20th January 2014 Today has been my first day of teaching practices. My group of students consists of 10 people from the first course at the degree of Primary Education in the Faculty of Education Science. We have had a problem because the students are in their blank days for preparing their exams, so only one student out of the 10 that belong to my group has assisted to the today’s lesson. I have adapted the activities and tasks that I had prepared for pairs or groups, but I would say that the class has been very productive in the sense that the student was motivated to speak and participate. In fact, we haven’t finished all the activities I had prepared because the student was making questions and working very well in each task. These lessons are focused on fostering and improving the oral skills (listening and mainly speaking). Each session will last one hour and a half, a total number of 20 lessons. Today we have practiced about presentations by using a game in the blackboard. I wrote some items related to me and the student had to guess what they are by asking me questions. This is a simple but effective way of presenting me to the students. Then, we changed the roles and it was the student who had to write some words that are related to his life and I had to guess what they are for him. The second activity was a listening about the dialogue between an examiner and a candidate for an IELTS speaking test. This listening is used as background knowledge so that now the student is able to imagine a situation in which he is the candidate and I am the examiner. We improvised the situation and the communication was really fluent and funny. Then we continued with some activities adapted from a book that Elena Gómez gave to me and the other people in charge of the English lessons at the faculty. She told us we could use the book or even adapt the activities in it for our classes. I prefer to adapt the activities and make them more motivating for the students. The first activity was to answer typical questions in interviews for famous people in a daily newspaper. The questions were about personal issues such as hobbies, preferences, personal opinions, etc. The next adapted activity consists of guessing the question for certain answers related to vocabulary and expressions about different types of accommodations and their characteristics. This activity was complemented with another one about finding the odd adjective, also related to the topic of accommodations. Then we did another listening activity using several photographs of different types of accommodations and their advertisements for being rented so that the student has to answer some questions related to his personal opinion about each photograph. And finally we have done some activities in order to improve pronunciation, mainly they were activities focused on word stress and their patterns.
Well done Macarena. However, my main concern here is that you seem to be supporting general English for the students and that is definitely not the idea of the Practicum experience. You should be attending classes with your advisor, learning CLIL classroom techniques and then be allowed to teach your own proposal. That is the required procedure. Please come to me for any question on this.
Yesterday we have our first English support class. It took place in seminar 1, from 16:00 to 17:30. Although I feared to be almost alone in class (experiencing the same problem that the most of partners are suffering) finally came to class eight students. One of the students did not belong to my group (7), but I guess she will deal with this issue with Elena and will not be any problem. So, there were three absent students of 10 in total, and another aforementioned student. The class syllabus was quite simple and focused on conversational purposes. In this first class, my aim was to assess their level and their confidence to speak in English. Thus, and after a brief introduction, we did an activity where they had to match questions and answers of an interview of a pop star and then answer those questions by themselves. Then, an activity where they had to choose one topic from a proposed list and speak at least for 30 seconds, and another one about speaking on whatever they wanted for 1 minute, using at least one connectors from a list. Finally, we played tic-tac-toe, dividing the class in two teams, being the mechanism to write O or X very much the same than in previous activities: doing a speech about the topic written in each square. Although I am concerned that the class was a bit repetitive, I think that the students’ attitude has been outstanding. We could create a great atmosphere in class. In this way, and in spite of the most of them have a level from lower-intermediate to upper-intermediate (5/7), two of the students, with poorer proficiency, could participate and feel integrated even though one of the students from the beginner lot seemed to be quite shy. In quite satisfied (by the moment) with them, and they show great interest and motivation to learn. Furthermore, I felt confident and comfortable teaching them, and I did not panic after a student's question which I did not know the correct answer. I could even say that I enjoyed myself.
Emilio, thanks for your enthusiasm and good mood facing the experience. Please check my comment above for Macarena, my concern is the same and I really want you to get the best of the experience.
I am Ginés Pedrosa Parra and, from now on, I am going to coment my experiences in my practical sessions in the IES "Ángel de Saavedra" of Córdoba. Today I have had the first one, which corresponds to First Year of Secundary Education (the well-known Spanish acronym "ESO") Before the class, I have been informed by the teacher about the syllabus, specially about the contents and the timing. The class took place at second hour, i.e., the one from half past nine to half past ten. The first thing the teacher did was taking roll. The students were in silence, more or less. Secondly, they were asked, as a warming up, about how were their weekends and if they remembered any song heard by themselves during those days. Many of them answered, but only two made a mistake -both made the same one-: confusing the preposition "on" to "by" ("I listened to Be my lover of Inna" instead of "(...)by Inna"). Thirdly, the teacher and I shared out a A3 sheet, which corresponds to the eighth unit of the syllabus. Afterwards the students copied the solutions from the digital blackboard to their sheets. Once they had finished, they played a game based on figuering out which song was the one a mate was whistling -a song previously worked in previous classes-. After that, The students listened to a song in order to focusing on several concepts (crecendo, accelerando and the word "dawn" -to widen their vocabulary-). The worked it setting the beats of the correnponding rhythm by their movement of their hands and, at a time, saying the ones they were setting. Long story short, the rest of the activities were related to singing (one to practice English pronuntiation and the other one with showing the characteristics of one instrument -today was the turn of the accodion- simulating the student were the instrument itshelf -e.g.: "I´m an accordion and I have keys....."-). Finally, as a review activity, the pupils listened to previously worked songs in order to remember them easily. During this final activity, the alarm went off. It has been an interesting experience. As the teacher told me before the class, we will participe more and more as the time goes. Today, my duty was reduced to understand how a Music bilingual class works in the non theoretical world, in a real center (by which I have taken notes) and help the teacher correcting several linguistic mistakes from the students.
In my second session at Magisterio again there has been just one student. Anyway, the class has been funny, motivating and I think that very useful for the sake of improving the oral, especially the conversational, skills of my student. The first task I proposed to the student was to read aloud 5 tongue twisters. The objective of this activity was to create a relax atmosphere and having fun, while he was getting the pronunciation of difficult sounds when put together. After this, we made a roleplay debate for the sake of practicing persuasive techniques in speaking. One of us was suposed to be from a determined political party against the idea of abortion and the other person was from the opposition party in favour of abortion. The idea is to discuss and persuade the other from your thoughts.
The next task was to imagine that he was an English teacher and there was a naughty boy in the class, so he had to think about the way in which he could foster the student's motivation and participation in the class.
Then, the next activity was to think of one word starting with each letter of the alphabet. After this, the student had to make up a story using the words he had mentioned previously ramdonly.
The next activity was to think of a well-known story and making up an alternative ending.
The last task of this session was to tell a story whereas I was interrupting him all the time by asking absurd questions. He had to answer my questions and then continue with his story without losing the plot.
Macarena, ok as a general English in-practice teacher; however, as I told you face to face the other day, you were supposed to be having CLIL practices in non-linguistic areas; say for example "pedagogy" or "educational statistics" etc. Isn't there any chance for you to ask your advisor in CCEE to be able to get in touch with that?
Yesterday I had my second session as an English supporter. But firstly, I want to apologize because I didn't understand very well how to enroll this blog last week. Anyway, I would like to explain my experiences.
When I had my first lesson I was nervous and I didn't know what to expect from it. But at the end, it was so possitive. There were six students and I had planned a few activities to introduce ourselves. We talked about our background, we commented the reasons why we have chosen Education as a way of life and so on.Then we practice some games based on vocabulary and they made one monologue about specific topics.
As their English levels were different, I tried to make the lesson relaxed and we followed motivating methods as working in groups.
Last lesson was yesterday. There were five students and they started filling some gaps in different written monologues. After that, we played noughts and crosses with topical issues. Then, we practice memory development and vocabulary acquisition by using "Story chain".
In a circle they had to remember the sentece said by their partner on the left hand and add another part to it. Obviously, the chain was broken sometimes and it was a great opportunity for them to discuss.
Next day, I will try to make them practice vocabulary and lose shyness by playing pictionary. Obviously, including educational items and different levels or categories.
OK Rafael, please read my comment to Macarena above, the same applies to you. I assume you are in CCEE, but you haven't stated that and your partners might not know. I highly recommend that you propose the advisor to have an induction in the CLIL practices at the School. ATB, Javier.
Last wednesday I had my second class. It was at third hour, i.e., the one from half past ten to half past eleven (when the break starts). This time I had it with second year, group B. In this class, the students have the chance to practice their English with a native conversation assistant once every two weeks. This session was the one without him (he is a man). I was been previously told what the session was going to contain, so that I could help the students more effectively. The first thing the teacher did was, as usual, taking roll. Later on, he asked for a volunteer to tell the classmates what it have been done last class, helped by the "classroom diary". This is a challenging activity because the student has to change tenses, add modal verbs, include linkers, adverbs, etc.. So I helped him (because the one who dared to do it was a boy) by celebrating his grammar goals and giving him a hand with his mistakes (e.g. telling part of the correct sentence with a smile). After that, the teacher explained the exercice which was going to take the rest of the time. This one consisted in dancing with a concret choreography according to the rhythm of a song previously listened. The main points of this exercice were learning several new expressions related to dancing ("do a reverence", "hold the hand of your partner", "one step forward", "two steps backward" and "turn around") and working the "learning by dancing" approach. My role was helping students who didn´t do the exercice properly, for which I spoke slower and clearer and used the body language in order to make them understand why they were wrong. All the students looked happily involved, so I felt useful.
My first day of teaching practises was the 24th of January. In my class there are 9 students, almost every students went to the first class. They are studying the first course of Primary Education and they are really interesting in english class.
These classes are focused on oral skill so I divided the class in two parts. The first one we had presentations to break the ice so they spoke quiet because they felt comfortable. Later, we were practising classroom expressions, therefore, they have to speak in english to ask or to say whatever. They completed some expresions to memorize them. They were motivated and they used it during the class. It was very useful.
Finally, in the last part they practised the listening, they completed some exercises related with the dialogue of the listening.
Students went out happy, they worked and learnt. It is very satisfactory so I was very happy.
10th February 2014 Today is my third day at Magisterio. Again, I have prepared some activities to foster the oral skills, especially conversation and speaking. I am very happy today because the whole group has come! The first thing we have done is to know the new people that have joined the class. We have talked about their motivation for being in the course and other issues related to them, such as their hobbies and interests. After this brief introduction, we started with a funny activity in which I told a story that really happened to me but it was very unusual and strange. Then the students had to guess if the story was true or false. Then, in pairs, the students think about a story each person in the group. One of the stories must be true and the other false, so when each person tells the story to the rest of the class, they have to guess if they are real or not. The important thing is that the false stories must be realistic and the true ones must be unusual, just for the sake of confusion. It has been a very funny activity and the students have done it very well, creating excellent false stories when necessary. The next activity consisted of writing on the blackboard shocking statements to introduce a debate. Some of these statements were: “Homosexuality is an illness”, “Every girl, independently of her age, has the right to abort if she wants to”, “Big bottle must be prohibited in Córdoba”, & “Women are the best drivers”. The students have debated according to their opinions about these topics and it has been very interesting to know their perspectives on these troublesome issues. Then, we did a chain story telling activity. I started the story by saying “Once upon a time”, and every student had to add a sentence. Before that, I wrote on the blackboard some words that I was going to use to suggest the students some ideas of how to continue the story. After this, we did another funny activity which consists of being able to keep talking during three minutes without stopping. Each student could choose any topic that they felt confident with for the activity. There was a rule: Nobody could hesitate neither or spend more than 2 seconds in silence. The next activity has been a debate about what the students prefer: novels or movies based on novels (such as Harry Potter, Twilight, The Lord of the Rings, The Games of Hunger, Game of Thrones, etc). And finally, the last activity again has been focused on pronunciation and word stress.
Great activities Macarena, you do great; again, my concern is that this is very similar to what you already did in your graduate Practicum and you should be able to get in touch with something different.
Today, I have started CLIL practices at school "Virgen del Carmen". I am going to observe how bilingual plan work in this school. I am going to be with the first and second cycle of primary education. I am going to give arts (in 1st grade), science (in 2nd and 1st), and English (in 3rd). The bilingual program has been introduced three years ago in infant education so the 3rd course is not bilingual yet, it will be next year. This project is fairly innovative for teachers and students in this Centre. As a teacher has told me today, there are still too many aspects to improve. I have observed that teachers try to talk and explain all the concepts in English. The children interact with teachers and answer the most of the questions that the teachers ask to them. First of all, teachers explain the different activities in English, if the children have not understood properly, they repeat the activity in Spanish. Teachers use approximately 50%-70% English to carry out the session. With the first course students, Spanish predominate to English. To sum up, the first experience has been positive and interesting and I am very glad because the Centre and the teachers have received me enthusiastically.
Yesterday I had my third class. It was at second hour (from half past nine to half past ten), with First Level of Secondary Education, group A. The first thing, as usual, was taking roll and, after that, the teacher told the students they were going to review the eighth lesson, which is the last one they have done before the first second term exam (which will covered from lesson 6 to 8). He highlighted the most conflict points among which it was one I noticed very interesting, but difficult: they had to explain what a sentence from Billy Joel meant. It looked pretty difficult to a twelve year-old child. Nevertheless, most of them managed to explain it well, more or less. In part it is no wonder, as they have already talked about it before I had started my practice. It took long, most of the class time. Later on, the teacher show a model of an exam as the one the students will face to very soon. It took about ten minutes. Finally, according to the teacher instructions, the students sang the melody of a series of music works, just in the moment he stopped the audio reproductor. The aim of this funny play was removing the stress and making the students involved through singing. To sum up, a theorical class, ornated with a music play at the end.
I am going to talk about my second and third session at school. Today at first time I have given science lesson. I felt comfortable and fluent. I have asked to the children some questions about animals and baby animals. We were talking about viviparous and oviparous animals. I have used the blackboard to explain them the difference and after that we listened the audio. The teacher told me that I had given the lesson very good. He supposed that I had done this before, so I felt proud of myself. Some things that I would like to tell you are that in second course when the lesson is about to finish they review mental calculus and multiplications in English. In the first course, they have a paper tree. Every day one student thinks about an unknown word that he or she would like to know. When the student goes home, he or she searches the word and to the next day, they write the meaning of the word in a paper leaf.
12th February, 2014 Today I have had my fourth class, with Second Year of Secondary Education, group B. Almost all it has done has been the same that my class yesterday, even though that one was in First Year. This is due to the fact that the national syllabus contemplates the same contents for First and Second Year of Secondary Education. The only thing that changed from one class to another was the auditions (the songs used to the auditions) and, of course, the dialogues, answers and so on. As Music class is very participative, specially in the is organizated in this high school, every single class is different. Today did not come the conversation assistant because the class was thought to review the content and, therefore, his help was not absolutely necessary.
13th of February, Today in class we have talked about the Universe with the second course, groups A and B. As I said before, I am watching how does the bilingual plan work at school and also, how do the teachers work with this plan. What I am watching during this period is that teachers and students both are responding positively to this project. Students are learning better and faster. I was thinking about the way in which I learnt English at school when I was young and it was very different. The teachers only taught simple verbal structures on the blackboard with no sense. Most of the children didn’t understand anything. They didn’t talk about British or American culture or specific vocabulary. Also they didn’t teach with real-life situation. On the contrary, I love the way in which nowadays most of the teachers taught the English language. For example in this Centre they combine culture and language. They teach to their student with real-life examples. In this school, students understand almost every English concept of the units and they have a good general English knowledge.
(1/2) Achievement unlocked!! After having been waiting for my students to come to my lessons (due to their exams....), last 6th February I could teach my first class :) My students (3 people) are from 2nd course of the degree of Primary Education in the Faculty of Education Science. Since it was my first class and I did not know their level, I had prepared some activities in order to check their knowledge and use of the English language. Some of these activities, mainly focused on communicative skills, were: 1. Introductions: With the excuse of not knowing my students, I made them to introduce their partner. I thought it would be an interesting exercise in order to check if they were aware of third person singular endings. 2. As I wanted them to speak, I divided them into 2 groups and explained the following game: • “ACTIVITY 2: Who am I? Part I.
Work in small groups. Decide 3 different well-known characters (actors, cartoons, musicians, painters…) and write them down. Once you have written the names, the other group will have to find out your characters by asking a limited number of questions.
• ACTIVITY 3: Who am I? Part II.
Work individually now, choose another different well-known character and write a description (without revealing the name!). One of your partners will try to find out the name by reading aloud your description.
With these games I realized their main problems related to grammar (basic word order, question structure, etc). 3. I had also prepared another two activities dealing with vocabulary (mainly related to education) in form of games. 4. Last part of our class was a discussion: I asked them about the “bilingual degree” they were studying. They told me their opinion and expectations of the degree and some useful information for me as a teacher of these supporting lessons. After having experienced my first class, I can tell it was worth it the fact of waiting for them for two weeks: they are highly motivated, willing to work and participate. So I was really happy with this small group but….. family is growing!!
(2/2) My second session (on 13th February) was started with an amazing surprise: two girls who were not enrolled in these lessons had talked to one of my students and, since they were really happy with the first session, they decided to enroll in my group Of course they were very welcome since Elena Gómez told me there was not problem. This second session was planned as it follows: 1. Brief game (Linked words) as a warming up activity. I do recommend this game to my colleagues since, at least my group, they were breaking the ice very fast… they got involved in the class in less than a minute! 2. Vocabulary activity: since last lesson they told me they were experiencing some problems with this specific vocabulary I planned the following activity.
“ACTIVITY 2: Education. The statements a-j below were made by students about courses they are taking. Complete each sentence with a feature from the list:
a. The tutors provide you with a _________ before the course. b. As part of our assessment, we have to plan and carry out a ________. c. It’s a very flexible programme: we have very ______________. d. It can get very stressful: we are assessed by ______________. e. Coursework has really fixed ______________. You can’t get _________. f. Everyone gets ____________ if they’re experiencing difficulties. g. The course is marked by _______________ of written work. h. I spend a lot of time doing ___________ in a laboratory. i. It’s mostly __________ : it will all be useful for my career. j. There are regular ____________ in which people take turns to make presentations.”
3. Pronunciation: After having completed the exercise, we focused on the pronunciation of this vocabulary (highlighting distinctions between primary and secondary as a review).
4. Listening: using a famous song (“Say something”) we were practicing listening in this part of the session.
5. Speaking: Using one of the activities planned in the book Elena Gómez gave us, we spent the last part of our session discussing several questions about the topic trying to use the vocabulary we had been using throughout the lesson.
If any of my colleagues want to use my activities which have been mentioned, feel free! Even if you want my planning sessions just tell me and I will be happy to share them.
Today it was my last session at school; I have felt sad because it has been a marvelous but short experience. This period has been very useful for me. This practice has been different from my degree practices because I have watched how does function a bilingual plan. Also I have realized how the students answer to this plan. This morning, in first course we have done a worksheet about the sea. The topic was “under the sea”. Firstly I explained the activity; the first step was trace, the second step was complete the features and the details and the last step was colour it. Then I drew on the blackboard a big sea with little fishes, sea stars, crabs and in groups of three they also drew on the blackboard during 3 minutes while all the classroom were working. I followed the same procedure with the other classroom of first course. In the second course in Science lesson, I revised unit 5 and 8. They will have an exam next week so the teacher asked me today if I could do a review with them. We started with unit 5 “The animals”. We were talking about viviparous and oviparous animals, baby animals and the difference between herbivores, carnivores and omnivores animals. I made questions for each student such us what is your favorite animal? Or Do you like kangaroos? They had to answer and they practiced the structure yes I do or no I don’t. All these questions improve their abilities in oral communication. After that I drew on the blackboard how do the animals move? and I wrote a list with several kinds of animals and the students wrote near of each animal how does it move, for example swim or jump, and oviparous or viviparous depending on the animal. In conclusion, I loved this period because I have learnt lot of aspects of bilingual education and I have also practiced as English teacher. All the teachers have supplied me documents and information that I have needed and they have left me develop my own lesson freely in this short period.
17th February 2014 Today has been my fourth day at Magisterio. We have done lots of activities focused on improving students’ fluency when speaking and making them lose their shyness. In the first activity, every student had to take 3 flashcards showing pictures of objects. Then I started telling a story about what I did the previous day, and every time that I named the object that appeared in any of the students’ cards, the person who had this card had to continue with the story. Then, we did a funny story that I love because students get nervous because they do not understand what is happening. The activity consists of telling the students that I am going to organize a party next week and I need them to bring some items. But the crazy thing for them is that they do not know what they have to bring. Every person can only bring things that start with the first letter of their names. They ask, “Can I bring X?” and I have to say yes or no. From time to time I tell them one or two things they can bring, until they guess the aim of the activity. The next activity consisted of a list of 5 words for each student that they had to describe one by one and the rest of people had to guess what words were being described. The person that guessed more words was the winner of the activity. Then we did another funny activity. Every student had to think of a word (for example, an object or the name of a famous person) and then write it down in a post-it. After this, the post-its were interchanged without seeing the written word and then they had to put them on their foreheads. In this way, each student had to make yes/no questions to the rest of people in order to guess what he/she had in the forehead. The last activity was one of my favorite. It was about making crazy and funny job interviews. each students was given a piece of paper with the name of a weird but real profession (such as pinguinologist, dog food tester, teddy bear repair technician, or fortune cookie writer) and then, one by one, they had to face the interview, in which I had the roleplay of the boss and the rest of people were my associates, managers or workers, and they had to answer to all of our questions and make up a story about why they wanted to become part of our company. Today's lesson has been very funny!
Hello everybody! First I want to apologize for not writing sooner, but I haven’t had time. I've already started my practices! Then I'll put the dates and what I have done each and every day.
February 6th, 2014 (9:00-10:00) This day, my practicum partner and I met with Javier, the practicum coordinator. During this time we talked about the goals of the practicum, Javier told us about using the calendar to Gmail; we also met the center's facilities, as well as the classrooms and teachers who we’ll work for our practices I must say I liked the school and all the teachers have been very kind to us.
February 17th, 2014 (12:00-13:00) This day was my first day of practice with the children belonging to the first level of the second cycle of Infant Education (3 years). First, the teacher Laura (English teacher 3 years) showed me how she work with 3 years in an English class . Laura has begun reviewing the vocabulary that students already knew. Before continuing counting what we have done I would point out that prior to this class, I had contact with Laura by email and we agreed that I was going to bring to class a prepared material to review the unit vocabulary that children already knew. I prepared a flashcard with the vocabulary in the unit and a puppet of a cat. Now I keep telling you what we did in class. Then I presented my material and we worked with him in class. I told the children that the puppet, called “cat” (because it’s a cat) forget how some things are said and we have to help him remember. So I asked the students: "What's this?” And the children responded: cat, dog,… This material liked children very much. To end the class, I helped the teacher to perform a task with the children; the students had to cut and paste a frog with their body parts and remember how to say each body part. And we finished the class saying goodbye to the children This class I liked it and have been very satisfied because I have seen how the material (which I did) really liked children.
February 18th, 2014 (12:00-13:00) Today has been my second day of class of practice and I have been with a new teacher (Carolina) during the first half hour, we have been with students, who are 4 years old and the second half hour with students, who are 5 years old. In both classes first we sang a song, and then we performed two chips. Furthermore I would also say that Carolina has explained to me how works with her pupils of 4 years and 5 years and has given me the vocabulary they were learning. She also told me that for the next class, I will prepare me material to reinforce the vocabulary learned from both levels. Soon I will tell you what material prepared and my experience in its implementation in the classroom. Sorry for my English, I hope to improve it soon!
Yesterday was the first day of my Practicum. In spite of having spent all the afternoon in the Academy, I'll share one of the CLIL session with 9 years old students which was related to PE and culture aspects. The objective by the end of the lesson was pupils had read about baseball and basketball and written about football. The session started with a warming up activity by asking students about the five most popular sports in the USA and if they knew about those sports: players, leagues, rules... On the top of their pupil's book there was a sentence including the superlative "the tallest" and some numbers which were used to review the superlative and numbers. Then, the teacher introduced the topic of the lesson by eliciting what they could see in the pictures. After that they read a text about baseball aloud. We helped them with difficult and new words. After reading, we checked understanding of the new vocabulary and repeat the same procedure with the text about basketball. Then, they carried out an oral comprehension activity. They had to listen to a sentence and say aloud if it was related to basketball or baseball. Finally, the had to do an activity where they had to read and put the sentences in order, and, in the last activity, by using key words given in the activity, they had to write about some aspects of American football.
My second session was the 31st of January with my group of students of the first year of Primary Education in CCEE.
That day we started the class with some questions to break the ice, for example, what about their first exams, their opinion about the degree, etc. After, they were practising listening with some exercises. Elena provide us of this useful materials.They have to fill the chart or to complete the conversation.
Later, I give them some practical structures to stablish an order to describe and to create a debate, and a list of winter sports vocabulary .
With this material, first, each student had a flashcard of a winter sport (ski jumping,speed skating,bobsleigh...)and he/she had to describe it to the rest of the class because those sport are not ususally in our country. Second, they started a debate and they had to defend the sport they had in their flashcard.
They had a nice class, they had fun and they are very motivated to speak and to participate in class.
Today, I am going to explain one of the yesterday lessons for 9 years old students. It was a maths class and the objective of the lesson was pupils practice with the units of measure and do some operations.
As a warming up activity, the teachers asked students to perform some measuring and weighing tasks, for instance the width of the board, the height of a desk, the weight of a board cleaner, to review language from the previous lessons.
Then, they had to copy a chart into their notebooks, measure the things suggested in the activity and write the answers. After that, students had to make pairs, ask and answer about the information on their lists, guessing what each length represented (erasers, pens, etc)
Later, they opened their activity book and did an exercise where there were some sums and subtractions and check the answers with a code in a box. Here, the students worked individually and checked with their partners when was necessary. Then, they carried out three problem-solving activities. Pupils worked individually and then checked it in pairs. Finally, the teacher checked with the class by asking them to read the problems aloud and doing the sums on the board.
Last wednesday I had my fifth practical class. This week I have had only one because the one I have on Tuesdays, with First Year, did not take place because of a talk. This was the turn of Second Year, from half past ten to half past eleven. At this stage of my practical training I have realized the time the students have their class affect their behaviour, specially just before the break (which takes place from half past eleven to twelve), when they are a bit more nervious than in other hours, according to what I have seen and the teacher´s opinion. The students had the exam of themes six to eight, so the conversation assistant did not have to come. It took the students the whole hour and was structured the followong way:
1. At first, the student had to write down their data in a gap filling headline.
2. Then, they had nine questions to answer, all of them by writing except one where they had to sing a song already worked in class. These were the questions:
a) The music album. The students had to write down what the three songs they were listening were. b) Listening and thinking. They had to analyze several musical aspects, such as texture, rhythm, timbre, etc., from another song. c) Vocabulary. In this question, the students had to define three words related to Music (folklore, oboe and orchetra) and make up one each sentences using them. d) A text. In this section, they were asked to rewrite in prose a song already made in poetry. e) Searching and learning. Here the students had to choose a topic covered in class and write what they remembered about it. f) Musical writing. In this activity they had to fill two more bars from two different meters shown as example (3/4 and 6/8). This activity was the only one where the English language was not the vehicle to express the answer. g) Images. The student had to describe a picture. What it will have to take into account to correct the exam is the proper use of grammar (tenses, modal verbs, order...), the range of vocabulary, the writing length, and the originality. e) A song. This is the part where the students had to sing a previously worked song. f) In my city. This was the last question of the exam and here the students were asked to write an essay based on street musicians in Cordoba.
3. Finally, as a volunteer activity, there was a survey where the students had the chance to say which part had been the easiest and the most difficult for them, as well as to write as many opinions as they wanted to.
During the exam I kept an eye on the students so that they didn´t cheat and, at the same time, I was talking low to the teacher about what the type of exam seemed.
On my third day in the Academy, the teacher continued with session I wrote about last Wednesday. The aim for that session was pupils read more about sports and carried out an art Project. So, that day English was used not only for PE but also for Arts. Firstly, as usual there was a warming up activity in order to review what pupils remembered about the sports from the previous lesson. Then, the opened their books and they had to perform a speaking activity in pairs. There were some questions about baseball and basketball and they took turns to ask and answer the questions. At the end of the activity, they looked and checked their answers. Secondly, they opened their activity book. Here, they had to practice some of the questions and answers in open pairs. They were given a chart from which they had to ask questions to create week programmes as a part of the training program of one of the characters who appeared in the reading text. The teacher corrected with them on the blackboard. Finally, as a project, they had to make a ball. First, the teacher showed students the ball she had made. Then, she read the instructions with pupils before handing out any of the materials. She held up the materials as they were mentioned, pointing to, for instance, the neck of the balloon. Pupils worked individually following the instructions also written on their books.
Today has been my fifth session at Magisterio. It has been very interesting and funny, and I think that we have created an excellent atmosphere, in which shyness has no room anymore. That is fantastic for the sake of improving conversation and speaking. The first activity of today’s lesson has been one in which a student had the role of a detective looking for the murderer among the rest of peers. In secret, every student had to read a piece of paper in which a new identity for this role play activity was described. The context of the murder is the following: “Richard was an old and rich man, and today after dinner he has been murdered”. The characters involved in the story are: the personal trainer, the butler, the wife, the lover, the gardener, the cook, the friend, and the housekeeper. The murder is the cook, but nobody except for him knows it. Every character is accompanied by a brief description of his/her personality and the name of the person he/she suspects of being the murder. After this, we did an activity that I like to call “The Teapot”, in which one of the students had to go out from the class for a minute while the rest of people were thinking of a verb to create funny situations. The thing is that the person out of the class has to guess the verb but he/she has to do questions in which the word “teapot” functions as the substitute of it. For example, if the verb is “to kill”, any sentence must be formulated wit “to teapot”, and maybe the guessing person can say “Can you teapot your best friend?”, and the rest of people have to say yes or no. The last activity we have done today was a board game focused on vocabulary about everyday life, hobbies and so on. Every student had to say 3 words or to do something, depending on the task given in every box of the game. For this activity it is necessary to have a dice and some pieces.
Today has been my third day of teaching practices, and again I have been in the first level of Infant Education. First, the teacher’s English has reviewed the weather and vocabulary learned with children. Then, during the last half hour, I've been doing with children an activity of the carnival. For carrying out this activity, I have made a memori related to the carnival. The activity has been developed as follows: First I have taught the new vocabulary to children with flashcards. After that I have put all the cards on the table and I called the boys and girls 2 by 2; and each child picked a card. If both images are the same we said "are equal" If they are not the same, we put sad face. Although it has been a very fun class, I would also say that the children have been very nervous and restless. I guess it was because they were celebrating the day of Andalusia.
25th February, 2014: Today I have had my sixth class, with First Year, group A, at second hour (from half past nine to half past ten). After taking roll, which has been, as usual, the first thing, the teacher has shared out the exams already corrected. The students have had some minutes to check it and think about any possible doubt. After that, there have been given the exams back to the teacher and me following the list order, letting every single student to make as many questions as they wanted to. This part has lasted half an hour. Later on, the students have spoke up their opinion about the workshop on percussion they had the chance to enjoy yesterday, on account of the intercultural week that is being celebrating in this high school this week. The teacher and I have been correcting their gramatical mistakes at speaking, at random, without any order but always smiling, to make the students feel more confident and confortable. In general, they looked very impressed about that activity. Following with the didactic unit, the students have copied the definitions of a couple of words, folklore and oboe, from the digital board. Once it has been done, they have spoke about what they knew about folklore. As a speaking activity, the teacher and I have done the same as the previous one, trying to correct not only the gramatical mistakes but also the content and, if necessary, the amount of information related to that (content). After this activity, the teacher has proposed to move to the latest part of the Unit 9 sheet, the one that has being done currently, to work on the word "lullaby". The students have said the ones they knew, such as "Duérmete niño". Once this speaking activity has been done, the teacher has played "La tarara" by two versions, a folkloric one and the Isaac Albeniz one. To finish the class, there have been played a song from "El amor brujo" ("Love, the magician") by Manuel de Falla and they have been asked to dance improvising, as they went along. In the middle of this dancing activity, the bell went off.
Tuesday was my fourth day of practice, which I loved it, has been great. As I said in the previous comment, the English teacher told me that I will carry some educational material to reinforce the vocabulary in class. During the first half hour, I was in the second level of Primary Education. With educational material that I made, I began introducing a new teaching unit, entitled "The title seeds" To do this , first with Flashcards , I introduced new vocabulary ( Seeds , shoots, stems, leaves , buds , flowers ). Then I presented the teaching material for children as a game. The game consisted of the following: We made groups of 5 people each, each group was a color. Each group threw a die and they had to say aloud the name of the image that had touched him, thus achieving this image. I made a board on which we write the collected images and the group which gets all pictures before, wins. Students really liked this activity, and They were very motivated and excited, trying to get a new image. During the second half hour, I was in class the third level of Primary Education. This class We also started a new unit. Therefore, I introduced the vocabulary with flashcard (baker's, butcher's, fruit shop, toy shop, clothes shop, park) and then presented the educational material I made. The activity consisted of: First I handed out pictures of different places in the city in class, and then I handed out to each child a picture of something you can do or buy at a specific location of the city. When I said "already", the students had to go to the place where they wanted to go according to his image. Then they had to say "Let's go ...." With this activity, the kids enjoyed and were highly motivated and had learning fun.
Last Tuesday, we carried out an Art session with children of 6 and 7 years old. In this hour the objective was pupils learn about primary and secondary colours and how to mix colours to make other ones.
As warming-up activity, we reviewed the colours words by putting one set of coloured crayons on each table. Then, we named a colour and pupils tried to be the first to pick up the correct crayon. We repeated this until we mentioned all the colours.
Afterwards, we handed out some crayons for each pair of students, a piece of paper to mix up colours and a worksheet. In the first activity they mixed the colours the activity indicated, and they had to write the answer next to the colour test. In the second activity they had to colour the rectangles of a table by distinguishing between primary and secondary colours. The correction of both activities was made with the whole group eliciting the answer by means of questions.
Finally, pupils did a communicative activity by asking questions in pairs about what they had learnt in that session. They asked questions about how to make secondary colour using this structure "What colours make...?".
The day before yesterday I had my seventh class, with Second Year. This time, I eventually had the chance to see the conversation assistant (from now on: Drew, as he is called) working in my class. The first thing was, as usual, taking roll. After that, the student did a gap filling activity related to Hey Jude lyrics, by The Beatles. They wrote down the corresponding words as they were listening to the song. The song was listened once previously and twice having the sheet with the gap filling activity. After listening to the song and letting the students a couple of minutes to think of their answers, Drew read the answers and the students corrected their wrong ones. Once it was done, they all sang this song from two versions: a typical one by Beatles and another corresponding to karaoke style (voices almost silenced). Secondly, Drew read the lyrics of "Land of hope and glory" an adapted song for Henry The Seventh coronation, from the instrumental march number 1 from "Pomp and circumstance", by the English composer Edward Elgar. After that, we all sang it. It was easy because it is a well-known melody. Thirdly, Drew told the students the "Arriero de Bembibre" story, a previously worked folk song, in English. Due to the fact that he did not understand the meaning from several words and idiomatic expressions, such as "mozo", "buena media", "arriero", "arreaba" and "venta", some volunteers explained it to him, in English. To finish working with this folk song, it was performed by the students adopting the corresponding roles to the lyrics. After this activity, as a flamenco guitarist, I let the students about the sad Paco de Lucía's death and told them about how impontant he was to Flamenco and to Music and Culture in General, not only in Spain but in the world. To show that I used the digital board to play several videos from Youtube. Finally, due to the date, we all sang the Andalusia Hymn, in Spanish, considering it is an issue to work in all subjects, according to Junta de Andalucia instructions.
I showed to my students a big poster of different carnival traditions and in different places. They described the poster and the festivity. Then, they have to describe their costume y their classmates have to guess it. It was very funny and they were motivated to make a good explanation and to guess their classmates´costume.
Finally, they learnt new vocabulary about this festivity, they saw a video with the origin of the carnival and they did an exercise of listening.
The class was very complete and useful for student, they were really happy.
The twenty-sixth of February, I gave a CLIL session alone for students of fourth of PE whose objective was pupils learnt about the different kinds of literary genres.
To start with, I proposed a warming up activity by asking them what novels they have read recently in their L1. They started saying names of books and we discussed if they were novels, poems or plays writing them on the board. Then, they opened their books and I asked them if they knew what the biggest book in the world was. By using a tablet, I showed them a picture where they could see the huge book compared with the height of a person.
In their books, they had to carry out an activity of reading and matching. They read silently about three famous examples of different kinds of writing (The Owl and the Pussycat, Peter Pan and The Chronicles of Narnia). After having read the texts they matched them with the correct picture which illustrated the passages. We checked the activities with the whole class by using a small board where students wrote their answers.
Once having corrected the activities, they had to answer in pairs some questions about the texts they had read. Before answering them, I checked if they had understood the words appearing in the questions. When they all finished we corrected the activities together with the small board as we did in the previous activity.
Finally, they did an activity where they had to write their own poems. They had to take into account the rhyme of the words before choosing them from three different possibilities. Once completed the poem they were given a piece of cardboard where they wrote their poems and drew a picture which represented the passage on it.
3rd May 2014 Today is my 6th session at CCEE. Today we have moved on towards a different path. We have explored the contents of one the bilingual subjects that my students are rolled in for their degree: Pedagogy. The dynamics of the classroom have been more or less like the previous ones, basically for the sake of improving my students’ oral skills, but today we have focused on the specific contents of this subject. The contents that we have covered today are: Previous ideas on the teaching profession, satisfiers and dissatisfiers in the teaching profession, teaching as a profession: criteria of professionalism, and the priorities for improving teacher education. The first activity we have done today was a brainstorming in which the students had to say their already learnt ideas about what the teaching profession implies. Then we have done a debate about the answers that students had given and we have discussed about the relationship between the teaching profession and the social changes, especially the ever changing characteristics of students and also the demands coming from the educational institutions. The second activity we have done had to do with the ideas that satisfy or dissatisfy my students from their knowledge of becoming a teacher. We have done again a brainstorming activity in which students had to say one thing that would satisfy and another thing that would dissatisfy them when they are teachers. Then we have done a role play activity based on the previous ideas. In groups of 3 the students had to imagine a dissatisfying situation when being a teacher, and they had to try to solve the problem and then share the ideas with the rest of the class. For our next activity, I provided my students with the definition of the term profession: “A disciplined group of individuals who adhere to high ethical standards and uphold themselves to, and are accepted by, the public as possessing special knowledge and skills in a widely recognised, organised body of learning derived from education and training at a high level, and who are prepared to exercise this knowledge and these skills in the interest of others”. So then, we have done a debate about what this definition suggests to my students according to their ideas about being a teacher. And after it, I gave them a list of ideas related to the criteria of professionalism for teachers so that, in pairs, my students could think about a situation in which the person being the teacher is not following the previously mentioned criteria, and then they had to share it with the rest of the class. Finally the class was split up in 4 groups in order to do an activity related to the theme of the priorities for improving teacher education. I gave each of the groups one sentence to work with: How would you improve the competences of the teacher?, How would you improve the quality of the initial teacher education?, How would you ensure the quality of teacher educators?, and How would you promote professional values and attitudes in the teaching profession? After some time, each group had to share their conclusions with the rest of peers.
Today has been my fifth day of class. I have been in the second and third level of Infant Education. Today has been a day of drawing. My tutor of practice, asked me to do some drawings of the content that the children will learn and their word written underneath to put them on notice board for parents. The purpose of putting this content on the notice board is that the parents to know the contents that the children will learn in each learning unit. Today has not been a bad day, but not good, because I couldn’t carry out any activities with children like I would have liked. I hope the next class will be more fun.
Yesterday, students of seven and eight years old carried out a lesson related to food in order to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy food. To warm up, we carry through a small class survey by asking students “What’s your favourite food?” Pupils wrote the food item down or drew a picture of it if they did not know the name of it. Then we asked them to say or show their favourite foods and made a tally on the board. Referring to the tally chart on the board we asked pupils “How healthy are we? Do we like the right foods? Is (ice cream) healthy or unhealthy?”
Secondly, we handed out the worksheets. In the first activity we elicited the names of the foods in the photos. We wrote the names on the board and pupils had to categorise the food items into healthy or unhealthy. When they finished, we all corrected together. In the second activity, they had to circle the foods they liked to eat. Then, they compared their answers in small groups. Once having compared it, we asked them if they had circled more foods in the healthy or the unhealthy column, by eliciting the answers one by one. In groups, pupils discussed who had the healthiest eating habits and who had the least healthy.
Finally, pupils were given another worksheet. This one was a diary entry and it was about food. We wrote on the board breakfast lunch, dinner. We drew pictures for each meal according to what they ate the day before. We elicited the vocabulary and wrote new words on the board. Then, we asked several pupils about what they had eaten the day before for breakfast and we wrote down the answers on the board. After this demonstration they filled their diary entries about what they had eaten the previous day.
Last wednesday I had my eighth class, with First Year, at second hour, from half past nine to half past ten. The first thing the teacher did was, as usual, taking roll. After that, the teacher shared out some posters and asked the students to substitute the older ones, because of their bad state or the naughty drawings made around there by the students (who knows by who...). Later on, a quote from the great Spanish composer Manuel de Falla was remarked: "La música no se hace, ni debe hacerse jamás, para que se comprenda, sino para que se sienta.". All the students agreed with Falla. Once it was done, the teacher played "Ritual Fire Dance" by Falla and asked students about their feeling about it. At this point there was certain chaos at answering because the students tried to take part without taking into account the order, so the teacher and I had to tell them off and order them to be quiet. Once the class returned to the proper silence state, the students said very differents things, such as "fear", "like a snake", "a sacrifice", "magicians", "witchcraft" (this word was unknown to one student, who had to say the Spanish word to express what he was thinking about. I asked him to try and use other words to say different features of this kind of woman, giving him the begining -"I kind of woman from the tales who flies in..."- and, finally, I wrote on the brackboard the English word to it), etc.. All of them made sense and had a lot to do with the work by Falla. Later on, there was a humming contest based on the Falla melody. Then, the teacher told the students what they had to do as homework, i.e., the section from their sheet called "searching and learning" where they had to look for information about a topic (about Falla or Spanish folklore -the students had the chance to choose-). To finish the class, we all sang "Allelluiah" by Leonard Cohen and "Viena" by Billy Joel, to practice Engish by singing, a good way to learn, by singing, and to end the class.
Yesterday I had my nineth class, with Second Year, at third hour, from half past ten to half past eleven. This time the conversation assistant did not come but two special education children (from what we call in Spanish "aula específica). They both came with their specific teacher. This is done in order to make them feel part of the class even if they have their own activities, due to their limitations. Firstly, the teacher took roll. Secondly, he asked students to speak up, in front of the class, about what "El arriero" lyrics (a previously worked song) meant. Two of the volunteers made it in Spanish and another one in English. As they went along, I hightlighted the key words. Thirdly, the students changed the lyrics from a song (in poetry) to prose, by using Spanish writing, considering that it was a very demanding exercice to make using English, according to the students level. Once they all finished, some volunteers read their writings and the one the teacher chose as the better was rewarded with an extra point in the final mark. After that, the students took part in the same kind of competition, this time making up a comic about "El Arriero the Bembibre" song. Another winner was rewarded with an extra point. Later on, the teacher told the students what they had to do as homework. Reaching the end of the class the students did an exercice where they had to write a sentence using several words, previously defined. The last activity consisted on singing "Hey Jude", by The Beatles. The curious thing was the fact that the teacher stopped the playback and named one student at random and he or she had to keep singing a capella. That way, they were forced to be aware to the lyrics. After three performances, I explained several expressions from the song and the ring went off in the middle of my explanation.
The fifth of March¸ I gave the second part of the literature lesson that I had started last Wednesday with students of fourth of PE. The objective for this session was to learn more about the types of genre they had learnt by reading a passage from one of the novels.
As a warming up activity I divided the class into two groups and we did a quiz. I wrote a sentence on the board describing a characteristic of novels, poems and plays and they had to guess which one it belonged to.
Secondly, I reminded them the novel Chronicles of Narnia and if some of them had read about it before. Next, I explained that we were going to read some paragraphs about this book. In turns, they were reading the text aloud and clarifying the words they did not understand. Afterwards, they read the text silently and put the paragraphs in order. Then, we checked the activity with the whole group.
After that, I asked them to open their activity book. I explained that they had to put in order some paragraphs related to the biography of C. S. Lewis. They did it in groups of three due to the complexity of the activity and we checked the answer with other groups. Straightaway, the read and answered some sentences with “yes” or “no” about the text they had ordered. Finally, following the steps in the previous activity, they wrote about their favourite writer.
To end up, they made a poster about their favourite book writing about the author, story, characters and why it liked them.
10th March 2014 Today has been my 7th session at CCEE. We have continued with the theme of Pedagogy today. Basically we have been focused on a conceptual approach to the idea of education, its taxonomy in terms of education fields, and also the main theoretical models in education. So we have started the lesson with a video in which teachers speak about their ideas on education. The students’ task was to take notes about the main ideas of the video and then, in groups of 3, share and decide which ones were the best. Then we have debated about the fact that education is seen as a lifelong process intended for the modification of our behavior, in other words, that education can be seen as an instrument of social change. After it, we have made a classification of the educational fields, based on a text I had provided my students with. The original source of the text was the UNESCO, but I have adapted the text so that it is more useful for our goals in the class. The text talks about such classification and also about the description of each of the educational fields in which the taxonomy is based on. So, at the end we have agreed on a taxonomy like that: Formal education, Non-formal education, and Informal education. Then, the formal education is made of Early childhood education, Primary education, Secondary education, and Tertiary education. And finally, Secondary education is split up into Upper and Lower levels. Once we agreed on that, in pairs, students had to provide definitions for the educational fields assigned to each team, and then they had to share them to the rest of peers, who could add or change anything in their mates’ definitions in order to improve them. The last activity we have done today has been related to the theme of the main theoretical models in education. Working, my students were given a different text for each team. Each text was about the characteristics of one theoretical model in education (Traditional Pedagogy, The New School Movement, Progressive Education, Pedagogies of Freedom, Neoliberalism, and Critical Pedagogy). The task of each pair was to think about how they would teach a lesson by following the ideals of the theoretical model assigned to them, and finally, share with the rest of peers that experience.
Today has been the first day of my Practicum at school “San Agustín- Salesianos” in Linares. Before starting the Practicum, I met the school’s director who explained me that the bilingual program had been introduced two years before. I am going to be in the first cycle of Primary Education. The name of the teacher I am working with is Juan Pablo and he only teaches Science and English, so I am going to observe how the bilingual plan works in his classes. Moreover, the school has a native English teacher whose name is Matthew and he is going to be with us on Mondays and Tuesdays. I’ve started the day with 2nd primary children. They are 27 and I’ve observed that they are active and participative all the time and also, they are curious because they made lots of questions to teachers during the class. The first lesson they had was English and it started with the routines. Every day one pupil becomes “mini teacher” and it tells to its classmates which day of the week is, what the weather is like and which season it is. Then it asks four questions to four volunteers and finally it spells its name. After that the lesson starts. As I told before, Matthew was with us, he did the class while Juan Pablo guided him. Today’s lesson has started with a warming up activity in which children had to remember some pieces of clothes that were drawn on the board and Matthew asked them questions about clothing, too. Secondly, they did a clothes word search sheet and finished a picture that they had started the previous session. The second session today was with 2nd primary children, too. But, the lesson was Science. In this class students are divided in four groups. They have just started a new project and each group had to search at home some information about the topics: the age of the caves, the age of the romans, the age of the castles and the age of the inventions. During twenty minutes, in groups, children had to discuss about: animals and food, clothes and people, tools or weapons, buildings, art and important events from these ages. After that, each group explained these topics to the others while the teacher asked them some questions. I have observed that teachers talk and explain all the themes in English and students try to use English to speak and to answer the questions, although it is not easy for them and sometimes they speak in Spanish. If they don’t know how to say something in English they say it in Spanish, the teachers translate it and then, pupils repeat it. While Matthew was working with the students, Juan Pablo show me the last lesson plans they have used and he have explained me the methodology and the activities he used to do in class. The third session today was with 1st primary B children. The lesson was Science in which they talked about the chores. We’ve seen some chores and we’ve asked to the students if they do it or not. Moreover, we want to know if they help their parents at home or not. Finally, students had to complete a table which had the days of the week and the chores seen before. They had to write a check mark if they do it or leave it in blank if not. To sum up, I have to say that I’ve learn more than I thought in my first day. The teachers have received me with enthusiasm, so I feel comfortable and glad for that. It was pleasant to be at school again.
Today has been my second day at school. The first class I’ve seen today was Science with 1st primary A children. The session was the same that we’ve done yesterday with 1st primary B children in which they talked about the chores with the English native teacher. I could see the differences between both classes. 1st primary A children are more participative and active than 1st primary B children. Although the teachers use the same methodology with both groups there is a world of difference between them. Not just on the behaviour of pupils, but also in the way they learn. It seems that they are still in infant education. The second session today has been Science with 2nd primary children. We’ve remembered yesterday’s session and we’ve talked a little bit about the most relevant and important things and success from these ages. After that, each group started to create a diagram in a poster with the information collected in the previous session. But, before doing this the teacher has explained them how to do the diagram while I was drawing it on the whiteboard. Despite being the first time working like this and we’ve helped them, they’ve worked very well. They know how to organize themselves and how to develop the activity. It’s a pleasure to work with them because they are really interested and involved in that project. Finally, my turn! I’ve done the third session today. It was English with 1st primary B children. Before the class, Juan Pablo explained me what I had to do and I did it. We’ve been talking about their bedrooms and we’ve done two activities. One in which they have to search in a picture the images that appear in some pieces of puzzle and match them. And secondly, they had to colour four objects, trace some words and circle the correct ones. I conclusion, during my first teaching session I felt comfortable and I think that my speech has been fluent. Students have paid attention to my explanations and they have done the activities with no difficulties. So, I am proud because I believe that I’ve done a good job today!
Today I have had my tenth class, with First Year, at second hour, from half past nine to half past ten. The first thing has been, as usual, taking roll. Secondly, the teacher and I have shared out the Unit 10 sheets to the students, who had to copy the name of the songs, their authors and the followings definitions from the digital board. The unit is called "Woman is Fickle", the translation from the well-known aria "La donna è mobile", from Rigoletto, an opera by Donizzeti. Thirdly I have asked the students about what an opera is and, after helping them with their answers, we have reached an agreement: "an opera is a piece/work of theatre sung". To do it, the students had to practice the plural female and male (Female voices are..../Male voices are....). After this speaking activity, they have been asked to mark the ternary rhythm upon the aforesaid aria. Once it has been done, we all have sung it, firstly normally, and after that through a karaoke version (voice track muted). Later on, there has been a contest of solo singing. There have been eight volunteers and they did it quite well. The winner has got an extra point in his final mark. After that, we all have sung another verse of the aria. To end the class, the students have done the same they did at marking the ternary rhythm of the aria but this time with binary one, from a well-known song which is part of the Rocky´s soundtrack: "Eye of the tiger". The bell has just gone off at starting to listen to another song, one from the zarzuela "La verbena de la paloma", by Tomás Bretón.
Hello! First I want to apologize for taking a few days off from the blog, but my internet was not working well. Through this comment, I present my experience of my last two classes of practice. On 6 March, was my sixth day of practice, at this time, I spent half an hour with the children of the second level of Infant Education and another half hour with the children of the third level of Infant Education. In the two classes was made the same activities: first, the teacher reviewed the vocabulary with flashcards, after that, the children heard a story twice and they did an activity sheet, related to the story. Finally, the class has ended with teaching a new song. This class has been very rewarding, as I have observed how a new didactic unit is introduced. The teacher gave me the opportunity to prepare for the next class to I teach it. Then I explain my experience of this class. On March 11, I taught in the second and third levels of kindergarten, I really enjoyed, but I did not go as well as I expected. I introduced a new project in both classes. First I explained to the children the vocabulary we were going to learn in this project, after that, I put them a video and then the children made a activity sheet. It was the first time in my life I taught a class in English and although I'm not very happy how I taught the class, I have to admit that it was a nice experience, and I've learned a lot from it , because as it is said : " learn from mistakes " . I look forward to learning a lot, and in the future be a good teacher. Although my specialty is Early Childhood Education and I would like to work as a teacher of kindergarten, I know that English is necessary and I will surely have to taught English , so I would like to say that I love this master´s degree and practice , because I'm learning many things that previously ignored .
Today has been my eighth day of class, I've been in class of the first level of Infant Education. I've only been half an hour, because they have changed the timetable and I didn't know it, so I arrived half an hour later. When I arrived, the children were making an activity sheet. After finish, the teacher has left me review the vocabulary with pupils through flashcards, which I liked because I gained back new experience. Today was a very short day.
Yesterday I had my eleventh practical session, with Second Year, at third hour, from half past ten to the begining of the break, at half past eleven. In this chance, the two special needs children who usual atend this class (with their own teacher) and the conversation assistant came to the session. The first thing was, after taking roll, working on the vocabulary from the tenth unit by making sentences that used them and answering the questions I asked the students. Secondly, the a text related to the current situation of the Music in Education was commented by the children from the conversation assistant's observations. Thirdly, there was a contest that consisted of singing "Hey Jude" by The Beatles, reguarding the winner with an extra point in the final mark, as usual. The same was done with "Woman is fickle" (La donna è mobile), as an example of what an aria is.
After my recovery period I've come back to practices at CCEE. As I had my lessons planned I have used that pattern but I'm planning how to change them into a CLIL approach for the following days.
Last Tuesday I provided my students with some interactive activities. Exercises were focused on working as separated teams, trying to make them talk in groups and creating discussions.
First of all, I included some activities about creating lists of items needed for particular objectives (living alone, surviving in an isolated island, preparing special meals,etc). When they had finished those lists they had to support their answers having conversations.
Secondly, they had to create a contract between teachers and students in a Primary Education Classroom. It was a good way to make them work around modal verbs in affirmative and negative tense as well as thinking about duties.
At the end of the lesson they had the opportunity to talk in pairs about holidays with some restrictions. They had to use properly interrogative particles in order to make the activity useful.
17th March 2014 Today has been my 8th session at CCEE and we have talked about the basic extensions of education as a response to the conditions of today’s society: the vertical and the horizontal extension. Firstly, I gave my students the key ideas about the difference between these two types of extensions of education: the vertical one is based on a lifelong education/learning for all, whereas the horizontal extension deals with an education for all in any type of context (formal, non-formal and informal). Them I asked my students to add new ideas they previously knew about the two basic kinds of extension in education. The beginning of the class has served as a kind of brainstorming for the rest of the class. Then we have done a debate about the right to education in relation to every stage (elementary, technical and professional, and higher education) and the most appropriate nature of stage (free, compulsory, available, equally accessible, etc). Then the class was split up into two groups and each group had a little text to work on it and then share to the rest of peers their main conclusions. These two texts about the right to education were: “Education shall be directed to the full development of the hum personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance, and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups”. “Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children”. After it, we have talked about the Milenium Development goals of the United Nations, being one of them the ideal of achieving universal primary education. So we have performed a role play activity in which every student had the role of a member of the government from different countries belonging to the United Nations and they had to debate about the previously mentioned goal about achieving universal primary education. The next thing we have done was the comparison between that goal of the United Nations already mentioned before and the EFA goals dealing with the idea of education for all. In pairs, students had to prepare a short discourse to finally share with the rest of peers about one of the six educational goals of the EFA that they could choose: early childhood care and education, primary education of good quality, equitable access to education, adult literacy, gender equality, and quality of education. Finally we have talked about the most important and fundamental ideas within the theme of the lifelong learning: new basic skills for all, more investment in human resources, innovation in teaching and learning, valuing learning, rethinking guidance and counseling, and bringing learning closer to home. After saying a few ideas about each of these topics, in groups of 3, I asked my students to put them into a hierarchy of importance for them, and then share with the rest of peers their reasons.
Again I was in the class of second and third level of Infant Education. This day, I was first on the second level during the first half hour. The teacher let me give my own class, so first we review the vocabulary with flashcard, after that we played a game that I made a few days ago and which the kids really liked it, I reminded the students how this game was played and we played. This new experience was very rewarding, I liked it a lot, because I put in practice the knowledge I have gained during my studies. The kids also had fun, it was a fun class. After this half hour, I was on the third level, in this class I did the same, first we review the vocabulary with flashcards, and we play the game to prepare them. It was also very fun and motivating for children.
18th March, 2014: Last Tuesday I had my twelveth practical class, with First Year, at second hour (9.30-10.30). After taking roll I shared out the exam of units nine and ten. It took the students the whole hour. What I did was, on the one hand, thinking of ideas about what and how to do the following practical sessions (based on the syllabus); on the other hand, answering the learners what they asked about the specific points of the exam they did not understand perfectly. The exam structure was similar to the previous one, that I already analyzed carefully in the blog. Only changed the contents.
19th March, 2014: Last Wednesday I had my thirteenth practical session, with Second Year, at third hour (10.30-11.30). Apart from the normal registered students, the two S.N. (special needs) students with their corresponding monitor attended the class. This time Drew, the conversation assistant, did not come because he do it every other week. After taking roll, I reviewed the exam the students was going to have on Friday. I focused specially on the concept of “dot” for two reasons. One of them was because of the amount of technical vocabulary this section implies (as dotted crotchet, half note, whole note….), which is easy to forget; another one is to know how to use those concepts in the filling notes exercise the exam was going to include. The whole reviewing took us about half an hour Once we did it, we looked over all the melodies previously worked in class, by singing. In the middle of this activity, the bell went off.
24th March 2014 Today has been my 9th session at the Faculty of Education Sciences. We have talked about the past, the present, and the immediate future of the Spanish educational system. The first thing we have seen today was a historical approach of the Spanish educational system and how the contemporary education represents the fulfillment of the ideals of the Enlightenment. In this sense, we have talked about the freedom of teaching, the universal right to education, gender equality, coeducation, secular school, compulsory schooling, and free education. After it, I split up the class into four groups of 2-3 students each, and I provided each group with a statement about different phenomena that influenced the genesis of public school systems: 1) Industrial and agricultural revolutions; 2) Demographic factors, 3) Development of the financial capitalism and the economic liberalism, and 4) The promotion of the bourgeoisie. Each group had to prepare a short discourse and then share it with the rest of peers about the way in which they thought that their statements could influence the Spanish educational system in the past. Then we saw a YouTube video in which we could see the development of the education in Spain from 1812 (with the Constitution of Cádiz) to 1975 (with the Decentralization process). After it, I provided my students with some of the most important ideas about education of the Article 27 of the 1978 Spanish Constitution, and we discussed about them. We have also named some of the fundamental Organic laws in the post-constitutional period, up to the moment, with the 2013 Organic Law for the Improvement of the Quality of Education. Secondly, we have talked about the distribution of responsibilities in non-university education, starting with the State, and following with the regional level, the local authorities, and finally schools. Here we made a short debate about what the students thought of this distribution of responsibilities. It has been very interesting to hear their opinions. After it, we have had a quick look at the different stages, organization and ages for each of the levels in our current educational system, together with some graphics showing the distribution of students in the last two academic years in terms of public, private or semiprivate schooling. Finally, we have seen some of the key features of the education reform (LOMCE) for an immediate future, and we have made a critical debate about it.
Hello everybody, I should say that two sessions have been undertaken since I wrote last time.
The first one was last week and I experienced how hard is working with different level students. On the other hand, we were more focused on specific vocabulary and grammar related to science. I organised a list of exercises about prepositions but directly in touch with the environment.
Firstly, they had to classify into two sections: movement or position. Then, I encouraged them to talk about nature elements using these prepositions properly. After that, the students have to set some routes, describing the elements of the city they would see. It took more time than expected because at the end we decided to include more starting points and destinations. Finally, they completed a "Fill in the gaps" activity with the song "Hey Brother" to make the last part of the lesson more relaxing.
Second lesson has taken place today (25th of March). With the goal of making a review on conditionals, students have worked in groups with some specific activities.
As a warming up exercise, they have filled some personal information about hypothetical situations which could appear in their lives. After that, I've played a video with some statements of upset children in different classrooms. They have had to identify the problems or the causes and shared verbally some alternatives through conditionals.
Last task I've given to them has been a team competition based on speed. They have had to open an envelope where there were parts of conditional sentences. Students had to join these sentences properly through discussion within their groups.
Today has been my eleventh class of practice, I have been in the first level of Infant Education, and have a day of sheets. At first we reviewed the vocabulary with flashcard and then the students have made two sheets related to the spring, which have cost them a lot of effort. The difficulties of the sheets haven’t been the uses of the English language, but the difficulty of the task of the sheets, that is to say, make serialization. The class has been good, I liked a lot because I learned some of the weaknesses of children. I will say that every day I have more desire to become a teacher and put into practice all the knowledge acquired during my studies.
25th March 2014: Last Tuesday I had my fourteenth practical class, with First Year, at second hour (from nine thirty to ten thirty). The first thing was, after taking roll, reviewing the exams the students did the previous session. Due to the fact that I can not evaluate students officially, I simply observed the way the teacher explained the different doubts the students had. Once all doubts was solved, the teacher spoke up the final marks of every single student. Afterwards, we (the teacher and I) shared out the eleventh sheet, titled “The Fifth Symphony”, (in honor of the work by Beethoven) and the students did the two first parts: “The music album” (to widen the amount of works and composers they are able to recognize) and “Listening and thinking” (to work the analytical part of listening music). Later on, there was a humming contest about the fifth symphony by Beethoven and the fortieth one by Mozart, both well-known. The following activity was very funny. It consisted on trying to figure out what was said in the final part of a video called “facethoven” in which a man was “talking by gestures”. At the end of the activity, the teacher encouraged the students to do a similar activity made up by themselves but, by the way they looked, I believe they will not do it. To end the class, we listened to a very curious song in which the singer (the rapper, in this case), sang (rapped) using a combination of words shaped with an only vowel. After listening to the song, they tried to do the same by themselves, by reading the lyrics on the digital board. Almost all made many mistakes, specially because of the speed of diction. The alarm went on in the middle of this activity.
26th March 2014: Last Wednesday I had my fifteenth practical class, with Second Year, at third hour (from half past ten to the beginning of the break, at half past eleven). That is to say I have done the first part of the classes I am supposed to do in the Practicum of the Master degree. Due to the fact it was the class in which the revision of the exam was going to take place, the conversation assistant did not come, but the two special needs students with their monitor did come. Firstly, after taking roll, the teacher and I shared out the corrected exams and he solved any doubts the students had. After that, the teacher spoke up the final marks of the second term. Secondly, I gave the students the sheet corresponding to the eleventh didactic unit, titled “The personality of melodies” and, immediately, they had to find an adjective, previously worked in class, to describe the three songs from the sheet. Their answers were similar, more or less (happy and fun to “All you need is love” by Beatles, sad and romantic for “Fur Elise” by Beethoven, etc…) except in the case of the fortieth symphony by Mozart, in which some students used “sad” and others “funny”, which are opposite, more or less. I contributed providing an explanation to this situation and giving a word to describe it: “ambiguous”. Thirdly, the students copied the section “listening and thinking” from the digital board and, once it was done, the teacher explained the context of the song “All you need is love”, by The Beatles, speaking about the hippy movement, among another data. After that, its lyrics was read fast and, afterwads, sung by a karaoke version (music without the original voice). The teacher came up with a very funny exercice: as the students sang along, he said several words in Spanish which have to be incorporated to the part of the lyrics they were in (in English). To end the class, we all sang “Hey Jude” by The Beatles, widely worked in class, so the students did it very well.
Today has been my 10th session at the Faculty of Education Sciences. We have talked about the current situation of schools. First, we have debated about the differences between elite schools and schools for all. It has been very interesting to see what my students think about this topic, and they wanted to express their feelings, so I think it has been a very good idea to touch this point in the class. Then the class was split up into two groups and each of them had to think about the consequences of a certain issue I provided them with in relation to the current situation of schools, so that at the end of the activity, each group could share their main ideas with the rest of peers. One of the topics provided for them was the financial crisis (how it is affecting and challenging the school’s quantity and quality of resources, etc) and the other topic was about the school’s expectations of pursuing both quality and equity at the same time. The last activity we have done today was the following: in pairs, my students were given a statement which presented a utopian idea about what we would like the situation of schools were. They had to prepare a short PowerPoint presentation about their topics and finally share with the rest of us. The utopian topics were these ones: 1) A school connected to life and society promotes a holistic education; 2) A child-centered school pays attention to diversity; 3) A democratic school believes in the involvement of parents and the local community, and distributes power; 4) A modern school conceives the role of teachers as facilitators and creators of learning opportunities; and 5) This kind of school plans a flexible organization and curriculum, and its administrators and teachers are socially committed. This last activity of today’s lesson was more time-consuming than others, but I wanted my students to stop and reflect upon these issues. So I don’t think it has been a waste of time to spend more than 30 minutes in only one activity; on the contrary, it has been very satisfying for me to see how my students have been working on it.
Today I have started the practicum. The school I have chosen for the practices has implemented an English bilingual programme at Infant Education and in the first and second years of Primary Education. According to my schedule for accomplishing the 30 hours, I attend classes in both levels, which is quite interesting to have a wider perspective of CLIL in this particular school.
This morning I have been observing the teachers’ work during 3 bilingual classes: In the second year of Primary Education, classes B and A has studied the same lesson. They both use the 02 Science and Environment Student’s Book by Edelvives publisher. Firstly, the teacher has asked them the date and then he has explained briefly to the pupils the lesson plan for the Science class. Secondly, they have reviewed some random vocabulary from previous lessons related to the water cycle. The teacher has told them a word or expression in Spanish and the have said it in English and vice versa. After that, the teacher has asked the pupils in English to name the water bodies. Then, he has asked them for the definitions of evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and collection, as well as wind and tornado. After, the teacher has played a song related to healthy habits and the class sings along while making gestures. Then, he has played a game with the pupils (the teacher says touch…). Thus, they have reviewed some vocabulary related to the human body. Next, they have made an activity on dinosaurs practising with some vocabulary (i.e. legs, tail, head, wings) and the verb to have got (It has got 2 legs/ It hasn’t got a tail). The teacher has given them time to do the activity on the workbook. Later, they have corrected the exercise altogether and the teacher has clarified that a is used for one thing but not for plural (*it has got a tails). Then, they have made deductions such as it has got legs and it can run. Finally, they have worked with 2 pictures of dinosaurs for finding the differences between them.
In the Infant Education class for 5 years-old, the teacher works with Yo-Yo Phonics books by Edelvives publisher. First, I have introduced myself to them in English and then they have also told me their names. Next, the teacher has told them a story about a family using little vocabulary related to sailing while there are some pictures related to the topic projected on a white tactile screen. Then, the teacher has asked the pupils to find several things in the pictures, which they were asked to mark on the screen. After that, the pupils have been working with several phonemes and graphemes as a review /g/, /f/, /w/. The teacher has written each letter on the screen and then she has played a song on their sounds. They have sung and have made gestures for making the comprehension of certain words easier. Later, the teacher has asked them the date and has told them to make an activity on their workbook, where they have to write down the date and their names.
Today's lesson has been quite different. The attendance has been lower so students and me have worked more fluently. At the beginning of the lesson we have chat and discuss about how many adjectives did they know in order to define their selves. Then, I have provided them with some definitions and students have guessed the qualities or adjectives related to those meanings.
After that warming-up activity, we have spoken about countries. Using a reading comprehension, we have linked those characteristics worked before with some new qualities about behavior and features from different places.
Through a listening activity, we have been working the three main sectors: primary, secondary and tertiary. At the end, I have played a well-known song to make them enjoy more the last part of the lesson, filling in the gaps and looking for new vocabulary.
Day 1 (Monday, 31st of March): Today I have started the training in the IES Castilblanco . Due to the town is over 30 km from where I live and the classes start at 8:15 am , I’ve woken up very early to be on time , but eventually I was late because it was raining a lot and There were many cars in front of the school so I’ve had to find parking further from the center. Once, I have reached the school, mi tutor Luis Odriozola was waiting in the principal's office and he has explained me the school works and he has given me a very full timetable in order to see how a bilingual class is from different subjects and different courses. He is the coordinator of the department of modern languages and besides tutor 4th B. Later, he has introduced me to another English teacher named Jesus Peña who has told me that Tuesday and Thursday I would help to teach in 3th, a group where students are mixed from very low level of English because they belong to diversification to students with a normal level of 3th ESO. Later, Luis has taught me the center's facilities and at 9:15 we have started with classes. I've been as an observer in the English class at 4 º B , 3rd B, 1 C and 1 A. And at the last time, I have had a reinforcement English class in 2nd B class with Jesus Peña and we have seen a movie in English with subtitles in Spanish called "HOT FUZZ " . In all courses, students have been a little nervous and have asked me a lot of questions in English which has been the perfect excuse to practice the speaking.
Day 2 ( Tuesday, 1st of April): Today I have returned to start the day at 8:15 with English class in 1th B group, they did not know and the children have been very kind, this course is a bilingual group and they are better than the other first groups where yesterday, I was observing. Then, Luis has introduced me to the Spanish language teacher Maria Hernandez who has had a test with her students so she has taken the opportunity to explain me a little about the profile of her students and what their difficulties and strengths are. It is a teacher who is very familiar with her students and this fact has attracted much attention from me because she had all pointed in a notebook made from recycled materials. She also told me that in coordination with Luis Odrizola (my training tutor) have conducted a literature project related to the book Twilight by Stephanie Meyer, which will be presented by 4th students on Friday for the rest of schoolmates. Then, during the break Luis and me have been in the library because my tutor is in charge of it and he has showed me how he has worked with students twilight book in English. At 5th time, I've had class with Jesus Peña and 3th A, the group which has two levels. I have taught to the group with the lowest level and we have worked very simple things from the book "Good MOVE" of Oxford. As they do not use students' workbooks, we have worked some cards and worksheets that I have made on essential grammar and we have completed a crossword to practice the vocabulary of the unit. Lastly, we have joined whole students to make a common listening about a girl who explains how she has met her favorite music band, then my group just had to answer true and false, while more advanced students explained why statements were false or true.
por cierto no sé subir tweets en twiter, me he hecho una cuenta pero no se como poner los mensajes en el muro de las prácticas, alguien puede ayudarme?
Yesterday I started my practices at school “Santísima Trinidad, Trinitarios” in Córdoba. Before starting the Practice, I met the school´s director who explained me that the bilingual program had been introduced one year before. I am going to be in the first cycle of Primary Education. The name of the teacher is Úrsula, she is native English teacher and she only teaches Science and Art, so I am going to observe how the bilingual plan works in her classes. I started the day with 1st primary children. They had Natural and Social Science´s class and they started a new unit called “My neighbourhood”. The teacher started explaining what means neighbourhood and what they can find in this. Using flashcards and the blackboard reviewed vocabulary (numbers, places, shapes, ...), and they learned new vocabulary related to the unit. Also they worked pronunciation and grammar through questions/ answers, for example: Do you live in a house or in a flat? I live in a flat. Finally they made the textbook activities related to the unit where they worked listening, reading and writing.
The next hour I was in 2nd primary. They had Natural and Social Science´s class and they started a new unit called “Materials”. The teacher started explaining what means materials and what kind of materials we know. Using flashcards and the blackboard reviewed vocabulary and they learned new vocabulary related to the unit. Also they worked proununciation and grammar through questions/answer, for example: What are windows made of? Windows are made of glass and metal. Finally they made the textbook activities related to the unit where they worked listening, reading and writing.
The last hour I was in the same class because they had Art´s class. Students did two activities. In the first activity, the question had to unite with their response and paint the two vignettes of colour that indicate the question vignette. Then the teacher corrected the activity with the pupils, together. The next activity the pupils had that draw for to work the simmetry.
Today, I have been in 1st A primary education. They have had Natural and Social Science´s class and teacher has begun reviewing everything seen in class yesterday. Then they have learned the song of the unit called “ In my neighbourgood” and also, teacher has taught new vocabulary with flashcards and finally the pupils have done one activity of the textbook where they have heard a story called “ ¡ I grow up I want to be...!, then every pupil have to do in his house, a picture about his favourite profession like teacher, policeman, etc.
The next two hours I have been in 1st B primary education and in 2nd B education, where the pupils have learned the same that the pupils of 1st A primary and 2nd A primary education learned yesterday.
Today, I have been in 2nd B primary education and they have had Natural and Social Science´s class and teacher has begun reviewing everything seen in class yesterday, working pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary and through simple sentences. For example; Balls are made of rubber and then they have done one activity with the teacher on the blackboard where they had to classify materials in natural and man-made. Once done reviewing, the pupils have done one activity to learn the properties of materials. In this activity they have worked listening, speaking and new vocabulary. Then the pupils have done the next activity where they had to write in a box, whether the materials have or not the property and then have corrected along with the teacher, forming sentences. For example; Wood isn´t transparent/ Wood is rigid.
The next hour, I have been in 1st A primary education and they have had Art class and the pupils have done a tab, where with using plasticine and fingers have gone filling different fruit and working vocabulary.
The next hour, I have been in 2nd B primary education and they have had Art class and the pupils have done a tab, where with using plasticine and fingers have gone filling different fruit and working vocabulary.
The last hour, I have been in 1st B primary education and they have had Natural and Social Science´s class and teacher has begun reviewing everything seen in class yesterday, working pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary with help of flashcards and through simple sentences. Once done reviewing, the pupils have donde an activity to learn new vocabulary about the professions working, listening, grammar and pronunciation through of questions/answer. For example; Do you want to be when grow up? When I grow up, I want to be...(fireman, teacher,...). Then the teacher has worked with the students memorization of vocabulary through repetition, gestures and song, using simple sentences. For example; A teacher teaches children. Finally they have done two activities related professions.
Today I have started the day with the teacher Maria Hernandez ( language teacher ) in 4 class B and we have corrected some language tests using the digital board. A strange thing is that although the center is considered ICT it only has two digital boards for whole school, one in the 2 nd B class and another in 3rd A, so we have had to ask the classroom 2nd B which was free because they were in the gym. Later , I have met the music teacher Nestor Ramirez and I have been two hours with him observing the music class and I've enjoyed it but I have noticed attention that there were many children who do not carry the instrument to the class, when I have asked them why, their answers have been: I forgot , I do not like playing that, the teacher does not teach me , I don't have any instrument. The book that students have is designed by the teacher and is really an excellent job with simple English language and information about the history of music and contemporary music . During the Break I have met with Luis and I have helped him with the loan of books in the library. Then we have gone to the English class 2 º A and we have worked on writing because students did the last day a trip to the river. They have used laptops to find some words they did not know, however the teacher has insisted that if they did not know a word they should explain it. Later, my tutor has had coordination so I have gone with him to see if it actually they are working the CLIL methodology but I 've noticed that not, although they have an hour to coordinate subjects they do not work the integration of contents. Luis has explained me that the Andalusian junta became them bilingual 3 years ago but they did not want besides the level of students is too low to make it because primary school is not bilingual . In the last hour, I've met the teacher Margarita Fernández who teaches Biology in 4th A. Some students have not done their homeworks because they did not understand them, then the teacher, after correcting exercises , has explained them as Spring flora in the area is and they have appointed some flowers typical. Lastly, she has introduced some laws of Mendel indicating who Mendel is and how they can form different species mixing different characteristics from them.
Today I´m going to write about several sessions because I have had a problem with my computer. My sessions take two hours and we are trying to incorporate CLIL to my class in CCEE. - 7th March: We started with warm up activity, asking and answering some personal questions. Later, students listened a song and they had to fill the gaps related with the content we are doing. In this way they felt comfortable and they were happy and enthusiastic. With respect to incorporate CLIL, we did a debate about education. We talked about their subjects, their easiness or difficulties in their career. I provided them some exercises of useful vocabulary and structures for their subjects in bilingual education. -14th March: This session is divided in two parts. In the first part, we saw a video of how is a bilingual class of Science and Art in primary education and later we talked about it. In the second part, they did some presentations about a bilingual session they had prepared in their houses about a topic of Sciences, Math or Art. This session was amazing and very useful. They learnt a lot of the video and of their work in class. They are very motivated and they want to improve their mistakes. This class was very important for them -21st March: We started remembering the last session. So, students talked about the advantages and disadvantages they found in their presentations. Then, they completed a questionnaire with some purposes they would change or they would improve if they were teachers. In the second half of the class I gave them a text about Finland Education so they make a comparative chart with our education and Finland education and finally we talk about it and we shared our ideas to the classmates. They learnt a lot about themselves and their classmates. It is very interesting!!! -28th March: My aim is students learn, and what they learn is useful for their life. So in this session I started with several songs they love it to introduce them in my class. Later, they read a text about an advertisement to offer jobs and how a girl followed some steps to create her curriculum. They did some exercises to complete some parts or to identify the parts of the curriculum. They listened it and finally, following this steps, they had to create their own curriculum for the future. They didn´t have curriculum so they were surprised and they were on the ball because it is very important for them and their future.
Today, I have been in 2nd B primary education and they have had Natural and Social Science´s class and teacher has begun reviewing everything seen in class yesterday, working pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary and through simple sentences. For example; Rubber comes from trees. They also have worked synonyms for example; man-made/manucfactured. Then the students and teacher have done one activity, together. In this activity they have worked reading, writing, vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and the properties of materials. Finally, the teacher has explained the qualities of some materials, where they have worked new vocabulary, speaking through of questions/answer. For example; Can you bend a nuts? No, I can.
The next hour, I have been in 1st B primary education and they have had Natural and Social Science´s class and teacher has begun reviewing everything seen in class yesterday. Then teacher has explained that the neighbourhoods have streets and streets have names and she has asked; where do you live?, every pupil. Teacher also has explained that houses have number and with pictures on the blackboard, the teacher has asked and the students have responded. For example; Carmen lives on black street, Carmen lives at number 2. Finally, the students have done activities where they have completed sentences, they also have worked reading, speaking, writing, pronunciation, grammar and new vocabulary.
The next hour, I have been in the same class and they have had Art´s class. The pupils have done a tab, where with using plasticine and fingers have gone filling different fruit and working vocabulary.
The last hour, I have been in 2nd A primary education and they have had Natural and Social Science´s class. They have had a similar class to the class of 2nd B primary education.
1st April 2014: Last Tuesday I had my sixteenth class, with First Year, at second hour. Firstly, after taking roll, the teacher told the students a new behavior rule: saying “Sorry Sir, it won´t happen again” just after he tell off someone, so that the one who says it would not be penalized with a negative mark and vice versa. Secondly, we did the activity related to the video from youtube called “Facethoven” I explained in my comment about my class on the thirty first of March. It was done, even though the computer was extremely slowly. Thirdly, the students were asked about the meaning of the following sentence by Mendelsohn: “Music fills the soul of things better than words”. To help them to do it I proposed them several examples such as being in love, death, disease, bad news, end of the school or frustration. After that, the teacher said what the students had to do as homework, the section called “searching and learning”, in which they have to look for information related to a specific topic. To end the class, there was a contest related to the song by Nash “Efectos vocales”. The students had to make up a couple of verses using an only vowel, the “a”.
2nd April 2014: Yesterday I had my seventeenth class, with Second Year, at third hour. Three specific need education students came this time Firstly, after taking, the teacher has focused the student´s attention on the word symphony, its meaning and how to apply it in different contexts. Secondly, a Spanish text based on the differences between melodies and chords was worked. The teacher and I showed the idea from the text by playing the recorder and the keyboard (the musical one), respectively. Thirdly, the exercise I explained in my comment from the session on the twenty-sixth of March, related to think of an adjective to describe the atmosphere of different songs, was done. To end the class, the song “All you need is love” by The Beatles was sung.
Today I've been with Maria Hernandez (spanish teacher) who has asked students from 3rd B a project where they must select a novel by a spanish writer of the 20th centur and must read and investigate the author's biography and eventually, they will present it in spanish and in English. After that, I've been in the art class with teacher Ricardo Pacheco and the classes 2 º B and 4 º B and I 've noticed that while he was speaking to them in English at all time, students from both courses has responded him in Spanish, in addition when they were working in group, they have used Spanish language to communicate with each other and not the second language. During the break, I have gone back to the library to help my tutor Luis Odriozola and then I've been an observer in their classrooms with 3 º and 1 º C. The last time, I have been with Jesús Peña helping him to teach in the class 3rd B where is the group of diversification, again I have been with the group with the lowest level and we have returned to review what the last day we learned, we have performed a role- play abouth clothing , completed some activities and at the end of the class we have made a listening. In my group, they have had to attach the names of the characters with the correct information that the listening provides and the most advanced group has had to explain with their words what each character does .
Today, we have started telling the pupils in Primary Education - classes A and B - a joke in order to introduce April Fools’ Day. After that, both sessions in these classes has been focused on a revision of specific vocabulary and definitions on Science related to the water cycle and the rotation movement, due to the exam on Thursday, 3rd April. Firstly, I have asked them some words in English and Spanish, and later we have reviewed some definitions that include the precedent vocabulary they have been working with for several weeks. Next, we have watched a video about the main phases of the water cycle, where cartoons explain concepts such as evaporation, condensation, and precipitation. Then, we have played a video on the rotation movement. Finally, we have sung a song about the water cycle by means of a video previously uploaded to the subject’s blog, so that pupils could watch it and study at home.
Day 5 ( Friday, 4th of April) Friday mornings are the quietest of the week for Luis (my tutor) because he only has two classes although today just one because some students have gone to a trip, so we've been only in 4th B the group where I have taught my didactic unit . As a request from my tutor Luis Odriozola, I have prepared a tutorial session about respecting other cultures because he thought that we could work a bilingual unit and not just to prepare a unit of English. After the break , we has gone to the multipurpose room to make preparations for the presentation, then I have had the opportunity to see an exhibition about Twilight from Stephenie Meyer which has been a pleasant experience to be able to listen to students speaking English and the rest of schoolmates listening them. Luis has exlained me that every trimester they ahve to make a presentation of this type. Finally at the last time, Luis and me have been commenting on my experience, I gave him thanks for all the help I have received and I have said goodbye to all colleagues
Today, I have been in 1st A primary education and they have had Natural and Social Science´s class and teacher has begun reviewing everything seen in class yesterday. Then teacher has explained that the neighbourhoods have streets and streets have names and she has asked; where do you live?, every pupil. Teacher also has explained that houses have number and with pictures on the blackboard, the teacher has asked and the students have responded. For example; Carmen lives on black street, Carmen lives at number 2. Finally, the students have done activities where they have completed sentences, they also have worked reading, speaking, writing, pronunciation, grammar and new vocabulary.
The next hour, I have been in 2nd A primary education and they have had Natural and Social Science´s class and teacher has begun reviewing everything seen in class yesterday, working pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary and through simple sentences. For example; Rubber comes from trees. They also have worked synonyms for example; man-made/manucfactured. Then the students and teacher have done one activity, together. In this activity they have worked reading, writing, vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and the properties of materials. Finally, the teacher has explained the qualities of some materials, where they have worked new vocabulary, speaking through of questions/answer. For example; Can you bend a nuts? No, I can.
This morning I have met class B from the first year of Primary Education. This has been a very good opportunity to know how this school implement CLIL in another different level. The teacher has told me that certain pupils have some difficulties at the beginning due to the fact that they come from other schools where they have not studied English in Infant Education. However, groups tend to become homogeneous at the end of the course. There is a tactile screen in this classroom, which helps both the teaching and learning process. Moreover, the use of a CD player is essential for fostering children’s participation, as well as for practising listening comprehension. Firstly, the teacher has introduced me to the class, which has been a good excuse for practising greetings. Then, the teacher has asked them what the date was, and we have been revising numbers and months. Next, we have been singing several songs, as children seemed sleepy and not much participative. After that, they have shown me the vocabulary they have been working with in previous units, such as words and expressions related to the human body. Then, they have done some exercises on their activity books, related to fruits.
After this class, I have been working with groups A and B that belong to the second level of Primary Education. First, I have asked the pupils some vocabulary and definitions related to the water cycle, as a review for the exam. Then, we have delivered them a sheet with some activities on the same topic. They had to fill in the gaps with some words, such as clouds, vapour, snow, and land. Next, they had to draw a picture of the water cycle and add labels to explain the whole process.
Finally, the written exam has taken place today in the second level of Primary Education. Due to the fact that there are several special needs students, the teacher has delivered pupils two versions of the exam. In one version, pupils had to identify each phase of the water cycle in a picture and name them. Next, they were given several definitions they had been working with previously and they had to fill in the gaps. Then, they had to write a definition for soil, tornadoes, evaporation, and collection. After, pupils were given some words in English and some other in Spanish which they had to translate. Then, they had to draw and label a picture of the rotation movement they had already done in class. The other version consisted of 4 exercises only. First, they had to identify each phase of the water cycle in a picture and name them. After, they were given several definitions and they had to fill in the blanks. Then, they had to match several words instead of writing definitions. Moreover, in the last activity they were given several words and they had to label a picture of the rotation movement and colour it.
Today I have been in class A with first-year pupils of Primary Education. We have revised the vocabulary from last unit by means of the tactile screen. They have shown me how much words and expressions they have learnt up to now. After that, we have introduced a new unit on cities. First, we have presented the concepts of city, town, and village and their differences. Furthermore, they have done several activities related to this topic, and we have corrected them after. Later, in the second year of Primary Education, we have given the pupils a sheet with new vocabulary on cities. I have read aloud the new concepts so that they could practice the pronunciation. They had to listen and repeat. Then, the teacher has played a CD and they had to follow the reading. After that, they were required to listen and point. Then, they had to read the text and translate it. Later, they have put some sticks with new vocabulary on their books; that is to say, they had to put a stick with the word skyscraper on the correspondent picture. Finally, they have practiced their speaking. We have asked them who takes them to school.
Today has been my session number 11 at the Faculty of Education Science. In this lesson we have talked about the concept of the Education Theory, as being formed by several disciplines, such as history, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience. We have made a quick brainstorm about the main ideas connected to these disciplines and their possible relation with the education theory, in order to establish and activate students’ background knowledge. After it, we have talked about the different sub-groups within the education theories: the classical education, the contemplative education, the critical pedagogy, and the democratic education. First, I have explained each of them briefly, and then we have watched a YouTube video which also talked about them. After watching the video, I provided my students with a series of True or False statements, and in pairs, they had to choose true or false for each one, and then share the results with the rest of peers. Then we have moved towards the topic of the normative theories of education, which provide the norms and standards of education. The two types were the normative philosophies and the normative curriculum theory. After an explanation about the differences between them, I asked my students, in groups of 3, to look for more information about the type that they liked the most and prepare a short writing to finally share with the rest of peers. Next, we have also talked about the descriptive theories of education (in opposition to the normative ones previously mentioned). These theories provided descriptions or explanations of the process of education, and the most important types were: the curriculum theory, the instructional theory, the nature of the learner and of learning (based on Philosophical Anthropology and Educational Psychology), the sociology of education, and the organizational and leadership theory. I have explained every type of descriptive theory of education and then, in groups of 3, my students have discussed about the advantages and disadvantages of at least 3 of them, and finally, they have shared the information with the rest of mates. Finally, I have provided my students with a list of the big names in the field of educational theory, and in pairs, they had to choose one educational theorist and look for 5 fundamental ideas in the work of this person. Finally they had to share the information with the rest of peers.
Today, I have been in 1st A primary education and they have had Natural and Social Science´s class and teacher has begun reviewing everything seen in the previous class. Then teacher has explained a new page of the book working with the pupils new vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, etc. Finally the students have done activities of the book.
The next hour, I have been in 2nd A primary education and they have had Natural and Social Science´s class and teacher has begun reviewing everything seen in the previous class, working pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary and through simple sentences. For example; Rubber comes from trees. They also have worked synonyms for example; man-made/manucfactured. Then the students and teacher have done one activity, together. In this activity they have worked reading, writing, vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and the properties of materials. Finally, the teacher has explained the qualities of some materials, where they have worked new vocabulary, speaking through of questions/answer. For example; Can you bend a nuts? No, I can. Finally, the students have done review exercises.
The last hour, I have been in the same class where I have taught my first Art´s class. The students have done an activity where they had to color, cut and stick an egg, to celebrate the Easter´s Day. Previously, I developed material in my house and I have used for explain this topic. We have worked vocabulary, pronunciation, etc.
This morning, I have been in the English language classes of the second year of Primary Education (classes B and A). They were delivered a sheet with some exercises and we have played a video of 3 children and their teacher in a dinosaur museum, and they have been doing some exercises meanwhile for practising the expressions it has got…/it hasn’t got… Next, we have watched a video on how to cook a cake for putting into practice the concepts of the 5 senses (to touch, to see, to taste, to smell, and to hear). Indeed, all this vocabulary and expressions will be very useful for the Science class. After that, we have corrected the activities.
Later, in the Infant Education class for 5 years-old, the teacher has begun the class by playing a story with a rhyme at the end and projecting some pictures of it on the tactile screen. Thus, they would associate words in the story with items in the pictures. Next, they have been working with listening comprehension, as the teacher has asked them to explain the story to her. Some children were trying to tell it in Spanish, but I have observed that the majority of them try to use words in English. Then, she has played a song of the letter -w- (row, row, row, waves are fun…) and has invited them to join her singing and dancing in order to practice this new sound introduced. After, she has written the new grapheme and has asked them to give words with its sound (William, water, wet, windy, well…). Next, she has projected a different picture with words around it (sack, rock, pond, duck, basket, stick, and sock). Firstly, they have identified them in the picture by marking them one by one on the tactile screen. Secondly, they have reflected on the sound /k/ and its different manners to write it. Then, the teacher has erased their answers from the screen and has asked the pupils to do the same activity on their activity book. Next, we have corrected their tasks and reminded them of writing their names and the date on the page every day. Finally, the teacher has told me that she writes dots under each word she introduces to them, so that they remember the number of sounds in the words.
Sorry for not writing before, but I rushed off my foot lately.
Through this remark, I will share my experience of the last 3 days of practice.
Tuesday, 1st April On Tuesday, I spent 4 hours in school, the first 3 hours I was preparing materials for Easter, I mean, and I made crowns of rabbits, which represent “easter bunny "Easter bunny" is the typical rabbit of the Easter in New York, which brings chocolate eggs and sweets. These crowns will be made the last day of school before Easter. I hope that I hope that children will like very much this material and that they may have something symbolic of the celebration of Easter in English. During the next hour, I was half an hour with the second level of Infant Education and another half hour with the third level of Infant Education. The two classes were taught similarly, I mean, the same activities were made, albeit with different levels and themes. At first, we reviewed with the children the learned vocabulary with flashcard, then the pupils did a Task Sheet and finally they learned a song. From all that we have told, I would highlight the moment of the song, because even though it was the first time that children listened it, they learned it very easily. It is wonderful to observe how young children are able to learn so quickly and with such motivation and enthusiasm.
Thursday, 3th April This day was with the first level of kindergarten, the teacher previously asked me to do some exercises and a micro unit of spring. So I taught the class. I did a mural of spring, where each element is linked to the landscape with Velcro. And this was the first activity we did. I taught the children the mural, work with different grammatical structures such as: I can see ... there is / are ...., I like ....; also we reviewed the numbers, for this, we counted how many flowers, trees, butterflies and suns there were. After this activity, we remove each element of the mural and I gave one to each child, I said in English: "Stand up, the children who have got a tree", for example. And the children who had that element, raised his hand and returned to stick on the wall. In this activity, the children enjoyed and had a blast. I felt proud of myself. Another activity we did was the realization of puzzles, it was also very rewarding, the students when they formed a puzzle, very excited said: "It's a butterfly" or "is a tree", all in English. I really liked this class. I'm very glad with the activities that I prepared.
Friday, 4 th April This day, I was two hours of practice. It was also a day of preparation materials; I continued making crowns of "Easter bunny" for children. I would emphasize the importance of preparing materials, the work of a teacher is not only taught, but also the preparation thereof and their materials, which significantly affects the child's learning. I'm pretty satisfied with my practices, because I'm learning a lot and I'm doing many types of activities: class observation, teach, prepare materials, ...
Today I have mixed some theory about language with practical activities based on real life challenges (job interviews at schools)
Firstly, we have made a revision on personal adjectives referring to skills, strengths or weaknesses. Then students have corrected homework collectively. Everything was related to abilities and professional competences.
Secondly, we have made a role-play. During the game they have exchanged positions as interviewer and interviewed. Each role had weird or specific characteristic in order to make the game harder.
After that, they have practised listening by a video where a native speaker explained how to interview and be interviewee. Questions and answers have been the main points and their analysis.
Finally, a "fill in the gaps" activity based on a known song has been the full stop.
In these two sessions, we have been working with pupils belonging to the second year of Primary Education (clases A and B). Firstly, we have revised the new vocabulary related to cities from the sheet we handed out yesterday. Secondly, we have read a text on the book about communities, where some words from the vocabulary are explained (city, town, and village). Then, we have explained the differences among these concepts and have asked them to do 2 written activities. They have answered where they live in (the name of the city, town or village) and then they have thought about the type of community it is (city, town or village). Next, we have delivered the pupils a sheet with several exercises. They have written words from the new vocabulary under several pictures, in order to identify an image with the concept in English. Then, they have written some sentences in the correct order (i.e. Cities have got an airport, a bus station and a train station). Next, they have filled in the gaps with more vocabulary (for example, I buy things _[shop]_ / I see paintings and sculptures _[museum]_). After that, they have drawn at the back their favourite place in city, town or village. Finally, we have corrected the activities and have played a song (head and shoulders, knees and toes…) during the last 5 minutes before the class was over.
Today, I have been with first level pupils of Primary Education (class B). We have revised the differences between the city and town. Next, we have named some cities and towns as examples for them to understand. After that, we have corrected some activities. Then, we have introduced several typical jobs in cities and towns (i.e. policewoman, farmer). After, the teacher has shown them pictures of some workers, for facilitating their understanding. Then, some pupils have mimed these professions and the others have guessed them. In the second level of Primary Education (classes A and B), we have begun by revising the vocabulary of the new unit. Next, pupils have read a text related to the concept of neighbourhood and then we have explained the meanings of several words. Then, they have done 3 exercises. In the first one, they have labelled a picture with the given words (street, supermarket, hospital, and school). After, they have matched some sentences (i.e. When I’m sick, I go to the _[hospital]_). Next, they have matched some places with their descriptions (i.e. city - enormous and noisy, lots of buildings). Finally, we have delivered them a sheet where they had to draw places in a city according to some coordinates (for example, a park and a train station).
Today, I have been in 1st A primary education and they have had Natural and Social Science´s class and teacher has begun reviewing everything seen in the previous class. Then teacher has explained a new page of the book working with the pupils new vocabulary about transport, pronunciation, grammar, listen, etc. Finally the students have done activities of the book and review exercises.
The next hour, I have been in 1st B primary education and they have had Natural and Social Science´s class and they have had a similar class to the class of 1st A primary education.
The last hour, I have been in 2nd B primary education and they have had Natural and Social Science´s class and they have been doing review exercises for the exam.
9th April 2014
Today, I have been in 2nd B primary education and they have had Natural and Social science´s class and they have been doing review exercises for the exam.
The next hour, I have been in 1st A primary education where I have taught my second Art´s class. The students have done an activity where they had to color, cut and stick an egg, to celebrate the Easter´s Day. Previously, I developed material in my house and I have used for explain this topic. We have worked vocabulary, pronunciation, etc.
The next hour, I have been in 2nd B primary education where I have taught my third Art´s class. The students have done an activity where they had to color, cut and stick an egg, to celebrate the Easter´s Day. Previously, I developed material in my house and I have used for explain this topic. We have worked vocabulary, pronunciation, etc.
The last hour, I have been in 1st B primary education and they have had Natural and Social Science´s class and they have been doing review exercises for the exam.
10th April 2014
Today, I have been in 2nd B and 1st B primary education and they have had Natural and Social Science´s class and they have been doing unit test.
Finally, I have been in 1st B primary education where I have taught my last Art´s class. The students have done an activity where they had to color, cut and stick an egg, to celebrate the Easter´s Day. Previously, I developed material in my house and I have used for explain this topic. We have worked vocabulary, pronunciation, etc.
Today I have been teaching pupils in the second level of Primary Education (classes A and B). Firstly, they have read a text on their books of Science about public and private buildings. Thus, they have practiced pronunciation of new vocabulary and have learnt the differences between these types of buildings. Secondly, I have clarified what a town hall is, by means of a PowerPoint presentation I had made in advance. Next, I have explained them who the workers in a town hall are and who vote and elect them. On the slides, I have shown pictures to clarify the definition concepts. After that, I have asked them to do an activity on their books where they have identified the public places and services that the town hall organises for the community. Finally, we have played a game in which the pupils were 18 years old citizens, and they have voted the mayor and councillors of the class.
This has been the last day of the training at the bilingual school. The first two hours I have been in classes A and B of the first year in Primary Education. Both classes have been working on the same topics: towns and cities. Firstly, we have revised the vocabulary of the unit. Secondly, pupils have listened to a recording of sounds in towns and cities and have pointed the pictures on their books (i.e. they have heard church bells ringing and have pointed the picture of the church). Then, they have read some texts about the characteristics of towns and cities. Next, they have studied how to tell an address to people, and they have filled in the gaps on a sheet where they had to write their own address.
Although the pupils have worked with the same content in both classes, I have been working on different topics in class B. There is an intellectually gifted girl in this class who has begun to attend the Science classes of the second level of Primary Education. Due to the fact that there was a teacher absent today, I have been teaching her Science in English of an advanced level, while her classmates have been working on the aforementioned topics with the other teacher. We have reviewed some vocabulary from other units about the human body and she has done some exercises after my explanations. It has been a great opportunity to meet her and teach such an intelligent pupil.
Later, I have met a class that belongs to the fourth level of Infant Education. The teacher uses the same methods I have described in previous entries. However, the only difference is that these pupils have a lower knowledge of vocabulary in English, as they are younger than the pupils I met before. In this session, they have listened to a story and have done some interactive activities. After this, the teacher has explained them it is Easter time and they have done a task on this topic.
8th April 2014: Last Tuesday I had my eighteenth practical class, with First Level of Secondary Education, at second hour, from half past nine to half past ten. Firstly, after taking roll, the teacher checked whether the eleventh sheet was done or not. Once he did it, he and I shared out the twelveth one and the students copied the sections “Music Album” and “Listening and Thinking” from the digital board. Secondly, the students had to hum two songs from the section “Music Album”, which were Turkish marches (by Mozart and by Beethoven). Later on, the teacher gave a brief explanation about fusion and interculturallity, which define the previous works. Thirdly, there was a rhythm exercise in which the students had to hum a non previously known work taking into account only the rhythm, not the intonation (the pitch). Fourthly, we watched a video in youtube as an example of fusion between the Turkish march by Mozart and heavy metal, performanced by the guitarist of Mago de Oz. To end the class, we sang He Jude by The Beatles.
9th, April 2014: Last Wednesday I had my ninetheenth practical session, with Second Year, at third hour, from half past ten to the break (from half past eleven). That time the special needs students with their monitor and Drew, the conversation assistant, went all to the class. Firstly, the students copied the sections “Music album” and “Listening and Thinking” from the digital board. Secondly, the students were offered to sing “La donna e mobile” by karaoke, so as the volunteers who did it well would be given an extra point in the final mark of the third term. After listening a couple of performances by the volunteers, the lyrics was translated by the conversation assistant. Later on, I talked about the sexist content in this aria (“La donna e mobile”). It created a very interesting and productive debate, not only for the ethic side but also for the linguistic one. In the middle of that debate the bell went off.
Well, first of all I have to apologize because now that I was going to write my last sessions I’ve realized that my posts (which I have been writing from another computer) are not published….. Idk if the problem has been the computer/internet/blog/whatever… BUT thankfully I have a copy in a doc file so I will copy paste all my posts once again (successfully this time, I hope). So, sorry for all my following posts!!
February 20th 2014 “Hi everyone! Today it has been my third session with my 5 students of 2nd course of the degree of Primary Education in the Faculty of Education Science. As a warming up activity I’ve prepared the well-known game “Pictionary”. Usually they like a lot these short activities where, unconsciously, I used to review the vocabulary/contents of the previous sessions. After that, and as a crucial point for these sessions where communicative skills are trained, I decided to review a little bit of basic grammar such as Present Simple and Present Continuous vs Past Simple and Past Continuous throughout different activities where the emphasis was focused on pronunciation. As a speaking activity I planned a debate with the topic of the former Educative System. They were using the tenses previously worked and also some vocabulary was given to them in advanced so they could elaborate their speech. As a result of this debate, they were expressing their opinions and ideas on their own degree as a “bilingual degree”. At the end, we finished the session with the listening of a song and fillinf the gaps on the lyrics. “
February 27th, 2014 “Today it has been my fourth session with my students of the bilingual degree of Primary Education in the Faculty of Education Science. As a warming up activity we used one exercise from the book that Elena Gómez gave us at the beginning of the course where one of the students is asked to keep talking for one minute about a particular topic that another student decides. Good to break the ice at the beginning of the class and reinforce the relationship between the students. After that warming up activity I had prepared one test of Cambridge (PET). Since some of them were interested in certifications/exams, I looked for a test with the content of grammar I was planned to review (different tenses from the previous sessions + Phrasal Verbs) and, at the same time, they will discover the typical exercises of a Cambridge test. As a speaking activity we used a grill which I had already prepared with random words. Each student should pick up 3 words and create a story, even if the three words have no real connection between them. They came out with really interesting stories… At the end, as usual, they were listening to a song and completing the lyrics (most of them were dealing with phrasal verbs). The surprising thing about today was that, while they usually listen to the song twice, they have filled the lyrics by listening the song just once.. That has resulted in an increased motivation.”
March 6th 2014 “ My fifth session has taken place today. As a warming up activity we have been playing with the game “Tell us what you are thinking”. I have been telling one word to each student and they had to answer with the first word they thought about (related to the word I said or not…). Funny associations have arisen here… After that, I have thought about reviewing a little bit of the pronunciation we were using in previous sessions by creating a reading activity. Besides, this activity dealt with different Present/Past tenses and some questions of reading comprehension. We did it and by reading it aloud I noticed that, although they were not perfectly correct on their pronunciation, they had improved considerably in a few weeks. As a pre-speaking activity, I had planned a brainstorming about different topics such as: • Advantages of being a teacher • Disadvantages of being a teacher • Bilingual programs at university • ICT tools • Motivation in the EFL classroom After having written all of the ideas they were saying, each student picked a topic and developed a short speech using the vocabulary mentioned during the brain storming process. At the end, as usual, listening of a famous song “
March 20th 2014 Hi everyone! Today my 7th session has taken place. Since I planned my 6th and 7th sessions to be practically the same I decided to wait until my 7th session was taught and I would post them here together. Exact dates of my sessions were: 6th- March 13th 2014 and 7th- March 20th 2014. Our previous sessions were mainly focused on reviewing the grammar tenses and pronunciation by speaking activities, so these sessions were intended to focus on listening. I have found a very useful source of materials for these types of activities in iTunes provided by the BBC. There are several listening activities called “6 minute English”, they deal with different topics in a kind of a debate between different speakers (usually with different English accents). The objective of these activities is to improve the listening skill and to expand vocabulary in certain topics or areas. So, I decided to use two of these listening for these sessions: “Drinking around the world” (6th session) and “The male brain and female brain” (7th session). As a pre-listening activity at home, I asked my students last week to think about possible vocabulary of these two topics. They also had to find an article related to one of the two topics and bring it to the session. At the very beginning of the lessons they shared their vocabulary and we were reading the articles, making an extra effort on pronunciation. After that warming up, I played the listening and I made some questions about the topic. Finally I decided to create an open debate about the two topics where students were really participative and involved in the discussion! These days I could not end the session with our typical song but I was surprised with the evolution of my students and so they were!
March 27th 2014 Today has been my 9th session with my students of Education. Last week some of them wrote me telling me that, since they were applying for a scholarship, they would face an interview in English. They asked me some tips or advices so I took that as a topic for a session. I would like to thank María José for borrowing me some of the materials I used in my session This session was divided into 4 parts: 1. Job application form: I gave them a typical application form (from Education field) and they filled it with their own information. Vocabulary was the main field of the activity. 2. Personal profile: By collecting all the vocabulary, I asked them to create a short paragraph with their personal info as if they were going to be published for a specific job. They were also asked to read it aloud. 3. Interviews: Dividing the group into couples, they were playing the role of interviewer-interviewee by asking and answering several questions I gave them in a handout such as: “ How would you describe yourself?” “In what way do you think you can make a contribution to this company?”, etc. 4. At the end, I played a listening activity about “Odd interviews” from the BBC source I mentioned in my previous post of March 20th were they could make use of the vocabulary learnt in order to answer some questions.
Hi everyone! Today I would write my two last sessions ( 9th session on April 3rd 2014 + 10th session on April 10th 2014) because they were dealing with the same topic: Didactic Units. Since throughout the previous 8 sessions we were reviewing basic grammar and vocabulary as a reinforcement for their degree by promoting their communicative skills, I proposed to my students to get involved in the CLIL process by teaching them (as a supporting lesson) one of the subjects of their degree. They told me they were dealing in this semester with Didactic Units within the subject of Didactics but in Spanish. That’s why I decided to focus these two sessions on Didactic Units in English. I was given the materials they were using and trying to follow the same patterns as their teacher of Didactics, I prepared these two-sessions. Most of the knowledge that these sessions required has been already learnt by the students during their degree so my objective as a teacher of these two sessions would be the fact of eliciting that knowledge (even in their L1 if it is needed) and encouraging them to translate that information into English at the same time. In order to follow the lesson I provided the students with a handout with several examples of a Didactic Unit in English. The first session was divided into 4 points: 1. Brief introduction of the topic. 2. Context and students. 3. Timing. 4. Objectives. Using the materials I looked for the sessions (some textbooks, handouts and their own materials in Spanish from the lessons of Didactics) we were trying to develop these 4 points in order to create a Didactic Unit at the end. Initially the students were a bit lost in English, but when they realized they already knew all the information they were asked for (objectives of an unit, timing, etc) they were highly motivated and tried hard to express their opinions not only as students but as their new role of “teachers”. At the end of the lesson I gave each student a particular point which would be dealt with during the next session, so every student would prepare it and explain it to the rest of the class. This model of Didactic Unit was “completed” during the following session (10th on April 10th 2014). This session began with a review of the previous one and it was also divided into 4 points: 1. Contents. 2. Methodology. 3. Evaluation. 4. Sessions. As I said before, these four points were given to the students, so they were speaking about what they prepared at home: different theories, models, contents, authors, etc. It was quite useful since they were making a presentation unconsciously: using the different tenses previously learnt, pronunciation and vocabulary. After those short presentations that each student performed, I was asking some questions in order to make sure that the rest of the class was understanding the point of the partner. At the end, I gave them a template of a Didactic Unit and each of them was completing it individually. When they finished I asked them to read it aloud at the same time that their partners were taking notes about possible mistakes, questions, etc.
I strongly recommend this type of sessions (above all when dealing with Education students) because they were using the L2 as a vehicle for explaining/doing/understanding and the improvement of fluency in these two sessions has been amazing!
21st April, 2014 Today has been my session number 12 at the Faculty of Education Sciences. In this lesson we have talked about the concept of the Learning theory of education. Learning theories are described as conceptual frameworks dealing with how information is caught, processed, and retained during the process of learning. After a presentation of the topic, we talked about the different perspectives or paradigms through which we could see learning: behaviorism, cognitivism, humanism, and constructivism. I asked my students to tell me the basic ideas they knew about these four paradigms, for the sake of brainstorming the topic. Then, the class split up into groups of 3 and they had to choose one perspective to describe learning, and think about the advantages and disadvantages of it. Finally, they had to share the information with the rest of peers. Then, we took a deeper look at the sub-categories of each paradigm. For example, within behaviorism we had conditioning; within cognitivism we had the educational neuroscience and the Theory of Multiple Intelligences; and within humanism we had the transformative learning. I have explained every one, and then my students had to choose their favourite one and explain to the rest of peers the reasons for his/her selection. Finally, we have talked about other topics related to the learning theories of education, such as the multimedia learning, the contrast between the learning style theory and the instructional theory, and also the informal and post-modern theories. After a brief explanation of them all, I asked my students, in groups of 3, to look for more information on the internet about one of them, and then share the main ideas with the rest of peers.
- 4th April: In this session, with my students of the bilingual program in CCEE, we worked grammar review and vocabulary because they have made some mistakes in their exams or their homework. So, I prepared some review exercises y give them some list of vocabulary to be useful in their studies. In this way students clarify doubts and they felt more comfortable and sure when they speak or write English. We reviewed verbal tenses, passive voice, reported speech and conditionals sentences. They were happy to remember a lot of things they have forgotten.
- 11th April and 25th April session: My classmate Aurora tell me about her class about Didactic Unit so I asked to my students by email about it and they answered to me they were interested in because they didn´t know to do it. Students brought me with the material they were working and I follow those steps. 1. Introduction 2. Context 3. Aims 4. Contents 5. Methodology 6. Evaluation 7. Sessions I provided them with some useful materials and they have to create a didactic unit in English with those steps. That´s is the reason why it took two sessions. They found difficulty in thinking about choosing the subject, the level, etc. But finally they felt motivated and some of them created fantastic didactic units. This class was excellent for them.
24th April This day has been of practice. I was in the class of first level of Infant Education. I spent some time preparing flashcard to put on a board information to parents, in which some content that children learn in English are shown to them. It's coming to the end of my practices, so one of the teacher asked me and I offered to teach the last class with an activit. I'm pretty excited and I hope everything will be great. I have confident enough in me. I will tell you later about my next class.
Today has been my session number 13 at the Faculty of Education Sciences. In this lesson we have talked about the concept of the Problem-solving learning theory as a student-centered pedagogy dealing with the idea that learning happens through the experience of problem solving, so it is a style of active learning based on group work. First, I gave the students the fundamental ideas and features surrounding the concept of problem-solving learning, together with a brief view about the history of this learning model, who have been and are still its supporters, and also its connection with the constructivist learning we had already seen on the previous session. Next, we have watched a YouTube video in which the concepts of problem-solving learning scaffolding, and collaborative work were put in connection, and after listened to the video, we made a recapitulation of the main ideas highlighted. After it, in groups of 3, students had to look for more information about either the concept of scaffolding in the process of learning, or the idea of collaborative work, and then share the information with the rest of peers. Finally, in groups of 3, I asked my students to think of how they would organize a lesson by following the basics of this learning model. It has been very interesting to observe how my students have worked in this practical activity, because it has been very motivating for them and very fruitful.
22nd April, 2014: Last Tuesday I had my twentieth practical session, with First Year, at third hour, from half past ten to the break time, which starts at half past eleven. The first thing was, as usual taking roll, after which the teacher and I shared out the corresponding sheet to the exam of units eleven and twelve. He explained its contents. Secondly, the twelfth sheet was reviewed, and the attention was focused specially to the exercise in which the students had to make up lyrics from the Turkish March by Mozart, trying to match the text and music rhythm (being specially careful of accents) Thirdly, we did a practical exercise related to triplets, which are special musical length groups that requires making several mathematics operations to be understood at the beginning. As you practice and practice, you make it unconsciously. To end the class, we listened all the songs included into the eleventh and twelfth units and made some remarks about the corresponding music structure.
23rd April, 2014: Last Wednesday I had my twenty first class, with Second Year, at second hour, from half past nine to half past ten. The conversation assistant, who usually comes to this class every other week, did not come. Who did come were the three special needs students with their monitor. Firstly, after taking roll, the teacher revised the concept of triplets (which I explained in my previous practical session synopsis) by practicing them. The teacher proposed a challenge to the imminent exam, so that the student who overtook it, would be prized with an extra point in the general mark. This challenge consisted on singing a written score which included, at least, one triplet. Secondly, I explained the meaning of the two words from the section “Vocabulary”: march (in lower case letter, not the month) and fusion. After that, I reviewed what recitative, aria and chorus were and asked the students to explain it again individually, firstly in Spanish and secondly in English. To end the class, we sang the songs involved in the exam.
29th April, 2014: Today I have had my twenty second class. This time I had it with First Year, at third hour, from half past ten to the break, that starts at half past eleven. The first thing have been talking about greetings. The students have looked surprised about the amount of expressions they can use to greet. After that, we have covered the meaning of brotherhood, an abstract concept not much easy to explain. Thirdly, I have explained the meaning of march and fusion. To make easier and more enjoyable the explanation of that first word I have made the students follow several marches by walking, taking into account the rhythm. Fourthly, we have talked about interculturality, giving examples of typical foods, clothes, just like its prons and cons. In addition, it has generated a debate about topics that identify places, people, cultures, etc., such as Halloween, pizza, Flamenco, jamón (ham), jeans…
Today has been my last class of practices with Carolina. As I said in the previous commentary, today I have taught the class in which I have said goodbye to the pupils of Carolina. I prepared in my home one activity related to the unit that the children are working "Animals". I prepared a book of animals, in which, in a part of it, we could see wild animals and in the other part we could see pets; these animals could be extracted from the book and again put them in the book. The activity I have done with them has been the following: First I have given them different animals. After, each child came to class center and they talked about your animal. The pupils told us what animal it was, where it lived and whether it was pet or wild. Then, the child had to place your animal in the correct part of the book. The phrases that more we have worked in English are: It’s a wild animal; it lives on the farm/ in the forest; it’s a wild animals/pets. The students have had a great time and I am very happy because I was able to observe how the pupils learned very quickly and very easily, besides this, some pupils pronounced the sentences very well.
I am excited about how I taught the class and with myself. Has been a fantastic day.
Today has been my session number 14 at the Faculty of Education Sciences. Today we have made a very practical class. For this sake, I have provided my students with some basic theoretical ideas, so that they could work on them in groups of 3 people. The first thing we have done today was a brainstorming activity, so that the background or previous knowledge of my students was activated. We have brainstormed about the following ideas: preparing a course, first day of class, syllabus construction, class discussions and debates, classroom dynamics, and assessment. Then, the class was split up into groups of 3, and I asked them to plan a didactic unit based on what they had learnt. Finally, they had to share the information with the rest of the class. This activity is time-consuming, but I think it is worthy, and it has also been very motivating for my students. They have done a great job!
30th April, 2014: Last Wednesday I had my twenty third class, with Second Year, at second hour, from half past nine to half past ten. This time the students had the exam of units eleven and twelve and it took them the whole hour. During the class, the teacher and I talked and exchanged ideas about the activities we could do in the followings units. I also solved several doubts a couple of students asked me about.
6th May, 2014: Last Tuesday I had my twenty fourth class, with First Year, at third hour, from half past ten to the beginning of the break, at half past eleven. The thing that student did the whole hour was the exam of units eleven and twelve. As usual, some students went to ask me about several doubts they had related to the exam. The teacher and I planned the corresponding activities to the next unit, the thirteenth.
7th May, 2014: Yesterday, I had my twenty fifth class, with Second Year, at second hour, from half past nine to half past ten. After taking roll, the first thing was sharing out the correct exams so that the students knew their marks and where they had to improve. Secondly, the students started the thirteenth sheet, as usual, by writing down what they saw on the digital board. Only the first two sections were covered, Music album and Listening and thinking. Thirdly we worked two expressions: “What is your favorite instrument” and “Do you know how to play the violin”. As the students were getting the hand of it I warned them about not to mix the expressions that need “the way somebody does…” and “….how to do”. Fourthly we talked about the oboe. Later on, we read and commented the lyrics from While My Guitar Gently Weeps, by George Harrison, that speaks of musicians that sell themselves to the business music market. After that, there was a behavioural incident between two students that was fast solved by the teacher. To end the class we did a general review to the whole list of song listened in class, giving an extra quarter point to the correct name said by the volunteers.
Today has been my session number 15 at the Faculty of Education Sciences. In this lesson we have talked about the concept of the philosophy of education. I have chosen this topic in this exact day because today has been the last day that I have taught Pedagogy content, and the next day I will teach another bilingual subject, The Knowledge about Social and Cultural Means, from a philosophical framework. In addition, today’s topic also touches some of the points we have been dealing with in previous sessions, so I think that it is the perfect link and also the perfect recapitulation of information. First, we have talked about the philosophical perspectives from which the educational theories are constructed: ethics, epistemology, human condition, and psychological perspectives on human learning and development. Then we have made a taxonomy of the philosophies of education in charge of what to teach, on the one hand, and who and how to teach, on the other. So, in the first group we had essentialism, perennialism, progressivism, and existentialism; whereas in the second group we had behaviorism, cognitivism, humanism, and constructivism. I have explained each of them, and then, in pairs, the students had to discuss about the advantages and disadvantages of them, and share their opinions with the rest of the mates. After it, we have done an activity about the different contemplative education methods: critical pedagogy, democratic education, social reconstructionism, and unschooling. I split up the class into 4 groups and I provided each group with a text dealing with a different method. The purpose was to read the text and then explain to the rest of mates what it was about. Finally, I have provided my students with a list of the big names of the philosophers of education, such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Rousseau, Piaget, and others. In pairs, my students had to choose one character and look for more information about him, and prepare a short PowerPoint presentation to share with the rest of peers at the end of the class.
Hi everyone! Once again I'm writing two of my lessons (11th: April 17th + 12th: May 8th) together since they were part of the same Didactic Unit: Special needs students within the context of Primary education.
Time ago my students told me they would have to hand in a project about this topic at the end of the year and, as their English teacher, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity in order to provide them with some tools (vocabulary and structures) and make them to think about this interesting topic for them but by means of English as a vehicle of communication.
Although their projects are in Spanish, they were quite participative and asking a lot so I felt they were really "learning" something by using English but not only the language.
Both days I introduced the topic by proposing a brainstorming activity: "special needs". Fisrt day I wrote on the blackboard whatever it came to their minds and helped them with some problems of vocabulary. Second day, I asked them to explain why they thought about that particular words. It was a good activity to elicitate content (1st day) and as a review of the first lesson (2nd).
With the next activity dealing with some texts, I tried to expand their knowledge going deeper in this topic of special needs: beyond blind and deaf students are a loooot of learners with special needs and my students told me they were quite lost in this field. So I selected some readings dealing with Deep causes of inattention, impulsivity or hyperactivity. In these texts, real causes of that problems were provided as well as possible methodologies (1st day) and assessment (2nd). After each reading, and having previously solved any problem with vocabulary or structure, students were asked to sum up the text and answer some questions on comprehension.
After that, I asked my students to exchange their opinions about the topic by pairs.
At the end of the 1st lesson I gave my students a writing activity (knowing that the same activity would be useful for them to include it in their projects): creation of a didactic unit (also making them to review the content of previous lessons) for special needs students with a timing of 30 minutes (working in 2 groups of 3).
At the end of the second lesson, they exposed what they planned in these didactic units and I was quite happy (and surprised!) with their expositions.
Last Tuesday I had my twenty sixth class, with First Year, at third hour, from half past ten to the begining of the break (from half past eleven).
Firstly, after taking roll, the teacher shared out the latest exam and explained the doubts several students had about it.
Secondly, the students did the section Vocabulary, which included the words “flute” and “suite”. Just after that I talked about how to make a flute in PVC (vinilic plastic).
Later on, a group of students of last year of Secondary Education (not the compulsary one), came to the class to practice a performance to a videoclip, so we enjoyed watching them.
17th may, 2014: Yesterday I had my twenty seventh class, with Second Year, at second hour, from half past nine to half past ten. This time one more specific needs student came to class (a very singular one, with behavior disorder) plus their monitor and the conversation assistant. The new student has been expelled from the class due to his bad manners.
We covered the vocabulary from the thirteenth didactic unit (flute and suite). As the students were comentating it, the teacher and I explained the differences between flute and recorder. After that, the conversation assistant said the words to name several instruments so that the students had to say what he was refering to, in Spanish. To do it we widden the vocabulary words list, with woodwind or reed
The following activity was listening and, at the same time, reading the lyrics from the song While my guitar, by the Beatles, after which it was sung.
To end the class, the teacher, the assistant and I gave several volunteers a hand to translate the lyrics. The ones who did it in Spanish were awarded with an extra point in their final marks. On the other hand, the ones who did it in English, obtained two.
19th May 2014 Today has been my session number 16 at the Faculty of Education Sciences. Today we have started a new subject: The Knowledge about Social and Cultural Means, from a philosophical framework. Today’s session has been devoted to the topic of the critical means. The first thing we have done in today’s session was to have a debate about this Anglo-Saxon saying: “There are only two unavoidable things in life, death and the tax office.” I also added the idea of disagreement, because from a philosophical perspective, that is a fundamental and unavoidable thing in life. Then I asked my students (in pairs) to think of philosophical disagreements (such as the existence or not of God, etc) and then share the main ideas with the rest of peers. After it, we talked about the philosophical theories of the contemporary British Jonathan Glover and his metaphorical description of the philosophical task as something like trying to keep floating on a ship that is about to sink. Then we also talked about the difference between the real philosophical argumentation and discussion, and the mere expression of opinions. And I asked my students to think about examples of each kind to share with the rest of peers. The next thing we have done was to watch a YouTube video which told the story of the Socrates’ humility: Socrates was named the wiser man just because he was aware of his own ignorance. After the video, I provided my students with a text to read it from a part of the Plato’s dialogue between Socrates and Eutifron about that same topic of humility when admitting your ignorance. So, then we made a debate about what my students preferred: either if they always wanted to be right in a discussion (and consequently, sometimes having blind prejudices), or either if they sometimes admitted that the other person was right. Finally, we talked about the different stages in the Socratic method, and after it, I asked my students in groups of 3 to think of a situation where they could apply that method.
Hello Everyone ! . Yesterday was my first day, I have started my internship at school Colón in Córdoba. The center director explained the bilingual school program and after that she introduced me to the teacher who is going to be my placement tutor, whose name is Francisco. Francisco’s classes are 5º and 6º of primary , he is the social science teacher. We have been talking about my formation and objectives in this practices. Them he showed me the history didactic unit about Independence war, he was working with that day. He came with me to the class to introduce me to the pupils. Liz, an American girl who is working as an auxiliary conversation in class was there too. The teacher started students if they had done their homework. Then we corrected it in the digital blackboard. I had never used a digital blackboard before and I think it is an useful educational resource. We continued making another kind of activities such us ordering historical facts with famous figures, completing a text with the correct option. Students made these activities by themselves and then we corrected them in the digital blackboard to make them participate actively. To sum up I would like to add that I really enjoyed this class about Spanish history in the XIX century and main concepts and facts were explained in a clear and easy way to students.
I have a break and it is time to refresh my imputs! I will explain the planning from my last lessons in a few lines.
21st April
As my students wanted to be more in touch with education issues I tried to make it properly. Firstly, we made an "Education Quiz" where they had to choose between three answers related to schools' environment and stuff.
After that, students had to prepare a mini-presentation about their childhood school. They had to point out curiosities, experiences and important facts. We had a discussion about the posibility of sending their kids to that school and why.
Then, they carried out a Listening activity about how do we have to discipline disobedient schoolchildren. They answered a lot of questions about the topic and we created a very cool debate.
Finally and with a dynamic purpose, we played Taboo together and made a "Fill in the gaps" exercise.
We started with a "Warming up Activity". They have to reorganize some inspirational quotes from famous people related to education (Gandhi, Augustine of Hippo,etc.)
Then I gave them a handout with six different species of birds. They had explanations below with the most significant features and data of each bird. The objective was to show how to explain contents during a Science lesson so I gave them several cards with different animals. Each student had to invent an explanation about each specie and the rest had to guess them.
After that, we watched a video on bilingual education. It was about science and it created a good discussion full of coments and doubts.
This was one of the best lessons I had. First of all students did a "Quick Listening". They filled some gaps with specific vocabulary about CLIL.
After that, we made a review on Bilingual Education materials and rules. They started a phase of brainstorming and we spent the whole lesson designing activities and tasks implementing different features of CLIL in Pre-Primary Education.
After attending "XV Jornadas ZETA" I thought I had to share some acquired knowledge with my students.
We spent a long time with an interactive activity based on guessing movies' title. One of the students sitting with her back in front of the screen had to guess the film that her mates described.
Then I showed some materials that I got during the weekend about "Story telling". Secondly, they had to produce their own story but using a given beginning. At some point, they had to exchange their sheets and continue with their classmates' stories.
Finally, we watched two different stories made for enfants. They were based on bilingual education so students had to get the contents taught through the plot. We analysed a lot of details and they share their answers.
Today we have had so much fun. With the objective of warming up we have played Taboo with one-minute shifts.
We have repeated an activity but with some changes. They have had to guess some films but this time their mates have explained what has appeared during some scenes, not pictures.
We have been studying how pupils can learn using songs. They have seen video clips and we have talked about the benefits of this kind of activities. Students have been getting the contents from the songs and the way to teach them properly.
They have been thinking about how to implement specific contents in their own songs, so they have invented those songs and how to dance the rhythm teaching contents as well.
We have ended up with a "Fill in the gaps" activity to encourage their Listening skills.
Today has been my second day of practice, I started the day with a math test in 5 º A, I tried to help during the exam, resolving doubts that students could have. I observed in the decoration of class many posters about geometry, table sizes and lengths in English, I believe this is a positive idea to promote bilingualism. The second hour it has been in 6º B social science class, teacher Francisco talked and explained about the European Union. Later we saw a presentation and debated about it, finally children made activities about this topic to build up what they had learnt before. After the break time we had some free time so I have showed the teacher the unit I had prepared. The last hour, I stayed in 5º A, for history class, the teacher explained the lesson using the blackboard with the conversation assistant read it. This is really good for pupils since they can listen to a native pronunciation and ask her about the vocabulary that they don’t understand after that we played a game which consisted of describing picture on the board. At the end of the class Francisco told students the homework they would have to do for the following day.
20th May, 2014: Before starting my comment about the class I had last Tuesday I would like to correct the date of my two last sessions, which I wrote wrong on this blog: they correspond to the days 13th and 14th May. I do not know why I did it, perhaps I was thinking about another month, perhaps the exhaustion of this season... Anyway, here we go: Last Tuesday, the twentieth of May, I had my antepenultimate class, the twenty eighth, with First year, at second hour, from half past nine to half past ten. Firsly, after taking roll, the teacher and I reviewed the thriteenth sheet (corresponding to the same didactic unit). To do it, we did an exercice consisting on humming the melody from Badinerie, by Bach, giving an extra point to the volunteer who did it well. Secondly, the students commented an image where there was a man walking in the rain, with his umbrella. They had, not only to comment the content by itself, but also relate it to the song Raindrops, by Bacharach, which is set on the same context. To end the class, the students were encouraged to make up a choreography to dance Badinerie. To do it they had only five minutes to set it with their classmates. There were three volunteers.
21st May, 2014: Yesterday I had my penultimate practical session of this Practicum, the twenty nineth class, with Second Year, at third hour, from half past ten to the begining of the break, at half past eleven. What it was done was pretty similar to my previous practical session, with First Year, last Tuesday: choreographies about the song Badinerie, by Bach (in fours, with worse results than the ones from First Year this week), a humming contest about the same song (the first four bars -or measures-).
After that, we reviewed the activity from the thirteenth sheet, related to the churchs in Córdoba with organs. To end the class, the students sang the song While my guitar gently weeops, by George Harrison, to practice pronunciation by singing.
26th May, 2014 Today has been my session number 17 at the Faculty of Education Sciences. Today we have focused on the political means, and we have talked about the discursive fallacies and the different kinds that exist: the domino effect, the so-called wedge, and what is called drawing the line. First, I provided my students with some images representing those types of discursive fallacies, so that they could activate their background knowledge for the rest of the class. They had to try to describe what these discursive fallacies were about just with their pictorial representations. After it, we defined what the domino effect is, and what differences exist between it and the so-called slippery slope. Then, I asked my students (in pairs) to think about some examples of each of these two kinds of discursive fallacies and their consequences. Then, we repeated the same dynamics: we defined the so-called wedge discursive fallacy, and next, I asked my students (again in pairs) to think about some examples of it and its consequences, and share them with the rest of peers. Finally, we again defined the following discursive fallacy, drawing the line, and we also compared it to the concept of sorites, created by Eubúlides of Mileto but explored by Cicero. And after it, I again asked my students (in pairs) to think about some examples of each discursive fallacy and their consequences.
27th May, 2014: Today I have finally had my last practical class, the thirtieth, with First Year, at second hour, from half past nine to half past ten. Firstly, after taking roll, I have shared out the fourteenth sheet and the students have copied the sections “Music Album” and “Listening and thinking” from the digital board. Secondly, we have listened to the three pieces from the first section (Music album) and started a debate about the lyrics from one of them: As time goes by, by German Hupfeld (part of the Casablanca's soundtrack). Due to this song we have talked about the meaning of love. To do it in a more interesting way I have asked the students “Are you a jealous person?”, forcing them to express theirself about feelings (how silly you feel when expressing feelings in a foreign language....). To enrich the debate, the teacher has added the following topic: Love in your parents's times. More o less jelousy today?. Different strokes for different folks. To end my task of commentating my practical sessions on this blog I would like to sum up my experience saying I admire the enthusiasm most of the students I have worked with show at speaking English, and I wish the rest take English as seriously as they do.
9th May and 16th May These two session are based on cultural aspect of the English speaking countries. I showed some videos and images about London, Ireland, Australia, India and EEUU. We create a funny and interesting class because each pupil contributes with his/her ideas and they learnt a lot. Moreover, they practiced speaking and listening. In the second session, students had to prepare a similar class themselves so they took some topic like festivities of English speaking countries and Gibraltar because they wanted to know more about it. They showed a powerpoint with videos, images and many interesting web pages where they had learnt and looked for information. They explained what they had learnt and they were very motivated because they love learning about different cultures. It was very useful for them.
23rd May In this session I prepared some material comparing the different educational system in UUEE, UK and Spain. We created a debate and each student had a different vision of the foreign educational system. They are interesting in this topic because, maybe, they go out in the future to continue their studies. At the end of the class students played a table game similar to trivial where there is a board and many questions cards in English. All of them wanted to win so they had a good time speaking and reading in English.
Today has been my session number 18 at the Faculty of Education Sciences. We have had two sessions in one day, so 3 hours today, because of the timetable of my students and the proximity of exams.
In the first part of the class, we have focused on the topic of the political ideologies as a means, and we have talked about Anarchism, Capitalism, Communism, Fascism, and Socialism. Firstly, we have made a brainstorm with my students’ previous or background knowledge, because I wanted to hear what they knew about these concepts before we defined them. The class was split up into groups of 3 so that they could think of some of the main features of each concept, and then they shared their ideas with the rest of mates. Then I provided my students with some definitions by important philosophers about the previously mentioned concepts, but the concept itself was never given, so the task of my students (in pairs) was to guess which definition fixed better with each concept. After it, I asked my students to define with their own words the concepts of anarchism, capitalism, communism, fascism, and socialism. And finally, in pairs, they had to think about a real situation in the past in which any of these concepts had happened. Then, each pair shared their situation with the rest of the class, and the other people had to discuss about the consequences that such situation provoked from a socio-historical-financial perspective.
Then, in the second part of the class, we have continued with the philosophic frame to talk about the environmental means, especially, we have focused on the topics about the environment, the climate change and the sustainability model. First, we have talked about the similarities between environmentalists and philosophers worried about human excessive consumption in the Western world, being now exported to other parts of our planet. From this point, we have also initiated another debate about the psychological consequences of a society of excessive consumption. Then, I used a quotation from A Sand County Almanca (1949) by Aldo Leopold, to create a new debate: “We abuse the Earth because we treat it as if it were a good belonging to us. When we appreciate the Earth as a community to which we belong, only then we could start to use it with love and respect”. (Foreword, page viii). Next, we have talked about the different ecologist attitudes within the philosophic frame: both pragmatic and ideal attitudes, like the Theory of Gaia, Deep Ecology, Enlightened Stewardship, and the model of Sustainability. And we have discussed the advantages and disadvantages of each one, first in groups of 3, and then every group sharing info with the rest of peers. And finally I proposed a debate about this topic: Is the solution of the climate change a matter of ethics? Or is it just a matter of financial benefits?
Thursday, 22 May. It was my third day. I started the morning on the 6th class B with the history lesson. Teacher Francisco presented to students the topic about industrial revolution with the help of the digital blackboard, how people lived in the time of the industrial revolution, different social classes, social changes that were presented and the salient features of that time. We worked with activities and answered to students. The second hour I was in 5ºA, in the class of social science, Teacher Francisco explained about prehistory, asked children if they knew the different between Paleolithic and Neolithic times and age of metals. We reviewed and after that we made activities. The following hour I stayed in 3º B with the teacher Sonia in class. She started the Class asking them how they were. Then she told them that she had a surprise and introduced me to the students. Children wanted to know my name, age, where I came from, how long I would stay in school. The teacher encourages interaction in the classroom makes children use the grammatical structures and communicate using grammatical structures such us do you like ? I do / I do not, . Do you hate? I do / I do not. At the end of the class we checked activities about food vocabulary that students had made at home. I spent my fourth hour with Sonia in 1º A she asked the class how they were and told them that I would stay to help her. She explained the meaning of new words that children didn’t and then we wrote these words in cards to remember new vocabulary that they are learning. Then we sang a song about the topic we had been working that day. Kids were happy and participated actively.
Friday, 23 May. I started the day in 3ºA.The teacher paid attention to the students needs, tried to get active participation of the class using an appropriate level for children and their linguistic knowledge. The teacher encouraged interaction in the classroom making children use the grammatical structures and communicate with real dialogues in pairs. After that we made activities in workbook about this topics. The Second hour I stayed class 1º B with teacher Sonia. She reviewed the vocabulary from the previous class and gave to students new vocabulary, practiced pronunciation with this word and show them the meaning, asked questions for using the grammatical structures I like, I love, I hate, .Later children open his classbook and read the history about space travel, they practiced in pairs, when they finished. She and me was read for the class making characters. Finally kids took his workbook and made activities about this topics. I tried to solve their doubts and help them when they have some questions. The last hour I was in 6º A, we reviewed the activities they had answer. At the end of class he clarified their doubts and continued developing theme. At the end clarifies doubts , send new work on this lesson to make them as homework. Finally he explained the homework that students would have to do at home.
Pardon the late post. I will upload all the lessons in upcoming days.
Session 2: 29th January. Second class at CCEE. It took place in seminar 1 at 16:00. Although I forgot to call roll, attendance was chiefly in the figures of previous lesson. As our main concern is to foster oral skills and it was the second lesson, I considered that they would feel rather confident speaking about topics they are interested in. Thus, the subject for this class was leisure activities. The first activity was designed for them to speak up about themselves. On a set of pictures about different leisure activities, they had to explain why they either like or dislike those activities. Furthermore, they had to define themselves according with their favorite activities. The second activity had similar purposes, although it was designed more as a participative debate, with a set of suggested questions students may ask to fellow students. Third activity was a listening activity. It was a record also on hobbies and leisure activities, in which students had to fill gaps with the missing information about each character. Generally, students experienced difficulties to understand the CD recording. After the listening a text was provided to the students. My intention was to get them to approach to social and cultural issues of English-speaking countries. Following class’ thread, the text was a Daily Mail report on British people’s favorite pastimes. Last activity was somehow different and more relaxed. Given some guidelines they interpreted a role play in couples. The one should get a date, while the other had to show no interest at all. Although the atmosphere was slightly less enthusiastic than in the opening session, students generally showed commitment and interest.
Tuesday May 27. I started my day in 3º B, we listened a conversation in English with children , then they were reading and interpretating characters and finally we translated the meaning of dialogue into Spanish and made comprehension activities about this. The second hour I was in 1ºA, the teacher presented unit about food, gave children new vocabulary for this topic and we used oral conversation to practice the new vocabulary that we had learnt that day. After that we made activities and tried to solve doubts with the students. The following hour I was preparing sources and activities to use it in my next class. The last hour I was in 6º A the teacher continued lesson about industrial revolution, that he had started the day before. We checked homework in blackboard, the conversation auxiliary helped kids with the pronunciation and lastly students asked the question they had.
Wednesday May 28. First hour I was in early 1 A, we read about space travel and we translated into Spanish the different characters. Then the teacher asked the kids about it and then made control activities on this workbook. The next time I went to 3 º B, we spoke about the food, that it is the topic we are working this week, the teacher gives new vocabulary of food, practiced new structures and finally sang the theme song. The last hour I stayed in 6º A, the conversation auxiliary showed children a presentation for her natural place, Iowa State, explained during the same, population, weather and the economy in this country. Kids were asking questions about what gets their attention. At the end Liz asked some questions to student to notice if they had paid attention. I have found it an interesting activity that connects children at the American culture and awakens their curiosity.
Attendance was unhopefully low, due to exam period. Since two of the three attendant students could not go to the previous lesson and the left student agreed, we decided to repeat the same lesson planning of the previous week.
My intention was also to discuss on the selection of an appropiate support virtual environment to our classes. I prefered to use facebook. Despite its limitations, its interface is quite handy to use and facebook groups offer almost same possibilites than moodle. Furthermore, as a social network also offers a direct connection with students in case of last minute changes and re-scheduling. Obviously, final decission was delayed due to low attendance.
Today has been my 20th and last session at the Faculty of Education Sciences. We have talked about how the mass media is able to manipulate the public opinion. The first thing we have done was this activity: in pairs, my students had to think about a situation that has happened and it has been manipulated by the mass media for the sake of making people vote for a certain candidate, or something like that. Then each pair had to share the situation with the rest of peers. Then I asked my students, in groups of 3, to look for different newspapers, sensationalists and serious ones, to contrast the same piece of news. After it, we watched a YouTube video in which we could see how a gradual TV coverage affected and manipulated the information about the War of Vietnam in the United States for the sake of reducing the popular support for this conflict and accelerating the retreat of the American forces in the 70’s. Then we commented the video in a critical way. Then we did a role-play activity. In groups of 3, my students had to imagine that they were working for a TV news channel and they had to launch a certain piece of news, but they had to manipulate the information so that it was attracting for the audience and in so doing, they could make financial benefits. Finally, we have talked about the concept of the so-called “the society of disinformation”. And in connection with that concept, we have talked about the idea of propaganda in relation to politics, and the difference between black and white political propaganda. We have also talked about the techniques for achieving the highest level of propaganda: that which is used in the totalitarian governments. Then, in groups of 3, I asked my students to think about countries governed by totalitarian regimes, and finally imagine how they could use political propaganda there and what for.
Monday 2 June. I started the day with a Social science in 6 º A, We checked homework exercises, and solved doubts that students could have. The teacher told students the date of the exam and what they would have to study for it. Lastly he explained the last part of the lesson. The second hour was in 5º B Math class, teacher Francisco talked and explained about Geometry focusing in area and perimeter. Later he ordered activities for class and for homework .After the break time we had one hour free so I have showed the teacher my activities for the unit I had prepared he has told me some corrections to improve my unit so it has been really interesting to know his opinion about it. The last hour, I stayed in 1º B, for English class, the teacher explained the lesson using grammatical structures and she made student participate in oral activities and listen and repeat the song with sign language. From my point of view this is a great way of making children practice oral language and use grammatical and vocabulary of this unit. Finally played a game that consisted in describing and object or animal and the rest of the class had to guess what it was.
Tuesday June 3. I started my day in 2º A, the teacher presented unit about wheat and flour, gave children new vocabulary for this topic and we used oral conversation to practice the new vocabulary that we had learnt that day. Then we read a story about to conversion of wheat into flour and its different stages until it is prepared to be sold in stores. After that we listened a story about this topic, made activities. The next hour I stayed in 1ºB we worked with kids about their favourite place in the word. Children said that their favourite places were the beach, the countyside, school, home. Later we used flashcards to show places such us jungle ,mountain, sea and then they had to draw their favorite place in his notebook, when they finished they showed their pictures to the rest of the class and explained the reason why it was their favourite place to stay. Finally they did activities about this topic in his workbook and we checked. The following class I was in 6º A in History, the teacher carried on explaining contemporary age topic using a video of the coup in Spain in 23 of February, children asked questions and we were talking about what would have happened if the coup had succeeded. After that we used the blackboard to make an activity that consisted in describing Spanish government with his name of president. Finally teacher explained the homework for the following day about the democratic transition in Spain.
During this session students and I have been analyzing multiple didactic units again. All of these materials came from the CLIL Programme from Junta de Andalucía.
As my students are studying to become pre-primary teachers I chose units based on the lowest levels of primary education. So, contents are closer to those they are going to teach in the future.
We have been commenting on activities, main topics, vocabulary and so on. It has been so useful in order to reinforce their knowledge about CLIL environment.
During this lesson and the next one I have implemented the didactic unit I’ve designed about psychology and learning processes.
Being more specific, unit is based on conditioning, learning process and language. My students are very interested in this topic because they want to know how to handle different behaviors, learning styles and children’ development.
This lesson has been carried out continuing with the issue we started working on last Tuesday. Students have been working on the topic of psychology again and we have ended up by chatting in English to make my students feel more relaxed.
Wednesday June 4. I started my day in 3º B, we listened a conversation in English with children , then they were reading about clothes and used the structure put on/ take off, I’m wearing a T-shirt, jeans, dress, shoes, scarf, etc. After we made activities about this. The next hour I stayed in 6º A, we checked homework exercises, and solved doubts that students could have. Lastly Teacher explained the last part of the lesson about contemporary age. We reviewed a story events from Fernando VII to the present and made activities in the blackboard about this. The following class I stayed in 1ºB, for English class, the teacher explained the lesson about the shadow, we using grammatical structures about the weather with its sunny or its cloudy, she made student participate in oral activities and listen and repeat the shadow song with sign language. To finish she gave activities to difference where my shadow is and draw and colour your shadow. The last hour I was in 2ºA, Teacher gave to me the opportunity to teach the class. I prepared some activities to have fun with the children made games, for example, chain stories to create one story with kids in couples. Salesman to sell a product to the class withthout saying that it is. Decodification move the letter of word and put in the right order. Creates codeword. The class was great, Teacher helped me and stayed to assists me, children enjoyed and participated actively in the activities.
Thursday June 5 . I started my day in 2º B, teacher gave new vocabulary about this topics, then they were reading a text about clothes and used the structure put on/ take off, I’m wearing a T-shirt, jeans, dress, shoes, scarf, etc. Finally we made activities about this. The second hour I was in 6ºA for assistant in contemporary age exam. I was tried to solve doubt during the exam. The following class I stayed in 1ºA, for English class, the teacher explained the lesson about the shadow, we read an story with this topic, later we using grammatical structures i’ts sunny or its cloudy, she made student participated in oral activities and listen and repeat the shadow song with sign language. Finally she gave activities to difference where is my shadow and draw and colour your shadow. The last hour I was made activities and resources for didactic unit to following class.
Friday June 6. I started my last day of practice in 5º B with social science class, the teacher explained last lesson about Prehistory. Later we showed a presentation and debated about it, finally children made activities about this topic to build up what they had learnt before. The next hour I stayed in 2ºB we carried on with the clothes thematic, kids used the structures I’m wearing, teacher gave them new vocabulary and practiced pronunciation with them and finally teacher ordered activities about it in workbook. Then we cheeked together in the blackboard. The third time I was in 6ºA the teacher presented unit about ancient age, he explained the new lesson, gave to students new vocabulary for this topic and we used oral conversation to practice the new vocabulary that we had learnt that day. After that we made activities and tried to solve doubts with the students. Finally he explained the homework that students would have to do at home. The last hour I was in 3º B the teacher announced to student that I would teach the class that day , we reviewed the basic vocabulary and structures of the first issues and made activities to strengthen these concepts, we corrected faults on the board with all the kids and to finish I proposed a series of games I had prepared for the class, we played a guessing game in which you have to describe an animal and another game about decoding words. Children actively participated and cooperated actively in class. I think they had fun and besides they worked essential skills in the area of English.
Session thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth: 15th May, 2014, 2nd May, 2014, 5th June, 2014 and 12th June, 2014.
Hi everyone! I’ve been a little bit stressed those weeks so sorry for the late post. Today I will write four of my lessons because they all belong to the same didactic unit: Literature. I was surprised at the very moment when my students asked me to dedicate some lessons to this topic but they explained to me that although they would have an exam in Spanish this year, next year they would have to face the same subject in English. Because of that reason I did prepare simple lessons containing the four of the skills related to literature. In spite of dealing with different literary genres, all of them follow the same pattern: 1. Warming up: Brain storming activity on Narration/Poetry/Drama plus a special lesson for Fiction. 2. Reading: Brief text with an example of a narration, poetry, etc. • 1st session: Narrative: fragment of “Animal Farm” by George Orwell. • 2nd session: Poetry: fragment of “The Chimney Sweeper” by William Blake. • 3rd session: Drama: fragment of “Hamlet” by Shakespeare. • 4th session: Fiction: fragment of “Gulliver's Travels” by Jonathan Swift. - Different activities here appealing to summary of the texts, different parts of the story (introduction, climax, etc), narrator, addressee, literary figures, rhythm when possible, vocabulary, etc. 3. Listening: I prepared a video or podcast where the text that students had was read, so they can focus on pronunciation. Also another activity, where the story was continued and they had to tell me the answers of some questions I gave them about the continuation. 4. Speaking: Working by pairs, they had to invent an alternative ending of the story we had (very funny when dealing with poetry!!!). 5. Writing: As homework, short paragraph about the possible applications of these literary texts in their lessons of Bilingual Primary school.
6TH June and 13th June In these two sessions I have carried out my didactic unit to finish my practices in Ciencias de la Educacion. My didactic unit is about important Spanish people in USA. The contents are related with Sciences and Language because the most important characters are writers or scientist so students have to know contents of it In my first session, students look for information and they were interested in the topic because it is something different. They remembered some aspects of these people and they watched a video related with it. Later, they had to write a description and a biography of one of the most important Spanish people. In my second session, we played a game called “Who I am?” to remembered the contents of the previous session. As the same way we watched a video of the most important Spanish people last week, that day we watched a video of important English people in Spain. It was very interesting. Students made a chart with English and Spanish scientist, writers, artist… Finally, students had to look for information about a VIP person and to do a presentation where they were assessed
Lesson 4: 12th February Fourth lesson at CC.EE. 5 attendees. A group on facebook was established, in which I will post activities and helpful websites, and they will upload answers. I also proposed them to compile a collective glossary of unknown terms we use in class, and they agreed too. The objective of the lesson was to provide students with basic vocabulary and communicative skills in the field of education and teaching. My approach in this sense is quite evident: they are all teaching students; therefore this focus would foster their motivation, as well as the usefulness of introducing actual essential vocabulary for them. The first activity was, then, a warming up debate on the profession of teaching, with a previous brainstorming. Afterwards, they had to complete some activities related to education vocabulary. As we lost some minutes discussing about the use of internet in our course, we only have time to make a brief oral debate about their expectations in UCO’s bilingual program.
Lesson 5: 19th February Fifth lesson at CC.EE. Full attendance. There was no available VGA connector, so we had to change our usual place (seminar room 1) to a lecture room upstairs with a desktop computer. An agreement on the usage of virtual support was finally reached. Due to organizational problems, the classroom change took us around 30 minutes. The central thread of the lesson was personal descriptions. Although my initial will was to address topics somehow related with Infant Education, the shortcomings of their level of English led me to deal with more basic issues. In the first activity they should provide the teacher with random descriptions of fellow students, and I handed those descriptions to other students so they could guess the described classmate. Then, over a list of 50 personal qualities they had to debate on which of them are positive and which of them negative. Once they knew the meaning of those words, they had to re-write previous descriptions, with the help of personal interviews in English to their classmates, and hand them to me. Classroom switch with maximum attendance and the very nature of the topic we dealt with provoke some noisiness and irrelevant chatter, although their behavior was far from being catastrophic.
Lesson 6: 26th February Sixth lesson at CC.EE. Again with high attendance, and again the same problem with the lack of VGA connector, forcing us to change classroom. Fortunately, we did not waste time as much as in the last lesson. The main aim of this lesson was to finalize with the topic of personal descriptions. I also decided to include job interviews as a communicative task, everything related with the sphere of teaching and education. Firstly, as a warming up activity, a brief talk about memories of one’s teachers. This activity allowed me to test their knowledge and accuracy using past tenses for prospective lesson plannings. The second activity was a group exercise in which, with the help of suggestions, they had to write a list of desirable qualities of a good teacher. The third activity was the key element of the whole lesson. They had to prepare and carry out with a job interview. Their purpose was to hire a new teacher for a school or academy. I divided the class into two groups, and each group had to choose one person within the group to be the interviewee. I was cheeky enough to tell those two to bring me a coffee while the rest of the class was preparing the interview. Despite a certain lack of skills the activity was successful. Before the last activity I intended to introduce clothing vocabulary, explaining as well adjective order in descriptions. As that was the week before carnival, they had to think (in groups too) about a fancy dress to wear in that weekend, explaining “how” and the materials used.
Lesson 7th: 5th March. Seventh lesson at CC.EE. High attendance, we faced no problems at all with the equipment. The aim of the lesson was again issues related with the labor sphere in general and teaching in particular. In the first half of the lesson students had to differentiate different job advertisements, valuing the different kinds of jobs, the skills required and their own suitability for those jobs. Afterwards, they did a listening exercise on the advantages and disadvantages of working while studying. The second half of the class dealt with teaching. Mainly, it was an introduction on the concept and the completion of didactic units. After a brief debate on different approaches to didactic units, a template was given to them to be completed in groups.
Lesson 8th: 12th March. Eighth lesson at CC.EE. From this time forward attendance will fall. The actual figure of students for this lesson was 4. The aim of this lesson was to establish a set of contexts in which students have to use orally different past tenses. Generally, those contexts were supposed to be tied with each student’s memories. As a warming up, they had to create orally sentences in past in which each verb follows the sequence of the alphabet. In the second exercise they had to use time expressions and sequencing markers to have a conversation in pair about past events and experiences. The third activity was quite similar, and they were meant to tell each other about their first experience in different contexts. In the next exercise they had to differentiate what is an adventure, an achievement, an event, a special occasion and an experience, and then to put an example of each one. The last activity was a written production on their best holidays ever. Frankly, it was one of the lessons I am less satisfied with. The proposed activities were too repetitive and similar with each other, and there was a generalized lack of grammar basis in their level. Some students even respectfully criticized extremely oral focalization of the planning, asking for grammatical explanations when they were needed.
Lesson 9th: 19th March. Ninth session. Lowest attendance, only two people. As they were no present in the previous lesson we repeated the same lesson planning. Attendants showed a level slightly higher than the rest of the class, so the results were not that disappointing.
Lesson 11th: 2nd April. Eleventh session. Attendance, from now on, would be stabilized among the figures from 5 to 7 students. Addressing students’ suggestions this lesson was somehow more focalized in grammar skills, not abandoning in any case the communicative approach. Once again the understanding and use of the different past tenses was the main thread of the lesson. Our goal was to differentiate the utilization of the past simple and past progressive. Therefore, I started the lesson giving an explanation about the use of the aforementioned tenses. To consolidate their capacity of differentiation the first activity was as simple as a classic “fill the gap” exercise. Afterwards, I gave them a handout in which they had to put in order a sequence of different sentences. They also had to underline simple past verbs and to circle present progressive verbs. A second handout was also provided with a review exercise about time clauses. Personally I found some difficulties to give them a confident explanation, as my academical background has nothing to do with philology or language. In any case, they seemed to understand it properly.
Lesson 12th: 9th April. 12th Lesson. 5 Attendees. No incidences to be reported. The first half of the lesson followed the same structure than the week before. An explanation on the differences among present simple and present perfect was also given. Furthermore, the first exercise was another “fill the gap” activity, and then a handout in which they had to use the present perfect to build sentences about classmates’ experiences. The second half of the lesson was, somehow, different. In different groups they had to build a fictional history, giving positive (fortunately) and negative (unfortunately) sentences, and then changing fortunately and unfortunately with time clauses. As an ending, there was a reading on Easter traditions.
Lesson 13th: 23rd April. 13th Lesson. 4 attendees. No incidences to be reported. The main goal of this session was the understanding, differentiation and utilization of three different verbal forms of the future: will, going to and a certain use of the present continuous. First two activities were grammar exercises aimed to consolidate the newly acquired knowledge. Next exercises were oral activities. In the first one students had to about their own future plans, and in the next one some flashcards were given to groups to build up stories using the future. As an ending, there was a reading on a NASA report about the problems that the Earth will face in the future. There were no time to complete all the activities, so they were send as homework.
Lesson 15th: 7th May. 15th lesson, 6 attendees. No incidences to be reported. This lesson was different from the last few lessons, being more focused in essential communicational tasks than in grammar. Therefore, the main aim of this lesson was the acquisition of vocabulary related with food and communicative scenarios such as ordering food in a restaurant or shopping in a grocery. First activity was a brainstorming on typical dishes of Spain, the USA and the UK and some oral questions related with the topic. Afterwards, given a set of adjectives, they had to guess different kinds of food. Third activity was a reading task about restaurants’ reviews, classifying afterwards each one according to the prospective customer base. Finally, in the last activity, they had to discuss in groups about a project to start up a new restaurant.
Lesson 16th: 14th May 16th Lesson. 4 attendees. No incidences to be reported. The lesson continued the guiding thread of food, in this case more focused on groceries than in restaurants. Thus, the first activity was a role play in a grocery shop: firstly they had to write a list of stuff they might sell in different kinds of food shops, and then they had to perform the aforementioned role play. As some students suggested me, and taking into account that we were in May and they were somehow overwhelmed with essays and revisions, the last half of the class were not as usual. They prepared activities about songs they like.
Lesson 17th: 21st May 17th lesson. 5 attendees. No incidences to be reported. Using facebook group, during the week students voted for a film they would like to watch. I recommended them to choose an animation film as they are dubbed and easier to understand. Therefore, they picked up Anastasia, and it was played with subtitles in English. After the film, and having them a handout with guidelines, each student had to make an oral review of the film.
Session Seventeenth: 19th June Today our last session has taken place. Since, as I said before, next exam of my students will deal with literature, as a way of reviewing all the information we have seen until last day I asked them to divide the contents and (together with the contents they already had from their subject of Literature) prepare a presentation each of them. It was quite interactive since the rest of the students were asking few questions and the one presenting was able to answer almost all of them (with a little bit of help of vocabulary…). Since I arranged with my students that all my lessons would last 2 hours due to the multiple lessons I missed at the very beginning of this period of internship because of their exams (except for my first session that was 1 hour and a half), finally we have had a total amount of 33 hours.
Welcome to 2014 MICP Blog.
20th January 2014
ResponderEliminarToday has been my first day of teaching practices. My group of students consists of 10 people from the first course at the degree of Primary Education in the Faculty of Education Science. We have had a problem because the students are in their blank days for preparing their exams, so only one student out of the 10 that belong to my group has assisted to the today’s lesson. I have adapted the activities and tasks that I had prepared for pairs or groups, but I would say that the class has been very productive in the sense that the student was motivated to speak and participate. In fact, we haven’t finished all the activities I had prepared because the student was making questions and working very well in each task.
These lessons are focused on fostering and improving the oral skills (listening and mainly speaking). Each session will last one hour and a half, a total number of 20 lessons.
Today we have practiced about presentations by using a game in the blackboard. I wrote some items related to me and the student had to guess what they are by asking me questions. This is a simple but effective way of presenting me to the students. Then, we changed the roles and it was the student who had to write some words that are related to his life and I had to guess what they are for him.
The second activity was a listening about the dialogue between an examiner and a candidate for an IELTS speaking test. This listening is used as background knowledge so that now the student is able to imagine a situation in which he is the candidate and I am the examiner. We improvised the situation and the communication was really fluent and funny.
Then we continued with some activities adapted from a book that Elena Gómez gave to me and the other people in charge of the English lessons at the faculty. She told us we could use the book or even adapt the activities in it for our classes. I prefer to adapt the activities and make them more motivating for the students.
The first activity was to answer typical questions in interviews for famous people in a daily newspaper. The questions were about personal issues such as hobbies, preferences, personal opinions, etc.
The next adapted activity consists of guessing the question for certain answers related to vocabulary and expressions about different types of accommodations and their characteristics. This activity was complemented with another one about finding the odd adjective, also related to the topic of accommodations.
Then we did another listening activity using several photographs of different types of accommodations and their advertisements for being rented so that the student has to answer some questions related to his personal opinion about each photograph.
And finally we have done some activities in order to improve pronunciation, mainly they were activities focused on word stress and their patterns.
Well done Macarena. However, my main concern here is that you seem to be supporting general English for the students and that is definitely not the idea of the Practicum experience. You should be attending classes with your advisor, learning CLIL classroom techniques and then be allowed to teach your own proposal. That is the required procedure. Please come to me for any question on this.
EliminarMacarena,
Eliminar¿can you tweet your daily experience? I really want to know your feelings right after facing the class
22nd January 2014.
ResponderEliminarYesterday we have our first English support class. It took place in seminar 1, from 16:00 to 17:30. Although I feared to be almost alone in class (experiencing the same problem that the most of partners are suffering) finally came to class eight students. One of the students did not belong to my group (7), but I guess she will deal with this issue with Elena and will not be any problem. So, there were three absent students of 10 in total, and another aforementioned student. The class syllabus was quite simple and focused on conversational purposes.
In this first class, my aim was to assess their level and their confidence to speak in English. Thus, and after a brief introduction, we did an activity where they had to match questions and answers of an interview of a pop star and then answer those questions by themselves. Then, an activity where they had to choose one topic from a proposed list and speak at least for 30 seconds, and another one about speaking on whatever they wanted for 1 minute, using at least one connectors from a list. Finally, we played tic-tac-toe, dividing the class in two teams, being the mechanism to write O or X very much the same than in previous activities: doing a speech about the topic written in each square.
Although I am concerned that the class was a bit repetitive, I think that the students’ attitude has been outstanding. We could create a great atmosphere in class. In this way, and in spite of the most of them have a level from lower-intermediate to upper-intermediate (5/7), two of the students, with poorer proficiency, could participate and feel integrated even though one of the students from the beginner lot seemed to be quite shy. In quite satisfied (by the moment) with them, and they show great interest and motivation to learn. Furthermore, I felt confident and comfortable teaching them, and I did not panic after a student's question which I did not know the correct answer. I could even say that I enjoyed myself.
Emilio, thanks for your enthusiasm and good mood facing the experience. Please check my comment above for Macarena, my concern is the same and I really want you to get the best of the experience.
Eliminar4th february 2014
ResponderEliminarI am Ginés Pedrosa Parra and, from now on, I am going to coment my experiences in my practical sessions in the IES "Ángel de Saavedra" of Córdoba.
Today I have had the first one, which corresponds to First Year of Secundary Education (the well-known Spanish acronym "ESO")
Before the class, I have been informed by the teacher about the syllabus, specially about the contents and the timing.
The class took place at second hour, i.e., the one from half past nine to half past ten. The first thing the teacher did was taking roll. The students were in silence, more or less. Secondly, they were asked, as a warming up, about how were their weekends and if they remembered any song heard by themselves during those days. Many of them answered, but only two made a mistake -both made the same one-: confusing the preposition "on" to "by" ("I listened to Be my lover of Inna" instead of "(...)by Inna").
Thirdly, the teacher and I shared out a A3 sheet, which corresponds to the eighth unit of the syllabus. Afterwards the students copied the solutions from the digital blackboard to their sheets. Once they had finished, they played a game based on figuering out which song was the one a mate was whistling -a song previously worked in previous classes-.
After that, The students listened to a song in order to focusing on several concepts (crecendo, accelerando and the word "dawn" -to widen their vocabulary-). The worked it setting the beats of the correnponding rhythm by their movement of their hands and, at a time, saying the ones they were setting.
Long story short, the rest of the activities were related to singing (one to practice English pronuntiation and the other one with showing the characteristics of one instrument -today was the turn of the accodion- simulating the student were the instrument itshelf -e.g.: "I´m an accordion and I have keys....."-).
Finally, as a review activity, the pupils listened to previously worked songs in order to remember them easily. During this final activity, the alarm went off.
It has been an interesting experience. As the teacher told me before the class, we will participe more and more as the time goes. Today, my duty was reduced to understand how a Music bilingual class works in the non theoretical world, in a real center (by which I have taken notes) and help the teacher correcting several linguistic mistakes from the students.
Good start Ginés, it seems the expectations were right; you are in the right CLIL track.
Eliminar3rd February 2014
ResponderEliminarIn my second session at Magisterio again there has been just one student. Anyway, the class has been funny, motivating and I think that very useful for the sake of improving the oral, especially the conversational, skills of my student.
The first task I proposed to the student was to read aloud 5 tongue twisters. The objective of this activity was to create a relax atmosphere and having fun, while he was getting the pronunciation of difficult sounds when put together.
After this, we made a roleplay debate for the sake of practicing persuasive techniques in speaking. One of us was suposed to be from a determined political party against the idea of abortion and the other person was from the opposition party in favour of abortion. The idea is to discuss and persuade the other from your thoughts.
The next task was to imagine that he was an English teacher and there was a naughty boy in the class, so he had to think about the way in which he could foster the student's motivation and participation in the class.
Then, the next activity was to think of one word starting with each letter of the alphabet. After this, the student had to make up a story using the words he had mentioned previously ramdonly.
The next activity was to think of a well-known story and making up an alternative ending.
The last task of this session was to tell a story whereas I was interrupting him all the time by asking absurd questions. He had to answer my questions and then continue with his story without losing the plot.
Macarena, ok as a general English in-practice teacher; however, as I told you face to face the other day, you were supposed to be having CLIL practices in non-linguistic areas; say for example "pedagogy" or "educational statistics" etc. Isn't there any chance for you to ask your advisor in CCEE to be able to get in touch with that?
EliminarYesterday I had my second session as an English supporter. But firstly, I want to apologize because I didn't understand very well how to enroll this blog last week. Anyway, I would like to explain my experiences.
ResponderEliminarWhen I had my first lesson I was nervous and I didn't know what to expect from it. But at the end, it was so possitive. There were six students and I had planned a few activities to introduce ourselves. We talked about our background, we commented the reasons why we have chosen Education as a way of life and so on.Then we practice some games based on vocabulary and they made one monologue about specific topics.
As their English levels were different, I tried to make the lesson relaxed and we followed motivating methods as working in groups.
Last lesson was yesterday. There were five students and they started filling some gaps in different written monologues. After that, we played noughts and crosses with topical issues. Then, we practice memory development and vocabulary acquisition by using "Story chain".
In a circle they had to remember the sentece said by their partner on the left hand and add another part to it. Obviously, the chain was broken sometimes and it was a great opportunity for them to discuss.
Next day, I will try to make them practice vocabulary and lose shyness by playing pictionary. Obviously, including educational items and different levels or categories.
OK Rafael, please read my comment to Macarena above, the same applies to you. I assume you are in CCEE, but you haven't stated that and your partners might not know. I highly recommend that you propose the advisor to have an induction in the CLIL practices at the School. ATB, Javier.
EliminarI'm so sorry. My practices are taking place in CCEE.
EliminarEste comentario ha sido eliminado por el autor.
ResponderEliminar5th February, 2014
ResponderEliminarLast wednesday I had my second class. It was at third hour, i.e., the one from half past ten to half past eleven (when the break starts). This time I had it with second year, group B. In this class, the students have the chance to practice their English with a native conversation assistant once every two weeks. This session was the one without him (he is a man). I was been previously told what the session was going to contain, so that I could help the students more effectively.
The first thing the teacher did was, as usual, taking roll. Later on, he asked for a volunteer to tell the classmates what it have been done last class, helped by the "classroom diary". This is a challenging activity because the student has to change tenses, add modal verbs, include linkers, adverbs, etc.. So I helped him (because the one who dared to do it was a boy) by celebrating his grammar goals and giving him a hand with his mistakes (e.g. telling part of the correct sentence with a smile).
After that, the teacher explained the exercice which was going to take the rest of the time. This one consisted in dancing with a concret choreography according to the rhythm of a song previously listened. The main points of this exercice were learning several new expressions related to dancing ("do a reverence", "hold the hand of your partner", "one step forward", "two steps backward" and "turn around") and working the "learning by dancing" approach.
My role was helping students who didn´t do the exercice properly, for which I spoke slower and clearer and used the body language in order to make them understand why they were wrong.
All the students looked happily involved, so I felt useful.
Fantastic session Ginés!!! Well done.
EliminarMy first day of teaching practises was the 24th of January. In my class there are 9 students, almost every students went to the first class. They are studying the first course of Primary Education and they are really interesting in english class.
ResponderEliminarThese classes are focused on oral skill so I divided the class in two parts. The first one we had presentations to break the ice so they spoke quiet because they felt comfortable. Later, we were practising classroom expressions, therefore, they have to speak in english to ask or to say whatever. They completed some expresions to memorize them. They were motivated and they used it during the class. It was very useful.
Finally, in the last part they practised the listening, they completed some exercises related with the dialogue of the listening.
Students went out happy, they worked and learnt. It is very satisfactory so I was very happy.
M. José, you do not tell your classmates where you are having your practices. Can you please specify? It again, looks like a general English course.
EliminarMy practices are in CCEE
Eliminar10th February 2014
ResponderEliminarToday is my third day at Magisterio. Again, I have prepared some activities to foster the oral skills, especially conversation and speaking. I am very happy today because the whole group has come!
The first thing we have done is to know the new people that have joined the class. We have talked about their motivation for being in the course and other issues related to them, such as their hobbies and interests.
After this brief introduction, we started with a funny activity in which I told a story that really happened to me but it was very unusual and strange. Then the students had to guess if the story was true or false. Then, in pairs, the students think about a story each person in the group. One of the stories must be true and the other false, so when each person tells the story to the rest of the class, they have to guess if they are real or not. The important thing is that the false stories must be realistic and the true ones must be unusual, just for the sake of confusion. It has been a very funny activity and the students have done it very well, creating excellent false stories when necessary.
The next activity consisted of writing on the blackboard shocking statements to introduce a debate. Some of these statements were: “Homosexuality is an illness”, “Every girl, independently of her age, has the right to abort if she wants to”, “Big bottle must be prohibited in Córdoba”, & “Women are the best drivers”. The students have debated according to their opinions about these topics and it has been very interesting to know their perspectives on these troublesome issues.
Then, we did a chain story telling activity. I started the story by saying “Once upon a time”, and every student had to add a sentence. Before that, I wrote on the blackboard some words that I was going to use to suggest the students some ideas of how to continue the story.
After this, we did another funny activity which consists of being able to keep talking during three minutes without stopping. Each student could choose any topic that they felt confident with for the activity. There was a rule: Nobody could hesitate neither or spend more than 2 seconds in silence.
The next activity has been a debate about what the students prefer: novels or movies based on novels (such as Harry Potter, Twilight, The Lord of the Rings, The Games of Hunger, Game of Thrones, etc).
And finally, the last activity again has been focused on pronunciation and word stress.
Great activities Macarena, you do great; again, my concern is that this is very similar to what you already did in your graduate Practicum and you should be able to get in touch with something different.
EliminarToday, I have started CLIL practices at school "Virgen del Carmen". I am going to observe how bilingual plan work in this school. I am going to be with the first and second cycle of primary education. I am going to give arts (in 1st grade), science (in 2nd and 1st), and English (in 3rd). The bilingual program has been introduced three years ago in infant education so the 3rd course is not bilingual yet, it will be next year. This project is fairly innovative for teachers and students in this Centre. As a teacher has told me today, there are still too many aspects to improve.
ResponderEliminarI have observed that teachers try to talk and explain all the concepts in English. The children interact with teachers and answer the most of the questions that the teachers ask to them. First of all, teachers explain the different activities in English, if the children have not understood properly, they repeat the activity in Spanish. Teachers use approximately 50%-70% English to carry out the session. With the first course students, Spanish predominate to English.
To sum up, the first experience has been positive and interesting and I am very glad because the Centre and the teachers have received me enthusiastically.
11th February, 2014
ResponderEliminarYesterday I had my third class. It was at second hour (from half past nine to half past ten), with First Level of Secondary Education, group A.
The first thing, as usual, was taking roll and, after that, the teacher told the students they were going to review the eighth lesson, which is the last one they have done before the first second term exam (which will covered from lesson 6 to 8). He highlighted the most conflict points among which it was one I noticed very interesting, but difficult: they had to explain what a sentence from Billy Joel meant. It looked pretty difficult to a twelve year-old child. Nevertheless, most of them managed to explain it well, more or less. In part it is no wonder, as they have already talked about it before I had started my practice. It took long, most of the class time.
Later on, the teacher show a model of an exam as the one the students will face to very soon. It took about ten minutes.
Finally, according to the teacher instructions, the students sang the melody of a series of music works, just in the moment he stopped the audio reproductor. The aim of this funny play was removing the stress and making the students involved through singing.
To sum up, a theorical class, ornated with a music play at the end.
I am going to talk about my second and third session at school. Today at first time I have given science lesson. I felt comfortable and fluent. I have asked to the children some questions about animals and baby animals. We were talking about viviparous and oviparous animals. I have used the blackboard to explain them the difference and after that we listened the audio. The teacher told me that I had given the lesson very good. He supposed that I had done this before, so I felt proud of myself. Some things that I would like to tell you are that in second course when the lesson is about to finish they review mental calculus and multiplications in English.
ResponderEliminarIn the first course, they have a paper tree. Every day one student thinks about an unknown word that he or she would like to know. When the student goes home, he or she searches the word and to the next day, they write the meaning of the word in a paper leaf.
12th February, 2014
ResponderEliminarToday I have had my fourth class, with Second Year of Secondary Education, group B. Almost all it has done has been the same that my class yesterday, even though that one was in First Year. This is due to the fact that the national syllabus contemplates the same contents for First and Second Year of Secondary Education. The only thing that changed from one class to another was the auditions (the songs used to the auditions) and, of course, the dialogues, answers and so on.
As Music class is very participative, specially in the is organizated in this high school, every single class is different.
Today did not come the conversation assistant because the class was thought to review the content and, therefore, his help was not absolutely necessary.
13th of February,
ResponderEliminarToday in class we have talked about the Universe with the second course, groups A and B. As I said before, I am watching how does the bilingual plan work at school and also, how do the teachers work with this plan. What I am watching during this period is that teachers and students both are responding positively to this project. Students are learning better and faster. I was thinking about the way in which I learnt English at school when I was young and it was very different. The teachers only taught simple verbal structures on the blackboard with no sense. Most of the children didn’t understand anything. They didn’t talk about British or American culture or specific vocabulary. Also they didn’t teach with real-life situation. On the contrary, I love the way in which nowadays most of the teachers taught the English language. For example in this Centre they combine culture and language. They teach to their student with real-life examples. In this school, students understand almost every English concept of the units and they have a good general English knowledge.
(1/2) Achievement unlocked!!
ResponderEliminarAfter having been waiting for my students to come to my lessons (due to their exams....), last 6th February I could teach my first class :) My students (3 people) are from 2nd course of the degree of Primary Education in the Faculty of Education Science. Since it was my first class and I did not know their level, I had prepared some activities in order to check their knowledge and use of the English language.
Some of these activities, mainly focused on communicative skills, were:
1. Introductions: With the excuse of not knowing my students, I made them to introduce their partner. I thought it would be an interesting exercise in order to check if they were aware of third person singular endings.
2. As I wanted them to speak, I divided them into 2 groups and explained the following game:
• “ACTIVITY 2: Who am I? Part I.
Work in small groups. Decide 3 different well-known characters (actors, cartoons, musicians, painters…) and write them down. Once you have written the names, the other group will have to find out your characters by asking a limited number of questions.
• ACTIVITY 3: Who am I? Part II.
Work individually now, choose another different well-known character and write a description (without revealing the name!). One of your partners will try to find out the name by reading aloud your description.
With these games I realized their main problems related to grammar (basic word order, question structure, etc).
3. I had also prepared another two activities dealing with vocabulary (mainly related to education) in form of games.
4. Last part of our class was a discussion: I asked them about the “bilingual degree” they were studying. They told me their opinion and expectations of the degree and some useful information for me as a teacher of these supporting lessons.
After having experienced my first class, I can tell it was worth it the fact of waiting for them for two weeks: they are highly motivated, willing to work and participate. So I was really happy with this small group but….. family is growing!!
(2/2) My second session (on 13th February) was started with an amazing surprise: two girls who were not enrolled in these lessons had talked to one of my students and, since they were really happy with the first session, they decided to enroll in my group Of course they were very welcome since Elena Gómez told me there was not problem.
ResponderEliminarThis second session was planned as it follows:
1. Brief game (Linked words) as a warming up activity. I do recommend this game to my colleagues since, at least my group, they were breaking the ice very fast… they got involved in the class in less than a minute!
2. Vocabulary activity: since last lesson they told me they were experiencing some problems with this specific vocabulary I planned the following activity.
“ACTIVITY 2: Education. The statements a-j below were made by students about courses they are taking. Complete each sentence with a feature from the list:
Research project / deadlines / easy-going tutors / end-of-year- examination / background reading list / extensions / weekly seminars / individual tuition / ongoing assessment / practical work / vocational content
a. The tutors provide you with a _________ before the course.
b. As part of our assessment, we have to plan and carry out a ________.
c. It’s a very flexible programme: we have very ______________.
d. It can get very stressful: we are assessed by ______________.
e. Coursework has really fixed ______________. You can’t get _________.
f. Everyone gets ____________ if they’re experiencing difficulties.
g. The course is marked by _______________ of written work.
h. I spend a lot of time doing ___________ in a laboratory.
i. It’s mostly __________ : it will all be useful for my career.
j. There are regular ____________ in which people take turns to make presentations.”
3. Pronunciation: After having completed the exercise, we focused on the pronunciation of this vocabulary (highlighting distinctions between primary and secondary as a review).
4. Listening: using a famous song (“Say something”) we were practicing listening in this part of the session.
5. Speaking: Using one of the activities planned in the book Elena Gómez gave us, we spent the last part of our session discussing several questions about the topic trying to use the vocabulary we had been using throughout the lesson.
If any of my colleagues want to use my activities which have been mentioned, feel free! Even if you want my planning sessions just tell me and I will be happy to share them.
Today it was my last session at school; I have felt sad because it has been a marvelous but short experience. This period has been very useful for me. This practice has been different from my degree practices because I have watched how does function a bilingual plan. Also I have realized how the students answer to this plan. This morning, in first course we have done a worksheet about the sea. The topic was “under the sea”. Firstly I explained the activity; the first step was trace, the second step was complete the features and the details and the last step was colour it. Then I drew on the blackboard a big sea with little fishes, sea stars, crabs and in groups of three they also drew on the blackboard during 3 minutes while all the classroom were working. I followed the same procedure with the other classroom of first course.
ResponderEliminarIn the second course in Science lesson, I revised unit 5 and 8. They will have an exam next week so the teacher asked me today if I could do a review with them. We started with unit 5 “The animals”. We were talking about viviparous and oviparous animals, baby animals and the difference between herbivores, carnivores and omnivores animals. I made questions for each student such us what is your favorite animal? Or Do you like kangaroos? They had to answer and they practiced the structure yes I do or no I don’t. All these questions improve their abilities in oral communication. After that I drew on the blackboard how do the animals move? and I wrote a list with several kinds of animals and the students wrote near of each animal how does it move, for example swim or jump, and oviparous or viviparous depending on the animal.
In conclusion, I loved this period because I have learnt lot of aspects of bilingual education and I have also practiced as English teacher. All the teachers have supplied me documents and information that I have needed and they have left me develop my own lesson freely in this short period.
17th February 2014
ResponderEliminarToday has been my fourth day at Magisterio. We have done lots of activities focused on improving students’ fluency when speaking and making them lose their shyness.
In the first activity, every student had to take 3 flashcards showing pictures of objects. Then I started telling a story about what I did the previous day, and every time that I named the object that appeared in any of the students’ cards, the person who had this card had to continue with the story.
Then, we did a funny story that I love because students get nervous because they do not understand what is happening. The activity consists of telling the students that I am going to organize a party next week and I need them to bring some items. But the crazy thing for them is that they do not know what they have to bring. Every person can only bring things that start with the first letter of their names. They ask, “Can I bring X?” and I have to say yes or no. From time to time I tell them one or two things they can bring, until they guess the aim of the activity.
The next activity consisted of a list of 5 words for each student that they had to describe one by one and the rest of people had to guess what words were being described. The person that guessed more words was the winner of the activity.
Then we did another funny activity. Every student had to think of a word (for example, an object or the name of a famous person) and then write it down in a post-it. After this, the post-its were interchanged without seeing the written word and then they had to put them on their foreheads. In this way, each student had to make yes/no questions to the rest of people in order to guess what he/she had in the forehead.
The last activity was one of my favorite. It was about making crazy and funny job interviews. each students was given a piece of paper with the name of a weird but real profession (such as pinguinologist, dog food tester, teddy bear repair technician, or fortune cookie writer) and then, one by one, they had to face the interview, in which I had the roleplay of the boss and the rest of people were my associates, managers or workers, and they had to answer to all of our questions and make up a story about why they wanted to become part of our company.
Today's lesson has been very funny!
Hello everybody!
ResponderEliminarFirst I want to apologize for not writing sooner, but I haven’t had time.
I've already started my practices! Then I'll put the dates and what I have done each and every day.
February 6th, 2014 (9:00-10:00)
This day, my practicum partner and I met with Javier, the practicum coordinator. During this time we talked about the goals of the practicum, Javier told us about using the calendar to Gmail; we also met the center's facilities, as well as the classrooms and teachers who we’ll work for our practices I must say I liked the school and all the teachers have been very kind to us.
February 17th, 2014 (12:00-13:00)
This day was my first day of practice with the children belonging to the first level of the second cycle of Infant Education (3 years). First, the teacher Laura (English teacher 3 years) showed me how she work with 3 years in an English class .
Laura has begun reviewing the vocabulary that students already knew.
Before continuing counting what we have done I would point out that prior to this class, I had contact with Laura by email and we agreed that I was going to bring to class a prepared material to review the unit vocabulary that children already knew. I prepared a flashcard with the vocabulary in the unit and a puppet of a cat.
Now I keep telling you what we did in class. Then I presented my material and we worked with him in class. I told the children that the puppet, called “cat” (because it’s a cat) forget how some things are said and we have to help him remember. So I asked the students: "What's this?” And the children responded: cat, dog,…
This material liked children very much.
To end the class, I helped the teacher to perform a task with the children; the students had to cut and paste a frog with their body parts and remember how to say each body part.
And we finished the class saying goodbye to the children
This class I liked it and have been very satisfied because I have seen how the material (which I did) really liked children.
February 18th, 2014 (12:00-13:00)
Today has been my second day of class of practice and I have been with a new teacher (Carolina) during the first half hour, we have been with students, who are 4 years old and the second half hour with students, who are 5 years old. In both classes first we sang a song, and then we performed two chips.
Furthermore I would also say that Carolina has explained to me how works with her pupils of 4 years and 5 years and has given me the vocabulary they were learning. She also told me that for the next class, I will prepare me material to reinforce the vocabulary learned from both levels. Soon I will tell you what material prepared and my experience in its implementation in the classroom.
Sorry for my English, I hope to improve it soon!
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ResponderEliminarYesterday was the first day of my Practicum. In spite of having spent all the afternoon in the Academy, I'll share one of the CLIL session with 9 years old students which was related to PE and culture aspects. The objective by the end of the lesson was pupils had read about baseball and basketball and written about football.
ResponderEliminarThe session started with a warming up activity by asking students about the five most popular sports in the USA and if they knew about those sports: players, leagues, rules...
On the top of their pupil's book there was a sentence including the superlative "the tallest" and some numbers which were used to review the superlative and numbers.
Then, the teacher introduced the topic of the lesson by eliciting what they could see in the pictures. After that they read a text about baseball aloud. We helped them with difficult and new words. After reading, we checked understanding of the new vocabulary and repeat the same procedure with the text about basketball.
Then, they carried out an oral comprehension activity. They had to listen to a sentence and say aloud if it was related to basketball or baseball.
Finally, the had to do an activity where they had to read and put the sentences in order, and, in the last activity, by using key words given in the activity, they had to write about some aspects of American football.
My second session was the 31st of January with my group of students of the first year of Primary Education in CCEE.
ResponderEliminarThat day we started the class with some questions to break the ice, for example, what about their first exams, their opinion about the degree, etc. After, they were practising listening with some exercises. Elena provide us of this useful materials.They have to fill the chart or to complete the conversation.
Later, I give them some practical structures to stablish an order to describe and to create a debate, and a list of winter sports vocabulary .
With this material, first, each student had a flashcard of a winter sport (ski jumping,speed skating,bobsleigh...)and he/she had to describe it to the rest of the class because those sport are not ususally in our country. Second, they started a debate and they had to defend the sport they had in their flashcard.
They had a nice class, they had fun and they are very motivated to speak and to participate in class.
Today, I am going to explain one of the yesterday lessons for 9 years old students. It was a maths class and the objective of the lesson was pupils practice with the units of measure and do some operations.
ResponderEliminarAs a warming up activity, the teachers asked students to perform some measuring and weighing tasks, for instance the width of the board, the height of a desk, the weight of a board cleaner, to review language from the previous lessons.
Then, they had to copy a chart into their notebooks, measure the things suggested in the activity and write the answers. After that, students had to make pairs, ask and answer about the information on their lists, guessing what each length represented (erasers, pens, etc)
Later, they opened their activity book and did an exercise where there were some sums and subtractions and check the answers with a code in a box. Here, the students worked individually and checked with their partners when was necessary.
Then, they carried out three problem-solving activities. Pupils worked individually and then checked it in pairs. Finally, the teacher checked with the class by asking them to read the problems aloud and doing the sums on the board.
19th February
ResponderEliminarLast wednesday I had my fifth practical class. This week I have had only one because the one I have on Tuesdays, with First Year, did not take place because of a talk.
This was the turn of Second Year, from half past ten to half past eleven. At this stage of my practical training I have realized the time the students have their class affect their behaviour, specially just before the break (which takes place from half past eleven to twelve), when they are a bit more nervious than in other hours, according to what I have seen and the teacher´s opinion.
The students had the exam of themes six to eight, so the conversation assistant did not have to come. It took the students the whole hour and was structured the followong way:
1. At first, the student had to write down their data in a gap filling headline.
2. Then, they had nine questions to answer, all of them by writing except one where they had to sing a song already worked in class. These were the questions:
a) The music album. The students had to write down what the three songs they were listening were.
b) Listening and thinking. They had to analyze several musical aspects, such as texture, rhythm, timbre, etc., from another song.
c) Vocabulary. In this question, the students had to define three words related to Music (folklore, oboe and orchetra) and make up one each sentences using them.
d) A text. In this section, they were asked to rewrite in prose a song already made in poetry.
e) Searching and learning. Here the students had to choose a topic covered in class and write what they remembered about it.
f) Musical writing. In this activity they had to fill two more bars from two different meters shown as example (3/4 and 6/8). This activity was the only one where the English language was not the vehicle to express the answer.
g) Images. The student had to describe a picture. What it will have to take into account to correct the exam is the proper use of grammar (tenses, modal verbs, order...), the range of vocabulary, the writing length, and the originality.
e) A song. This is the part where the students had to sing a previously worked song.
f) In my city. This was the last question of the exam and here the students were asked to write an essay based on street musicians in Cordoba.
3. Finally, as a volunteer activity, there was a survey where the students had the chance to say which part had been the easiest and the most difficult for them, as well as to write as many opinions as they wanted to.
During the exam I kept an eye on the students so that they didn´t cheat and, at the same time, I was talking low to the teacher about what the type of exam seemed.
On my third day in the Academy, the teacher continued with session I wrote about last Wednesday. The aim for that session was pupils read more about sports and carried out an art Project. So, that day English was used not only for PE but also for Arts.
ResponderEliminarFirstly, as usual there was a warming up activity in order to review what pupils remembered about the sports from the previous lesson. Then, the opened their books and they had to perform a speaking activity in pairs. There were some questions about baseball and basketball and they took turns to ask and answer the questions. At the end of the activity, they looked and checked their answers.
Secondly, they opened their activity book. Here, they had to practice some of the questions and answers in open pairs. They were given a chart from which they had to ask questions to create week programmes as a part of the training program of one of the characters who appeared in the reading text. The teacher corrected with them on the blackboard.
Finally, as a project, they had to make a ball. First, the teacher showed students the ball she had made. Then, she read the instructions with pupils before handing out any of the materials. She held up the materials as they were mentioned, pointing to, for instance, the neck of the balloon. Pupils worked individually following the instructions also written on their books.
Today has been my fifth session at Magisterio. It has been very interesting and funny, and I think that we have created an excellent atmosphere, in which shyness has no room anymore. That is fantastic for the sake of improving conversation and speaking.
ResponderEliminarThe first activity of today’s lesson has been one in which a student had the role of a detective looking for the murderer among the rest of peers. In secret, every student had to read a piece of paper in which a new identity for this role play activity was described. The context of the murder is the following: “Richard was an old and rich man, and today after dinner he has been murdered”. The characters involved in the story are: the personal trainer, the butler, the wife, the lover, the gardener, the cook, the friend, and the housekeeper. The murder is the cook, but nobody except for him knows it. Every character is accompanied by a brief description of his/her personality and the name of the person he/she suspects of being the murder.
After this, we did an activity that I like to call “The Teapot”, in which one of the students had to go out from the class for a minute while the rest of people were thinking of a verb to create funny situations. The thing is that the person out of the class has to guess the verb but he/she has to do questions in which the word “teapot” functions as the substitute of it. For example, if the verb is “to kill”, any sentence must be formulated wit “to teapot”, and maybe the guessing person can say “Can you teapot your best friend?”, and the rest of people have to say yes or no.
The last activity we have done today was a board game focused on vocabulary about everyday life, hobbies and so on. Every student had to say 3 words or to do something, depending on the task given in every box of the game. For this activity it is necessary to have a dice and some pieces.
Today has been my third day of teaching practices, and again I have been in the first level of Infant Education.
ResponderEliminarFirst, the teacher’s English has reviewed the weather and vocabulary learned with children.
Then, during the last half hour, I've been doing with children an activity of the carnival. For carrying out this activity, I have made a memori related to the carnival.
The activity has been developed as follows: First I have taught the new vocabulary to children with flashcards. After that I have put all the cards on the table and I called the boys and girls 2 by 2; and each child picked a card. If both images are the same we said "are equal" If they are not the same, we put sad face.
Although it has been a very fun class, I would also say that the children have been very nervous and restless. I guess it was because they were celebrating the day of Andalusia.
25th February, 2014:
ResponderEliminarToday I have had my sixth class, with First Year, group A, at second hour (from half past nine to half past ten).
After taking roll, which has been, as usual, the first thing, the teacher has shared out the exams already corrected. The students have had some minutes to check it and think about any possible doubt. After that, there have been given the exams back to the teacher and me following the list order, letting every single student to make as many questions as they wanted to. This part has lasted half an hour.
Later on, the students have spoke up their opinion about the workshop on percussion they had the chance to enjoy yesterday, on account of the intercultural week that is being celebrating in this high school this week. The teacher and I have been correcting their gramatical mistakes at speaking, at random, without any order but always smiling, to make the students feel more confident and confortable. In general, they looked very impressed about that activity.
Following with the didactic unit, the students have copied the definitions of a couple of words, folklore and oboe, from the digital board. Once it has been done, they have spoke about what they knew about folklore. As a speaking activity, the teacher and I have done the same as the previous one, trying to correct not only the gramatical mistakes but also the content and, if necessary, the amount of information related to that (content).
After this activity, the teacher has proposed to move to the latest part of the Unit 9 sheet, the one that has being done currently, to work on the word "lullaby". The students have said the ones they knew, such as "Duérmete niño".
Once this speaking activity has been done, the teacher has played "La tarara" by two versions, a folkloric one and the Isaac Albeniz one.
To finish the class, there have been played a song from "El amor brujo" ("Love, the magician") by Manuel de Falla and they have been asked to dance improvising, as they went along. In the middle of this dancing activity, the bell went off.
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ResponderEliminarTuesday was my fourth day of practice, which I loved it, has been great. As I said in the previous comment, the English teacher told me that I will carry some educational material to reinforce the vocabulary in class.
ResponderEliminarDuring the first half hour, I was in the second level of Primary Education.
With educational material that I made, I began introducing a new teaching unit, entitled "The title seeds" To do this , first with Flashcards , I introduced new vocabulary ( Seeds , shoots, stems, leaves , buds , flowers ).
Then I presented the teaching material for children as a game. The game consisted of the following: We made groups of 5 people each, each group was a color. Each group threw a die and they had to say aloud the name of the image that had touched him, thus achieving this image. I made a board on which we write the collected images and the group which gets all pictures before, wins.
Students really liked this activity, and They were very motivated and excited, trying to get a new image.
During the second half hour, I was in class the third level of Primary Education. This class We also started a new unit. Therefore, I introduced the vocabulary with flashcard (baker's, butcher's, fruit shop, toy shop, clothes shop, park) and then presented the educational material I made. The activity consisted of: First I handed out pictures of different places in the city in class, and then I handed out to each child a picture of something you can do or buy at a specific location of the city. When I said "already", the students had to go to the place where they wanted to go according to his image. Then they had to say "Let's go ...."
With this activity, the kids enjoyed and were highly motivated and had learning fun.
Last Tuesday, we carried out an Art session with children of 6 and 7 years old. In this hour the objective was pupils learn about primary and secondary colours and how to mix colours to make other ones.
ResponderEliminarAs warming-up activity, we reviewed the colours words by putting one set of coloured crayons on each table. Then, we named a colour and pupils tried to be the first to pick up the correct crayon. We repeated this until we mentioned all the colours.
Afterwards, we handed out some crayons for each pair of students, a piece of paper to mix up colours and a worksheet. In the first activity they mixed the colours the activity indicated, and they had to write the answer next to the colour test. In the second activity they had to colour the rectangles of a table by distinguishing between primary and secondary colours. The correction of both activities was made with the whole group eliciting the answer by means of questions.
Finally, pupils did a communicative activity by asking questions in pairs about what they had learnt in that session. They asked questions about how to make secondary colour using this structure "What colours make...?".
26th February, 2014
ResponderEliminarThe day before yesterday I had my seventh class, with Second Year. This time, I eventually had the chance to see the conversation assistant (from now on: Drew, as he is called) working in my class.
The first thing was, as usual, taking roll. After that, the student did a gap filling activity related to Hey Jude lyrics, by The Beatles. They wrote down the corresponding words as they were listening to the song. The song was listened once previously and twice having the sheet with the gap filling activity. After listening to the song and letting the students a couple of minutes to think of their answers, Drew read the answers and the students corrected their wrong ones. Once it was done, they all sang this song from two versions: a typical one by Beatles and another corresponding to karaoke style (voices almost silenced).
Secondly, Drew read the lyrics of "Land of hope and glory" an adapted song for Henry The Seventh coronation, from the instrumental march number 1 from "Pomp and circumstance", by the English composer Edward Elgar. After that, we all sang it. It was easy because it is a well-known melody.
Thirdly, Drew told the students the "Arriero de Bembibre" story, a previously worked folk song, in English. Due to the fact that he did not understand the meaning from several words and idiomatic expressions, such as "mozo", "buena media", "arriero", "arreaba" and "venta", some volunteers explained it to him, in English. To finish working with this folk song, it was performed by the students adopting the corresponding roles to the lyrics.
After this activity, as a flamenco guitarist, I let the students about the sad Paco de Lucía's death and told them about how impontant he was to Flamenco and to Music and Culture in General, not only in Spain but in the world. To show that I used the digital board to play several videos from Youtube.
Finally, due to the date, we all sang the Andalusia Hymn, in Spanish, considering it is an issue to work in all subjects, according to Junta de Andalucia instructions.
My third session was the 21th of February.
ResponderEliminarI showed to my students a big poster of different carnival traditions and in different places. They described the poster and the festivity. Then, they have to describe their costume y their classmates have to guess it. It was very funny and they were motivated to make a good explanation and to guess their classmates´costume.
Finally, they learnt new vocabulary about this festivity, they saw a video with the origin of the carnival and they did an exercise of listening.
The class was very complete and useful for student, they were really happy.
The twenty-sixth of February, I gave a CLIL session alone for students of fourth of PE whose objective was pupils learnt about the different kinds of literary genres.
ResponderEliminarTo start with, I proposed a warming up activity by asking them what novels they have read recently in their L1. They started saying names of books and we discussed if they were novels, poems or plays writing them on the board. Then, they opened their books and I asked them if they knew what the biggest book in the world was. By using a tablet, I showed them a picture where they could see the huge book compared with the height of a person.
In their books, they had to carry out an activity of reading and matching. They read silently about three famous examples of different kinds of writing (The Owl and the Pussycat, Peter Pan and The Chronicles of Narnia). After having read the texts they matched them with the correct picture which illustrated the passages. We checked the activities with the whole class by using a small board where students wrote their answers.
Once having corrected the activities, they had to answer in pairs some questions about the texts they had read. Before answering them, I checked if they had understood the words appearing in the questions. When they all finished we corrected the activities together with the small board as we did in the previous activity.
Finally, they did an activity where they had to write their own poems. They had to take into account the rhyme of the words before choosing them from three different possibilities. Once completed the poem they were given a piece of cardboard where they wrote their poems and drew a picture which represented the passage on it.
3rd May 2014
ResponderEliminarToday is my 6th session at CCEE. Today we have moved on towards a different path. We have explored the contents of one the bilingual subjects that my students are rolled in for their degree: Pedagogy. The dynamics of the classroom have been more or less like the previous ones, basically for the sake of improving my students’ oral skills, but today we have focused on the specific contents of this subject.
The contents that we have covered today are: Previous ideas on the teaching profession, satisfiers and dissatisfiers in the teaching profession, teaching as a profession: criteria of professionalism, and the priorities for improving teacher education.
The first activity we have done today was a brainstorming in which the students had to say their already learnt ideas about what the teaching profession implies. Then we have done a debate about the answers that students had given and we have discussed about the relationship between the teaching profession and the social changes, especially the ever changing characteristics of students and also the demands coming from the educational institutions.
The second activity we have done had to do with the ideas that satisfy or dissatisfy my students from their knowledge of becoming a teacher. We have done again a brainstorming activity in which students had to say one thing that would satisfy and another thing that would dissatisfy them when they are teachers. Then we have done a role play activity based on the previous ideas. In groups of 3 the students had to imagine a dissatisfying situation when being a teacher, and they had to try to solve the problem and then share the ideas with the rest of the class.
For our next activity, I provided my students with the definition of the term profession: “A disciplined group of individuals who adhere to high ethical standards and uphold themselves to, and are accepted by, the public as possessing special knowledge and skills in a widely recognised, organised body of learning derived from education and training at a high level, and who are prepared to exercise this knowledge and these skills in the interest of others”.
So then, we have done a debate about what this definition suggests to my students according to their ideas about being a teacher. And after it, I gave them a list of ideas related to the criteria of professionalism for teachers so that, in pairs, my students could think about a situation in which the person being the teacher is not following the previously mentioned criteria, and then they had to share it with the rest of the class.
Finally the class was split up in 4 groups in order to do an activity related to the theme of the priorities for improving teacher education. I gave each of the groups one sentence to work with: How would you improve the competences of the teacher?, How would you improve the quality of the initial teacher education?, How would you ensure the quality of teacher educators?, and How would you promote professional values and attitudes in the teaching profession? After some time, each group had to share their conclusions with the rest of peers.
Today has been my fifth day of class. I have been in the second and third level of Infant Education. Today has been a day of drawing. My tutor of practice, asked me to do some drawings of the content that the children will learn and their word written underneath to put them on notice board for parents. The purpose of putting this content on the notice board is that the parents to know the contents that the children will learn in each learning unit.
ResponderEliminarToday has not been a bad day, but not good, because I couldn’t carry out any activities with children like I would have liked. I hope the next class will be more fun.
Yesterday, students of seven and eight years old carried out a lesson related to food in order to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy food. To warm up, we carry through a small class survey by asking students “What’s your favourite food?” Pupils wrote the food item down or drew a picture of it if they did not know the name of it. Then we asked them to say or show their favourite foods and made a tally on the board. Referring to the tally chart on the board we asked pupils “How healthy are we? Do we like the right foods? Is (ice cream) healthy or unhealthy?”
ResponderEliminarSecondly, we handed out the worksheets. In the first activity we elicited the names of the foods in the photos. We wrote the names on the board and pupils had to categorise the food items into healthy or unhealthy. When they finished, we all corrected together. In the second activity, they had to circle the foods they liked to eat. Then, they compared their answers in small groups. Once having compared it, we asked them if they had circled more foods in the healthy or the unhealthy column, by eliciting the answers one by one. In groups, pupils discussed who had the healthiest eating habits and who had the least healthy.
Finally, pupils were given another worksheet. This one was a diary entry and it was about food. We wrote on the board breakfast lunch, dinner. We drew pictures for each meal according to what they ate the day before. We elicited the vocabulary and wrote new words on the board. Then, we asked several pupils about what they had eaten the day before for breakfast and we wrote down the answers on the board. After this demonstration they filled their diary entries about what they had eaten the previous day.
4th March, 2014:
ResponderEliminarLast wednesday I had my eighth class, with First Year, at second hour, from half past nine to half past ten.
The first thing the teacher did was, as usual, taking roll. After that, the teacher shared out some posters and asked the students to substitute the older ones, because of their bad state or the naughty drawings made around there by the students (who knows by who...).
Later on, a quote from the great Spanish composer Manuel de Falla was remarked: "La música no se hace, ni debe hacerse jamás, para que se comprenda, sino para que se sienta.". All the students agreed with Falla.
Once it was done, the teacher played "Ritual Fire Dance" by Falla and asked students about their feeling about it. At this point there was certain chaos at answering because the students tried to take part without taking into account the order, so the teacher and I had to tell them off and order them to be quiet. Once the class returned to the proper silence state, the students said very differents things, such as "fear", "like a snake", "a sacrifice", "magicians", "witchcraft" (this word was unknown to one student, who had to say the Spanish word to express what he was thinking about. I asked him to try and use other words to say different features of this kind of woman, giving him the begining -"I kind of woman from the tales who flies in..."- and, finally, I wrote on the brackboard the English word to it), etc.. All of them made sense and had a lot to do with the work by Falla.
Later on, there was a humming contest based on the Falla melody.
Then, the teacher told the students what they had to do as homework, i.e., the section from their sheet called "searching and learning" where they had to look for information about a topic (about Falla or Spanish folklore -the students had the chance to choose-).
To finish the class, we all sang "Allelluiah" by Leonard Cohen and "Viena" by Billy Joel, to practice Engish by singing, a good way to learn, by singing, and to end the class.
5th March, 2014
ResponderEliminarYesterday I had my nineth class, with Second Year, at third hour, from half past ten to half past eleven. This time the conversation assistant did not come but two special education children (from what we call in Spanish "aula específica). They both came with their specific teacher. This is done in order to make them feel part of the class even if they have their own activities, due to their limitations.
Firstly, the teacher took roll.
Secondly, he asked students to speak up, in front of the class, about what "El arriero" lyrics (a previously worked song) meant. Two of the volunteers made it in Spanish and another one in English. As they went along, I hightlighted the key words.
Thirdly, the students changed the lyrics from a song (in poetry) to prose, by using Spanish writing, considering that it was a very demanding exercice to make using English, according to the students level. Once they all finished, some volunteers read their writings and the one the teacher chose as the better was rewarded with an extra point in the final mark.
After that, the students took part in the same kind of competition, this time making up a comic about "El Arriero the Bembibre" song. Another winner was rewarded with an extra point.
Later on, the teacher told the students what they had to do as homework.
Reaching the end of the class the students did an exercice where they had to write a sentence using several words, previously defined.
The last activity consisted on singing "Hey Jude", by The Beatles. The curious thing was the fact that the teacher stopped the playback and named one student at random and he or she had to keep singing a capella. That way, they were forced to be aware to the lyrics. After three performances, I explained several expressions from the song and the ring went off in the middle of my explanation.
The fifth of March¸ I gave the second part of the literature lesson that I had started last Wednesday with students of fourth of PE. The objective for this session was to learn more about the types of genre they had learnt by reading a passage from one of the novels.
ResponderEliminarAs a warming up activity I divided the class into two groups and we did a quiz. I wrote a sentence on the board describing a characteristic of novels, poems and plays and they had to guess which one it belonged to.
Secondly, I reminded them the novel Chronicles of Narnia and if some of them had read about it before. Next, I explained that we were going to read some paragraphs about this book. In turns, they were reading the text aloud and clarifying the words they did not understand. Afterwards, they read the text silently and put the paragraphs in order. Then, we checked the activity with the whole group.
After that, I asked them to open their activity book. I explained that they had to put in order some paragraphs related to the biography of C. S. Lewis. They did it in groups of three due to the complexity of the activity and we checked the answer with other groups. Straightaway, the read and answered some sentences with “yes” or “no” about the text they had ordered. Finally, following the steps in the previous activity, they wrote about their favourite writer.
To end up, they made a poster about their favourite book writing about the author, story, characters and why it liked them.
10th March 2014
ResponderEliminarToday has been my 7th session at CCEE. We have continued with the theme of Pedagogy today. Basically we have been focused on a conceptual approach to the idea of education, its taxonomy in terms of education fields, and also the main theoretical models in education.
So we have started the lesson with a video in which teachers speak about their ideas on education. The students’ task was to take notes about the main ideas of the video and then, in groups of 3, share and decide which ones were the best.
Then we have debated about the fact that education is seen as a lifelong process intended for the modification of our behavior, in other words, that education can be seen as an instrument of social change.
After it, we have made a classification of the educational fields, based on a text I had provided my students with. The original source of the text was the UNESCO, but I have adapted the text so that it is more useful for our goals in the class. The text talks about such classification and also about the description of each of the educational fields in which the taxonomy is based on. So, at the end we have agreed on a taxonomy like that: Formal education, Non-formal education, and Informal education. Then, the formal education is made of Early childhood education, Primary education, Secondary education, and Tertiary education. And finally, Secondary education is split up into Upper and Lower levels. Once we agreed on that, in pairs, students had to provide definitions for the educational fields assigned to each team, and then they had to share them to the rest of peers, who could add or change anything in their mates’ definitions in order to improve them.
The last activity we have done today has been related to the theme of the main theoretical models in education. Working, my students were given a different text for each team. Each text was about the characteristics of one theoretical model in education (Traditional Pedagogy, The New School Movement, Progressive Education, Pedagogies of Freedom, Neoliberalism, and Critical Pedagogy). The task of each pair was to think about how they would teach a lesson by following the ideals of the theoretical model assigned to them, and finally, share with the rest of peers that experience.
10th of March 2014
ResponderEliminarToday has been the first day of my Practicum at school “San Agustín- Salesianos” in Linares.
Before starting the Practicum, I met the school’s director who explained me that the bilingual program had been introduced two years before.
I am going to be in the first cycle of Primary Education. The name of the teacher I am working with is Juan Pablo and he only teaches Science and English, so I am going to observe how the bilingual plan works in his classes. Moreover, the school has a native English teacher whose name is Matthew and he is going to be with us on Mondays and Tuesdays.
I’ve started the day with 2nd primary children. They are 27 and I’ve observed that they are active and participative all the time and also, they are curious because they made lots of questions to teachers during the class.
The first lesson they had was English and it started with the routines. Every day one pupil becomes “mini teacher” and it tells to its classmates which day of the week is, what the weather is like and which season it is. Then it asks four questions to four volunteers and finally it spells its name. After that the lesson starts. As I told before, Matthew was with us, he did the class while Juan Pablo guided him. Today’s lesson has started with a warming up activity in which children had to remember some pieces of clothes that were drawn on the board and Matthew asked them questions about clothing, too. Secondly, they did a clothes word search sheet and finished a picture that they had started the previous session.
The second session today was with 2nd primary children, too. But, the lesson was Science. In this class students are divided in four groups. They have just started a new project and each group had to search at home some information about the topics: the age of the caves, the age of the romans, the age of the castles and the age of the inventions. During twenty minutes, in groups, children had to discuss about: animals and food, clothes and people, tools or weapons, buildings, art and important events from these ages. After that, each group explained these topics to the others while the teacher asked them some questions.
I have observed that teachers talk and explain all the themes in English and students try to use English to speak and to answer the questions, although it is not easy for them and sometimes they speak in Spanish. If they don’t know how to say something in English they say it in Spanish, the teachers translate it and then, pupils repeat it.
While Matthew was working with the students, Juan Pablo show me the last lesson plans they have used and he have explained me the methodology and the activities he used to do in class.
The third session today was with 1st primary B children. The lesson was Science in which they talked about the chores. We’ve seen some chores and we’ve asked to the students if they do it or not. Moreover, we want to know if they help their parents at home or not. Finally, students had to complete a table which had the days of the week and the chores seen before. They had to write a check mark if they do it or leave it in blank if not.
To sum up, I have to say that I’ve learn more than I thought in my first day. The teachers have received me with enthusiasm, so I feel comfortable and glad for that. It was pleasant to be at school again.
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ResponderEliminar11th of March 2014
ResponderEliminarToday has been my second day at school.
The first class I’ve seen today was Science with 1st primary A children. The session was the same that we’ve done yesterday with 1st primary B children in which they talked about the chores with the English native teacher.
I could see the differences between both classes. 1st primary A children are more participative and active than 1st primary B children. Although the teachers use the same methodology with both groups there is a world of difference between them. Not just on the behaviour of pupils, but also in the way they learn. It seems that they are still in infant education.
The second session today has been Science with 2nd primary children. We’ve remembered yesterday’s session and we’ve talked a little bit about the most relevant and important things and success from these ages.
After that, each group started to create a diagram in a poster with the information collected in the previous session. But, before doing this the teacher has explained them how to do the diagram while I was drawing it on the whiteboard.
Despite being the first time working like this and we’ve helped them, they’ve worked very well. They know how to organize themselves and how to develop the activity. It’s a pleasure to work with them because they are really interested and involved in that project.
Finally, my turn! I’ve done the third session today. It was English with 1st primary B children. Before the class, Juan Pablo explained me what I had to do and I did it. We’ve been talking about their bedrooms and we’ve done two activities. One in which they have to search in a picture the images that appear in some pieces of puzzle and match them. And secondly, they had to colour four objects, trace some words and circle the correct ones.
I conclusion, during my first teaching session I felt comfortable and I think that my speech has been fluent. Students have paid attention to my explanations and they have done the activities with no difficulties. So, I am proud because I believe that I’ve done a good job today!
11th March, 2014:
ResponderEliminarToday I have had my tenth class, with First Year, at second hour, from half past nine to half past ten.
The first thing has been, as usual, taking roll.
Secondly, the teacher and I have shared out the Unit 10 sheets to the students, who had to copy the name of the songs, their authors and the followings definitions from the digital board. The unit is called "Woman is Fickle", the translation from the well-known aria "La donna è mobile", from Rigoletto, an opera by Donizzeti.
Thirdly I have asked the students about what an opera is and, after helping them with their answers, we have reached an agreement: "an opera is a piece/work of theatre sung". To do it, the students had to practice the plural female and male (Female voices are..../Male voices are....).
After this speaking activity, they have been asked to mark the ternary rhythm upon the aforesaid aria. Once it has been done, we all have sung it, firstly normally, and after that through a karaoke version (voice track muted).
Later on, there has been a contest of solo singing. There have been eight volunteers and they did it quite well. The winner has got an extra point in his final mark.
After that, we all have sung another verse of the aria.
To end the class, the students have done the same they did at marking the ternary rhythm of the aria but this time with binary one, from a well-known song which is part of the Rocky´s soundtrack: "Eye of the tiger".
The bell has just gone off at starting to listen to another song, one from the zarzuela "La verbena de la paloma", by Tomás Bretón.
Hello!
ResponderEliminarFirst I want to apologize for taking a few days off from the blog, but my internet was not working well.
Through this comment, I present my experience of my last two classes of practice.
On 6 March, was my sixth day of practice, at this time, I spent half an hour with the children of the second level of Infant Education and another half hour with the children of the third level of Infant Education.
In the two classes was made the same activities: first, the teacher reviewed the vocabulary with flashcards, after that, the children heard a story twice and they did an activity sheet, related to the story. Finally, the class has ended with teaching a new song. This class has been very rewarding, as I have observed how a new didactic unit is introduced.
The teacher gave me the opportunity to prepare for the next class to I teach it. Then I explain my experience of this class.
On March 11, I taught in the second and third levels of kindergarten, I really enjoyed, but I did not go as well as I expected. I introduced a new project in both classes. First I explained to the children the vocabulary we were going to learn in this project, after that, I put them a video and then the children made a activity sheet.
It was the first time in my life I taught a class in English and although I'm not very happy how I taught the class, I have to admit that it was a nice experience, and I've learned a lot from it , because as it is said : " learn from mistakes " .
I look forward to learning a lot, and in the future be a good teacher. Although my specialty is Early Childhood Education and I would like to work as a teacher of kindergarten, I know that English is necessary and I will surely have to taught English , so I would like to say that I love this master´s degree and practice , because I'm learning many things that previously ignored .
Today has been my eighth day of class, I've been in class of the first level of Infant Education. I've only been half an hour, because they have changed the timetable and I didn't know it, so I arrived half an hour later. When I arrived, the children were making an activity sheet. After finish, the teacher has left me review the vocabulary with pupils through flashcards, which I liked because I gained back new experience. Today was a very short day.
ResponderEliminar12th March, 2014:
ResponderEliminarYesterday I had my eleventh practical session, with Second Year, at third hour, from half past ten to the begining of the break, at half past eleven.
In this chance, the two special needs children who usual atend this class (with their own teacher) and the conversation assistant came to the session.
The first thing was, after taking roll, working on the vocabulary from the tenth unit by making sentences that used them and answering the questions I asked the students.
Secondly, the a text related to the current situation of the Music in Education was commented by the children from the conversation assistant's observations.
Thirdly, there was a contest that consisted of singing "Hey Jude" by The Beatles, reguarding the winner with an extra point in the final mark, as usual.
The same was done with "Woman is fickle" (La donna è mobile), as an example of what an aria is.
Hello,
ResponderEliminarAfter my recovery period I've come back to practices at CCEE. As I had my lessons planned I have used that pattern but I'm planning how to change them into a CLIL approach for the following days.
Last Tuesday I provided my students with some interactive activities. Exercises were focused on working as separated teams, trying to make them talk in groups and creating discussions.
First of all, I included some activities about creating lists of items needed for particular objectives (living alone, surviving in an isolated island, preparing special meals,etc). When they had finished those lists they had to support their answers having conversations.
Secondly, they had to create a contract between teachers and students in a Primary Education Classroom. It was a good way to make them work around modal verbs in affirmative and negative tense as well as thinking about duties.
At the end of the lesson they had the opportunity to talk in pairs about holidays with some restrictions. They had to use properly interrogative particles in order to make the activity useful.
17th March 2014
ResponderEliminarToday has been my 8th session at CCEE and we have talked about the basic extensions of education as a response to the conditions of today’s society: the vertical and the horizontal extension.
Firstly, I gave my students the key ideas about the difference between these two types of extensions of education: the vertical one is based on a lifelong education/learning for all, whereas the horizontal extension deals with an education for all in any type of context (formal, non-formal and informal). Them I asked my students to add new ideas they previously knew about the two basic kinds of extension in education. The beginning of the class has served as a kind of brainstorming for the rest of the class.
Then we have done a debate about the right to education in relation to every stage (elementary, technical and professional, and higher education) and the most appropriate nature of stage (free, compulsory, available, equally accessible, etc).
Then the class was split up into two groups and each group had a little text to work on it and then share to the rest of peers their main conclusions. These two texts about the right to education were:
“Education shall be directed to the full development of the hum personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance, and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups”.
“Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children”.
After it, we have talked about the Milenium Development goals of the United Nations, being one of them the ideal of achieving universal primary education. So we have performed a role play activity in which every student had the role of a member of the government from different countries belonging to the United Nations and they had to debate about the previously mentioned goal about achieving universal primary education.
The next thing we have done was the comparison between that goal of the United Nations already mentioned before and the EFA goals dealing with the idea of education for all. In pairs, students had to prepare a short discourse to finally share with the rest of peers about one of the six educational goals of the EFA that they could choose: early childhood care and education, primary education of good quality, equitable access to education, adult literacy, gender equality, and quality of education.
Finally we have talked about the most important and fundamental ideas within the theme of the lifelong learning: new basic skills for all, more investment in human resources, innovation in teaching and learning, valuing learning, rethinking guidance and counseling, and bringing learning closer to home. After saying a few ideas about each of these topics, in groups of 3, I asked my students to put them into a hierarchy of importance for them, and then share with the rest of peers their reasons.
Day before yesterday I had my ninth class.
ResponderEliminarAgain I was in the class of second and third level of Infant Education. This day, I was first on the second level during the first half hour. The teacher let me give my own class, so first we review the vocabulary with flashcard, after that we played a game that I made a few days ago and which the kids really liked it, I reminded the students how this game was played and we played.
This new experience was very rewarding, I liked it a lot, because I put in practice the knowledge I have gained during my studies. The kids also had fun, it was a fun class.
After this half hour, I was on the third level, in this class I did the same, first we review the vocabulary with flashcards, and we play the game to prepare them. It was also very fun and motivating for children.
So far I am very happy with my classes practices.
18th March, 2014:
ResponderEliminarLast Tuesday I had my twelveth practical class, with First Year, at second hour (9.30-10.30). After taking roll I shared out the exam of units nine and ten. It took the students the whole hour.
What I did was, on the one hand, thinking of ideas about what and how to do the following practical sessions (based on the syllabus); on the other hand, answering the learners what they asked about the specific points of the exam they did not understand perfectly.
The exam structure was similar to the previous one, that I already analyzed carefully in the blog. Only changed the contents.
19th March, 2014:
ResponderEliminarLast Wednesday I had my thirteenth practical session, with Second Year, at third hour (10.30-11.30). Apart from the normal registered students, the two S.N. (special needs) students with their corresponding monitor attended the class. This time Drew, the conversation assistant, did not come because he do it every other week.
After taking roll, I reviewed the exam the students was going to have on Friday. I focused specially on the concept of “dot” for two reasons. One of them was because of the amount of technical vocabulary this section implies (as dotted crotchet, half note, whole note….), which is easy to forget; another one is to know how to use those concepts in the filling notes exercise the exam was going to include. The whole reviewing took us about half an hour
Once we did it, we looked over all the melodies previously worked in class, by singing. In the middle of this activity, the bell went off.
24th March 2014
ResponderEliminarToday has been my 9th session at the Faculty of Education Sciences. We have talked about the past, the present, and the immediate future of the Spanish educational system.
The first thing we have seen today was a historical approach of the Spanish educational system and how the contemporary education represents the fulfillment of the ideals of the Enlightenment. In this sense, we have talked about the freedom of teaching, the universal right to education, gender equality, coeducation, secular school, compulsory schooling, and free education.
After it, I split up the class into four groups of 2-3 students each, and I provided each group with a statement about different phenomena that influenced the genesis of public school systems: 1) Industrial and agricultural revolutions; 2) Demographic factors, 3) Development of the financial capitalism and the economic liberalism, and 4) The promotion of the bourgeoisie. Each group had to prepare a short discourse and then share it with the rest of peers about the way in which they thought that their statements could influence the Spanish educational system in the past.
Then we saw a YouTube video in which we could see the development of the education in Spain from 1812 (with the Constitution of Cádiz) to 1975 (with the Decentralization process). After it, I provided my students with some of the most important ideas about education of the Article 27 of the 1978 Spanish Constitution, and we discussed about them.
We have also named some of the fundamental Organic laws in the post-constitutional period, up to the moment, with the 2013 Organic Law for the Improvement of the Quality of Education.
Secondly, we have talked about the distribution of responsibilities in non-university education, starting with the State, and following with the regional level, the local authorities, and finally schools. Here we made a short debate about what the students thought of this distribution of responsibilities. It has been very interesting to hear their opinions.
After it, we have had a quick look at the different stages, organization and ages for each of the levels in our current educational system, together with some graphics showing the distribution of students in the last two academic years in terms of public, private or semiprivate schooling.
Finally, we have seen some of the key features of the education reform (LOMCE) for an immediate future, and we have made a critical debate about it.
Hello everybody, I should say that two sessions have been undertaken since I wrote last time.
ResponderEliminarThe first one was last week and I experienced how hard is working with different level students. On the other hand, we were more focused on specific vocabulary and grammar related to science. I organised a list of exercises about prepositions but directly in touch with the environment.
Firstly, they had to classify into two sections: movement or position. Then, I encouraged them to talk about nature elements using these prepositions properly. After that, the students have to set some routes, describing the elements of the city they would see. It took more time than expected because at the end we decided to include more starting points and destinations. Finally, they completed a "Fill in the gaps" activity with the song "Hey Brother" to make the last part of the lesson more relaxing.
Second lesson has taken place today (25th of March). With the goal of making a review on conditionals, students have worked in groups with some specific activities.
As a warming up exercise, they have filled some personal information about hypothetical situations which could appear in their lives. After that, I've played a video with some statements of upset children in different classrooms. They have had to identify the problems or the causes and shared verbally some alternatives through conditionals.
Last task I've given to them has been a team competition based on speed. They have had to open an envelope where there were parts of conditional sentences. Students had to join these sentences properly through discussion within their groups.
Today has been my eleventh class of practice, I have been in the first level of Infant Education, and have a day of sheets. At first we reviewed the vocabulary with flashcard and then the students have made two sheets related to the spring, which have cost them a lot of effort. The difficulties of the sheets haven’t been the uses of the English language, but the difficulty of the task of the sheets, that is to say, make serialization. The class has been good, I liked a lot because I learned some of the weaknesses of children.
ResponderEliminarI will say that every day I have more desire to become a teacher and put into practice all the knowledge acquired during my studies.
25th March 2014:
ResponderEliminarLast Tuesday I had my fourteenth practical class, with First Year, at second hour (from nine thirty to ten thirty).
The first thing was, after taking roll, reviewing the exams the students did the previous session. Due to the fact that I can not evaluate students officially, I simply observed the way the teacher explained the different doubts the students had. Once all doubts was solved, the teacher spoke up the final marks of every single student.
Afterwards, we (the teacher and I) shared out the eleventh sheet, titled “The Fifth Symphony”, (in honor of the work by Beethoven) and the students did the two first parts: “The music album” (to widen the amount of works and composers they are able to recognize) and “Listening and thinking” (to work the analytical part of listening music).
Later on, there was a humming contest about the fifth symphony by Beethoven and the fortieth one by Mozart, both well-known.
The following activity was very funny. It consisted on trying to figure out what was said in the final part of a video called “facethoven” in which a man was “talking by gestures”. At the end of the activity, the teacher encouraged the students to do a similar activity made up by themselves but, by the way they looked, I believe they will not do it.
To end the class, we listened to a very curious song in which the singer (the rapper, in this case), sang (rapped) using a combination of words shaped with an only vowel. After listening to the song, they tried to do the same by themselves, by reading the lyrics on the digital board. Almost all made many mistakes, specially because of the speed of diction. The alarm went on in the middle of this activity.
26th March 2014:
ResponderEliminarLast Wednesday I had my fifteenth practical class, with Second Year, at third hour (from half past ten to the beginning of the break, at half past eleven). That is to say I have done the first part of the classes I am supposed to do in the Practicum of the Master degree. Due to the fact it was the class in which the revision of the exam was going to take place, the conversation assistant did not come, but the two special needs students with their monitor did come.
Firstly, after taking roll, the teacher and I shared out the corrected exams and he solved any doubts the students had. After that, the teacher spoke up the final marks of the second term.
Secondly, I gave the students the sheet corresponding to the eleventh didactic unit, titled “The personality of melodies” and, immediately, they had to find an adjective, previously worked in class, to describe the three songs from the sheet. Their answers were similar, more or less (happy and fun to “All you need is love” by Beatles, sad and romantic for “Fur Elise” by Beethoven, etc…) except in the case of the fortieth symphony by Mozart, in which some students used “sad” and others “funny”, which are opposite, more or less. I contributed providing an explanation to this situation and giving a word to describe it: “ambiguous”.
Thirdly, the students copied the section “listening and thinking” from the digital board and, once it was done, the teacher explained the context of the song “All you need is love”, by The Beatles, speaking about the hippy movement, among another data. After that, its lyrics was read fast and, afterwads, sung by a karaoke version (music without the original voice). The teacher came up with a very funny exercice: as the students sang along, he said several words in Spanish which have to be incorporated to the part of the lyrics they were in (in English).
To end the class, we all sang “Hey Jude” by The Beatles, widely worked in class, so the students did it very well.
31st March, 2014
ResponderEliminarToday has been my 10th session at the Faculty of Education Sciences. We have talked about the current situation of schools. First, we have debated about the differences between elite schools and schools for all. It has been very interesting to see what my students think about this topic, and they wanted to express their feelings, so I think it has been a very good idea to touch this point in the class.
Then the class was split up into two groups and each of them had to think about the consequences of a certain issue I provided them with in relation to the current situation of schools, so that at the end of the activity, each group could share their main ideas with the rest of peers. One of the topics provided for them was the financial crisis (how it is affecting and challenging the school’s quantity and quality of resources, etc) and the other topic was about the school’s expectations of pursuing both quality and equity at the same time.
The last activity we have done today was the following: in pairs, my students were given a statement which presented a utopian idea about what we would like the situation of schools were. They had to prepare a short PowerPoint presentation about their topics and finally share with the rest of us. The utopian topics were these ones: 1) A school connected to life and society promotes a holistic education; 2) A child-centered school pays attention to diversity; 3) A democratic school believes in the involvement of parents and the local community, and distributes power; 4) A modern school conceives the role of teachers as facilitators and creators of learning opportunities; and 5) This kind of school plans a flexible organization and curriculum, and its administrators and teachers are socially committed.
This last activity of today’s lesson was more time-consuming than others, but I wanted my students to stop and reflect upon these issues. So I don’t think it has been a waste of time to spend more than 30 minutes in only one activity; on the contrary, it has been very satisfying for me to see how my students have been working on it.
31st March 2014
ResponderEliminarToday I have started the practicum. The school I have chosen for the practices has implemented an English bilingual programme at Infant Education and in the first and second years of Primary Education. According to my schedule for accomplishing the 30 hours, I attend classes in both levels, which is quite interesting to have a wider perspective of CLIL in this particular school.
This morning I have been observing the teachers’ work during 3 bilingual classes:
In the second year of Primary Education, classes B and A has studied the same lesson. They both use the 02 Science and Environment Student’s Book by Edelvives publisher. Firstly, the teacher has asked them the date and then he has explained briefly to the pupils the lesson plan for the Science class. Secondly, they have reviewed some random vocabulary from previous lessons related to the water cycle. The teacher has told them a word or expression in Spanish and the have said it in English and vice versa. After that, the teacher has asked the pupils in English to name the water bodies. Then, he has asked them for the definitions of evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and collection, as well as wind and tornado. After, the teacher has played a song related to healthy habits and the class sings along while making gestures. Then, he has played a game with the pupils (the teacher says touch…). Thus, they have reviewed some vocabulary related to the human body. Next, they have made an activity on dinosaurs practising with some vocabulary (i.e. legs, tail, head, wings) and the verb to have got (It has got 2 legs/ It hasn’t got a tail). The teacher has given them time to do the activity on the workbook. Later, they have corrected the exercise altogether and the teacher has clarified that a is used for one thing but not for plural (*it has got a tails). Then, they have made deductions such as it has got legs and it can run. Finally, they have worked with 2 pictures of dinosaurs for finding the differences between them.
In the Infant Education class for 5 years-old, the teacher works with Yo-Yo Phonics books by Edelvives publisher. First, I have introduced myself to them in English and then they have also told me their names. Next, the teacher has told them a story about a family using little vocabulary related to sailing while there are some pictures related to the topic projected on a white tactile screen. Then, the teacher has asked the pupils to find several things in the pictures, which they were asked to mark on the screen. After that, the pupils have been working with several phonemes and graphemes as a review /g/, /f/, /w/. The teacher has written each letter on the screen and then she has played a song on their sounds. They have sung and have made gestures for making the comprehension of certain words easier. Later, the teacher has asked them the date and has told them to make an activity on their workbook, where they have to write down the date and their names.
Hi! Yesterday I started my training in the IES Castilblanco from Castilblanco de los Arroyos in the north of Seville.
ResponderEliminar1st April 2014
ResponderEliminarToday's lesson has been quite different. The attendance has been lower so students and me have worked more fluently. At the beginning of the lesson we have chat and discuss about how many adjectives did they know in order to define their selves. Then, I have provided them with some definitions and students have guessed the qualities or adjectives related to those meanings.
After that warming-up activity, we have spoken about countries. Using a reading comprehension, we have linked those characteristics worked before with some new qualities about behavior and features from different places.
Through a listening activity, we have been working the three main sectors: primary, secondary and tertiary. At the end, I have played a well-known song to make them enjoy more the last part of the lesson, filling in the gaps and looking for new vocabulary.
Day 1 (Monday, 31st of March):
ResponderEliminarToday I have started the training in the IES Castilblanco . Due to the town is over 30 km from where I live and the classes start at 8:15 am , I’ve woken up very early to be on time , but eventually I was late because it was raining a lot and There were many cars in front of the school so I’ve had to find parking further from the center. Once, I have reached the school, mi tutor Luis Odriozola was waiting in the principal's office and he has explained me the school works and he has given me a very full timetable in order to see how a bilingual class is from different subjects and different courses. He is the coordinator of the department of modern languages and besides tutor 4th B. Later, he has introduced me to another English teacher named Jesus Peña who has told me that Tuesday and Thursday I would help to teach in 3th, a group where students are mixed from very low level of English because they belong to diversification to students with a normal level of 3th ESO. Later, Luis has taught me the center's facilities and at 9:15 we have started with classes. I've been as an observer in the English class at 4 º B , 3rd B, 1 C and 1 A. And at the last time, I have had a reinforcement English class in 2nd B class with Jesus Peña and we have seen a movie in English with subtitles in Spanish called "HOT FUZZ " . In all courses, students have been a little nervous and have asked me a lot of questions in English which has been the perfect excuse to practice the speaking.
Day 2 ( Tuesday, 1st of April):
ResponderEliminarToday I have returned to start the day at 8:15 with English class in 1th B group, they did not know and the children have been very kind, this course is a bilingual group and they are better than the other first groups where yesterday, I was observing. Then, Luis has introduced me to the Spanish language teacher Maria Hernandez who has had a test with her students so she has taken the opportunity to explain me a little about the profile of her students and what their difficulties and strengths are. It is a teacher who is very familiar with her students and this fact has attracted much attention from me because she had all pointed in a notebook made from recycled materials. She also told me that in coordination with Luis Odrizola (my training tutor) have conducted a literature project related to the book Twilight by Stephanie Meyer, which will be presented by 4th students on Friday for the rest of schoolmates. Then, during the break Luis and me have been in the library because my tutor is in charge of it and he has showed me how he has worked with students twilight book in English. At 5th time, I've had class with Jesus Peña and 3th A, the group which has two levels. I have taught to the group with the lowest level and we have worked very simple things from the book "Good MOVE" of Oxford. As they do not use students' workbooks, we have worked some cards and worksheets that I have made on essential grammar and we have completed a crossword to practice the vocabulary of the unit. Lastly, we have joined whole students to make a common listening about a girl who explains how she has met her favorite music band, then my group just had to answer true and false, while more advanced students explained why statements were false or true.
por cierto no sé subir tweets en twiter, me he hecho una cuenta pero no se como poner los mensajes en el muro de las prácticas, alguien puede ayudarme?
ResponderEliminar31th March 2014
ResponderEliminarYesterday I started my practices at school “Santísima Trinidad, Trinitarios” in Córdoba. Before starting the Practice, I met the school´s director who explained me that the bilingual program had been introduced one year before. I am going to be in the first cycle of Primary Education. The name of the teacher is Úrsula, she is native English teacher and she only teaches Science and Art, so I am going to observe how the bilingual plan works in her classes. I started the day with 1st primary children. They had Natural and Social Science´s class and they started a new unit called “My neighbourhood”. The teacher started explaining what means neighbourhood and what they can find in this. Using flashcards and the blackboard reviewed vocabulary (numbers, places, shapes, ...), and they learned new vocabulary related to the unit. Also they worked pronunciation and grammar through questions/ answers, for example: Do you live in a house or in a flat? I live in a flat. Finally they made the textbook activities related to the unit where they worked listening, reading and writing.
The next hour I was in 2nd primary. They had Natural and Social Science´s class and they started a new unit called “Materials”. The teacher started explaining what means materials and what kind of materials we know. Using flashcards and the blackboard reviewed vocabulary and they learned new vocabulary related to the unit. Also they worked proununciation and grammar through questions/answer, for example: What are windows made of? Windows are made of glass and metal. Finally they made the textbook activities related to the unit where they worked listening, reading and writing.
The last hour I was in the same class because they had Art´s class. Students did two activities. In the first activity, the question had to unite with their response and paint the two vignettes of colour that indicate the question vignette. Then the teacher corrected the activity with the pupils, together. The next activity the pupils had that draw for to work the simmetry.
1st April 2014
ResponderEliminarToday, I have been in 1st A primary education. They have had Natural and Social Science´s class and teacher has begun reviewing everything seen in class yesterday. Then they have learned the song of the unit called “ In my neighbourgood” and also, teacher has taught new vocabulary with flashcards and finally the pupils have done one activity of the textbook where they have heard a story called “ ¡ I grow up I want to be...!, then every pupil have to do in his house, a picture about his favourite profession like teacher, policeman, etc.
The next two hours I have been in 1st B primary education and in 2nd B education, where the pupils have learned the same that the pupils of 1st A primary and 2nd A primary education learned yesterday.
2nd April 2014
ResponderEliminarToday, I have been in 2nd B primary education and they have had Natural and Social Science´s class and teacher has begun reviewing everything seen in class yesterday, working pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary and through simple sentences. For example; Balls are made of rubber and then they have done one activity with the teacher on the blackboard where they had to classify materials in natural and man-made. Once done reviewing, the pupils have done one activity to learn the properties of materials. In this activity they have worked listening, speaking and new vocabulary. Then the pupils have done the next activity where they had to write in a box, whether the materials have or not the property and then have corrected along with the teacher, forming sentences. For example; Wood isn´t transparent/ Wood is rigid.
The next hour, I have been in 1st A primary education and they have had Art class and the pupils have done a tab, where with using plasticine and fingers have gone filling different fruit and working vocabulary.
The next hour, I have been in 2nd B primary education and they have had Art class and the pupils have done a tab, where with using plasticine and fingers have gone filling different fruit and working vocabulary.
The last hour, I have been in 1st B primary education and they have had Natural and Social Science´s class and teacher has begun reviewing everything seen in class yesterday, working pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary with help of flashcards and through simple sentences. Once done reviewing, the pupils have donde an activity to learn new vocabulary about the professions working, listening, grammar and pronunciation through of questions/answer. For example; Do you want to be when grow up? When I grow up, I want to be...(fireman, teacher,...). Then the teacher has worked with the students memorization of vocabulary through repetition, gestures and song, using simple sentences. For example; A teacher teaches children. Finally they have done two activities related professions.
Day 3 (Wednesday, 2nd of April)
ResponderEliminarToday I have started the day with the teacher Maria Hernandez ( language teacher ) in 4 class B and we have corrected some language tests using the digital board. A strange thing is that although the center is considered ICT it only has two digital boards for whole school, one in the 2 nd B class and another in 3rd A, so we have had to ask the classroom 2nd B which was free because they were in the gym. Later , I have met the music teacher Nestor Ramirez and I have been two hours with him observing the music class and I've enjoyed it but I have noticed attention that there were many children who do not carry the instrument to the class, when I have asked them why, their answers have been: I forgot , I do not like playing that, the teacher does not teach me , I don't have any instrument. The book that students have is designed by the teacher and is really an excellent job with simple English language and information about the history of music and contemporary music . During the Break I have met with Luis and I have helped him with the loan of books in the library. Then we have gone to the English class 2 º A and we have worked on writing because students did the last day a trip to the river. They have used laptops to find some words they did not know, however the teacher has insisted that if they did not know a word they should explain it. Later, my tutor has had coordination so I have gone with him to see if it actually they are working the CLIL methodology but I 've noticed that not, although they have an hour to coordinate subjects they do not work the integration of contents. Luis has explained me that the Andalusian junta became them bilingual 3 years ago but they did not want besides the level of students is too low to make it because primary school is not bilingual . In the last hour, I've met the teacher Margarita Fernández who teaches Biology in 4th A. Some students have not done their homeworks because they did not understand them, then the teacher, after correcting exercises , has explained them as Spring flora in the area is and they have appointed some flowers typical. Lastly, she has introduced some laws of Mendel indicating who Mendel is and how they can form different species mixing different characteristics from them.
Today I´m going to write about several sessions because I have had a problem with my computer.
ResponderEliminarMy sessions take two hours and we are trying to incorporate CLIL to my class in CCEE.
- 7th March: We started with warm up activity, asking and answering some personal questions. Later, students listened a song and they had to fill the gaps related with the content we are doing. In this way they felt comfortable and they were happy and enthusiastic.
With respect to incorporate CLIL, we did a debate about education. We talked about their subjects, their easiness or difficulties in their career. I provided them some exercises of useful vocabulary and structures for their subjects in bilingual education.
-14th March: This session is divided in two parts. In the first part, we saw a video of how is a bilingual class of Science and Art in primary education and later we talked about it.
In the second part, they did some presentations about a bilingual session they had prepared in their houses about a topic of Sciences, Math or Art. This session was amazing and very useful. They learnt a lot of the video and of their work in class. They are very motivated and they want to improve their mistakes.
This class was very important for them
-21st March: We started remembering the last session. So, students talked about the advantages and disadvantages they found in their presentations. Then, they completed a questionnaire with some purposes they would change or they would improve if they were teachers.
In the second half of the class I gave them a text about Finland Education so they make a comparative chart with our education and Finland education and finally we talk about it and we shared our ideas to the classmates.
They learnt a lot about themselves and their classmates. It is very interesting!!!
-28th March: My aim is students learn, and what they learn is useful for their life. So in this session I started with several songs they love it to introduce them in my class. Later, they read a text about an advertisement to offer jobs and how a girl followed some steps to create her curriculum.
They did some exercises to complete some parts or to identify the parts of the curriculum. They listened it and finally, following this steps, they had to create their own curriculum for the future.
They didn´t have curriculum so they were surprised and they were on the ball because it is very important for them and their future.
3rd April 2014
ResponderEliminarToday, I have been in 2nd B primary education and they have had Natural and Social Science´s class and teacher has begun reviewing everything seen in class yesterday, working pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary and through simple sentences. For example; Rubber comes from trees. They also have worked synonyms for example; man-made/manucfactured. Then the students and teacher have done one activity, together. In this activity they have worked reading, writing, vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and the properties of materials. Finally, the teacher has explained the qualities of some materials, where they have worked new vocabulary, speaking through of questions/answer. For example; Can you bend a nuts? No, I can.
The next hour, I have been in 1st B primary education and they have had Natural and Social Science´s class and teacher has begun reviewing everything seen in class yesterday. Then teacher has explained that the neighbourhoods have streets and streets have names and she has asked; where do you live?, every pupil. Teacher also has explained that houses have number and with pictures on the blackboard, the teacher has asked and the students have responded. For example; Carmen lives on black street, Carmen lives at number 2. Finally, the students have done activities where they have completed sentences, they also have worked reading, speaking, writing, pronunciation, grammar and new vocabulary.
The next hour, I have been in the same class and they have had Art´s class. The pupils have done a tab, where with using plasticine and fingers have gone filling different fruit and working vocabulary.
The last hour, I have been in 2nd A primary education and they have had Natural and Social Science´s class. They have had a similar class to the class of 2nd B primary education.
1st April 2014:
ResponderEliminarLast Tuesday I had my sixteenth class, with First Year, at second hour.
Firstly, after taking roll, the teacher told the students a new behavior rule: saying “Sorry Sir, it won´t happen again” just after he tell off someone, so that the one who says it would not be penalized with a negative mark and vice versa.
Secondly, we did the activity related to the video from youtube called “Facethoven” I explained in my comment about my class on the thirty first of March. It was done, even though the computer was extremely slowly.
Thirdly, the students were asked about the meaning of the following sentence by Mendelsohn: “Music fills the soul of things better than words”. To help them to do it I proposed them several examples such as being in love, death, disease, bad news, end of the school or frustration.
After that, the teacher said what the students had to do as homework, the section called “searching and learning”, in which they have to look for information related to a specific topic.
To end the class, there was a contest related to the song by Nash “Efectos vocales”. The students had to make up a couple of verses using an only vowel, the “a”.
2nd April 2014:
ResponderEliminarYesterday I had my seventeenth class, with Second Year, at third hour. Three specific need education students came this time
Firstly, after taking, the teacher has focused the student´s attention on the word symphony, its meaning and how to apply it in different contexts.
Secondly, a Spanish text based on the differences between melodies and chords was worked. The teacher and I showed the idea from the text by playing the recorder and the keyboard (the musical one), respectively.
Thirdly, the exercise I explained in my comment from the session on the twenty-sixth of March, related to think of an adjective to describe the atmosphere of different songs, was done.
To end the class, the song “All you need is love” by The Beatles was sung.
Day 4 (Thursday, 3rd of April)
ResponderEliminarToday I've been with Maria Hernandez (spanish teacher) who has asked students from 3rd B a project where they must select a novel by a spanish writer of the 20th centur and must read and investigate the author's biography and eventually, they will present it in spanish and in English. After that, I've been in the art class with teacher Ricardo Pacheco and the classes 2 º B and 4 º B and I 've noticed that while he was speaking to them in English at all time, students from both courses has responded him in Spanish, in addition when they were working in group, they have used Spanish language to communicate with each other and not the second language. During the break, I have gone back to the library to help my tutor Luis Odriozola and then I've been an observer in their classrooms with 3 º and 1 º C. The last time, I have been with Jesús Peña helping him to teach in the class 3rd B where is the group of diversification, again I have been with the group with the lowest level and we have returned to review what the last day we learned, we have performed a role- play abouth clothing , completed some activities and at the end of the class we have made a listening. In my group, they have had to attach the names of the characters with the correct information that the listening provides and the most advanced group has had to explain with their words what each character does .
1st April 2014
ResponderEliminarToday, we have started telling the pupils in Primary Education - classes A and B - a joke in order to introduce April Fools’ Day. After that, both sessions in these classes has been focused on a revision of specific vocabulary and definitions on Science related to the water cycle and the rotation movement, due to the exam on Thursday, 3rd April. Firstly, I have asked them some words in English and Spanish, and later we have reviewed some definitions that include the precedent vocabulary they have been working with for several weeks. Next, we have watched a video about the main phases of the water cycle, where cartoons explain concepts such as evaporation, condensation, and precipitation. Then, we have played a video on the rotation movement. Finally, we have sung a song about the water cycle by means of a video previously uploaded to the subject’s blog, so that pupils could watch it and study at home.
Day 5 ( Friday, 4th of April)
ResponderEliminarFriday mornings are the quietest of the week for Luis (my tutor) because he only has two classes although today just one because some students have gone to a trip, so we've been only in 4th B the group where I have taught my didactic unit . As a request from my tutor Luis Odriozola, I have prepared a tutorial session about respecting other cultures because he thought that we could work a bilingual unit and not just to prepare a unit of English. After the break , we has gone to the multipurpose room to make preparations for the presentation, then I have had the opportunity to see an exhibition about Twilight from Stephenie Meyer which has been a pleasant experience to be able to listen to students speaking English and the rest of schoolmates listening them. Luis has exlained me that every trimester they ahve to make a presentation of this type. Finally at the last time, Luis and me have been commenting on my experience, I gave him thanks for all the help I have received and I have said goodbye to all colleagues
4th April 2014
ResponderEliminarToday, I have been in 1st A primary education and they have had Natural and Social Science´s class and teacher has begun reviewing everything seen in class yesterday. Then teacher has explained that the neighbourhoods have streets and streets have names and she has asked; where do you live?, every pupil. Teacher also has explained that houses have number and with pictures on the blackboard, the teacher has asked and the students have responded. For example; Carmen lives on black street, Carmen lives at number 2. Finally, the students have done activities where they have completed sentences, they also have worked reading, speaking, writing, pronunciation, grammar and new vocabulary.
The next hour, I have been in 2nd A primary education and they have had Natural and Social Science´s class and teacher has begun reviewing everything seen in class yesterday, working pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary and through simple sentences. For example; Rubber comes from trees. They also have worked synonyms for example; man-made/manucfactured. Then the students and teacher have done one activity, together. In this activity they have worked reading, writing, vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and the properties of materials. Finally, the teacher has explained the qualities of some materials, where they have worked new vocabulary, speaking through of questions/answer. For example; Can you bend a nuts? No, I can.
2nd April 2014
ResponderEliminarThis morning I have met class B from the first year of Primary Education. This has been a very good opportunity to know how this school implement CLIL in another different level. The teacher has told me that certain pupils have some difficulties at the beginning due to the fact that they come from other schools where they have not studied English in Infant Education. However, groups tend to become homogeneous at the end of the course.
There is a tactile screen in this classroom, which helps both the teaching and learning process. Moreover, the use of a CD player is essential for fostering children’s participation, as well as for practising listening comprehension.
Firstly, the teacher has introduced me to the class, which has been a good excuse for practising greetings. Then, the teacher has asked them what the date was, and we have been revising numbers and months. Next, we have been singing several songs, as children seemed sleepy and not much participative. After that, they have shown me the vocabulary they have been working with in previous units, such as words and expressions related to the human body. Then, they have done some exercises on their activity books, related to fruits.
After this class, I have been working with groups A and B that belong to the second level of Primary Education. First, I have asked the pupils some vocabulary and definitions related to the water cycle, as a review for the exam. Then, we have delivered them a sheet with some activities on the same topic. They had to fill in the gaps with some words, such as clouds, vapour, snow, and land. Next, they had to draw a picture of the water cycle and add labels to explain the whole process.
3rd April 2014
ResponderEliminarFinally, the written exam has taken place today in the second level of Primary Education. Due to the fact that there are several special needs students, the teacher has delivered pupils two versions of the exam.
In one version, pupils had to identify each phase of the water cycle in a picture and name them. Next, they were given several definitions they had been working with previously and they had to fill in the gaps. Then, they had to write a definition for soil, tornadoes, evaporation, and collection. After, pupils were given some words in English and some other in Spanish which they had to translate. Then, they had to draw and label a picture of the rotation movement they had already done in class.
The other version consisted of 4 exercises only. First, they had to identify each phase of the water cycle in a picture and name them. After, they were given several definitions and they had to fill in the blanks. Then, they had to match several words instead of writing definitions. Moreover, in the last activity they were given several words and they had to label a picture of the rotation movement and colour it.
4th April 2014
ResponderEliminarToday I have been in class A with first-year pupils of Primary Education. We have revised the vocabulary from last unit by means of the tactile screen. They have shown me how much words and expressions they have learnt up to now. After that, we have introduced a new unit on cities. First, we have presented the concepts of city, town, and village and their differences. Furthermore, they have done several activities related to this topic, and we have corrected them after.
Later, in the second year of Primary Education, we have given the pupils a sheet with new vocabulary on cities. I have read aloud the new concepts so that they could practice the pronunciation. They had to listen and repeat. Then, the teacher has played a CD and they had to follow the reading. After that, they were required to listen and point. Then, they had to read the text and translate it. Later, they have put some sticks with new vocabulary on their books; that is to say, they had to put a stick with the word skyscraper on the correspondent picture. Finally, they have practiced their speaking. We have asked them who takes them to school.
7th April, 2014
ResponderEliminarToday has been my session number 11 at the Faculty of Education Science. In this lesson we have talked about the concept of the Education Theory, as being formed by several disciplines, such as history, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience. We have made a quick brainstorm about the main ideas connected to these disciplines and their possible relation with the education theory, in order to establish and activate students’ background knowledge.
After it, we have talked about the different sub-groups within the education theories: the classical education, the contemplative education, the critical pedagogy, and the democratic education. First, I have explained each of them briefly, and then we have watched a YouTube video which also talked about them. After watching the video, I provided my students with a series of True or False statements, and in pairs, they had to choose true or false for each one, and then share the results with the rest of peers.
Then we have moved towards the topic of the normative theories of education, which provide the norms and standards of education. The two types were the normative philosophies and the normative curriculum theory. After an explanation about the differences between them, I asked my students, in groups of 3, to look for more information about the type that they liked the most and prepare a short writing to finally share with the rest of peers.
Next, we have also talked about the descriptive theories of education (in opposition to the normative ones previously mentioned). These theories provided descriptions or explanations of the process of education, and the most important types were: the curriculum theory, the instructional theory, the nature of the learner and of learning (based on Philosophical Anthropology and Educational Psychology), the sociology of education, and the organizational and leadership theory. I have explained every type of descriptive theory of education and then, in groups of 3, my students have discussed about the advantages and disadvantages of at least 3 of them, and finally, they have shared the information with the rest of mates.
Finally, I have provided my students with a list of the big names in the field of educational theory, and in pairs, they had to choose one educational theorist and look for 5 fundamental ideas in the work of this person. Finally they had to share the information with the rest of peers.
7th April 2014
ResponderEliminarToday, I have been in 1st A primary education and they have had Natural and Social Science´s class and teacher has begun reviewing everything seen in the previous class. Then teacher has explained a new page of the book working with the pupils new vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar, etc. Finally the students have done activities of the book.
The next hour, I have been in 2nd A primary education and they have had Natural and Social Science´s class and teacher has begun reviewing everything seen in the previous class, working pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary and through simple sentences. For example; Rubber comes from trees. They also have worked synonyms for example; man-made/manucfactured. Then the students and teacher have done one activity, together. In this activity they have worked reading, writing, vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and the properties of materials. Finally, the teacher has explained the qualities of some materials, where they have worked new vocabulary, speaking through of questions/answer. For example; Can you bend a nuts? No, I can.
Finally, the students have done review exercises.
The last hour, I have been in the same class where I have taught my first Art´s class. The students have done an activity where they had to color, cut and stick an egg, to celebrate the Easter´s Day. Previously, I developed material in my house and I have used for explain this topic. We have worked vocabulary, pronunciation, etc.
7th April
ResponderEliminarThis morning, I have been in the English language classes of the second year of Primary Education (classes B and A). They were delivered a sheet with some exercises and we have played a video of 3 children and their teacher in a dinosaur museum, and they have been doing some exercises meanwhile for practising the expressions it has got…/it hasn’t got… Next, we have watched a video on how to cook a cake for putting into practice the concepts of the 5 senses (to touch, to see, to taste, to smell, and to hear). Indeed, all this vocabulary and expressions will be very useful for the Science class. After that, we have corrected the activities.
Later, in the Infant Education class for 5 years-old, the teacher has begun the class by playing a story with a rhyme at the end and projecting some pictures of it on the tactile screen. Thus, they would associate words in the story with items in the pictures. Next, they have been working with listening comprehension, as the teacher has asked them to explain the story to her. Some children were trying to tell it in Spanish, but I have observed that the majority of them try to use words in English. Then, she has played a song of the letter -w- (row, row, row, waves are fun…) and has invited them to join her singing and dancing in order to practice this new sound introduced. After, she has written the new grapheme and has asked them to give words with its sound (William, water, wet, windy, well…). Next, she has projected a different picture with words around it (sack, rock, pond, duck, basket, stick, and sock). Firstly, they have identified them in the picture by marking them one by one on the tactile screen. Secondly, they have reflected on the sound /k/ and its different manners to write it. Then, the teacher has erased their answers from the screen and has asked the pupils to do the same activity on their activity book. Next, we have corrected their tasks and reminded them of writing their names and the date on the page every day. Finally, the teacher has told me that she writes dots under each word she introduces to them, so that they remember the number of sounds in the words.
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ResponderEliminarSorry for not writing before, but I rushed off my foot lately.
ResponderEliminarThrough this remark, I will share my experience of the last 3 days of practice.
Tuesday, 1st April
On Tuesday, I spent 4 hours in school, the first 3 hours I was preparing materials for Easter, I mean, and I made crowns of rabbits, which represent “easter bunny "Easter bunny" is the typical rabbit of the Easter in New York, which brings chocolate eggs and sweets. These crowns will be made the last day of school before Easter. I hope that I hope that children will like very much this material and that they may have something symbolic of the celebration of Easter in English.
During the next hour, I was half an hour with the second level of Infant Education and another half hour with the third level of Infant Education. The two classes were taught similarly, I mean, the same activities were made, albeit with different levels and themes. At first, we reviewed with the children the learned vocabulary with flashcard, then the pupils did a Task Sheet and finally they learned a song. From all that we have told, I would highlight the moment of the song, because even though it was the first time that children listened it, they learned it very easily. It is wonderful to observe how young children are able to learn so quickly and with such motivation and enthusiasm.
Thursday, 3th April
This day was with the first level of kindergarten, the teacher previously asked me to do some exercises and a micro unit of spring. So I taught the class. I did a mural of spring, where each element is linked to the landscape with Velcro. And this was the first activity we did. I taught the children the mural, work with different grammatical structures such as: I can see ... there is / are ...., I like ....; also we reviewed the numbers, for this, we counted how many flowers, trees, butterflies and suns there were. After this activity, we remove each element of the mural and I gave one to each child, I said in English: "Stand up, the children who have got a tree", for example. And the children who had that element, raised his hand and returned to stick on the wall. In this activity, the children enjoyed and had a blast. I felt proud of myself.
Another activity we did was the realization of puzzles, it was also very rewarding, the students when they formed a puzzle, very excited said: "It's a butterfly" or "is a tree", all in English.
I really liked this class. I'm very glad with the activities that I prepared.
Friday, 4 th April
This day, I was two hours of practice. It was also a day of preparation materials; I continued making crowns of "Easter bunny" for children. I would emphasize the importance of preparing materials, the work of a teacher is not only taught, but also the preparation thereof and their materials, which significantly affects the child's learning. I'm pretty satisfied with my practices, because I'm learning a lot and I'm doing many types of activities: class observation, teach, prepare materials, ...
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ResponderEliminar8th April
ResponderEliminarToday I have mixed some theory about language with practical activities based on real life challenges (job interviews at schools)
Firstly, we have made a revision on personal adjectives referring to skills, strengths or weaknesses. Then students have corrected homework collectively. Everything was related to abilities and professional competences.
Secondly, we have made a role-play. During the game they have exchanged positions as interviewer and interviewed. Each role had weird or specific characteristic in order to make the game harder.
After that, they have practised listening by a video where a native speaker explained how to interview and be interviewee. Questions and answers have been the main points and their analysis.
Finally, a "fill in the gaps" activity based on a known song has been the full stop.
8th April
ResponderEliminarIn these two sessions, we have been working with pupils belonging to the second year of Primary Education (clases A and B). Firstly, we have revised the new vocabulary related to cities from the sheet we handed out yesterday. Secondly, we have read a text on the book about communities, where some words from the vocabulary are explained (city, town, and village). Then, we have explained the differences among these concepts and have asked them to do 2 written activities. They have answered where they live in (the name of the city, town or village) and then they have thought about the type of community it is (city, town or village). Next, we have delivered the pupils a sheet with several exercises. They have written words from the new vocabulary under several pictures, in order to identify an image with the concept in English. Then, they have written some sentences in the correct order (i.e. Cities have got an airport, a bus station and a train station). Next, they have filled in the gaps with more vocabulary (for example, I buy things _[shop]_ / I see paintings and sculptures _[museum]_). After that, they have drawn at the back their favourite place in city, town or village. Finally, we have corrected the activities and have played a song (head and shoulders, knees and toes…) during the last 5 minutes before the class was over.
9th April
ResponderEliminarToday, I have been with first level pupils of Primary Education (class B). We have revised the differences between the city and town. Next, we have named some cities and towns as examples for them to understand. After that, we have corrected some activities. Then, we have introduced several typical jobs in cities and towns (i.e. policewoman, farmer). After, the teacher has shown them pictures of some workers, for facilitating their understanding. Then, some pupils have mimed these professions and the others have guessed them.
In the second level of Primary Education (classes A and B), we have begun by revising the vocabulary of the new unit. Next, pupils have read a text related to the concept of neighbourhood and then we have explained the meanings of several words. Then, they have done 3 exercises. In the first one, they have labelled a picture with the given words (street, supermarket, hospital, and school). After, they have matched some sentences (i.e. When I’m sick, I go to the _[hospital]_). Next, they have matched some places with their descriptions (i.e. city - enormous and noisy, lots of buildings). Finally, we have delivered them a sheet where they had to draw places in a city according to some coordinates (for example, a park and a train station).
8th April 2014
ResponderEliminarToday, I have been in 1st A primary education and they have had Natural and Social Science´s class and teacher has begun reviewing everything seen in the previous class. Then teacher has explained a new page of the book working with the pupils new vocabulary about transport, pronunciation, grammar, listen, etc. Finally the students have done activities of the book and review exercises.
The next hour, I have been in 1st B primary education and they have had Natural and Social Science´s class and they have had a similar class to the class of 1st A primary education.
The last hour, I have been in 2nd B primary education and they have had Natural and Social Science´s class and they have been doing review exercises for the exam.
9th April 2014
Today, I have been in 2nd B primary education and they have had Natural and Social science´s class and they have been doing review exercises for the exam.
The next hour, I have been in 1st A primary education where I have taught my second Art´s class. The students have done an activity where they had to color, cut and stick an egg, to celebrate the Easter´s Day. Previously, I developed material in my house and I have used for explain this topic. We have worked vocabulary, pronunciation, etc.
The next hour, I have been in 2nd B primary education where I have taught my third Art´s class. The students have done an activity where they had to color, cut and stick an egg, to celebrate the Easter´s Day. Previously, I developed material in my house and I have used for explain this topic. We have worked vocabulary, pronunciation, etc.
The last hour, I have been in 1st B primary education and they have had Natural and Social Science´s class and they have been doing review exercises for the exam.
10th April 2014
Today, I have been in 2nd B and 1st B primary education and they have had Natural and Social Science´s class and they have been doing unit test.
Finally, I have been in 1st B primary education where I have taught my last Art´s class. The students have done an activity where they had to color, cut and stick an egg, to celebrate the Easter´s Day. Previously, I developed material in my house and I have used for explain this topic. We have worked vocabulary, pronunciation, etc.
10th April
ResponderEliminarToday I have been teaching pupils in the second level of Primary Education (classes A and B). Firstly, they have read a text on their books of Science about public and private buildings. Thus, they have practiced pronunciation of new vocabulary and have learnt the differences between these types of buildings. Secondly, I have clarified what a town hall is, by means of a PowerPoint presentation I had made in advance. Next, I have explained them who the workers in a town hall are and who vote and elect them. On the slides, I have shown pictures to clarify the definition concepts. After that, I have asked them to do an activity on their books where they have identified the public places and services that the town hall organises for the community. Finally, we have played a game in which the pupils were 18 years old citizens, and they have voted the mayor and councillors of the class.
11th April
ResponderEliminarThis has been the last day of the training at the bilingual school. The first two hours I have been in classes A and B of the first year in Primary Education. Both classes have been working on the same topics: towns and cities. Firstly, we have revised the vocabulary of the unit. Secondly, pupils have listened to a recording of sounds in towns and cities and have pointed the pictures on their books (i.e. they have heard church bells ringing and have pointed the picture of the church). Then, they have read some texts about the characteristics of towns and cities. Next, they have studied how to tell an address to people, and they have filled in the gaps on a sheet where they had to write their own address.
Although the pupils have worked with the same content in both classes, I have been working on different topics in class B. There is an intellectually gifted girl in this class who has begun to attend the Science classes of the second level of Primary Education. Due to the fact that there was a teacher absent today, I have been teaching her Science in English of an advanced level, while her classmates have been working on the aforementioned topics with the other teacher. We have reviewed some vocabulary from other units about the human body and she has done some exercises after my explanations. It has been a great opportunity to meet her and teach such an intelligent pupil.
Later, I have met a class that belongs to the fourth level of Infant Education. The teacher uses the same methods I have described in previous entries. However, the only difference is that these pupils have a lower knowledge of vocabulary in English, as they are younger than the pupils I met before. In this session, they have listened to a story and have done some interactive activities. After this, the teacher has explained them it is Easter time and they have done a task on this topic.
8th April 2014:
ResponderEliminarLast Tuesday I had my eighteenth practical class, with First Level of Secondary Education, at second hour, from half past nine to half past ten.
Firstly, after taking roll, the teacher checked whether the eleventh sheet was done or not. Once he did it, he and I shared out the twelveth one and the students copied the sections “Music Album” and “Listening and Thinking” from the digital board.
Secondly, the students had to hum two songs from the section “Music Album”, which were Turkish marches (by Mozart and by Beethoven). Later on, the teacher gave a brief explanation about fusion and interculturallity, which define the previous works.
Thirdly, there was a rhythm exercise in which the students had to hum a non previously known work taking into account only the rhythm, not the intonation (the pitch).
Fourthly, we watched a video in youtube as an example of fusion between the Turkish march by Mozart and heavy metal, performanced by the guitarist of Mago de Oz.
To end the class, we sang He Jude by The Beatles.
9th, April 2014:
ResponderEliminarLast Wednesday I had my ninetheenth practical session, with Second Year, at third hour, from half past ten to the break (from half past eleven). That time the special needs students with their monitor and Drew, the conversation assistant, went all to the class.
Firstly, the students copied the sections “Music album” and “Listening and Thinking” from the digital board.
Secondly, the students were offered to sing “La donna e mobile” by karaoke, so as the volunteers who did it well would be given an extra point in the final mark of the third term. After listening a couple of performances by the volunteers, the lyrics was translated by the conversation assistant. Later on, I talked about the sexist content in this aria (“La donna e mobile”). It created a very interesting and productive debate, not only for the ethic side but also for the linguistic one.
In the middle of that debate the bell went off.
Well, first of all I have to apologize because now that I was going to write my last sessions I’ve realized that my posts (which I have been writing from another computer) are not published….. Idk if the problem has been the computer/internet/blog/whatever… BUT thankfully I have a copy in a doc file so I will copy paste all my posts once again (successfully this time, I hope). So, sorry for all my following posts!!
ResponderEliminarFebruary 20th 2014
ResponderEliminar“Hi everyone! Today it has been my third session with my 5 students of 2nd course of the degree of Primary Education in the Faculty of Education Science. As a warming up activity I’ve prepared the well-known game “Pictionary”. Usually they like a lot these short activities where, unconsciously, I used to review the vocabulary/contents of the previous sessions.
After that, and as a crucial point for these sessions where communicative skills are trained, I decided to review a little bit of basic grammar such as Present Simple and Present Continuous vs Past Simple and Past Continuous throughout different activities where the emphasis was focused on pronunciation.
As a speaking activity I planned a debate with the topic of the former Educative System. They were using the tenses previously worked and also some vocabulary was given to them in advanced so they could elaborate their speech. As a result of this debate, they were expressing their opinions and ideas on their own degree as a “bilingual degree”.
At the end, we finished the session with the listening of a song and fillinf the gaps on the lyrics. “
February 27th, 2014
ResponderEliminar“Today it has been my fourth session with my students of the bilingual degree of Primary Education in the Faculty of Education Science. As a warming up activity we used one exercise from the book that Elena Gómez gave us at the beginning of the course where one of the students is asked to keep talking for one minute about a particular topic that another student decides. Good to break the ice at the beginning of the class and reinforce the relationship between the students.
After that warming up activity I had prepared one test of Cambridge (PET). Since some of them were interested in certifications/exams, I looked for a test with the content of grammar I was planned to review (different tenses from the previous sessions + Phrasal Verbs) and, at the same time, they will discover the typical exercises of a Cambridge test.
As a speaking activity we used a grill which I had already prepared with random words. Each student should pick up 3 words and create a story, even if the three words have no real connection between them. They came out with really interesting stories…
At the end, as usual, they were listening to a song and completing the lyrics (most of them were dealing with phrasal verbs). The surprising thing about today was that, while they usually listen to the song twice, they have filled the lyrics by listening the song just once.. That has resulted in an increased motivation.”
March 6th 2014
ResponderEliminar“ My fifth session has taken place today. As a warming up activity we have been playing with the game “Tell us what you are thinking”. I have been telling one word to each student and they had to answer with the first word they thought about (related to the word I said or not…). Funny associations have arisen here…
After that, I have thought about reviewing a little bit of the pronunciation we were using in previous sessions by creating a reading activity. Besides, this activity dealt with different Present/Past tenses and some questions of reading comprehension. We did it and by reading it aloud I noticed that, although they were not perfectly correct on their pronunciation, they had improved considerably in a few weeks.
As a pre-speaking activity, I had planned a brainstorming about different topics such as:
• Advantages of being a teacher
• Disadvantages of being a teacher
• Bilingual programs at university
• ICT tools
• Motivation in the EFL classroom
After having written all of the ideas they were saying, each student picked a topic and developed a short speech using the vocabulary mentioned during the brain storming process.
At the end, as usual, listening of a famous song “
March 20th 2014
ResponderEliminarHi everyone! Today my 7th session has taken place. Since I planned my 6th and 7th sessions to be practically the same I decided to wait until my 7th session was taught and I would post them here together. Exact dates of my sessions were: 6th- March 13th 2014 and 7th- March 20th 2014.
Our previous sessions were mainly focused on reviewing the grammar tenses and pronunciation by speaking activities, so these sessions were intended to focus on listening. I have found a very useful source of materials for these types of activities in iTunes provided by the BBC. There are several listening activities called “6 minute English”, they deal with different topics in a kind of a debate between different speakers (usually with different English accents). The objective of these activities is to improve the listening skill and to expand vocabulary in certain topics or areas. So, I decided to use two of these listening for these sessions: “Drinking around the world” (6th session) and “The male brain and female brain” (7th session).
As a pre-listening activity at home, I asked my students last week to think about possible vocabulary of these two topics. They also had to find an article related to one of the two topics and bring it to the session. At the very beginning of the lessons they shared their vocabulary and we were reading the articles, making an extra effort on pronunciation.
After that warming up, I played the listening and I made some questions about the topic. Finally I decided to create an open debate about the two topics where students were really participative and involved in the discussion! These days I could not end the session with our typical song but I was surprised with the evolution of my students and so they were!
March 27th 2014
ResponderEliminarToday has been my 9th session with my students of Education. Last week some of them wrote me telling me that, since they were applying for a scholarship, they would face an interview in English. They asked me some tips or advices so I took that as a topic for a session. I would like to thank María José for borrowing me some of the materials I used in my session
This session was divided into 4 parts:
1. Job application form: I gave them a typical application form (from Education field) and they filled it with their own information. Vocabulary was the main field of the activity.
2. Personal profile: By collecting all the vocabulary, I asked them to create a short paragraph with their personal info as if they were going to be published for a specific job. They were also asked to read it aloud.
3. Interviews: Dividing the group into couples, they were playing the role of interviewer-interviewee by asking and answering several questions I gave them in a handout such as: “ How would you describe yourself?” “In what way do you think you can make a contribution to this company?”, etc.
4. At the end, I played a listening activity about “Odd interviews” from the BBC source I mentioned in my previous post of March 20th were they could make use of the vocabulary learnt in order to answer some questions.
Hi everyone! Today I would write my two last sessions ( 9th session on April 3rd 2014 + 10th session on April 10th 2014) because they were dealing with the same topic: Didactic Units.
ResponderEliminarSince throughout the previous 8 sessions we were reviewing basic grammar and vocabulary as a reinforcement for their degree by promoting their communicative skills, I proposed to my students to get involved in the CLIL process by teaching them (as a supporting lesson) one of the subjects of their degree. They told me they were dealing in this semester with Didactic Units within the subject of Didactics but in Spanish. That’s why I decided to focus these two sessions on Didactic Units in English. I was given the materials they were using and trying to follow the same patterns as their teacher of Didactics, I prepared these two-sessions. Most of the knowledge that these sessions required has been already learnt by the students during their degree so my objective as a teacher of these two sessions would be the fact of eliciting that knowledge (even in their L1 if it is needed) and encouraging them to translate that information into English at the same time.
In order to follow the lesson I provided the students with a handout with several examples of a Didactic Unit in English.
The first session was divided into 4 points:
1. Brief introduction of the topic.
2. Context and students.
3. Timing.
4. Objectives.
Using the materials I looked for the sessions (some textbooks, handouts and their own materials in Spanish from the lessons of Didactics) we were trying to develop these 4 points in order to create a Didactic Unit at the end.
Initially the students were a bit lost in English, but when they realized they already knew all the information they were asked for (objectives of an unit, timing, etc) they were highly motivated and tried hard to express their opinions not only as students but as their new role of “teachers”.
At the end of the lesson I gave each student a particular point which would be dealt with during the next session, so every student would prepare it and explain it to the rest of the class.
This model of Didactic Unit was “completed” during the following session (10th on April 10th 2014). This session began with a review of the previous one and it was also divided into 4 points:
1. Contents.
2. Methodology.
3. Evaluation.
4. Sessions.
As I said before, these four points were given to the students, so they were speaking about what they prepared at home: different theories, models, contents, authors, etc. It was quite useful since they were making a presentation unconsciously: using the different tenses previously learnt, pronunciation and vocabulary. After those short presentations that each student performed, I was asking some questions in order to make sure that the rest of the class was understanding the point of the partner.
At the end, I gave them a template of a Didactic Unit and each of them was completing it individually. When they finished I asked them to read it aloud at the same time that their partners were taking notes about possible mistakes, questions, etc.
I strongly recommend this type of sessions (above all when dealing with Education students) because they were using the L2 as a vehicle for explaining/doing/understanding and the improvement of fluency in these two sessions has been amazing!
21st April, 2014
ResponderEliminarToday has been my session number 12 at the Faculty of Education Sciences. In this lesson we have talked about the concept of the Learning theory of education. Learning theories are described as conceptual frameworks dealing with how information is caught, processed, and retained during the process of learning.
After a presentation of the topic, we talked about the different perspectives or paradigms through which we could see learning: behaviorism, cognitivism, humanism, and constructivism. I asked my students to tell me the basic ideas they knew about these four paradigms, for the sake of brainstorming the topic. Then, the class split up into groups of 3 and they had to choose one perspective to describe learning, and think about the advantages and disadvantages of it. Finally, they had to share the information with the rest of peers.
Then, we took a deeper look at the sub-categories of each paradigm. For example, within behaviorism we had conditioning; within cognitivism we had the educational neuroscience and the Theory of Multiple Intelligences; and within humanism we had the transformative learning. I have explained every one, and then my students had to choose their favourite one and explain to the rest of peers the reasons for his/her selection.
Finally, we have talked about other topics related to the learning theories of education, such as the multimedia learning, the contrast between the learning style theory and the instructional theory, and also the informal and post-modern theories. After a brief explanation of them all, I asked my students, in groups of 3, to look for more information on the internet about one of them, and then share the main ideas with the rest of peers.
- 4th April: In this session, with my students of the bilingual program in CCEE, we worked grammar review and vocabulary because they have made some mistakes in their exams or their homework.
ResponderEliminarSo, I prepared some review exercises y give them some list of vocabulary to be useful in their studies. In this way students clarify doubts and they felt more comfortable and sure when they speak or write English.
We reviewed verbal tenses, passive voice, reported speech and conditionals sentences.
They were happy to remember a lot of things they have forgotten.
- 11th April and 25th April session: My classmate Aurora tell me about her class about Didactic Unit so I asked to my students by email about it and they answered to me they were interested in because they didn´t know to do it.
Students brought me with the material they were working and I follow those steps.
1. Introduction
2. Context
3. Aims
4. Contents
5. Methodology
6. Evaluation
7. Sessions
I provided them with some useful materials and they have to create a didactic unit in English with those steps. That´s is the reason why it took two sessions.
They found difficulty in thinking about choosing the subject, the level, etc. But finally they felt motivated and some of them created fantastic didactic units. This class was excellent for them.
Happy to know that your students found it interesting! :)
Eliminar24th April
ResponderEliminarThis day has been of practice. I was in the class of first level of Infant Education. I spent some time preparing flashcard to put on a board information to parents, in which some content that children learn in English are shown to them.
It's coming to the end of my practices, so one of the teacher asked me and I offered to teach the last class with an activit. I'm pretty excited and I hope everything will be great. I have confident enough in me.
I will tell you later about my next class.
29th April
ResponderEliminarToday has been my session number 13 at the Faculty of Education Sciences. In this lesson we have talked about the concept of the Problem-solving learning theory as a student-centered pedagogy dealing with the idea that learning happens through the experience of problem solving, so it is a style of active learning based on group work.
First, I gave the students the fundamental ideas and features surrounding the concept of problem-solving learning, together with a brief view about the history of this learning model, who have been and are still its supporters, and also its connection with the constructivist learning we had already seen on the previous session.
Next, we have watched a YouTube video in which the concepts of problem-solving learning scaffolding, and collaborative work were put in connection, and after listened to the video, we made a recapitulation of the main ideas highlighted.
After it, in groups of 3, students had to look for more information about either the concept of scaffolding in the process of learning, or the idea of collaborative work, and then share the information with the rest of peers.
Finally, in groups of 3, I asked my students to think of how they would organize a lesson by following the basics of this learning model. It has been very interesting to observe how my students have worked in this practical activity, because it has been very motivating for them and very fruitful.
22nd April, 2014:
ResponderEliminarLast Tuesday I had my twentieth practical session, with First Year, at third hour, from half past ten to the break time, which starts at half past eleven.
The first thing was, as usual taking roll, after which the teacher and I shared out the corresponding sheet to the exam of units eleven and twelve. He explained its contents.
Secondly, the twelfth sheet was reviewed, and the attention was focused specially to the exercise in which the students had to make up lyrics from the Turkish March by Mozart, trying to match the text and music rhythm (being specially careful of accents)
Thirdly, we did a practical exercise related to triplets, which are special musical length groups that requires making several mathematics operations to be understood at the beginning. As you practice and practice, you make it unconsciously.
To end the class, we listened all the songs included into the eleventh and twelfth units and made some remarks about the corresponding music structure.
23rd April, 2014:
ResponderEliminarLast Wednesday I had my twenty first class, with Second Year, at second hour, from half past nine to half past ten. The conversation assistant, who usually comes to this class every other week, did not come. Who did come were the three special needs students with their monitor.
Firstly, after taking roll, the teacher revised the concept of triplets (which I explained in my previous practical session synopsis) by practicing them. The teacher proposed a challenge to the imminent exam, so that the student who overtook it, would be prized with an extra point in the general mark. This challenge consisted on singing a written score which included, at least, one triplet.
Secondly, I explained the meaning of the two words from the section “Vocabulary”: march (in lower case letter, not the month) and fusion.
After that, I reviewed what recitative, aria and chorus were and asked the students to explain it again individually, firstly in Spanish and secondly in English.
To end the class, we sang the songs involved in the exam.
29th April, 2014:
ResponderEliminarToday I have had my twenty second class. This time I had it with First Year, at third hour, from half past ten to the break, that starts at half past eleven.
The first thing have been talking about greetings. The students have looked surprised about the amount of expressions they can use to greet.
After that, we have covered the meaning of brotherhood, an abstract concept not much easy to explain.
Thirdly, I have explained the meaning of march and fusion. To make easier and more enjoyable the explanation of that first word I have made the students follow several marches by walking, taking into account the rhythm.
Fourthly, we have talked about interculturality, giving examples of typical foods, clothes, just like its prons and cons. In addition, it has generated a debate about topics that identify places, people, cultures, etc., such as Halloween, pizza, Flamenco, jamón (ham), jeans…
29 th april
ResponderEliminarToday has been my last class of practices with Carolina.
As I said in the previous commentary, today I have taught the class in which I have said goodbye to the pupils of Carolina. I prepared in my home one activity related to the unit that the children are working "Animals". I prepared a book of animals, in which, in a part of it, we could see wild animals and in the other part we could see pets; these animals could be extracted from the book and again put them in the book.
The activity I have done with them has been the following: First I have given them different animals. After, each child came to class center and they talked about your animal. The pupils told us what animal it was, where it lived and whether it was pet or wild. Then, the child had to place your animal in the correct part of the book.
The phrases that more we have worked in English are: It’s a wild animal; it lives on the farm/ in the forest; it’s a wild animals/pets.
The students have had a great time and I am very happy because I was able to observe how the pupils learned very quickly and very easily, besides this, some pupils pronounced the sentences very well.
I am excited about how I taught the class and with myself. Has been a fantastic day.
6th May
ResponderEliminarToday has been my session number 14 at the Faculty of Education Sciences. Today we have made a very practical class. For this sake, I have provided my students with some basic theoretical ideas, so that they could work on them in groups of 3 people.
The first thing we have done today was a brainstorming activity, so that the background or previous knowledge of my students was activated. We have brainstormed about the following ideas: preparing a course, first day of class, syllabus construction, class discussions and debates, classroom dynamics, and assessment.
Then, the class was split up into groups of 3, and I asked them to plan a didactic unit based on what they had learnt. Finally, they had to share the information with the rest of the class. This activity is time-consuming, but I think it is worthy, and it has also been very motivating for my students. They have done a great job!
30th April, 2014:
ResponderEliminarLast Wednesday I had my twenty third class, with Second Year, at second hour, from half past nine to half past ten.
This time the students had the exam of units eleven and twelve and it took them the whole hour. During the class, the teacher and I talked and exchanged ideas about the activities we could do in the followings units. I also solved several doubts a couple of students asked me about.
6th May, 2014:
ResponderEliminarLast Tuesday I had my twenty fourth class, with First Year, at third hour, from half past ten to the beginning of the break, at half past eleven.
The thing that student did the whole hour was the exam of units eleven and twelve. As usual, some students went to ask me about several doubts they had related to the exam.
The teacher and I planned the corresponding activities to the next unit, the thirteenth.
7th May, 2014:
ResponderEliminarYesterday, I had my twenty fifth class, with Second Year, at second hour, from half past nine to half past ten.
After taking roll, the first thing was sharing out the correct exams so that the students knew their marks and where they had to improve.
Secondly, the students started the thirteenth sheet, as usual, by writing down what they saw on the digital board. Only the first two sections were covered, Music album and Listening and thinking.
Thirdly we worked two expressions: “What is your favorite instrument” and “Do you know how to play the violin”. As the students were getting the hand of it I warned them about not to mix the expressions that need “the way somebody does…” and “….how to do”.
Fourthly we talked about the oboe.
Later on, we read and commented the lyrics from While My Guitar Gently Weeps, by George Harrison, that speaks of musicians that sell themselves to the business music market.
After that, there was a behavioural incident between two students that was fast solved by the teacher.
To end the class we did a general review to the whole list of song listened in class, giving an extra quarter point to the correct name said by the volunteers.
12th May, 2014
ResponderEliminarToday has been my session number 15 at the Faculty of Education Sciences. In this lesson we have talked about the concept of the philosophy of education. I have chosen this topic in this exact day because today has been the last day that I have taught Pedagogy content, and the next day I will teach another bilingual subject, The Knowledge about Social and Cultural Means, from a philosophical framework. In addition, today’s topic also touches some of the points we have been dealing with in previous sessions, so I think that it is the perfect link and also the perfect recapitulation of information.
First, we have talked about the philosophical perspectives from which the educational theories are constructed: ethics, epistemology, human condition, and psychological perspectives on human learning and development.
Then we have made a taxonomy of the philosophies of education in charge of what to teach, on the one hand, and who and how to teach, on the other. So, in the first group we had essentialism, perennialism, progressivism, and existentialism; whereas in the second group we had behaviorism, cognitivism, humanism, and constructivism. I have explained each of them, and then, in pairs, the students had to discuss about the advantages and disadvantages of them, and share their opinions with the rest of the mates.
After it, we have done an activity about the different contemplative education methods: critical pedagogy, democratic education, social reconstructionism, and unschooling. I split up the class into 4 groups and I provided each group with a text dealing with a different method. The purpose was to read the text and then explain to the rest of mates what it was about.
Finally, I have provided my students with a list of the big names of the philosophers of education, such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Rousseau, Piaget, and others. In pairs, my students had to choose one character and look for more information about him, and prepare a short PowerPoint presentation to share with the rest of peers at the end of the class.
Hi everyone! Once again I'm writing two of my lessons (11th: April 17th + 12th: May 8th) together since they were part of the same Didactic Unit: Special needs students within the context of Primary education.
ResponderEliminarTime ago my students told me they would have to hand in a project about this topic at the end of the year and, as their English teacher, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity in order to provide them with some tools (vocabulary and structures) and make them to think about this interesting topic for them but by means of English as a vehicle of communication.
Although their projects are in Spanish, they were quite participative and asking a lot so I felt they were really "learning" something by using English but not only the language.
Both days I introduced the topic by proposing a brainstorming activity: "special needs". Fisrt day I wrote on the blackboard whatever it came to their minds and helped them with some problems of vocabulary. Second day, I asked them to explain why they thought about that particular words.
It was a good activity to elicitate content (1st day) and as a review of the first lesson (2nd).
With the next activity dealing with some texts, I tried to expand their knowledge going deeper in this topic of special needs: beyond blind and deaf students are a loooot of learners with special needs and my students told me they were quite lost in this field. So I selected some readings dealing with Deep causes of inattention, impulsivity or hyperactivity. In these texts, real causes of that problems were provided as well as possible methodologies (1st day) and assessment (2nd). After each reading, and having previously solved any problem with vocabulary or structure, students were asked to sum up the text and answer some questions on comprehension.
After that, I asked my students to exchange their opinions about the topic by pairs.
At the end of the 1st lesson I gave my students a writing activity (knowing that the same activity would be useful for them to include it in their projects): creation of a didactic unit (also making them to review the content of previous lessons) for special needs students with a timing of 30 minutes (working in 2 groups of 3).
At the end of the second lesson, they exposed what they planned in these didactic units and I was quite happy (and surprised!) with their expositions.
16th May, 2014:
ResponderEliminarLast Tuesday I had my twenty sixth class, with First Year, at third hour, from half past ten to the begining of the break (from half past eleven).
Firstly, after taking roll, the teacher shared out the latest exam and explained the doubts several students had about it.
Secondly, the students did the section Vocabulary, which included the words “flute” and “suite”. Just after that I talked about how to make a flute in PVC (vinilic plastic).
Later on, a group of students of last year of Secondary Education (not the compulsary one), came to the class to practice a performance to a videoclip, so we enjoyed watching them.
17th may, 2014:
ResponderEliminarYesterday I had my twenty seventh class, with Second Year, at second hour, from half past nine to half past ten. This time one more specific needs student came to class (a very singular one, with behavior disorder) plus their monitor and the conversation assistant. The new student has been expelled from the class due to his bad manners.
We covered the vocabulary from the thirteenth didactic unit (flute and suite). As the students were comentating it, the teacher and I explained the differences between flute and recorder. After that, the conversation assistant said the words to name several instruments so that the students had to say what he was refering to, in Spanish. To do it we widden the vocabulary words list, with woodwind or reed
The following activity was listening and, at the same time, reading the lyrics from the song While my guitar, by the Beatles, after which it was sung.
To end the class, the teacher, the assistant and I gave several volunteers a hand to translate the lyrics. The ones who did it in Spanish were awarded with an extra point in their final marks. On the other hand, the ones who did it in English, obtained two.
19th May 2014
ResponderEliminarToday has been my session number 16 at the Faculty of Education Sciences. Today we have started a new subject: The Knowledge about Social and Cultural Means, from a philosophical framework. Today’s session has been devoted to the topic of the critical means.
The first thing we have done in today’s session was to have a debate about this Anglo-Saxon saying: “There are only two unavoidable things in life, death and the tax office.” I also added the idea of disagreement, because from a philosophical perspective, that is a fundamental and unavoidable thing in life. Then I asked my students (in pairs) to think of philosophical disagreements (such as the existence or not of God, etc) and then share the main ideas with the rest of peers.
After it, we talked about the philosophical theories of the contemporary British Jonathan Glover and his metaphorical description of the philosophical task as something like trying to keep floating on a ship that is about to sink.
Then we also talked about the difference between the real philosophical argumentation and discussion, and the mere expression of opinions. And I asked my students to think about examples of each kind to share with the rest of peers.
The next thing we have done was to watch a YouTube video which told the story of the Socrates’ humility: Socrates was named the wiser man just because he was aware of his own ignorance. After the video, I provided my students with a text to read it from a part of the Plato’s dialogue between Socrates and Eutifron about that same topic of humility when admitting your ignorance. So, then we made a debate about what my students preferred: either if they always wanted to be right in a discussion (and consequently, sometimes having blind prejudices), or either if they sometimes admitted that the other person was right.
Finally, we talked about the different stages in the Socratic method, and after it, I asked my students in groups of 3 to think of a situation where they could apply that method.
Hello Everyone ! . Yesterday was my first day, I have started my internship at school Colón in Córdoba. The center director explained the bilingual school program and after that she introduced me to the teacher who is going to be my placement tutor, whose name is Francisco.
ResponderEliminarFrancisco’s classes are 5º and 6º of primary , he is the social science teacher. We have been talking about my formation and objectives in this practices. Them he showed me the history didactic unit about Independence war, he was working with that day.
He came with me to the class to introduce me to the pupils. Liz, an American girl who is working as an auxiliary conversation in class was there too.
The teacher started students if they had done their homework. Then we corrected it in the digital blackboard. I had never used a digital blackboard before and I think it is an useful educational resource. We continued making another kind of activities such us ordering historical facts with famous figures, completing a text with the correct option. Students made these activities by themselves and then we corrected them in the digital blackboard to make them participate actively.
To sum up I would like to add that I really enjoyed this class about Spanish history in the XIX century and main concepts and facts were explained in a clear and easy way to students.
I have a break and it is time to refresh my imputs!
ResponderEliminarI will explain the planning from my last lessons in a few lines.
21st April
As my students wanted to be more in touch with education issues I tried to make it properly. Firstly, we made an "Education Quiz" where they had to choose between three answers related to schools' environment and stuff.
After that, students had to prepare a mini-presentation about their childhood school. They had to point out curiosities, experiences and important facts. We had a discussion about the posibility of sending their kids to that school and why.
Then, they carried out a Listening activity about how do we have to discipline disobedient schoolchildren. They answered a lot of questions about the topic and we created a very cool debate.
Finally and with a dynamic purpose, we played Taboo together and made a "Fill in the gaps" exercise.
29th April
ResponderEliminarWe started with a "Warming up Activity". They have to reorganize some inspirational quotes from famous people related to education (Gandhi, Augustine of Hippo,etc.)
Then I gave them a handout with six different species of birds. They had explanations below with the most significant features and data of each bird. The objective was to show how to explain contents during a Science lesson so I gave them several cards with different animals. Each student had to invent an explanation about each specie and the rest had to guess them.
After that, we watched a video on bilingual education. It was about science and it created a good discussion full of coments and doubts.
6th May
ResponderEliminarThis was one of the best lessons I had. First of all students did a "Quick Listening". They filled some gaps with specific vocabulary about CLIL.
After that, we made a review on Bilingual Education materials and rules. They started a phase of brainstorming and we spent the whole lesson designing activities and tasks implementing different features of CLIL in Pre-Primary Education.
13th May
ResponderEliminarAfter attending "XV Jornadas ZETA" I thought I had to share some acquired knowledge with my students.
We spent a long time with an interactive activity based on guessing movies' title. One of the students sitting with her back in front of the screen had to guess the film that her mates described.
Then I showed some materials that I got during the weekend about "Story telling". Secondly, they had to produce their own story but using a given beginning. At some point, they had to exchange their sheets and continue with their classmates' stories.
Finally, we watched two different stories made for enfants. They were based on bilingual education so students had to get the contents taught through the plot. We analysed a lot of details and they share their answers.
20th May
ResponderEliminarToday we have had so much fun. With the objective of warming up we have played Taboo with one-minute shifts.
We have repeated an activity but with some changes. They have had to guess some films but this time their mates have explained what has appeared during some scenes, not pictures.
We have been studying how pupils can learn using songs. They have seen video clips and we have talked about the benefits of this kind of activities. Students have been getting the contents from the songs and the way to teach them properly.
They have been thinking about how to implement specific contents in their own songs, so they have invented those songs and how to dance the rhythm teaching contents as well.
We have ended up with a "Fill in the gaps" activity to encourage their Listening skills.
Today has been my second day of practice, I started the day with a math test in 5 º A, I tried to help during the exam, resolving doubts that students could have. I observed in the decoration of class many posters about geometry, table sizes and lengths in English, I believe this is a positive idea to promote bilingualism.
ResponderEliminarThe second hour it has been in 6º B social science class, teacher Francisco talked and explained about the European Union. Later we saw a presentation and debated about it, finally children made activities about this topic to build up what they had learnt before.
After the break time we had some free time so I have showed the teacher the unit I had prepared.
The last hour, I stayed in 5º A, for history class, the teacher explained the lesson using the blackboard with the conversation assistant read it.
This is really good for pupils since they can listen to a native pronunciation and ask her about the vocabulary that they don’t understand after that we played a game which consisted of describing picture on the board.
At the end of the class Francisco told students the homework they would have to do for the following day.
20th May, 2014:
ResponderEliminarBefore starting my comment about the class I had last Tuesday I would like to correct the date of my two last sessions, which I wrote wrong on this blog: they correspond to the days 13th and 14th May. I do not know why I did it, perhaps I was thinking about another month, perhaps the exhaustion of this season... Anyway, here we go:
Last Tuesday, the twentieth of May, I had my antepenultimate class, the twenty eighth, with First year, at second hour, from half past nine to half past ten.
Firsly, after taking roll, the teacher and I reviewed the thriteenth sheet (corresponding to the same didactic unit). To do it, we did an exercice consisting on humming the melody from Badinerie, by Bach, giving an extra point to the volunteer who did it well.
Secondly, the students commented an image where there was a man walking in the rain, with his umbrella. They had, not only to comment the content by itself, but also relate it to the song Raindrops, by Bacharach, which is set on the same context.
To end the class, the students were encouraged to make up a choreography to dance Badinerie. To do it they had only five minutes to set it with their classmates. There were three volunteers.
21st May, 2014:
ResponderEliminarYesterday I had my penultimate practical session of this Practicum, the twenty nineth class, with Second Year, at third hour, from half past ten to the begining of the break, at half past eleven.
What it was done was pretty similar to my previous practical session, with First Year, last Tuesday: choreographies about the song Badinerie, by Bach (in fours, with worse results than the ones from First Year this week), a humming contest about the same song (the first four bars -or measures-).
After that, we reviewed the activity from the thirteenth sheet, related to the churchs in Córdoba with organs.
To end the class, the students sang the song While my guitar gently weeops, by George Harrison, to practice pronunciation by singing.
26th May, 2014
ResponderEliminarToday has been my session number 17 at the Faculty of Education Sciences. Today we have focused on the political means, and we have talked about the discursive fallacies and the different kinds that exist: the domino effect, the so-called wedge, and what is called drawing the line.
First, I provided my students with some images representing those types of discursive fallacies, so that they could activate their background knowledge for the rest of the class. They had to try to describe what these discursive fallacies were about just with their pictorial representations.
After it, we defined what the domino effect is, and what differences exist between it and the so-called slippery slope. Then, I asked my students (in pairs) to think about some examples of each of these two kinds of discursive fallacies and their consequences.
Then, we repeated the same dynamics: we defined the so-called wedge discursive fallacy, and next, I asked my students (again in pairs) to think about some examples of it and its consequences, and share them with the rest of peers.
Finally, we again defined the following discursive fallacy, drawing the line, and we also compared it to the concept of sorites, created by Eubúlides of Mileto but explored by Cicero. And after it, I again asked my students (in pairs) to think about some examples of each discursive fallacy and their consequences.
27th May, 2014:
ResponderEliminarToday I have finally had my last practical class, the thirtieth, with First Year, at second hour, from half past nine to half past ten.
Firstly, after taking roll, I have shared out the fourteenth sheet and the students have copied the sections “Music Album” and “Listening and thinking” from the digital board.
Secondly, we have listened to the three pieces from the first section (Music album) and started a debate about the lyrics from one of them: As time goes by, by German Hupfeld (part of the Casablanca's soundtrack). Due to this song we have talked about the meaning of love. To do it in a more interesting way I have asked the students “Are you a jealous person?”, forcing them to express theirself about feelings (how silly you feel when expressing feelings in a foreign language....).
To enrich the debate, the teacher has added the following topic: Love in your parents's times. More o less jelousy today?. Different strokes for different folks.
To end my task of commentating my practical sessions on this blog I would like to sum up my experience saying I admire the enthusiasm most of the students I have worked with show at speaking English, and I wish the rest take English as seriously as they do.
9th May and 16th May
ResponderEliminarThese two session are based on cultural aspect of the English speaking countries.
I showed some videos and images about London, Ireland, Australia, India and EEUU.
We create a funny and interesting class because each pupil contributes with his/her ideas and they learnt a lot. Moreover, they practiced speaking and listening.
In the second session, students had to prepare a similar class themselves so they took some topic like festivities of English speaking countries and Gibraltar because they wanted to know more about it.
They showed a powerpoint with videos, images and many interesting web pages where they had learnt and looked for information. They explained what they had learnt and they were very motivated because they love learning about different cultures. It was very useful for them.
23rd May
ResponderEliminarIn this session I prepared some material comparing the different educational system in UUEE, UK and Spain. We created a debate and each student had a different vision of the foreign educational system. They are interesting in this topic because, maybe, they go out in the future to continue their studies.
At the end of the class students played a table game similar to trivial where there is a board and many questions cards in English. All of them wanted to win so they had a good time speaking and reading in English.
2nd June, 2014
ResponderEliminarToday has been my session number 18 at the Faculty of Education Sciences. We have had two sessions in one day, so 3 hours today, because of the timetable of my students and the proximity of exams.
In the first part of the class, we have focused on the topic of the political ideologies as a means, and we have talked about Anarchism, Capitalism, Communism, Fascism, and Socialism.
Firstly, we have made a brainstorm with my students’ previous or background knowledge, because I wanted to hear what they knew about these concepts before we defined them. The class was split up into groups of 3 so that they could think of some of the main features of each concept, and then they shared their ideas with the rest of mates.
Then I provided my students with some definitions by important philosophers about the previously mentioned concepts, but the concept itself was never given, so the task of my students (in pairs) was to guess which definition fixed better with each concept.
After it, I asked my students to define with their own words the concepts of anarchism, capitalism, communism, fascism, and socialism. And finally, in pairs, they had to think about a real situation in the past in which any of these concepts had happened. Then, each pair shared their situation with the rest of the class, and the other people had to discuss about the consequences that such situation provoked from a socio-historical-financial perspective.
Then, in the second part of the class, we have continued with the philosophic frame to talk about the environmental means, especially, we have focused on the topics about the environment, the climate change and the sustainability model.
First, we have talked about the similarities between environmentalists and philosophers worried about human excessive consumption in the Western world, being now exported to other parts of our planet.
From this point, we have also initiated another debate about the psychological consequences of a society of excessive consumption.
Then, I used a quotation from A Sand County Almanca (1949) by Aldo Leopold, to create a new debate: “We abuse the Earth because we treat it as if it were a good belonging to us. When we appreciate the Earth as a community to which we belong, only then we could start to use it with love and respect”. (Foreword, page viii).
Next, we have talked about the different ecologist attitudes within the philosophic frame: both pragmatic and ideal attitudes, like the Theory of Gaia, Deep Ecology, Enlightened Stewardship, and the model of Sustainability. And we have discussed the advantages and disadvantages of each one, first in groups of 3, and then every group sharing info with the rest of peers.
And finally I proposed a debate about this topic: Is the solution of the climate change a matter of ethics? Or is it just a matter of financial benefits?
Thursday, 22 May. It was my third day. I started the morning on the 6th class B with the history lesson. Teacher Francisco presented to students the topic about industrial revolution with the help of the digital blackboard, how people lived in the time of the industrial revolution, different social classes, social changes that were presented and the salient features of that time. We worked with activities and answered to students.
ResponderEliminarThe second hour I was in 5ºA, in the class of social science, Teacher Francisco explained about prehistory, asked children if they knew the different between Paleolithic and Neolithic times and age of metals. We reviewed and after that we made activities.
The following hour I stayed in 3º B with the teacher Sonia in class. She started the Class asking them how they were. Then she told them that she had a surprise and introduced me to the students.
Children wanted to know my name, age, where I came from, how long I would stay in school.
The teacher encourages interaction in the classroom makes children use the grammatical structures and communicate using grammatical structures such us do you like ? I do / I do not, . Do you hate? I do / I do not.
At the end of the class we checked activities about food vocabulary that students had made at home.
I spent my fourth hour with Sonia in 1º A she asked the class how they were and told them that I would stay to help her.
She explained the meaning of new words that children didn’t and then we wrote these words in cards to remember new vocabulary that they are learning.
Then we sang a song about the topic we had been working that day. Kids were happy and participated actively.
Friday, 23 May. I started the day in 3ºA.The teacher paid attention to the students needs, tried to get active participation of the class using an appropriate level for children and their linguistic knowledge.
ResponderEliminarThe teacher encouraged interaction in the classroom making children use the grammatical structures and communicate with real dialogues in pairs. After that we made activities in workbook about this topics.
The Second hour I stayed class 1º B with teacher Sonia. She reviewed the vocabulary from the previous class and gave to students new vocabulary, practiced pronunciation with this word and show them the meaning, asked questions for using the grammatical structures I like, I love, I hate, .Later children open his classbook and read the history about space travel, they practiced in pairs, when they finished. She and me was read for the class making characters. Finally kids took his workbook and made activities about this topics. I tried to solve their doubts and help them when they have some questions.
The last hour I was in 6º A, we reviewed the activities they had answer. At the end of class he clarified their doubts and continued developing theme. At the end clarifies doubts , send new work on this lesson to make them as homework.
Finally he explained the homework that students would have to do at home.
Pardon the late post. I will upload all the lessons in upcoming days.
ResponderEliminarSession 2: 29th January.
Second class at CCEE. It took place in seminar 1 at 16:00. Although I forgot to call roll, attendance was chiefly in the figures of previous lesson. As our main concern is to foster oral skills and it was the second lesson, I considered that they would feel rather confident speaking about topics they are interested in. Thus, the subject for this class was leisure activities.
The first activity was designed for them to speak up about themselves. On a set of pictures about different leisure activities, they had to explain why they either like or dislike those activities. Furthermore, they had to define themselves according with their favorite activities. The second activity had similar purposes, although it was designed more as a participative debate, with a set of suggested questions students may ask to fellow students.
Third activity was a listening activity. It was a record also on hobbies and leisure activities, in which students had to fill gaps with the missing information about each character. Generally, students experienced difficulties to understand the CD recording.
After the listening a text was provided to the students. My intention was to get them to approach to social and cultural issues of English-speaking countries. Following class’ thread, the text was a Daily Mail report on British people’s favorite pastimes.
Last activity was somehow different and more relaxed. Given some guidelines they interpreted a role play in couples. The one should get a date, while the other had to show no interest at all.
Although the atmosphere was slightly less enthusiastic than in the opening session, students generally showed commitment and interest.
Tuesday May 27. I started my day in 3º B, we listened a conversation in English with children , then they were reading and interpretating characters and finally we translated the meaning of dialogue into Spanish and made comprehension activities about this.
ResponderEliminarThe second hour I was in 1ºA, the teacher presented unit about food, gave children new vocabulary for this topic and we used oral conversation to practice the new vocabulary that we had learnt that day. After that we made activities and tried to solve doubts with the students.
The following hour I was preparing sources and activities to use it in my next class.
The last hour I was in 6º A the teacher continued lesson about industrial revolution, that he had started the day before. We checked homework in blackboard, the conversation auxiliary helped kids with the pronunciation and lastly students asked the question they had.
Wednesday May 28. First hour I was in early 1 A, we read about space travel and we translated into Spanish the different characters. Then the teacher asked the kids about it and then made control activities on this workbook.
ResponderEliminarThe next time I went to 3 º B, we spoke about the food, that it is the topic we are working this week, the teacher gives new vocabulary of food, practiced new structures and finally sang the theme song.
The last hour I stayed in 6º A, the conversation auxiliary showed children a presentation for her natural place, Iowa State, explained during the same, population, weather and the economy in this country. Kids were asking questions about what gets their attention. At the end Liz asked some questions to student to notice if they had paid attention. I have found it an interesting activity that connects children at the American culture and awakens their curiosity.
Session 3: 5th February.
ResponderEliminarThird lesson at CC.EE.
Attendance was unhopefully low, due to exam period. Since two of the three attendant students could not go to the previous lesson and the left student agreed, we decided to repeat the same lesson planning of the previous week.
My intention was also to discuss on the selection of an appropiate support virtual environment to our classes. I prefered to use facebook. Despite its limitations, its interface is quite handy to use and facebook groups offer almost same possibilites than moodle. Furthermore, as a social network also offers a direct connection with students in case of last minute changes and re-scheduling. Obviously, final decission was delayed due to low attendance.
9th June, 2014
ResponderEliminarToday has been my 20th and last session at the Faculty of Education Sciences. We have talked about how the mass media is able to manipulate the public opinion.
The first thing we have done was this activity: in pairs, my students had to think about a situation that has happened and it has been manipulated by the mass media for the sake of making people vote for a certain candidate, or something like that. Then each pair had to share the situation with the rest of peers.
Then I asked my students, in groups of 3, to look for different newspapers, sensationalists and serious ones, to contrast the same piece of news.
After it, we watched a YouTube video in which we could see how a gradual TV coverage affected and manipulated the information about the War of Vietnam in the United States for the sake of reducing the popular support for this conflict and accelerating the retreat of the American forces in the 70’s. Then we commented the video in a critical way.
Then we did a role-play activity. In groups of 3, my students had to imagine that they were working for a TV news channel and they had to launch a certain piece of news, but they had to manipulate the information so that it was attracting for the audience and in so doing, they could make financial benefits.
Finally, we have talked about the concept of the so-called “the society of disinformation”. And in connection with that concept, we have talked about the idea of propaganda in relation to politics, and the difference between black and white political propaganda. We have also talked about the techniques for achieving the highest level of propaganda: that which is used in the totalitarian governments. Then, in groups of 3, I asked my students to think about countries governed by totalitarian regimes, and finally imagine how they could use political propaganda there and what for.
Monday 2 June. I started the day with a Social science in 6 º A, We checked homework exercises, and solved doubts that students could have. The teacher told students the date of the exam and what they would have to study for it. Lastly he explained the last part of the lesson.
ResponderEliminarThe second hour was in 5º B Math class, teacher Francisco talked and explained about Geometry focusing in area and perimeter. Later he ordered activities for class and for homework .After the break time we had one hour free so I have showed the teacher my activities for the unit I had prepared he has told me some corrections to improve my unit so it has been really interesting to know his opinion about it.
The last hour, I stayed in 1º B, for English class, the teacher explained the lesson using grammatical structures and she made student participate in oral activities and listen and repeat the song with sign language.
From my point of view this is a great way of making children practice oral language and use grammatical and vocabulary of this unit. Finally played a game that consisted in describing and object or animal and the rest of the class had to guess what it was.
Tuesday June 3. I started my day in 2º A, the teacher presented unit about wheat and flour, gave children new vocabulary for this topic and we used oral conversation to practice the new vocabulary that we had learnt that day. Then we read a story about to conversion of wheat into flour and its different stages until it is prepared to be sold in stores. After that we listened a story about this topic, made activities.
ResponderEliminarThe next hour I stayed in 1ºB we worked with kids about their favourite place in the word. Children said that their favourite places were the beach, the countyside, school, home. Later we used flashcards to show places such us jungle ,mountain, sea and then they had to draw their favorite place in his notebook, when they finished they showed their pictures to the rest of the class and explained the reason why it was their favourite place to stay. Finally they did activities about this topic in his workbook and we checked.
The following class I was in 6º A in History, the teacher carried on explaining contemporary age topic using a video of the coup in Spain in 23 of February, children asked questions and we were talking about what would have happened if the coup had succeeded. After that we used the blackboard to make an activity that consisted in describing Spanish government with his name of president. Finally teacher explained the homework for the following day about the democratic transition in Spain.
27th May
ResponderEliminarDuring this session students and I have been analyzing multiple didactic units again. All of these materials came from the CLIL Programme from Junta de Andalucía.
As my students are studying to become pre-primary teachers I chose units based on the lowest levels of primary education. So, contents are closer to those they are going to teach in the future.
We have been commenting on activities, main topics, vocabulary and so on. It has been so useful in order to reinforce their knowledge about CLIL environment.
3rd June
ResponderEliminarDuring this lesson and the next one I have implemented the didactic unit I’ve designed about psychology and learning processes.
Being more specific, unit is based on conditioning, learning process and language. My students are very interested in this topic because they want to know how to handle different behaviors, learning styles and children’ development.
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ResponderEliminar10th June
ResponderEliminarThis lesson has been carried out continuing with the issue we started working on last Tuesday. Students have been working on the topic of psychology again and we have ended up by chatting in English to make my students feel more relaxed.
Wednesday June 4. I started my day in 3º B, we listened a conversation in English with children , then they were reading about clothes and used the structure put on/ take off, I’m wearing a T-shirt, jeans, dress, shoes, scarf, etc. After we made activities about this.
ResponderEliminarThe next hour I stayed in 6º A, we checked homework exercises, and solved doubts that students could have. Lastly Teacher explained the last part of the lesson about contemporary age. We reviewed a story events from Fernando VII to the present and made activities in the blackboard about this.
The following class I stayed in 1ºB, for English class, the teacher explained the lesson about the shadow, we using grammatical structures about the weather with its sunny or its cloudy, she made student participate in oral activities and listen and repeat the shadow song with sign language. To finish she gave activities to difference where my shadow is and draw and colour your shadow.
The last hour I was in 2ºA, Teacher gave to me the opportunity to teach the class. I prepared some activities to have fun with the children made games, for example, chain stories to create one story with kids in couples. Salesman to sell a product to the class withthout saying that it is. Decodification move the letter of word and put in the right order. Creates codeword.
The class was great, Teacher helped me and stayed to assists me, children enjoyed and participated actively in the activities.
Thursday June 5 . I started my day in 2º B, teacher gave new vocabulary about this topics, then they were reading a text about clothes and used the structure put on/ take off, I’m wearing a T-shirt, jeans, dress, shoes, scarf, etc. Finally we made activities about this.
ResponderEliminarThe second hour I was in 6ºA for assistant in contemporary age exam. I was tried to solve doubt during the exam.
The following class I stayed in 1ºA, for English class, the teacher explained the lesson about the shadow, we read an story with this topic, later we using grammatical structures i’ts sunny or its cloudy, she made student participated in oral activities and listen and repeat the shadow song with sign language. Finally she gave activities to difference where is my shadow and draw and colour your shadow.
The last hour I was made activities and resources for didactic unit to following class.
Friday June 6. I started my last day of practice in 5º B with social science class, the teacher explained last lesson about Prehistory. Later we showed a presentation and debated about it, finally children made activities about this topic to build up what they had learnt before.
ResponderEliminarThe next hour I stayed in 2ºB we carried on with the clothes thematic, kids used the structures I’m wearing, teacher gave them new vocabulary and practiced pronunciation with them and finally teacher ordered activities about it in workbook. Then we cheeked together in the blackboard.
The third time I was in 6ºA the teacher presented unit about ancient age, he explained the new lesson, gave to students new vocabulary for this topic and we used oral conversation to practice the new vocabulary that we had learnt that day. After that we made activities and tried to solve doubts with the students. Finally he explained the homework that students would have to do at home.
The last hour I was in 3º B the teacher announced to student that I would teach the class that day , we reviewed the basic vocabulary and structures of the first issues and made activities to strengthen these concepts, we corrected faults on the board with all the kids and to finish I proposed a series of games I had prepared for the class, we played a guessing game in which you have to describe an animal and another game about decoding words.
Children actively participated and cooperated actively in class. I think they had fun and besides they worked essential skills in the area of English.
Session thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth: 15th May, 2014, 2nd May, 2014, 5th June, 2014 and 12th June, 2014.
ResponderEliminarHi everyone! I’ve been a little bit stressed those weeks so sorry for the late post. Today I will write four of my lessons because they all belong to the same didactic unit: Literature. I was surprised at the very moment when my students asked me to dedicate some lessons to this topic but they explained to me that although they would have an exam in Spanish this year, next year they would have to face the same subject in English. Because of that reason I did prepare simple lessons containing the four of the skills related to literature.
In spite of dealing with different literary genres, all of them follow the same pattern:
1. Warming up: Brain storming activity on Narration/Poetry/Drama plus a special lesson for Fiction.
2. Reading: Brief text with an example of a narration, poetry, etc.
• 1st session: Narrative: fragment of “Animal Farm” by George Orwell.
• 2nd session: Poetry: fragment of “The Chimney Sweeper” by William Blake.
• 3rd session: Drama: fragment of “Hamlet” by Shakespeare.
• 4th session: Fiction: fragment of “Gulliver's Travels” by Jonathan Swift.
- Different activities here appealing to summary of the texts, different parts of the story (introduction, climax, etc), narrator, addressee, literary figures, rhythm when possible, vocabulary, etc.
3. Listening: I prepared a video or podcast where the text that students had was read, so they can focus on pronunciation. Also another activity, where the story was continued and they had to tell me the answers of some questions I gave them about the continuation.
4. Speaking: Working by pairs, they had to invent an alternative ending of the story we had (very funny when dealing with poetry!!!).
5. Writing: As homework, short paragraph about the possible applications of these literary texts in their lessons of Bilingual Primary school.
6TH June and 13th June
ResponderEliminarIn these two sessions I have carried out my didactic unit to finish my practices in Ciencias de la Educacion.
My didactic unit is about important Spanish people in USA. The contents are related with Sciences and Language because the most important characters are writers or scientist so students have to know contents of it
In my first session, students look for information and they were interested in the topic because it is something different. They remembered some aspects of these people and they watched a video related with it. Later, they had to write a description and a biography of one of the most important Spanish people.
In my second session, we played a game called “Who I am?” to remembered the contents of the previous session. As the same way we watched a video of the most important Spanish people last week, that day we watched a video of important English people in Spain. It was very interesting.
Students made a chart with English and Spanish scientist, writers, artist…
Finally, students had to look for information about a VIP person and to do a presentation where they were assessed
Lesson 4: 12th February
ResponderEliminarFourth lesson at CC.EE. 5 attendees. A group on facebook was established, in which I will post activities and helpful websites, and they will upload answers. I also proposed them to compile a collective glossary of unknown terms we use in class, and they agreed too.
The objective of the lesson was to provide students with basic vocabulary and communicative skills in the field of education and teaching. My approach in this sense is quite evident: they are all teaching students; therefore this focus would foster their motivation, as well as the usefulness of introducing actual essential vocabulary for them.
The first activity was, then, a warming up debate on the profession of teaching, with a previous brainstorming. Afterwards, they had to complete some activities related to education vocabulary. As we lost some minutes discussing about the use of internet in our course, we only have time to make a brief oral debate about their expectations in UCO’s bilingual program.
Lesson 5: 19th February
ResponderEliminarFifth lesson at CC.EE. Full attendance. There was no available VGA connector, so we had to change our usual place (seminar room 1) to a lecture room upstairs with a desktop computer. An agreement on the usage of virtual support was finally reached. Due to organizational problems, the classroom change took us around 30 minutes.
The central thread of the lesson was personal descriptions. Although my initial will was to address topics somehow related with Infant Education, the shortcomings of their level of English led me to deal with more basic issues.
In the first activity they should provide the teacher with random descriptions of fellow students, and I handed those descriptions to other students so they could guess the described classmate. Then, over a list of 50 personal qualities they had to debate on which of them are positive and which of them negative. Once they knew the meaning of those words, they had to re-write previous descriptions, with the help of personal interviews in English to their classmates, and hand them to me.
Classroom switch with maximum attendance and the very nature of the topic we dealt with provoke some noisiness and irrelevant chatter, although their behavior was far from being catastrophic.
Lesson 6: 26th February
ResponderEliminarSixth lesson at CC.EE. Again with high attendance, and again the same problem with the lack of VGA connector, forcing us to change classroom. Fortunately, we did not waste time as much as in the last lesson.
The main aim of this lesson was to finalize with the topic of personal descriptions. I also decided to include job interviews as a communicative task, everything related with the sphere of teaching and education.
Firstly, as a warming up activity, a brief talk about memories of one’s teachers. This activity allowed me to test their knowledge and accuracy using past tenses for prospective lesson plannings. The second activity was a group exercise in which, with the help of suggestions, they had to write a list of desirable qualities of a good teacher.
The third activity was the key element of the whole lesson. They had to prepare and carry out with a job interview. Their purpose was to hire a new teacher for a school or academy. I divided the class into two groups, and each group had to choose one person within the group to be the interviewee. I was cheeky enough to tell those two to bring me a coffee while the rest of the class was preparing the interview. Despite a certain lack of skills the activity was successful.
Before the last activity I intended to introduce clothing vocabulary, explaining as well adjective order in descriptions. As that was the week before carnival, they had to think (in groups too) about a fancy dress to wear in that weekend, explaining “how” and the materials used.
Lesson 7th: 5th March.
ResponderEliminarSeventh lesson at CC.EE. High attendance, we faced no problems at all with the equipment.
The aim of the lesson was again issues related with the labor sphere in general and teaching in particular. In the first half of the lesson students had to differentiate different job advertisements, valuing the different kinds of jobs, the skills required and their own suitability for those jobs. Afterwards, they did a listening exercise on the advantages and disadvantages of working while studying.
The second half of the class dealt with teaching. Mainly, it was an introduction on the concept and the completion of didactic units. After a brief debate on different approaches to didactic units, a template was given to them to be completed in groups.
Lesson 8th: 12th March.
ResponderEliminarEighth lesson at CC.EE. From this time forward attendance will fall. The actual figure of students for this lesson was 4.
The aim of this lesson was to establish a set of contexts in which students have to use orally different past tenses. Generally, those contexts were supposed to be tied with each student’s memories. As a warming up, they had to create orally sentences in past in which each verb follows the sequence of the alphabet. In the second exercise they had to use time expressions and sequencing markers to have a conversation in pair about past events and experiences. The third activity was quite similar, and they were meant to tell each other about their first experience in different contexts.
In the next exercise they had to differentiate what is an adventure, an achievement, an event, a special occasion and an experience, and then to put an example of each one. The last activity was a written production on their best holidays ever.
Frankly, it was one of the lessons I am less satisfied with. The proposed activities were too repetitive and similar with each other, and there was a generalized lack of grammar basis in their level. Some students even respectfully criticized extremely oral focalization of the planning, asking for grammatical explanations when they were needed.
Lesson 9th: 19th March.
ResponderEliminarNinth session. Lowest attendance, only two people. As they were no present in the previous lesson we repeated the same lesson planning. Attendants showed a level slightly higher than the rest of the class, so the results were not that disappointing.
Lesson 10th: 26th March.
ResponderEliminarStudent’s strike. No attendance at all.
Lesson 11th: 2nd April.
ResponderEliminarEleventh session. Attendance, from now on, would be stabilized among the figures from 5 to 7 students. Addressing students’ suggestions this lesson was somehow more focalized in grammar skills, not abandoning in any case the communicative approach.
Once again the understanding and use of the different past tenses was the main thread of the lesson. Our goal was to differentiate the utilization of the past simple and past progressive. Therefore, I started the lesson giving an explanation about the use of the aforementioned tenses.
To consolidate their capacity of differentiation the first activity was as simple as a classic “fill the gap” exercise. Afterwards, I gave them a handout in which they had to put in order a sequence of different sentences. They also had to underline simple past verbs and to circle present progressive verbs. A second handout was also provided with a review exercise about time clauses.
Personally I found some difficulties to give them a confident explanation, as my academical background has nothing to do with philology or language. In any case, they seemed to understand it properly.
Lesson 12th: 9th April.
ResponderEliminar12th Lesson. 5 Attendees. No incidences to be reported.
The first half of the lesson followed the same structure than the week before. An explanation on the differences among present simple and present perfect was also given. Furthermore, the first exercise was another “fill the gap” activity, and then a handout in which they had to use the present perfect to build sentences about classmates’ experiences.
The second half of the lesson was, somehow, different. In different groups they had to build a fictional history, giving positive (fortunately) and negative (unfortunately) sentences, and then changing fortunately and unfortunately with time clauses. As an ending, there was a reading on Easter traditions.
Lesson 13th: 23rd April.
ResponderEliminar13th Lesson. 4 attendees. No incidences to be reported.
The main goal of this session was the understanding, differentiation and utilization of three different verbal forms of the future: will, going to and a certain use of the present continuous. First two activities were grammar exercises aimed to consolidate the newly acquired knowledge.
Next exercises were oral activities. In the first one students had to about their own future plans, and in the next one some flashcards were given to groups to build up stories using the future. As an ending, there was a reading on a NASA report about the problems that the Earth will face in the future. There were no time to complete all the activities, so they were send as homework.
Lesson 14th: 30th April.
ResponderEliminarAs we were on the eve of Labor day they, unilaterally, decided to take the day off.
Lesson 15th: 7th May.
ResponderEliminar15th lesson, 6 attendees. No incidences to be reported.
This lesson was different from the last few lessons, being more focused in essential communicational tasks than in grammar. Therefore, the main aim of this lesson was the acquisition of vocabulary related with food and communicative scenarios such as ordering food in a restaurant or shopping in a grocery.
First activity was a brainstorming on typical dishes of Spain, the USA and the UK and some oral questions related with the topic. Afterwards, given a set of adjectives, they had to guess different kinds of food.
Third activity was a reading task about restaurants’ reviews, classifying afterwards each one according to the prospective customer base. Finally, in the last activity, they had to discuss in groups about a project to start up a new restaurant.
Lesson 16th: 14th May
ResponderEliminar16th Lesson. 4 attendees. No incidences to be reported.
The lesson continued the guiding thread of food, in this case more focused on groceries than in restaurants. Thus, the first activity was a role play in a grocery shop: firstly they had to write a list of stuff they might sell in different kinds of food shops, and then they had to perform the aforementioned role play.
As some students suggested me, and taking into account that we were in May and they were somehow overwhelmed with essays and revisions, the last half of the class were not as usual. They prepared activities about songs they like.
Lesson 17th: 21st May
ResponderEliminar17th lesson. 5 attendees. No incidences to be reported.
Using facebook group, during the week students voted for a film they would like to watch. I recommended them to choose an animation film as they are dubbed and easier to understand. Therefore, they picked up Anastasia, and it was played with subtitles in English. After the film, and having them a handout with guidelines, each student had to make an oral review of the film.
Session Seventeenth: 19th June
ResponderEliminarToday our last session has taken place. Since, as I said before, next exam of my students will deal with literature, as a way of reviewing all the information we have seen until last day I asked them to divide the contents and (together with the contents they already had from their subject of Literature) prepare a presentation each of them. It was quite interactive since the rest of the students were asking few questions and the one presenting was able to answer almost all of them (with a little bit of help of vocabulary…).
Since I arranged with my students that all my lessons would last 2 hours due to the multiple lessons I missed at the very beginning of this period of internship because of their exams (except for my first session that was 1 hour and a half), finally we have had a total amount of 33 hours.