10. The importance of Home-School Connection

                                
 

It is known that when the school and the family work together, the pupils get better education. The work of education is not only the responsibility of teacher or of parents. All the society and all the communities that are involve with the students have to be aware that is a big a common responsibility. Also, lots of research show that schools where parents are involve on the activities and on the learning process of the students, the students get better scores. Furthermore, we know that parents have critical role in developing their children’s learning habits

There is a discussion between teacher and parents around the next issue. Are richer parents most involve in their children learning process than poor parents?

I think that this is no true. Every family is different and we can’t generalise what we think. In most cases, parents that are poor status don’t care about the learning process of their children because they aren’t aware about the importance of education. Although, there are some parents that are poor, that they want that their children will be better than them so, they do all the things to involve with the education of their children and encourage, motivate and help them with their school routines.

On the other hand we have the contrary, rich parents that don’t have enough time to educate their children and think that the responsibility to educate is all for the school.

So parents are an essential link in improving academic success.

To achieve the home-school connection we can do different things to keep parents informed with:

Letters Home

Meetings

Homework with children and parents

Interactive learning tools

Porfolio

Muffins for Moms

Parent-Child websites.

As teachers, we have to try to encourage parents, showing parent how to participate in the learning process of their children. Also, invite parents to become active, responsive, responsible participants in their child’s education.

9. Developing CLIL (Content language integrated learning)

This quote by Do Coyle makes a brief about what I understand about a CLIL project.

“When language “is using” experience are positive,  when students are challenged to understand, think and reconceptualise prior learning in more than one language, when alternative perspectives are presented to our learners in different languages, as the number of successful language users increases, we can consider ourselves as having matured as a plurilingual, and pluricultural society. CLIL’s role is vital to that maturation process.”

A CLIL is a project which pupils learn a subject through a foreign language. It refers to situations where subjects are taught with two focused aims, these are namely the learning of content and the learning of a foreign language. It focuses on an inclusive capacity for integrating varied, dynamic and innovative learning environments.  The integration between the language and the subject curriculum areas is really important to deal with a CLIL. Also CLIL is dynamic, a flexible concept where topics and subjects are integrated in some kind of mutually beneficial way so that provide value-added to educational outcomes for the largest possible range of learners.

Different kinds of research find that CLIL:

Raise learner linguistic competence and confidence

Raise teacher and learner expectation

Develop risk-tasking and problem-solving skills in the learners

Increase vocabulary learning skills and grammatical awareness

Motivate and encourage learner’s independence

Take students beyond “reductive” foreign language topics

Improve literacy

Encourage to talk

Develop study skills, concentration

Generate positive attitudes

Put cultural awareness back to agenda

To understand properly the CLIL, we have to consider the 4c Framework. It focuses on the interrelationship between content, communication and cognition. It takes account of integrating learning and language learning.  

 I think it can be difficult to do CLIL in classrooms, but there is a big difference between teaching different subjects in a foreign language than integration of language and content. If we want to implement this flexible and innovating approach, language teachers and subjects teachers have to work together in one direction to do that CLIL will work in the schools.

I would like to stand out that CLIL is not a translation of the contents, is an integration of contents and language. Both have the same importance. The language is the tool to learn, so it is meaningful for students, because they relate the language with their everyday life, they world.

To summarise, lots of school across Europe take on the challenge of CLIL, and all the experience have been successful. So, here in Catalonia, we should make and effort and star fostering this new approach that give us such as good results for learning effectively our students.

This is an interesting video that shows how we can teach maths by social activity, that can be useful for a CLIL ( math's CLIL)

8. Reflecive teaching

What we understand by reflective teaching?

If we want to be good teachers, we should look at what we do in the classroom. There are some questions that we can ask ourselves with the purpose to improve our teaching at the end of the lessons. I would ask me:

-         

     What was the objective of my activities?

-         Did the activity work?

-         What have my students learnt?

-         What problems did the students have?

-         Were all students on the task?

-         Did the students enjoy the classroom?

-         What can I do to improve? What I would do different?

These questions would help me to analyse my teaching. Teachers have to observe, analyse and evaluate their own teaching. By collecting information about what happens on the classroom we can identify and explore our own practices. Also, it can help us to lead changes and improvements in our teaching process.

Reflective teaching doesn’t mean just that. If we actually want to reflect about our own practise we should collect all information that we can. Not just things that we have to improve, as well as things that effectively work.

We can gather information doing different things:

1.     Teacher diary

2.     Peer observation

3.     Recording lessons

These activities can provide very useful information for reflection.

What can we do after? Once we have some information, we have to THINK about our own practise. TALK with our peers and discuss some teaching beliefs, compare what they think. READ, we should find more information about what we are observing. There are lots of websites for teachers where we can find useful ideas or academic or research articles. And the last step is ASK. We can ask in teacher’s communities to know what other experts think about it. Also, you can ask for teacher’s associations that makes teacher training or conference where you can gather more information.

As my experience, I’m doing English in a small group of old people and I always ask the seven questions at the top of this post, when I finish the lesson. I collect information and I bear in mind the different aspects when I have to plan the next lessons.  Sometimes I discuss different problems that my students have with my peers on the university and it is really useful, because most of them are teaching as well as me and they give me proper advices.

In conclusion, reflect in my own practise help me to improve. Sometimes I decide to keep activities and sometimes I decide to do something difference that I think can help my students to learn effectively. 

Picture of  my English group 1. Centre Cívic El Figaró 

7. Rethinking Classroom management

There is an important issue of discussion around teachers, Classroom management. If we want to be good teachers, we have to take into account this important aspect.

To analyse the teaching and learning management, we need to consider three interrelated areas: The organisational, the curriculum and the social.

First of all, if we want to achieve a good classroom management, it’s important to think about the organisation. In the classroom has to be rules. These rules should be the result of a process of negotiation. This can help students to carry out the rules because they decided what we can do in the class and what not. Also, if we want to foster good behaviours, rules should describe desired behaviours rather than unwanted one. Furthermore, rights and duties in the classroom and at the school must be clear and explicit, the reason is that if we want that our students accomplish all the rules, they have to be aware about it and understand properly rights and duties. Moreover, as teachers, we have to be proactive. What does it mean? A proactive teacher is who foresees the attitudes and situations that can create conflict and he anticipates them.

Secondly, we have to consider the curriculum issue. Basically, we have to meet the curriculum and analyse. We have to wise up if the curriculum is according to the schools and the classroom context. To do a proper classroom management we need to have the curriculum adapted to the students features. It’s impossible to have the same curriculum in a St. Peters Schools, that in Escola Popular de la Mina. In both schools, students are completely different, so they have different needs, behaviours, interests, contexts and so on. Moreover, it’s really important to engage students and motivate, giving them opportunities to learn. We should plan task that allows cooperative and individual work because pupils like to work in different ways. What can we do to achieve that? We can work in small groups; work in cooperative environments such as moddle, blogs and wikis. Also to foster individual work, students can do portfolios. A good and balanced combination of both types of work will define a good way of teaching.

Thirdly, it’s important to treat the social issue which I think is the most important. The relationship between teacher and student has to be reciprocal, that helps to the good climate in class. It is known that students learn more and better if they are in a good climate classroom. What I mean to good climate classroom? I understand that it is a classroom where all the students feel good, happy, secure, when students enjoy being on it. That is really useful because it develops values and aspects like self- esteem, confidence, respect, security, good expectations, and responsibility. So in the classroom, teachers have to foster the affective side of learning.

From my point of view all these aspects are really important to do learning and teaching management. So, if we are capable to achieve it, our students will learn in a successful way, that it’s teacher main goal. 

6. What can we do to develop pronuntation?

It’s essential to recognize how important is pronunciation when we want to build oral language. The language is the way that we use to communicate, so we have to take care about our pronunciation. The communication is the most important thing we have to learn when we want to learn a language, because with communication we can socialize, we can express,  we can transfer information, we can say what we think and what we feel.

We have to know millions of things about how to develop language skills and how to improve pronunciation.

Firstly, children need to communicate in English, the firsts lessons should take place in English, entirely in English since they are very young because they have the ability to understand, they have tools to do it. To help pupils understanding teacher can do facial gestures and gestures, it accompanies speech to very young children. Students acquire language by taking part in activities, this is a big true. Children will communicate and use the language if they need it, so they have to participate in activity, in real tasks.

Secondly, it’s important to make a print rich classroom because it contributes to practise pronunciation. A print rich classroom is filled with letters, words and labels. It makes accessible and visual the literacy, so contribute to pronunciation. Also it promotes students interaction with word and text. In a print rich classroom we can find labels of classroom objects (words, names…), posters with classroom routines ( calendar, rules, what’s the weather like today? what’s the day today?...) and bulletin boards where pupils can display they own work ( personal best).

Thirdly, we have to know how have to be a proper pronunciation activity. It has to have three parts; we have to pay attention in starting part where, teacher have to review related activities done previously, show examples of work done by the children on previous occasions and capture the children’s interest by explain the new activity and show them related material.  The sustaining part where teacher has to watch each child carefully, participating and helping and where necessary adding a comment to guide children or sustain their interest.  And the last part, ending part where teacher have to give an opportunity for children can show their work themselves and explain what they have done in order to gain oral fluency.

Moreover, the repetition is primordial in the language skills develop and pronunciation improves. Repetition doesn’t bored young children. Children enjoy it.  It gives children a feeling of satisfaction and achievement that helps to motivate. Children need further opportunities to consolidate before they can use it. Teacher have to use only English without translation, he needs careful planning activities and adequate support of material. Also, teacher has to create an atmosphere where children are ready and comfortable to speak and communicate in English, because children are going to learn English by using it. Furthermore, teacher has to organize and control the activities. Mistakes are necessary part of the oral language learning process because pupils can see their own mistakes and improve.

 Here you have a long list of tools that are effective to promote the development of pronunciation. In my opinion, I like these following four activities:

-          Memorizing poems

-           Saying tongue twister

-           Saying riddles

-          Storytelling

-          Spelling words

These tools are different activities that we can work in an English classroom to develop the pronunciation, although these activities foster de motivation and encourage pupils to engage. So, as future teachers, we have what strategies and tools use and which ones are significative, meaningful and useful in order to make an effective teaching and set students up to success. 

5. Meeting individual needs with young learners

On the previous post I talked about differentiation instruction. Now I'm going to expose my reflection about the article by Peter Westwood and Wendy Arnold, Meeting individual needs with young learners.

As good teachers we want to be, we have to consider that we are dealing with children, so we should take into account their general features. We know that every child is different than the others, therefore we have to meet our students properly like: their interest, needs, skills, prior knowledge, strengths, weaknesses, preferences, abilities and goals. 

An interesting approach to achieve this objective could be differentiation instruction. However, there is a big discussion around that issue. There are people who agree and people who disagree.

From my point of view, I agree with differentiation instruction. I think that it can be useful and worthwhile if you use it in a proper way. Furthermore, we can use different strategies that will help us to adapt to our student’s individualities.

This is a list with some useful methods that we can start using if we want to meet children's individualities:

-Differentiated resources material

- Whole group activities/small group activities

- Projects

- Student and teacher interaction

- Computer support learning

- Multiple intelligences 

- Learning styles and preferences

There are some things that teachers are doing nowadays.

I think that all these things are really important. Although I think it is quite primordial work different learning styles. 

I think that a pretty good way to put in practice different learning styles is working by corners.  It gives to teacher the opportunity to work with multiples intelligence, because teacher can plan different activities like linguistic, mathematical, kinesthetic, intrapersonal, interpersonal, musical, and visual. So that gives you the possibility to reach to teach all students.

4. Is possible to do a differentiated instruction in the schools?

We're discussing about the Differentiated Instruction in class, but what do you think about this? Is possible to do a differentiated instruction in the schools currently?

First I'm going to do a brief about what I think it is differetiated instruction, then I will give my opion. 

Differentiated Instruction is a student-centered approach to learning where the teacher is based on student needs. Teacher designs multiple pathways to content, process, product and assessment. The main goal of differentiated instruction is reach to teach to students at all levels, paths, intelligences, rythm and goals. It uses appropriate instructional and assessment tools that are fair, flexible, challenging, and engage students in the curriculum in meaningful ways.

So, do you think is possible to apply this aproach in the schools?

From my point of view, I think that is really difficult to introduce this methodology to the schools today.

Nowadays in Catalan School there is a big ratio of students and that makes difficult to put in practise the differentiated instruction. Also , I think if as a teacher you want to apply this aproach in your classroom, it doesn't depend on you, it depends on the school, the rules, the directive team... there is a wide range of factors that decide the approach and the methodology of the school.

In spite of, Differentiated Instruction is a proper way to teach our students effectively. However it is difficult to apply we should know different activities that we can start in the classroom. For example work with corners, multisensorial activities, work in groups, etc.

To conclude we have to start to think that every student is different, so every student has different needs, interests and their preferred ways of learning. Therefore we have to do our best to reach to teach all the diversity of students and set up for succeed to get them to the same point although they become from differents.

Cristina

3. An interesting tv program!!

I was doing zapping on Saturday's morning when I saw an interesting program in tv3. It is called Fish and chips.

 "Fish & Chips" is a competition that uses games and entertainment to promote English as the language of communication among young people. The program is broadcast every Saturday at 12.20.

I didn't know that a program like that would exist. I think it's a proper way for students to learn and have fun at the same time. 

I leave the link below so you can have a look at the tv program.

http://www.tv3.cat/videos/3326350

2. My experience with English

I always speak in Catalan. It is my native language, although I speak Spanish and a little bit of English as well.

I started learning English when I was 8 years old, in the elementary school. I remember I used to love English classes. Everything seemed to be going really well until I went to “Batxillerat”. All my troubles with English began. I remember I used to study very hard and try my best, but it wasn’t enough.  It was really difficult for me to understand the English grammar as well as listening exercises. 

Four years ago, I decided to make a change. I was thinking to do something different with my life, because I wasn’t happy with myself. I had an ambition. I wanted to leave my country and start in another place. I decided to take my suitcase and buy a single ticket to go to England. It would be a challenge for me.

That makes me look brave but at first reality hit me and I was really scared. I didn’t speak English. I was just nineteen years old and I was on my own also I didn’t have job, a place to live and I didn’t have too much money.

In the beginning it was extremely difficult to learn English.  Moreover, it was hard to find a job and a nice place to live. But gradually I started learning and improve my speaking. I arrived at a little village called Ashford situated in Kent, rather far from London.  During the time I was living there, I lived with a lovely English family; they made me feel like a part of them. I worked in a shop, in Ralph Lauren. In there I met loads of people that later became my friends. All this new people that I met in this long travel of my life, they helped me with everything I needed and they made me spend the most amazing moments I had ever lived. They are lovely and pretty nice people

I think working in the shop made me improve my English because I had to relate and help the customers. People were very surprised with me because they told me how quick I was learning. When I already arrived I couldn’t say more than three words. I think live with child was a good way to learn English as well, because I learn from them.

I didn’t have time to study in any sort of academy for this reason my English is not as it good as could be. Actually I think my English improved, and now I can defend myself speaking English. I realize that my English at this moment is not as good as it was and I know I’m losing loads of expressions and vocabulary as well.

These are two of the little children who I was living with, Sophie and Recce.

1. Who am I ?

Hello everybody

This is my blog, I will post some work relacionated with the subject Didàctica de la Llengua Anglesa.

I'm Cristina Garcia,  I was born in Barcelona the 12nd of March in 1990 so I'm 22 years old. I'm studying Grau d'Educació Primària in the UB University.

I live in a little village called La Garriga. Is not too far from Barcelona, just 40 km. Monday to Friday I go to Barcelona to study, sometimes on morning and sometimes at the afternoon.

During the weekend I work in a clothes shop in a small shopping mall. Moreover I work in a Civic Center, teaching English to a litle group of old people. I really enjoy doing that!

In my free time I like going out with my friends and spending time with my family. Also I like going to the gym, listening to music and dancing.

With the purpose to improve my English level, I am being taught English Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I think I  should improve my grammar, it is my challenge for this course. Also, I know I have to improve the ability to read, listen to and speak. 

That is all for now

Cristina