Reflection 6

If only she knew

In the school where I was doing my practicum, I think there were very good teachers; with the teacher that I was in her class, does an excellent work with all the students from different parts of the world. While I was in the school, I was trying to observe what the teacher can improve, and I realize that this teacher doesn't relate the content that the students are learning with real situations.
According to what we have been studying, children need to learn lessons that have meaning for now. The idea is that the students not only could learn about history or just grammar, the idea is that the students can feel that they are learning for a real purpose; the school has to help them to use their knolewdge now.

I was looking for some pages that can support my answer, and I found an interesting document that talks about it.
To summarise some important things that the document says, and can explain the purposes that a task in class need to have, here is a little list:

• Coherence and unity for learners (from topic, activity and /or outcome)
• Meaning and purpose for learners
• Clear language goals
• A beginning and end
• Active involvement on the part of learners

The complete article is in this link:
http://www.um.es/glosasdidacticas/doc-es/18megias.pdf

ESL students have the need of learning language that can be useful, they need to communicate their ideas with friends, in the street, to buy something, etc. If the students feel that they are learning for real life in the school, they are going to feel motivation to assist.

Reflection 5

Websites that might help

One of the students that we have in our classroom is from Burma, but I don't really know what problem he has because I know that he understands English very well, but he doesn't want to speak. I believe that he has a problem, the teacher never force him to talk, sadly I don't know which the problem is. I would like to know more about him and why he doesn't want to speak. Today, we were helping the students to do an actitivity in groups, the idea was to present about a topic, and I asked him to talk in front of the class, and he accepted, he read, but quietly; I could notice that the teacher was very happy because he read something in front of the class. I haven't asked the teacher about his problem, so I don't really know what I can do. I feel really sad, we will finish our teacher shadowing and I feel that I still want to stay with the children, and try to do something for this student.
I was looking for some websites on internet that can help him, but I think that he really needs another kind of help, maybe he needs someone who can stay with him during the class, trying to understand the things that he wants to say, and giving him support. During the two weeks that we spent in the school I tried to do this with him, but I think it wasn't enough time.

I found some websites that can help the rest of the students in the class, some of them still have problems with pronunciation or spelling. The pages that I found are very interesting for children because there, they can find lots of games, songs, vocabulary, etc. I think that the children of my class need something different, if they use technology it could be a little more motivating for them.
Here are some good pages with resources for ESL students:

http://www.multimedia-english.com/
http://www.multimedia-english.com/htm/kids/menu.htm
http://www.manythings.org/e/pronunciation.html

And also I would like to recomend this site for the teacher, because it has a big list of games to do with ESL students, and I have read that this is a good way for them to learn the target language.
Here is the link:

http://www.eslcafe.com/idea/index.cgi?Games

Reflection 4

Response to a question about English Teaching

"Hello! What can I do in my English classes if my adolescents students don't want to cooperative to achieve a true meaningful learning and teaching process? I am worried about their acttitude because they don't like anything. I like to work as a teacher butit´s necessary a positive participation. They are not only lazy but also agressive. This problem is only this year when the students realize that they can pass without effortsbecause of the government policies about education here in Colombia. Thank you very much"
by Doris Elsa Gama

I think that the problem here is not only because the students can pass without effort, I believe that the students are not motivated, and here is when teachers have to think and plan activities that can be interesting for the students. As teachers, we have to think that adolescents are in a difficult age, for that reason the idea is to know them very well in order to create activities that can be meaningful. Students need to know what the purpose of the classes are, why they are studying something; if they feel that the things that are learning are not useful in their daily lives they will not be able to learn them.
I can recommend you a book about ESL/EFL Teaching, Principles for Succes by Freeman and Freeman that can be useful for you, the chapters V from the book is realated to what I've been explaining to you.
I also found an interesting website that can help you with some tips for teaching.
Here is the link:
Tools for Teaching

Also you can watch a movie that is related to your own situation, the name of it is "Freedom Writers" and the teacher in this movie could motivate her students, this is an awesome film.

Reflection 3

Podcasting my way to mastery of English

"A podcast is a series of audio or video digital-media files which is distributed over the Internet by syndicated download, through Web feeds, to portable media players and personal computers".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcast

I was looking for some podcasts that can caught my attention because I'm not good at watching videos, so I prefer listening to them, but in spite of it, I have decided to watch some podcasts of one of my favourite bands called Coldplay, as you know Gina, I'm very interested in music. The podcasts are from the official page of this band, and there is a time line in which you have to click on the year that you want to know more about them, for example, if you click on 1998 you will see a video from the very beginning of the band. I decided to choose these videos because it's very difficult for me to seat and watch TV or watch videos from internet, I really prefer listening some music or read, but obviously these podcasts caught my attention just because it is Coldplay.

Here is the link:
http://www.coldplay.com/time.php

I will watch the videos, starting from the beginning of the time line, and I will continue doing this until the end, this means until the videos that are uploaded this year. I will watch this videos only on weekends because I know that next year will be a very busy year. I will watch once, and if I don't understand something I'm going to watch them two times. ---------------------------------------------------------------------

Also, I could find a page where you can listen free audio books, since I love literature, with this page I could listen to some books while I'm on the bus travelling to Valparaiso, the place where I study. Moreover, as I don't like to stay for long time watching videos, it would be the best way for me to stay in contact with the language.

Here is the link:
http://www.podiobooks.com/index.php

I already registered myself on the page, so now I have acces to all of the books. I think that next year I'm going to travel 2 or 4 times a week, and every trip takes one hour and a half, so I will have enough time to listen to the books on the bus.

Reflection 2

A case of effective language teaching

Sarah was sitting on her desk, while the students were reading in silence and writing their predictions about the books. After the reading activity, the teacher asks for silence and she gives them some points if they don't speak while she is talking, so if they have 25 points they will be able to have a free class to do an activity that they prefer. When the students are ready to listen, Sarah starts giving some instructions about a future homework that the students have to do. After finishing, Sarah says "I'm too bored, let's do it something more interesting", and a new activity starts, Sarah put an extract of a movie about pantomime and the idea is that the students can guess what the characters are eating because in the movie, they are just simulating that they are eating something, all the children are in silence trying to watch carefully the movements of each character, and they write their guesses on their notebooks. Then, it's time to share answers, many hands are raised, and the students take turns to talk and to explain why they think that they are right on their guesses, what the clues are that gave them the answers. While the students are sharing their own aswers, Sarah gives the students that are participating actively, little pieces of papers with messages, on these papers say: "good work", "good job", "awesome", when the students recieve these messages they put their names on it; at the end of the class, I could see the purpose of these papers, the teacher makes a raffle every day with the messages that the children got during the class, if they were participating a lot, they can obtain more papers and they have more possibilities of being winners, for this class there were two winners, so they got the prize, and it was a candy. The class finished, and the students were really happy after that, they had gained new points to reach the 25, and some of them had won prizes.


I really like the classroom that the students are, the teacher told us that they decided what to put on the walls because the idea is that they feel comfortable; one of the posters that is on the wall is about an agreement that the students made, and they had to sign this agreement, this is about the behaviour that the students have to show in class. Also, one thing that I like is that they use "play do", when they finish an activity or while the teacher is reading, they create predictions with it on what they think will happen next in the book, they really enjoy playing with this. The points that they win as a group, are on the whiteboard, so they can see if they are close to obtain a free class, they really like it because in a free class they can decide what they want to do.
The class that was descripted before was really meaningful for me because it was so different from the classes that I have observed, and it was very dinamic, the teacher was always doing new things and the students were interested in all of the activities that they had to do. To give papers with messages motivate them because they know that they are doing well.
I think this is a student centered class, the teacher is always worried about the needs that the students have, and I know that the students enjoy being there because one of them said once "you're one of my favourite teacher"; also, this kind of comment motivate the teacher to continue doing well and to be more creative, so the students will be interested in every lesson.
I had always wondered which effective strategies to engage our students can we use, and to make them that enjoy the class; now I know some simple things that are meaningful and can motivate my future students.

Reflection 1

A topic in language education that I want to know more about is...

Something that I still want to know is how to involve students in reading. We already learned about think aloud, but this is only one strategy. The idea is to know different ways of getting students involved in texts.
I would like to find a new way of reading texts that could be more entertaining for them. Also, an important thing is to know other activities that we can do that are related to reading, but different from the common way.
The reason why I'm interesting in this area, is because children in the school where I'm doing teaching shadowing have to read in silence for 20 minutes every day, and today, children had to read a piece of a book, but I think that it was not so interesting because they just had to read it and answer some questions in pairs. I think that these two activities are not so motivating for them; they need to read, but a good way of doing it could be by different forms every day, not just read a certain amount of pages and answer some questions.

Here are two links that I found to improve the activities that we can do with our students in the area of reading:

http://www.everythingesl.net/inservices/wordless_books.php
http://www.teachervision.fen.com/skill-builder/problem-solving/48546.html

From these two pages on internet I could learn about different things:

• The first one is about wordless books, I really liked this strategy because it was totally new for me. The idea is that the teacher has to choose a book only with images, but the book has to be meaningful for the students. The purpose of those kinds of books is that children can create the story, they have to decide all together the names of the characters, the title, the theme, so they have to dictate to the teacher, and the teacher has to write the story. At the end, all the students have to read it. But this activity not only involve the students, but also parents, they have to participate because they have to type the text. All the details are on the website. I think that this is a very good activity to encourage students not only to read, but also be able to create a story, I believe that is more interesting for them to read something that they have created so they can feel part of it.
  

• The second website is about think aloud and read aloud, we already learned about these strategies, but I really liked this page because it shows how to do it, the things that we can say to catch the attention of the students, and how to use it in different subjects. Also this page shows that you can use this method in pair work, so the idea is that students can think out loud and share their own opinions, predictions or ideas.
  This strategy can be used not only to read, but also teachers that teach other subjects can use it as well. For example in maths to make predictions, in difficult tasks in social studies you can make the students that say what they are thinking. This strategy is very helpful and encourage your students to say aloud what things they have in mind.
  

These new strategies are very useful for me becasue they explain different ways of involving students in the process of reading. Reading is an important area of learning a new language, through reading students can learn new vocabulary, also can acquire new forms of grammar, and of course, children that are used to read are more creative and have higher IQ.

The Classroom Story

What do you see? (strategies)

Text Tour:

The strategy that the teacher uses is called "thinking-out-loud model", this means not a dialogue, the teacher expresses her/his own ideas loud, so the students start to participate in the conversation without the feeling of being under preasure. The idea is that the teacher has to encourage their students to be interested in the topic that is in the text by pointing out the things that catch the attention of the students, like pictures, big letters, and titles.

Teacher Stories:

This is another way to involve students in classes, this is a great way of teaching because children prefer a dynamic class instead of a regular class. In this model, the teacher creates the situation and uses the resources that she can find in the classroom. This teacher acts and represents the stories by using real objects and making sounds that are suitable in each story.

Wall-to-Wall Grins:

The teacher, while the students are working in pairs, circulates to answer some questions and doubts that the students can have. The idea is that the teacher can explain it, but this teacher is really special because she demonstrates all the things with realia or intends to do similar things, so that the students can understand in an easily way.

What do you think is the most effective?

I really like those strategies because this teacher presents three different ways of catch the students attention. Personally, I prefer the second one, I think that this could be more effective, children are tired of see teachers doing the same things every day, they need a change, they need to see something different every day. The idea of the second strategy is to show the story by acting and using the resources of the classroom, and also the teacher has to involve the students, so that, they can participate without feeling that they must do it, they feel free to talk, they want to express their own ideas.

Chapter 5

What are some barriers to teachers to teach English in a way that's motivating to students now?

There are different barriers that teachers have to face.

• Grammar-Based Approaches is one of these barriers because students need to know haow to use the language in real life, they do not need to some rules firts to ask for something in the street, they want to know how to express their ideas. Definitely, grammar exercises are not meaninful for them because they feel that they are not able to speak in common situations.

• Vocabulary Approaches is another barrier, to learn new vocabulary is important, but sometimes people that prepare those words to be teaching are not the words that the students commonly use. They need to know how to use these vocabulary in authentic situations, the new words that they learn have to be meaningful.

• Another barrier that teachers have to confront is the "Future-Oriented Curriculum", the curriculum is always designed for the needs that the students can have in the future, but this is not designed in order to the students can apply it in the present. New language learners can not wait, they need to know what are the most important things of the language to survive in the new country.

Teachers need to know what things motivate students in order to do classes interesting. Teachers have to prepare classes for the students in order to make the lessons useful for them, the idea is to teach through content, through the things that the students are used to see everyday.
I think that barriers can exist now, but is our responsability to find the best way of teaching our students; we have to be able to take care of the needs that the students have, and to know the most meaningful things for them.