Every kid needs a champion

In this video Rita Pierson talks about the importance of stablishing connections with your students and the need of giving feedback even when it is not good enough, because perhaps next time the student will be able to do it better because you encourage him to do it the best he can. 

Noelia Máñez

the monster quiz: the board game

I have found this link about a game called the monster quiz: the board game. 

http://blearning.eradigital.es/index.php/gaming/37-monster-quiz-the-board-game

It’s an app with a board game which it is also shown in the board of the classrom and it calls the attention of the students, the teacher if he or she wants can also print the game. You can use it such as a different form of working different areas and contents of the topic you are talking about. 

The students are the main characters of this game because they are who prepare the questions and the activities to complete the game, so they have to deal with the unit before doing this game task.  The goal of this interesting game is to have the nine cards of the monster, to achieve that, they have to win the competitions between their classmates.

They work on the unit for example with some questions of the present simple and the vocabulary, for example making question like: What is the girl wearing? 

Students can also promote the cooperation between the different groups and create community and unity among all the children of the  class.

 

Here you can see and explanation of a teacher that uses it in the class.

Noelia Máñez

The Power of Words

''Words have power to destroy or heal.
When words are both true and kind, they can change our world''.
-The Buddha-


Miriam Orón. 

EXPERT BEYOND EXPERIENCE

H. G. Widowson uses this quote from a poem by T.S. Eliot as moto for teaching education. In this case, he is focusing on the foreign language teaching. 

During his article, "Expert beyond Experience" (Widowson, H.G. 2003), he is developing some issues for been considerate. The main point is to focus on what does a foreign language teacher need. Even there is an unconditional requirement as having linguistical competence, there also exist some factors that must been kept in mind.  In that way, the author refers to the need to have been a foreign language learner. From this aspect, Widowson rejects the generalized idea that people have about the native speaker. He thinks that a person who also have been a learner of a foreign language may understand better what his or her students are passing through. In that what, it is a combination of competence in the language, pedagogic competence, and experience as a foreign language learner.

All this will give the teacher some experience in which he/she will learn from it and to develop expertise on it. From the moment the teacher is carrying through the learning process, he/she is getting experience and knowledge about how his/her job needs to work. Therefore, it is needed to theorise and have competence in the field. From that point emerges the idea of theory. When Widowson talks about that concept, he is referring about how things work, how to design activities that are going to work… and how it is proved.

Where does this theory come from? Even there are a lot of resources that experts have written in a lot of books, the theory can be developed by yourself during you are experiencing as a teacher. Here you can find some examples:

• Based on you experience as a learner, how kids would learn better.
• Knowing certain activities about useful pedagogies (ideas, resources, strategies...)
• Attempt the diversity to know why you tecah this or that way.

All those thoughts and ideas are going to be your theory in use. It is something intuitive. They are your beliefs about teaching and education, the theoretical concepts. Once you have achieved the theory, the next step is to theorize about it. Theorizing means to learn from those experiences, to think about them, and questioning yourself about why or why not you have chosen it.

The main idea is to put on practice the theory and theorize about it, in order to accept, modify or reject it.

But the theory must be used in an appropriate way, therefore here you need to develop critical reflection and not to take on trust everything. How can I be critical and analyse myself?

• Observing myself and recording my actions.
• Analysing the student's results.
• Asking my students to get feedback.
• Thinking about what I have done.

From the moment you are questioning yourself and your work as a teacher, you are becoming an expert. As I was telling you at the beginning, a foreign language teacher becomes an expert not only for his/her linguistical competences. Your experience and the theory you get from this is making you improve. But also, the critical reflection that you made in your practice. Since you can do all this, you would become an expert.

Cristina Francisco

Finding our Multiple Intelligences

     Have you ever thought about why your students react in different ways to the activities you do in the class? Or even why different groups react differently to the same activity?

     According to Gardner there are eight different types of intelligences. Everyone has all of them, but they are pronounced in a different way. Through questionnaires people can test their strengths ones.

     Here there is an online test if you are interested in finding out your multiple intelligences:

http://literacynet.org/mi/assessment/findyourstrengths.html

     This resource is really useful for teachers. Once they and their students know which their strengths are, teachers could adapt different activities depend on these ones.  

Learner type	Is good at	Learns best by	Activities
Linguistic	Reading, writing and stories	Saying, hearing and seeing words	Memory games Trivia quizzes Stories.
Logical/ mathematical	Solving puzzles, exploring patterns, reasoning and logic	Asking questions, categorizing and working with patterns	Puzzles Problem solving.
Visual/ Spatial	Drawing, building, arts and crafts	Visualizing, using the mind's eye	Flashcards Colors Pictures Drawing Project work.
Musical	Singing, listening to music and playing instruments	Using rhythm, with music on	Using songs Chants Drilling.
Bodily/ Kinaesthetic	Moving around, touching things and body language	Moving, touching and doing	TPR activities Action songs Running dictations Miming Realia.
Interpersonal	Mixing with others, leading groups, understanding others and mediating	Co-operating, working in groups and sharing	Mingle activities Group work Debates Discussions.
Intrapersonal	Working alone and pursuing own interests	Working alone	Working individually on personalised projects
Naturalistic	Nature	Working outside and observing nature	Environmental projects.

     To sum up, we should know our students and thanks to this questionnaire we can approach to them and give them some resources so they are engaged with English. In addition, it is also useful for other areas in their life, because they could know their main strengths and work harder in their weakness ones.

Miriam Orón. 

Who am I as a learner? (Carolina Araújo)

We all unconsciously are used to study for an exam in a certain way. Now that I am 20 years old and studying the degree of my dreams in university, I believe, I know which is the best way for me to acquire knowledge.  I do not think we usually recall in which way we obtain language or information. But now that I have being asked to do so I have realised how it works for me.

My name is Carolina and I am studying the beautiful degree of Teacher in Primary Education. I believe for the most part of my life I have learnt in the same way: listening and through visual. When I have to study for an exam I always tend to do schemes, or drawings, even songs. Also, the easiest way for me is listening. When I come back to the notes I took during the explanation of the teacher I can remember the examples or ideas just by reading the title. Maths have always been the fork on the road for me, I would rather study lots of paragraphs: when I was in school my teacher did not try to do something to the students that seemed to have difficulties, like me, with his subject. The thing is that I had this teacher for many years, so I did not acquire the basics of maths; leading to a failure in my high school with this subject.

Furthermore, I used to study better when I was in high school at home with full silence and in my room (would not be able to study in other place but my bedroom) but since I have been in university I prefer going to the library with friends. Also, I concentrate more in the mornings and evenings...in the night-time it is kind of impossible for me to even read one sentence without distracting.

Most of the English I have learnt is because of watching movies in original version, listening to music and watching youtube videos -as I have said before I am a listener-.

In my view my strengths as a learner are that I can acquire information in not much time and my organisation. On the contrary, my weaknesses are that it costs me a lot of time to concentrate, I am a slow reader when I have to understand everything on a text to after acquire it, and the biggest weakness I have is that I almost always procrastinate which is something that I have been trying to change lately.

As a conclusion,in my opinion I would like to say that even these are the ways that work better for me, it does not mean that it is the same for everyone. So taking that into account, I find so important for teachers to know different methodologies and work through all of them since each student has a way of learning and acquiring knowledge. This has been a good way to know a bit better how I function as a learner so I can take it into account for my future as a teacher.

Games for Learning English

Nowadays, we live in a society that is immersed in new technologies. This fact brings us many benefits, for example it allows us to teach or practice different skills through multimodality and not focuses so much on the textbooks.

With the links that I will leave below, we find some examples of possible tools to put into practice the theory that we could give in class. Thanks to these games, students can have fun and at the same time reinforce the contents. Also, they have exercises to improve their pronunciation.

https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/fun-games

https://www.eslgamesplus.com/

Miriam Orón.