Video

Shaping the way 2009

My name is Federico Arteaga and I am the trainer of the group.....


Shaping the way

Reflections on Feedback: teacher Maria del Pilar Rodríguez

Feedback is very important, especially when talking about teaching, since it is the only way there is to know things are being done properly and it also encourages teachers to improve. Nevertheless it becomes a hard (job) task because teachers don't know how students might react to it. Teachers must be very tactful when giving feedback, it should be in a a friendly way so students won't feel neither criticized nor offended. I think with children it is very dificult to do it that way since the more tactful it is done
the easier they will confuse concepts and won't realize they made a mistake. children don't care about making mistakes, they only care about being undrestood, so if it is something wrong, they will forget very easily. Teachers need to give feedaback, but with children it is a waste of time. They will correct their mistakes little by little; only practice with them will make them aware of them.

Mid-Term Projects

Hello everyone!!

Here we have the first two projects for the Class! Luisa and Alejandro have done an excellent work on planning and peer review.

You can download them and post comments about our teachers' work. I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of your class plans.

PROJECTS

Just to Share... Teacher Paola Andrea Cardona

§ Building language awareness:

In many of my courses with kids I’ve notice that there is a common fact among students: most of the time they don’t speak English. They are starting the process of interacting with this language and in general they don’t realize the importance of it in their lives.

We as teachers are mainly the support they have, not only for telling them that it is important, but for encouraging them to use it in their daily activities as something fun that can enjoy and at the same time learn from it.

There are several activities to build language awareness that don’t have to be focus on a specific age, they can create consciousness in kids, teenagers and adults- those ones who are not completely involved with English and perhaps are true beginners; those things can help them to get involved in the process of learning the language enthusiastically.

§ Contextualizing language:

It is not a secret that interaction and visuals are vital to the development of an effective learning process no matter in which subject: English, social studies, arts and even math. Sometimes we learn both faster and better by association; our job as teacher is to provide as many activities to associate with the background knowledge as we can, of course, taking into account the aims and expectations of our students and avoiding the confusion with something else.

When contextualizing something, many doubts and misconceptions can appear- there has to be a fact that clarify those doubts with both the teacher’s help and the clarification of the existing context- everything around us (sounds, smells, objects, etc).

§ Integrated skills tasks:

This is something we must keep in mind all time because with activities like this we can not only test our students’ comprehension, but have a clear idea about their strengths and weaknesses and that way know specially where is important to focus.

When we talk about integrated skills task, maybe the first thing that comes to our minds (at least to mine) is something boring, long and sometimes even doubt about the success of the activity. I think those activities should be developed with games, that allow our students to have fun and acquire a kind of accuracy dealing with all the skills.

§ Authentic materials:

Sometimes I found myself in the middle of a lesson planning session without knowing which extra material would be helpful for my class, and actually I had never thought about the authentic materials we discussed in our last session.

To me, the class was mainly focused on the academic purpose and the materials I used were directly related with the topic of the class leaving music as an extra-aid to focus even more in the topic of the lesson, or sometimes to relax the students. Realia wasn’t something actively used, but after our session of “authentic materials” I came up with a bunch of ideas for my classes.

Not because I’m teaching kids it has to mean that the class is going to end up being a mess, but the authentic materials used can be that “key” to let the English as a passive component for a while and incorporate things from the outside -from that reality they know and enjoy- to set a nice class environment.

*Paola Andrea Cardona M*

Assessment for integrated-skill tasks: teacher Luisa Fernanda Quintero

Assessing integrated-skill tasks

One the most useful ways to get our students involved into the learning of a foreign language is through the integration of the different skills, which help them to see this new language as a tool of communication and as a bridge to get to know different cultures.

Content-based language instruction and task-based instruction are two types of integrated skills approach .The first of these emphasizes learning content through language, in which students practice the different skills while learning content such as science, math, etc. The second stresses doing tasks that require communicative language use and include pair and group work, since students need to develop different tasks which they should interact and cooperate with other people.

The importance of this approach is that the students are not solely exposed to learn a new language, but they are also communicating their own ideas while working on topics that are of their interest. Therefore, in this approach, assessment should be developed in a way in which students can demonstrate knowledge and ability in several areas.

A performance task is a good kind of assessment, since this provides the opportunity to put into practice what students have learned and to demonstrate what they are able to do, and what is difficult for them. Examples of this may include the development of a project based on a specific topic or on a topic of their interest, so they can feel comfortable and confident with what they are doing And at the same time, they are applying al the skills they have developed during the lessons.

Luisa Fernanda Quintero Correa

A few words from Teacher María del Pilar Rodríguez

Can we say that we have the whole the responsabilty of our students' leaning? We give them the basis to learn, we try to guide them towards success, but does it mean that if they don't reach their final goal is our fault? They learn what they really want to learn, if they don't want to, they won't; it is up to them if they really want to take advantage of what we are giving them. I'm saying this, because we as teachers try to give our students the best from us, telling what they should or shouldn't do, try to make them be aware of the importance of the use of English in class and why they shouldn't use spanish, but most of them never get to understand it, so their progress takes longer, so they think it is our fault, if we get to make them aware of this issue we will have reached a very important objective in our role as teachers