miércoles, 31 de octubre de 2012

WHAT KIND OF INTELLIGENCES DO YOU HAVE???

Today's class was focused on multiple intelligences and cognitive processes.
 
In the first part of the class, the teacher showed us the following video:
 
 


After that we had to say what multiple intelligences we thought we were working on each part of the video.  The theory of multiple intelligences was proposed by Howard Gardner in 1983 as a model of intelligence that differentiates intelligence into various specific modalities, rather than seeing it as dominated by a single general ability. Gardner believes that there are eight intelligences as we can see in the next picture:



Later we performed an activity consisting of a sheet on which was a picture of a phone as we can see on the right.


Then we had to write in another sheet all the questions that occur to us relating to the phone.



To end today's class the teacher showed us a powerpoint on cognitive processes, referring to Bloom's Taxonomy. This onw is a classification of learning objectives within eucation proposed in 1956 by a committe of educators chaired by Benjamin Bloom who also edited the first volume of the standard text, Taxonomy of educational objectives: the classification of educational goals.

It has been more than fifty years and Bloom's Taxonomy remains essential tool for educators to establish in the different subjects learning objectives. Recently, Dr. Andrew Churches updated the review in 2000 (Anderson) to bring it into line with the new realities of the digital age. In it, complemented each category with verbs and digital world tools that enable the development of skills to remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate and create.

In the next link you can show the Bloom's Taxonomy by Dr. Andrew Churches.

http://www.eduteka.org/imgbd/23/23-11/CuadroBloom2008.jpg

We hope you like it!
 

lunes, 29 de octubre de 2012

SWEDISH DAY!!!

 Today's class was completely different because of the visit of a teacher Glimäng Molin Swedish Malmo University to talk about storytelling.


Molin explained why it was good to perform storytellers in class. The reasons are:
- Motivation: developing creativity and imagination. Children usually appreciate narratives and are willing to listen to, read, or talk about stories.

- Meaning: Stories are filled with meaning and when children find meaning, they are rewarded through understanding.

- Communication: reading, listening to stories and responding generates communication language and opportunities for development.

Later Molin said a series of recommendations to consider when making a storyteller, these were:

- Firstly it is important that the content is known by the students.
- Secondly, we need to use different versions of the story.
- Thirdly, it is very important to make sounds when telling the story.
- Finally, if we see that the vocabulary is very difficult we can give them a key vocabulary.


Molin then gave us a story about which we should work in pairs, it was the story of Room on the Broom. The story is about a witch who flies around the countryside, she drops various objects, which are picked up one by one by animals. As thanks, she offers all the animals a lift.


The activities were:

- Read the story together   
- Character List
- Make a story map
- Find tat ae repeated phrases in the story

The teacher told us that due to the large number of characters who appeared in the story, we should introduce them before starting. As we have seen before this will serve as a piece that will help us to create the neccesary context before starting the activity

In the next link you can find a lot of woorksheets for teaching "Room in the Broom". There are differents printable worksheets for many levels: beginners, elementary, intermediate or advanced. We hope you like it!



Finally we saw a video of Pie Corbett storytelling by the "Red Hen". You can see in the next video:




The class was very interesting because Molin shown us another type of activity that we can put into practice when we are teaching, also having experiences with teachers from foreign countries is always enriching.

viernes, 26 de octubre de 2012

GIVING INSTRUCTIONS

Today is Friday 26 October 2012. Today's class has been fully implemented. In the first half we made ​​an activity where we had to analyze two different styles of leading a foreign language class in a primary school. Later we had to relate knowledge we have learned previously to these styles.

After that, we performed another activity in which we had to choose an oral activity from a textbook to analyze it and know what students have to do. Then we had to write some instructions that we are going to tell the students to perform the task.

To do this we had to take into account some aspects to give instructions, these are:

          - Simple and clear
          - Repetitive
          - Use familiar language
          - Demonstrate the activity
          - Double check
 
In the next web you can see how to give classroom instructions effectively to students:
 

That's all for today!

jueves, 25 de octubre de 2012

A BRIEF SUMMARY

Today is the 25th of october, and that means that we have been in the Mención de Lengua Extranjera a whole month by now. It seems like if we had been here a lot more due to all the new knoweldege that we are acquaring thanks to classroom lessons, their related activities and group work. Most of them were very interesting and provided us with a "new view" on how to deal with our pupils in a not very far away future. The main idea is that to learn a language you have to use it. Until now it seems that our system has promoted an old fashion system of teaching english focused on written language, as if it was a dead language. This methodology has proved its uselesness with primary school children, who should be learning how to interact in a real context. Therefore we will have to develop the 5 skills, but with special interest in Listening, Speaking and Interacting. Scaffolding is a concept that we have delt with at the beginning of this year and it has given us a wide path to follow. Even though teachers do scaffolding intuitively, we find very usefull to know all the ways to improve the variety of doing it at the english classroom (paraphrasing, recasting, providing redundancy...) To read the RD (and the CEFR) and to analise its contents and objectives comparing them with pupils activities has made us think about the real porpouses of these activities, and how we will have to carefully choose which activities promote the skills that we want to develope. Working with songs has been very enjoyable, and so has been the "drawing dictations", showing us usefull ways of teaching listening skills. To prepare a meaningfull context to do Pre, While and Post-listening activities is essential and we should always take into account the multiple intelligence theory to reach every children enthusiasm. This has been a very brief summary of what we have been learning these last weeks. Hopefully, we will continue with our learning process, not only for our own benefit but, overall, for the children's sake.

miércoles, 24 de octubre de 2012

BRITISH COUNCIL!


Hi guys, how are you today? We hope you’re fine!
Today we want to show you two different short stories that you can find in the next web:

The first story is about the Jade Emperor’s clever plan to decide the order the animal years should go in. We have choosen this one because it uses a lot of vocabulary and different verb tenses such as present, past and future. Also we can work on listening comprehension through different activities and later students can interact with each other doing different speaking tasks about the story.
Besides the theme of the story is exotic, so can produce a great motivation and interest to students.


 
The second one is called “The treasure map” and the main objective of the activity is learn how to give directions in a funny way. We think that we could carry on an activity like this in the school.

miércoles, 17 de octubre de 2012

ACTIVITIES FOR LISTENING COMPREHENSION

Today we are going to show you a link where you can find listening comprehension activities for Primary School.
 
Every day the college professors are always remembering the importance of working oral skills like listening, speaking and conversing. This time the activities are focused on understanding what they are hearing. We hope you like.
 
 

ROAD SAFETY RUN GAME

Hello everyone, I just found a fun game for children aged 6 to 8 years in addition to having a good time can learn few traffic education.


GAMES FOR CHILDREN


Here you have the link of a very useful page with plenty of games for children from all ages.

http://www.eslgamesplus.com/colors-vocabulary-esl-memory-game/

I personally enjoyed the memory card ones, but there are a lot that can be used to improve young children knowledge of english!!

WHO ARE WE?


My name is Gonzalo, I'm 29 years old, I love travelling, listening to music, and doing outdoors sports. I'm very hard working so I always try to do the best that I can in every task.

Hello, my name is María Rodao, I'm 19 years old. In my free time, I like cycling, walking on the beach and going out with my friends. I'm hard working like Gonzalo, I'm creative and I'm good at writing. I always contribute all my knowledge on tasks.

Hi! My name is Alba. I'm twenty. I love speaking in English, dancing and the thing that I like the most is traveling! I want to travel all around the world. I hope you like our Blog! :)

Hello ! It seems that I'm the fourth member of this club! My name is Ana and I'm 35 years old, but I still feel like if I were 15. I love drama and arts in general. I'd also love to travel all over the world (like my friend Alba), but, as that one is not an easy task, I have to conform myself with reading because... "Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are".

 
Hi eveyone, my name is Alexandra, i am 19 years old and I live in Fuengirola.
I have chosen the Foreign language course, because, since i was little I have always wanted to be an English, a science and an art teacher. I love biology and chemestry and I,m very interested in art, in fact one of my hobbies is painting and I love visiting foreign countries and their museums. Another hobby of mine is playing paddle-tennis. I usually play with my friends in my free time.
Now I'm interested in taking the fourth level of the official language school and level twelve of Trinity College, for that reason, right now, I am with a native private English teacher who is helping me to achieve my goals.
That's all, i hope everyone does really well this year and see you all in class.

miércoles, 3 de octubre de 2012

WHY UMA BREKFAST CLUB?

We have chosen our blog name regarding an 80s film about five students who have to stay a whole Saturday in their highschool library. They are supposed to make an essay and meanwhile, they get to know each other and overcome their prejudices.