Reflection 6:A case of effective language teaching

This teacher always was able to encourage their students giving them oportunities to understand and learn. One of the most used techniques seen in the class was ‘Brainstorming’, it is very useful to embolden her students in order to generate new ideas about a specific topic. In the Esl class, it helps to get a better participation from the students and also to exercise the creativity and problem-solving attitude that they have to develop in their learning process. Moreover, ‘Brainstorming’ methodology doesn’t have just the usual single-answer, so it is always right what students say about the topic. The teacher usually gives multiple-answers questions about prospective activities on the students’ weekends, so they obviously have different plans about it. The main purpose of this approach in this case is to improve their speaking skill, their L2, because the class is the first level and it is vital for them to survive in the US with its language.

Reflection 5:A topic in language education that I want to know more about

My topic is focused on knowing the most effective strategies to use in the classroom, based on research. We have seen in Pasco Highschool that teachers must use just research-based strategies to get good results from their students. I chose this topic because sometimes the role of the teacher is not very well seen by the society, so I think it could be a good way to change it. Moreover, teachers' decisions must have strong basis to explain them in the learning context.

In Chile, the most effective strategies are not so well known, and teachers don't have a very good preparation; in that sense, they just teach in a traditional way without improving their performance in the class development. I would like to know more about those effective strategies used in the classrooms because I want to be an effective teacher in order that my students learn, and consequently they get good academic results.

If teachers want to develop a good work with their students, they need to study about what it's effective and what it is not; thus, they could develop a more professional labor.

Strategies for Effective Teaching http://www.engr.wisc.edu/services/elc/strategies.pdf

Here you can find several techniques such as: PRACTICAL EXAMPLES, SHOW AND TELL, CASE STUDIES,GUIDED DESIGN PROJECTS,OPEN-ENDED LABS,THE FLOWCHART TECHNIQUE, OPEN-ENDED QUIZZES,BRAINSTORMING, QUESTION-AND-ANSWER METHOD,SOFTWARE, TEACHING IMPROVEMENT,FAST FEEDBACK FORM...

All these strategies will help me when starting and developing my teaching career because I will have a good base to develop my classes, and also they will help me to be more confident about my role in the school.

Teaching and learning strategies

http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/front_strategies.html

They have been demonstrated to be successful with students of all ages, and ability levels, including those with various kinds of disabilities, and those who do not learn in traditional ways.

Reflection 4:Websites that might help

My student is Ariel, he is from Cuba, and he has been in the English class just these two last weeks. Ariel knows how important is English for him in order to survive in this country; moreover, he needs to improve his skills in order to participate more in the class as well as the rest of the students who come from other countries, and who also have had to face the cultural shock of living in a completely new environment.
The teacher must use the L1 to make easier their learning; however, it is very difficult for her to know 5 different languages; so, our role as native Spanish speakers must be to facilitate his learning. I chose the following webpage: "The yellow pencil" because it contains meaningful exercises that will help him with Spanish-English lessons for basic-level learners. Here, Ariel will find activities to practice the verb “to be” in this case, and interactive tests to see how much he has improved his knowledge. Also, he will be able to find karaokes and more lessons to become a better student; because what he only needs is using the L2.

http://www.theyellowpencil.com/index.html

Reflection 3: Response to a question about English teaching

Oral skills

by Kate on Sep 28 2008 10:03 AM

Hi, how can I get more students' participation in oral activities in the classroom?

thanks, Kate

http://www.everythingesl.net/askjudie/?i=11029&n=0

Hi Kate,

Sometimes the material provided in books is not much interesting for students, so in that case the role of the teacher plays an important meaning in the selection of the resources that will be part of their learning.

In spite of the fact, you didn't point out the language level of your students. I think that most of the following aspects have conection with all kind of students.

First, it is very important that you are able to find out and know your students’ interests before you create any activity; because this is the most effective way to engage them when they are learning. Moreover, it is significant to know if the year is integrated only by one genre because they have similarities depending on their sex in order to guide yourself at once you make decisions about teaching. Usually, the following topics are their favorite depending on genres:

Men:Sports(Mainly soccer or football in US), video games, technology, internet...

Women: Famous people, shopping, clothing, amazing stories,entertainment...

On the other hand, topics should be focused on their good and bad sides, and so make your students discuss because they will feel the necessity to say what they are thinking about; to show their opinions since maybe the rest of the students think very different; this means that it is better to use controversial issues to encourage them to talk, preferably in higher levels (teenagers). In this aspect, a good example could be to show them visual aids, like images or videos about famous people having uncomfortable situations in their real life so as to ask them about what they would do at that moment, to face their reality.

Finally, If you are going to work with children I would suggest you to show them eye-catching and funny pictures about animals or people in order that they wake up when they watch them. It implies your creativity to generate a story that complete the sense in its context.

I hope you understand the most I pointed out because it is really important to have new ideas when you don't find alternatives to use in the classroom.

Thank you & Good Luck

Jc

(If you want, I will put some material on my blog about what I said here to show how important are visual aids in the oral skills development in school.)

My address is www.juankspace.blogspot.com

I chose this question because I like finding new ways to teach in order to improve our role in the class, and the most important: that students develop their abilities through interactive activities.

Teenager level

Children Level

Reflection 2:If only the substitute knew…

Social class was not what we expected to see in schools since the teacher in charge couldn’t be present because of unknown reasons, but that was not the problem, it was that there was a substitute that really made me feel disappointed about his role in the classroom. He couldn’t be worse because he never put attention on his students’ needs, he only checked a homework and worked on his own duties. This “teacher” never taught anything; the class was nobody-centered and there was no classroom management to control some misbehaviors, in spite of the fact we were present.
When we are developing language acquisition in our students we must consider that they have to use communicative strategies to improve their learning. The activity didn’t consider multiple intelligences to get good results in this process. The class were not having the “silent period” because students have a good level of English, so there were no excuses to justify the poor activity.
"Acquisition requires meaningful interaction in the target language - natural communication - in which speakers are concerned not with the form of their utterances but with the messages they are conveying and understanding." Stephen Krashen pointed out this important theory about what teachers must do when students are acquiring a second language, but the person mentioned before didn’t practice any technique that implies social interaction to improve students’ learning.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Language_Acquisition
Krashen, Stephen D. Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning

Reflection 1:Podcasting my way to mastery English

I chose English Bites website because it provides several alternatives that help us to know more about different topics of our society in English. These podcasts will be very useful for us as prospective teachers because they contain meaninful content with eye-catching videos that will support our self-learning.
Some themes included in this resource center are related to music, sports, art, animals, etc...The main purpose of this site is to present common terms and english usage focus mainly on intermediate to advanced english learners.
I will work on 1 videopodcast weekly in order to improve my language skills because it is neccesary to get involved with the L2 so as to acquire it effectively.

http://australianetwork.com/learnenglish/vodcast/eb_mp4.xml

My good mistakes are...

1-“San Pedro Nolasco is a catholic school where there are no foreign students like in the most schools in contrast to the USA reality.”

“San Pedro Nolasco is a catholic school where there are not foreign students like in most of the schools, in contrast to the USA reality”

2-Here we can find the most common environment in this kind of institution, there are few troublemaking students that bully shy pupils but they are not the most.

Here, we can find the most common environment in this kind of institution; there are few troublemaking students who bully shy pupils, but they are not the most.

3-The students belong to a low social class, most of them do not have economic resourses enough to pay for a private school...

The students belong to a low social class; most of them do not have enough economic resourses to pay for a private school...

4-It is very helpful to be part of one of this group because interaction is the most important thing to improve fluency and to gain accuracy.

It is very helpful to be part of one of these groups because interaction is the most important thing to improve fluency, and to gain accuracy.

Working with second language learners, The Classroom Story

Analysis

Stone Fox:

• Jeff is very hardworking because he focuses all the time on develop an effective teaching to his students,mainly in his SLL.


• He has high expectations on them,so tehy feel comfortable and confident to their abilities to get the same level that the rest of the students.
  

Wine Box Sledding:

• This teacher uses their first language to teach them the L2 through social interaction. Moreover, they get engaged with the outdoor activities what facilitates their learning.


• "Better than good, Kids communicated with words and body language"
  

Scene-Setter Visuals:

• Jeff creates a pre-reading activity associating media(images,videos) with keywords of the book.


• He aslo paraphrases hard statements to facilitate the learner's understanding.
  

Power words:

• Students share their ideas with the teacher about important facts in the book in order to get different points of view.


• Multimodality is involved.


• There is a sequence:Summary-Reading-Discussion(Preview/View/Postview)

Spin-off stories:

• There is a conclusion of the story already connected to real events in the students' lives.


• Students can develop their abilities through several alternatives in the class using the four skills.
  

Jeff represents an effective teacher that is worried all the time about his students' needs in terms of learning, because of that it is important to point out that this role is too significant to develop the different students' abilities that make easier their thoughts.

Teaching through content by Jc

Text used: Fundamentals of English Grammar,third edition.(Workbook)
Content:Frequency adverbs
Chapter:Present Time
Pages:7-9

Using pictures of daily activities based on the Simpsons family, my students will have to create a poster about what they do everyday using frequency adverbs to point out their routines.

Getting to know my future students:

I would like to know,

-what their interests are.
-what their background is.
-which learning styles they have.
-what difficulties learning english they have.
-what abilities they can develop.
-how their parents will help during their learning.

Questions (2nd part)
-what are their interests?
-what is their background?
-which learning styles do they have?
-what difficulties learning english do they have?
-what abilities can they develop?
-how will help their parents during their learning?