on exploring. Also, regarding creative thinking, students could be asked to present results using different tools and media.

 

Even though fifth form projects deal with working with teams to try to promote social change, it may be necessary to go more deeply into what it means to work as a team, the roles involved, the expected attitude and behaviour, learning to act both as a good leader and as a good follower.

 

Developing communicative skills is a central issue. In fifth form students have several opportunities to exercise these skills throughout the year, however they mainly give informal talks or presentations. We could try to implement the teaching of formal presentation skills so that students gain more confidence and develop accuracy in a formal register.

 

We consider we should include reflecting moments within our plans, making them explicit and providing them with a specific timing in the assembly. This year we aim to raise students' awareness in relation to their learning styles and provide them with tools to enhance their strong points while at the same time improving their weaknesses.

My concerns about reading

 

As claimed by Cubo de Severino, we, as teachers are constantly facing the same dilemma: students read but they can’t comprehend. That is to say, they can’t achieve the appropriate levels of comprehension which are necessary for the school level in which they are placed. I’ve worked in primary school for some years and I have encountered many kids who couldn’t comprehend what they read and I couldn’t successfully help them. So I asked myself, what is it that they cannot comprehend? Why? How can I aid them in their process of understanding texts? For long I’ve attended seminars and read books to investigate what I could do to help them tackle texts. I even travelled to New Zealand in the year 2009 to iexperience and read about their educational system as they are one of the best countries regarding literacy. Even though I only assisted kindergarten teachers in their literacy programmes, I discovered that CONSISTENCY, PATIENCE and GOOD QUESTIONS are key factors in order to obtain observable data regarding student’s reading skills.

I also have a personal issue concerning reading. I love reading, I used to enjoy my grandma’s reading very much. I used to get books as presents and I couldn’t stop reading to eat or have a shower. I gave my mother some headaches because I always kept my nose above books. I felt involved in magical worlds, full of mystery and imagination. I don’t want my students to miss opportunities to enjoy reading as much as I do. 

I really really LOOOOOOVE reading. I think in my other life I must have been a bookworm, a nerd or something of the sort. I have some anecdotes in relation to my life as a reader, which are rather humilliating but I will share them with you. When I started reading, I used to read every single billboard in the street and I used to get mad with my father if he drove the car too fast. Imagine trying to read out Pavón avenue!! Then, my mother used to get angry at me because I always kept reading at my room when I was supposed to be having dinner. Then, after a couple of "shouts" I would go walking slowly through the hall with the book right under my nose, and I would keep reading while eating. Most of my books were always stained! Nowadays I keep walking and reading half a block after getting off the bus at the corner of my house ´cause I can´t stop reading a very interensting paragraph. And worst of all, really embarassing, some time ago I took a book to the shower because I wanted to finish reading David Copperfield! I know I´m a weirdo!



Project Based Learning (PBL)

TBL?? CLIL? I'll introduce you another... PBL
 

Today, I woke up early in the morning to participate in my online courses, and in the one called Connecting Classrooms I saw this video. I immediately remembered what Silvia told Ceci and I after the parents' meetings. What we used to do at school was unit of work since students usually worked on simple tasks that required short-term content memory and low-level mental processes. Individual students worked on their own, or in pairs, and sometimes made presentations of their work to their peers.

Helping hands and Green Helping Hands are real life projects which demand students to participate actively, feel involved, solve problems and take desicions as a community and for the community. They are active citizens who act like adults, having voice and choice in their activities to live in a better world they help create themselves. Besides, they learn the language and they learn about new topics, using critical thinking and reflection all along.

 

 

Reading

What is it with Reading?

I am about to send my thesis to be printed and I wonder why I chose Reading from all the possible topics for investigation.

I found some of the answers in a comment I left in Miss Lauri’s blog:

“I really real LOOOOOOOOOOOVE reading. I thing in my other life I must have been a bookwom, a nerd, or something of the sort. I have some anecdotes in relation to my life as a reader, which are rather humilliating but I will share them with you. When I started Reading I used t oread every single billboard in the Street and I used to get mad a t my father if he drove the car too fast (of course, it was funny for my family!!) Imagin trying t oread out Pavón Avenue!!! Then, my mother used to get angrey at me because I always kept readng in my room when I was supposed to be having dinner. Then, after a couple of “shouts” I would go walking slowly through the hall with the book under my nose, and I would keep Reading while eating. Most of my books were always stained!!

Nowadays, I keep walking and Reading half a block after getting off the bus at the corner of my house ‘cause I can’t stop Reading a very interesting paragraph. And worst of all, really embarassing, last week I took a book to the shower because I wanted to finish Reading David Copperfield! I know I’m a weirdo!!

The thing is, I really deeply find reading an amazing activity. And, maybe, deep in my heart I want my students to be able to  enjoy reading as much as I do!!

It's a pity I can't explain all this to the examination board....

Changing Paradigms in Education