Hello, so nice to see you again!
I hope you enjoy, reflect and think carefully and with love the huge work done over here for the past months. Every little word was written down with conscience and enthusiasm.
See you soon! Enjoy :)
10th of November of 2020…
Today we start the second part of the course on
ELT. Firstly, we have seen the guidelines of this new stage of ELT. The
presentation was like a overview of what it is prepared four us for the next
two months. I must admit that the idea of creating our own syllabus make me
feel nervous, excited, and scared all at the same time. It seems like a new
challenge for me, but let’s be clear, is a new challenge of my path of becoming
the best teacher I can be, so, I will achieve it with lots of enthusiasm,
desire and creativity.
The next day, 11th of November, we
spend the whole class talking and discovering about Bilingual Education &
CLTL in Spain in within the European Framework. For example, we have seen the
British Council programs, their mobility programs across Europe, etc. Their
main idea about acquiring L2 is that it must be centred on children learning
English as they have learned their mother tongue. That is why the methodology
is learner centred, based on the direct method at first.
Another programme we have seen was the Madrid
Community (CLIL) Bilingual Project. Here there are not native teachers but
native assistants who are students. Personally, I do not like this because,
even though the children would learn a proper accent, these person are not
qualified to be a teacher, so maybe the methodology or approaches they might
use could not be suitable or good for students to learn the language moreover
the accent. But that is only my point of view. Another feature about this
programme is that, at least, 1/3 of the classes the students have per week are
English ones.
The 12th of November of 2020 we
spend the class watching some videos about the topic: Efficient Teacher. These
are the videos mentioned:
· Video 1. The Effective Teacher
· Video 2. Effective Teaching in the 21st Century
· Video 3. 7Cs of Effective Teaching
· Video 4. Top 10 Qualities of an Effective Teacher
· Video 5. Teaching in the 21st Century
These are some key ideas my group partner and I
caught up while watching the five videos: (Aquí hacer la nube de palabras que
vimos enc lase)
- Personality
- Specific knowledge
- There are many factors that
influence the practice.
- Teacher’s role: believe in student’s
potential.
- Class environment.
- Challenge
- Respect differences.
- Materials have to be useful and relevant,
in summary, meaningful.
- Students learn by discovering.
- Group style and feedback.
- Building bridges between students
needs and curriculum.
- Encourage social interaction.
- Passionate.
- Leadership: good role model.
- Connected: collaboration with other
teacher, parents, etc.
- Organized
- Flexible: Go with the flow
- Dynamic
- Aspirational
- Ambitious
- Empathic
- Creative and diversity
- Open minded, learn from experiences
and learners.
- Students can find information
everywhere at anytime so the teachers roles as the only source of knowledge is
obsoleted. We have to teach them tools to filter that information (critical
mind).
- For whom are they learning this?
With which purpose? That’s how we have to structure our classes.
- Lessons have to be relevant
challenging engaging.
After all this, we came into this statement:
After watching the five videos we came with
this list of the best qualities of an effective teacher, by our point of view:
Expert: She/he must have an specific knowledge of the
topic is teaching. Is going to be the reference for tens of students, she/he
needs to provide them with the best data.
Challenging: She/he needs to create an engaging
envionrement that push students to get out of their comfort zone, explore,
create and become the best person they can be.
Passionate and inspiring: As the teacher is going to be one
of their main influences, she/he needs to believe in his/her students'
potential and create experiences where they can prove their value.
Organized and flexible at the same time: The most effective teacher needs to
have everything under control, planned and conscious decided. But, it also
needs to take advantages of the opportunities the routine in class provides,
like students doubts, weather situations, news of the day, etc. Everything is
an opportunity to develop a new learning experience in class.
Empathic: There is no effective learning process if you
can not connect with your students. If you create tight ties you will
understand them and adapt better the teaching process to their needs.
Creative: To adapt better the classes and create an
engaging envionrement you need to think out of the box. And at the same time
you will reflect that open mind philosophy to them.
After watching and discussing the videos we end
the class with this question: How do we connect objectives with activities?
The 16th of November we began the
class with this question: What is Project Based Learning (PBL)? And this
question will follow me for the next days, because we will have to prepared a
PBL for next week about Thanksgiving.
PBL is a teaching method in which students gain
knowledge and skills by working for an extended period of time to investigate
and respond to an authentic, engaging and complex question, problem, or
challenge. In Gold Standard PBL, projects are focused on student learning goals
and include Essential Project Design Elements:
· Key Knowledge, Understanding, and
Success Skills -
The project is focused on student learning goals, including standards-based
content and skills such as critical thinking/problem solving, communication,
collaboration, and self-management.
· Challenging Problem or Question - The project is framed by a
meaningful problem to solve or a question to answer, at the appropriate level
of challenge.
· Sustained Inquiry - Students engage in a rigorous,
extended process of asking questions, finding resources, and applying
information.
· Authenticity - The project features real-world
context, tasks and tools, quality standards, or impact – or speaks to students’
personal concerns, interests, and issues in their lives.
· Student Voice & Choice - Students make some decisions
about the project, including how they work and what they create.
· Reflection - Students and teachers reflect on
learning, the effectiveness of their inquiry and project activities, the
quality of student work, obstacles and how to overcome them.
· Critique & Revision - Students give, receive, and use
feedback to improve their process and products.
· Public Product - Students make their project work public by explaining, displaying and/or presenting it to people beyond the classroom.
About the PBL we have to prepare, we began with
planning our initial question and is this one:
- How can we adapt and celebrate Thanksgiving
this year with the pandemic situation?
With this question we can work the history and
geography by discovering how thanksgiving actually works and how can we
translate that into our Spanish society with the addition of the pandemic.
The 17th of November we began the
class by explaining our initial questions and receiving feedback and
suggestions from out teacher. She suggested us to complicate a little bit more
the question, to deep more in the history maybe, and connected with the actual
situation. The question was not wrong, but it could be improved. So, we took
notes about it and started thinking again on it.
Once we have seen all group’s questions, we
continued discovering PBL. Today I have learned that it is essential to show
why it is important to investigate and answer the initial question.
Also, it is important to have project
management, it is to say, the tools to manage the project. On of the tools is
time management, given information to students about the schedule of the lesson
and the project itself is a way to help our students to complete the task and
give them the autonomy and the capacity of manage their own time management.
But how do we manage to assure every student is
working and achieving the goal settled? For example, by reading and reflecting
on their portfolios.
And how will you check team progress? By the
evaluation.
Once the project is done, it is necessary to
talk about how it went, celebrate, and reflect.
And this is what we have done this same evening
Ana Gonzalo and me. We are cooperating because both of us are following the
same goal (creating a PBL about Thanksgiving) and for that we are planning and
scheduling together but dividing the task in small pieces so both of us are in
charged of some of them. It is to say, everything is done under a mutual
consensus but in the praxis, we work individually to later on put everything in
common.
For next day we agreed on having a general idea
of PBL and Thanksgiving, just like if we were doing a flipped classroom with
our work, so the next day we can meet on Teams with a general framework in our
minds and start creating from there. So here are my notes on my PBL research:
KEY IDEAS:
Two main questions have to be in our teacher
mind to focused the project process and doing it in the right direction:
- Did the students master the context?
- Where they able to apply their knowledge and skills?
How a PBL must be done? -> Including students in planning. Also, students need to have a purpose and an audience beyond the teacher, classmates, or families.
STRUCTURE OF A LESSON
1.
Whole
group introduction to the session (10 minutes)
2.
Guided
small-groups activities related to the units final project
Whole class review and reflection
I was so confused about the difference between
blended learning and flipped classroom because both features are so similar,
but this video gave me the solution: flipped classroom is a type of blending
learning. It changes the perspective of traditional classes. Now, students
watch the lectures at home, which is more flexible to anyone’s process of
learning, and at class they do tasks or activities related to the topic and
under the eye of the teacher whose role is facilitator and open to everyone’s
doubts and needs, so in the stage where students have more problems (Tasks)
they are available to help and guide them to complete satisfactorily the
translate of knowledge to practical skills and competences.
How do we integrate blended learning in our
class? We can
monitor groups, given them different activities. It is needed to use Bloom
Taxonomy to schedule the lessons but always having in mind ZPD of Vygotsky,
because you can not prepare a task if they are not able to understand that
without your help. So, also, we need to prepare scaffolding activities to help
in this case.
Some disadvantages of this method is that not
every student has Internet access at home (that does not promote inclusive
education). Another problem is that not every student has the enough autonomy
to work alone efficiently without help.
Some advantages are that students become more
prepared to control their learning process, their time management, the
activities and topics are focused on their needs and desires, so it makes
classes more engaging to them and with low affective filter.
As always, this method will be a success in
some cases but not in all of them. We need to think first in our students,
class environment, school and families context, and decide if this method could
be available to be done without making too many challenges that finally end up
in a big mess where students are going to be the most affected.
* WORK AT HOME… This evening my partner and I
realize that our initial question was so simplistic that it could be much
better if we give another try to our creativity’s minds. So, wondering between
a lot of topics we came into the idea of changing it to: Why do we say “thank
you”? Nevertheless, this one does not encompass all our ideas or all the stages
that would lead into the final product or goal of the project. So we think
about if there could be two initial questions. The second one will be: How can
we say “thank you” in our neighbourhood?
Both questions will involve history and civic
education. For history we thought that, like in the origin of Thanksgiving
tradition, we need to thank life for having essential thinks like food, so the
aim of the project is to make our students concerned about what they can do
(for example, share food with others) to help them as well as they are thanking
life for having it. The purpose is to know the history of Thanksgiving and
enhance civic conscious.
Next day, the 19th of November, we
began the class by bombing our teacher with different doubts about the
projects. I asked Dolores about the doubt of yesterday, and yes! We can have an
initial question that can be divided progressively in sub questions.
Another notes I noted down from classmates’
doubts where the following ones:
- Create worksheets to reference the
information they have been discovering.
- Subdivided the project in little
tasks. So they can use the previous information to different tasks.
- Related activities to the researches
they have done so we can see the progression.
- Invite someone outside the class.
- We have to be very systematic so
students can achieve mechanic actions and thinking resources like when you are
driving and you know how to drive, you do not think every action, you just do
it.
- We go to receptive to productive
skills. First, they have to understand before creating (speaking and writing).
- While we are listening or reading
they are active, they are focusing their attention in the input, for example,
highlighting key words.
5Cs
Content – Communication – Cognition – Culture – Competences
LISTENING
SKILLS
To avoid using L1, listening tasks are the best
option, but the work has to be progressive. If we do not pre-active their prior
knowledge this aim is going to be very difficult.
· Bottom up: Use synonims, explanation, point
out, use flashcards, etc.
· Top-down: use familiar situations, routines,
providing context, ask them questions.
Quote of the day: “Change perspective: teachers
do not know everything, they know lots of things.”
Today is the 23th of November, the coldest day of this course, at least, that seems to me. To accompany this cold day, there is not better topic that fits more with this weather… Today we are going to focus on reading skills and strategies.
First of all, we have to share our personal
experiences from when we began reading in English. I can not remember how I
started reading in my foreign language. I think it was something implicit
during the progress of the lessons. Once we started reading in our mother
tongue, I suppose, English teachers began given us reading activities in class
to read ou loud and practise, but I can not remember reading an English book
until the very last ending of high school, and it was The Catcher in the Rye.
Reading involves cultural context. The reader will decode the
information and would interpretate it by his/her point of view, the social
background she/he has, previous experiences and their personality.
APPROACHES TO READING
1.
Part-centered approach: It is related with Bottom up in listening skills. It involves
phonics and sight words. From learning the parts of the text to isolated words
or concepts.
As a teacher, we have to have a bank of
resources to adapt to every situation. Every situation is different. Also,
adding writing tasks emphasizes better the understanding of reading.
Reading needs to involve real purpose to
promote it.
Effective readers use strategies to understand
what they read before, during and after reding. Students can be taught to be
strategic and effective readers. These strategies are not available to be
applicable in all cases. We need to use it progressively and depending the
level.
Today is the 24th of November and it
is a really cold day to be fair. Today we begin the lesson by listening to a
video explanation of phonics called Jolly Phonics songs in correct order!
Letters and sounds ((242) Jolly Phonics Songs in correct order!
Letters and Sounds - YouTube). It was quite cute as well as useful. It makes me wonder if I could
use it at my private lessons, even though my student is 8 years old, because it
is a funny and engaging way to practise sounds that he does not acquired yet.
This video includes actions too that are integrated in the sounds, words, etc,
it is TPR.
Music is a perfect way to start a class. We can
also make it a routine in our daily lesson process.
Later on we get into the topic of phonics and
word families. It is important, as lesson management, to see first vowel and
consonant sounds and then we connect it to phrases and sentences to integrate
them into a context. Some tools we can use to make this are:
· Shound chart: connect a concept with the sound.
This is a powerful tool to help students to learn to read.
· Games: These ones can be played in small groups to
promote cooperative learning. Some examples are: In-a-Row game or the bingo. We
can fin ideas like these ones in StarFall (Learn to Read with Phonics | Starfall Education). It is important to combine online
resources with common and traditional ones like books. You can buy or create
them, maybe with Arts&Crafts teacher to promote teamwork between teachers
too.
We keep on the lesson by overviewing some books
suggestions from Dolores’ library to have an example of all the materials we
can have at hand to practise reading. As a teacher, we have to provide as many
opportunities to practise and fail as we can, students need that space of try
and fail with comfort.
Unless we try these tools, we won’t know if
they are useful to us.
To the question that appeared in class of what
should we do if our students make phonics mistakes we came into an agreement on
instead of being always correcting our students’ speeches we could do remedial
activities to solve the different problems that show up in class before it
becomes a language disaster. Maybe we can begin with group activities and if we
detect a specific problem with a determinate phonic for example or with a
individual student, we give them a specific activity.
Another strategy could be Cecilia’s proposal of
“Oh, you meant…” to expose the correct phonic without a high level of affective
filter. By Dolores point of view immediate correction does not always work, we
need to work it afterwards but not in the immediate time. While talking they
are not listening to you, they are only hearing. It is a progressive long term,
so we need to focus our attention is giving them the information during the
process. If we not correct errors, they will fossilized into mistakes.
To finish todays lesson, we have seen another
topic related with the previous one: Writing skills. In essence, we need to
connect writing and reading activities to improve both skills. While writing
students show their personalities and it is an engaging way to motivate them
too. Also, we can not ask them to write just out of the blue without any
previous preparation. It is something we need to work on progressively.
This is our project, from Group 2 (Ana Gonzalo Díaz, and myself).
THANKSGIVING DAY- PROJECT
INTRODUCTION
For our project, we have decided that the context of our classroom is going to be in a bilingual school, in 4th grade of Primary School.
The project is going to be developed in 7 sessions, two days a week in a total of 4 weeks. We want it to be very engaging to the children, so we have decided to do this project only two days a week, the Thursdays and Fridays, so they end the week in a very intense way.
The outcome of the
project is to understand what Thanksgiving is and why it happens. The different
objectives that we are going to work with are:
·
Develop
empathy with their environment.
·
Apply their
knowledge in TICs.
·
Develop
civic awareness and ethical values.
We have decided to work with two questions instead of only one because we think that in that way we can concrete more on the topic. Those two questions are:
· Why do they say “Thank you”? With this question, we pretend to look for the origins of Thanksgiving, what they do on Thanksgiving day, etc.
·
How can we
say “Thank you” in our neighbourhood?
With this question we want them to be aware of their privileges. Also, we want them to understand that not everybody is under the same circumstances, and some people do not have the same privileges that we have. We want to bring Thanksgiving Day to Spain but not as we know it.
SUMMARY OF SESSIONS:
·
Introduction
day: assign the roles to the students and
explain the project.
·
Researching
days (Why do they say “Thank you”?): the students would have different resources to do researching and
understand what Thanksgiving is and its story.
·
Discussion
(How can we say “Thank you” in our neighbourhood?): the whole class would discuss what they are thankful about and answer
the question that we propose.
·
In search
of associations days: the students would have to look for the different
associations that there are in the neighbourhood and decide with which associations
are they going to collaborate. Those days, the other half of the classroom
would do the different boxes in which the students of the school would leave
their donations. Also, the students would take advantage of the radio studio
that they have in the school to promote their initiative.
·
Thanksgiving
day: this day the students would carry the
donations to the associations that they have decided to work with.
DAY 5th of November -
Introduction Day.
·
Main goal
of this lesson: work individually extracting information from a text.
This day is very important because everything has to be clear for the students. The question “Why do they say Thank You in the USA?” would be in the big blackboard so the students could start thinking about it at the start of the lesson.
There would be a brainstorming to make sure that the students actually know what Thanksgiving is and what people in the USA do on this day. The teacher role in this first-class is to guide the students making questions about what they already know about Thanksgiving Day. The students are going to be very active in answering the questions.
The teacher would also show them a video of the Macy’s Parade to the children, so they know a little more about Thanksgiving Day.
After
the brainstorming, the students would be divided into groups. Each group would
have a topic and would work in it. The different topics are going to
be:
·
Who are the
Wampanoag and what relation do they have with Thanksgiving?
·
What was
the Mayflower and what people were in it?
·
Who were
Samoset and Squanto?
·
Who was
Massasoit and what relation does he have with a feast?
·
Is
Thanksgiving the same for Native Americans?
The different topics would be written down in papers, and one of each group would stand up to catch one without looking.
When they have the topics, we are going to give them a text (https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/explore/history/first-thanksgiving/) which is going to be read by the language assistant. The text is going to be for them to work with it.
After
the reading, individually, they are going to start looking for information in
the text about their topics and writing the main ideas in a sheet.
DAY 6th of November - Start the research.
· Goal of this lesson: work in groups and assume the roles.
This day they would have to continue with the research that they started the past lesson. Firstly in the lesson, they are going to sit by groups and compare the information they have extracted from the text read the day before. They would decide before they start working, what different role is going to assume each member of the group (facilitator, proposal, supporter, critic and recorder).
After they have decided the roles, they are going to put in common the information that they have extracted from the text. The next step is to decide what else they need to look for to make their work more complete. They would have access to the Internet and to encyclopedias in which they can find the information they are looking for.
Also, one of the assistants of the school would be in class helping with the English doubts and also answering questions about her own experience on Thanksgiving Day.
While the children are working, the teacher is going to be watching them work and taking notes about their behaviour to write it down then in the rubrica that she/he is going to have to evaluate the children.
The children do not have to do a huge writing in which they explain all the information that they have found. The main idea is that they understand their topics perfectly and assume their roles.
Taking advantage that this day they have to go to the TIC classroom, the TIC teacher in the school is going to show them how to use “Powtoon”, an easy way of doing presentations and videos.
For
the next day, they would have to prepare a presentation about the information
that they have about their topics, so in that way the rest of the group can
better understand the history of Thanksgiving Day.
DAY 12th of November - Cineforum.
· Goal of this lesson: relate the different topics and finish answering the question “Why do they say “Thank you” in the USA?”
This day is the last day about this first question: Why do they say “Thank you” in the USA?
The whole lesson would consist of the presentations of the Powtoons that they should have done in their houses. The first minutes they would have time to talk with their mates about the different ideas they think that are necessary to be mentioned in the presentations.
After that, the presentations would start. The teacher would decide the order in a convenient way, so the children can understand better and follow the information they are receiving.
After each presentation, there would be a round of questions if there is any question they have. In this round of questions, the teacher can help the students to answer if they do not have all the information clear.
The last minutes of the lesson, there would be a discussion of the relation between the topics. The teacher would be a guide for them to understand that every topic has relation between each other.
The
last part of the lesson is going to be the last reading about the text they
work with the first lesson, so now they understand it better with all the
information together.
DAY 13th of November - Discussion session.
· Goal of the lesson: Review all the information seen in the previous sessions and dive into the concept of being thankful.
Since this day, we are going to begin a new stage of this project. To assure every student has already a framework of culture and history of Thanksgiving, as well as key vocabulary words from it, we are going to approach the next question that would guide the next and final sessions: How can we say thank you in our close environment?
If it is needed, in the first 10 minutes we will do a Kahoot with some key concepts, key vocabulary words and contents they have researched last week, so they refresh the data and finish the understanding and acquiring process of the history.
Once we have this assured, we will sit all together on the floor, in a circle and we will do an assembly session. There will be music in the background to create a comfortable and low affective filter sensation in the students.
The main idea of this lesson is to discuss (focusing on speaking) on some philosophical and moral concepts. We will start with a question, and in silence, maybe in two-three minutes, the students must answer in a paper sheet.
· For what are you thankful about?
Once they all have written it down, the teacher will be guiding the conversation between the answers so everyone can participate, can open their hearts and minds and feel the protagonist of the lesson. We can commission a student to write down in the blackboard the most repeated answers.
The
next questions to relate what they are thankful about to the final product of
the project would be:
· How can we thank others?
If the class and the discussion allow us, we can get deeper on the topic and try to answer all together questions like: What means to be thankful? What is to thank? Do we have to thank others? Just if the group shows interest in it.
With the last question, How can we thank others? The main objective is to guide the group to the next session, what can we do (and this is the aim of the project) to show our thanks to others. Can we do something in our neighbourhood to show how thankful we are for what we have been talking about in this class? Who are the people that will be more excited about receiving our gratitude and help? Is it satisfactory to share our happiness in what we have got with others? Does it make us better people? Does it make us feel better with ourselves?
We will finish the lesson with a storytelling part (10-15 minutes) from a book-related with the topic. To help students to understand better the story as well as improving the learning of Thanksgiving vocabulary, we will create a word wall with key words that are important to know or that they might do not know. For that, the children would write down in a paper those words they did not understand and we will write down in the blackboard to work them later (maybe with direct translation or explaining it to them with synonyms or explanations in L2).
This
lesson apparently doesn't work on anything about English, but it is not true.
We are working speaking, listening and writing skills. They are also all the
time receiving sounds inputs, as well as producing outputs themselves, which
means using the language for a real purpose, communication with others in order
to participate in a big discussion with their equals. Also, we are practising
vocabulary, grammar tenses, maybe some idioms, pronunciation, intonation and
conversation strategies and skills.
Day
19th of November - In search of our association!
· Goal of the lesson: Find the association to collaborate with.
For this session we will work together with the TIC teacher. We will use both sessions that are consecutive in the schedule. We will start in the TIC classroom. For today’s lesson we need to find and set the association, ONG, etc. we are going to help in order to fulfill our Thanksgiving aim. The previous day we will have told them to ask at home for some charity causes that might be working at the moment in the city, or some charitable associations that their families or friends know that would be grateful for receiving our help.
So, to begin the class we will do a brainstorming and write in the blackboard those names they have brought and simultaneously search it on the Internet so we can all see the information and pictures of it. Once they are all said and debated, they will divide in groups of 4-5. Also, all of them will have roles to assure the efficient work of the group (as well as they learn how to manage the varied tasks, practise group management, group communication and consensus). The teacher would give each group a new association and they should find information about it:
· Banco de
alimentos
· ACNUR
· Save the
children
·
A project
from a near church
· A neighbourhood association
To
collect all the information they would fill the next template in order to
register the essential information of it:
They would have to do a research of it (with TIC’s teacher help and strategies, she/he will have a monitor role) to find more offers that would interest us. Ourself would have a facilitator role, we will stand there for doubts, taking notes of the group work process and the information they are collecting, always active for them if they need us but not interfering in their work so we promote autonomy. In order to do this, we will also put in the big whiteboard a clock with a countdown of 40 minutes. That is the time in which they have to search all the information. This is a way to make them conscious of the time they have to do the work and personally manage the time-work as an individual person and as a group.
When the time is over, they would have to give the teacher the template filled and they will all sit around the whiteboard. The teachers would search for that association so it can be projected and everyone can see it. The group in charge of it would give a brief speech of the work they do and the project in which we can be involved. Once they are all exposed, they will have 5 minutes to think and vote for the best option or the one they most like. As it is going to be a group decision, the one chosen would be the most voted. When they say out loud which is their decision they would have to argue why. We will write on the blackboard this guide sentences to help them:
·
I consider
this project the best one because…
·
Also it is
important that…
· I like
that…
· We could help them by….
Also it is important to decide how we are going to contribute (for example, collecting food, toys, a performance, etc) so the goal is clear and decided by all in consensus.
Once
the association is chosen we will tell them the next steps of this project
journey. The teacher will contact the association and once they told her how to
participate she will tell them and the next day we will start preparing
everything.
Day
20th of November - We get going!
Goal of the session: get everything prepared, work in small groups and as big class group.
Once the project is decided this day would be devoted to prepare all the materials and schedule the process of recollecting and giving our gratitude. As this is going to be unexpected because the students are going to be the ones who decide who and what we are going to give to help, we can only schedule the lesson from a general point of view. It could be adaptable to whatever situation.
The main idea is to work in collaboration with the Arts & Craft and TIC teacher. We are going to prepare the class in four sections or corners and in groups, the students would be spending 20 minutes in each corner to participate in all the tasks needed to get our project done.
·
FIRST
CORNER. The painting corner: Here they
will be working with the Arts & Craft teacher and will prepare some boxes
to collect all the objects we are going to give to our elected association. The
paperboard boxes can be painted with Thanksgiving elements for example.
· SECOND CORNER. The advertising corner: In this corner we will be heading the activity. The
aim is to write altogether their advertising speech that after will record. As
a teacher, we will guide them in the writing process but, as always, monitoring
and not interfering.
· THIRD CORNER. The radio corner: We will use the radio project of the school to spread
our advertisement for all the education community to let them know what we are
going to do and explain to them how they can participate if they want. Here we
will be the TIC teacher with the material needed, recording their voices.
· FOURTH CORNER. The poster corner. Here the group has to create a poster made with a board, pencils, crayons, collage photos, etc. to put all over the school to advise everyone and promote the participation of everyone.
For
this penultimate session we will be using two hours of class, using one of the
teachers involved in the activity.
Day 26th of November - THANKSGIVING DAY!
Today we will do the excursion to the association decided to give out what we have collected! If it is needed, we will take hours from other lessons so they can experience it calmly. The main point of this day is to make them take an active part in the final stage of the project. As it has been student centered, it is really important that they are the protagonist of the thankful action. To make them aware of all the work done in the process, of all the reflections about being thankful, of helping others who need us, it is essential that they go out to the association they have decided and give them what they have collected as well as talking to them and personally say thank you for the reason they want.
Maybe
in this session they will not use L2, but I think the main reason here is not
only the language we are teaching but the values and civic competences they are
showing out. Teaching shouldn’t be only focused on contents, but in helping to
create better citizens of this world.
As
you can see during these seven sessions we have worked four language skills
(listening, speaking, reading and writing) at the same time, as well as
vocabulary and grammar tenses adequate for their level. Although the main
objective was not the language itself but the civic and social competence and
awareness as well as the historical knowledge. The language was the vehicule to
get to the outcome. They have worked with different subjects, using different
skills and learning without even knowing, because their goal was not to learn
contents but to create something they were committed to.
