The way Assemblies introduced changes to my” teaching style”

 

   Some years ago, after teaching for a long time, I felt the strong need to make a significant change in my career. I knew, beforehand, that “starting again”, would bring many challenges. That was my clear, specific objective! It represented an interesting move towards growing as a teacher and as a human being.

   Of course I was not going to leave aside my academic background and my experience in different grades. The idea was to add, combine and recycle new strategies and techniques to the ones I had been applying for years.

   I felt immensely enthusiastic about my new situation. But planning was a big issue, it had to be done meticulously.

   It was not easy at the beginning. It was completely different from the way I had planned my Spanish lessons before.

   But, what really called my attention was the “concept” of the Assemblies. I could not imagine how students could get a valuable lesson without writing for an hour and a half.

   I imagined children getting bored, misbehaving, not knowing what to do with their time. I didn´t know how to time this stage, thinking it could mean a waste of time and energy.

   Little by little, I realized that it was definitely worth carrying out these Assemblies. More than that, I started enjoying them!

   Framing an interesting question, presenting a conflict to be solved, talking about a hard situation, mentioning characters from stories, making connections with real life, or just telling them:”What is the first thing that comes to your mind in relation to the topic, to this person, event or to the content in itself ?”

   It has been a pleasure to listen to students retelling anecdotes that parents or relatives had told them once. It has also been a wonderful opportunity for shy kids to “say something” because they could feel confident, and of course, I prized them immediately with warm, rewarding words. Mates listened to them and these contributions triggered other interesting comments. Sometimes, breaktime was due, and many children wanted to go on participating.

 

   Arranging the tables and chairs in a semicircle was also an asset. This “U format” allowed us to have eye contact, and I could carry my chair around the classroom, so as to be able to work with all the students.

 

   Assemblies brought real benefits to all the children and of course, to me. I noticed that they achieved and acquired fluency in their speaking and it also had a direct impact in their writing too. Sounds could be polished, functions used in the right contexts, types of words correctly collocated, among other linguistic advantages.

   Above everything I have mentioned before, what I like most is the way children expressed and shared their own feelings and emotions. Creating a relaxed, warm atmosphere in the classroom, also facilitated to strengthen enormously the emotional bonds among all the people who are involved in this cognitive, mental process called “LEARNING”.

 

Video 4, CONTEXT

We know that Context is crucial and essential to make ALL CONTENTS meaningful. Even during the Activation Knowledge stage, kids can be asked to say whatever they know about the topic, which is WITHIN the context. Even if it´s a wrong concept, we´ll take into account. In a specific part of the lesson, this mistake will be clarified, even by mates.
We strongly believe that it is very important to choose appropriate material and strategies according to age CULTURAL CONTEXT and interests.

The world into the classroom & Tools (video 2 & 3)

This year we´ll have an extraordinary opportunity to bring the world into the classroom: Brazil´s World Cup 2014. With this world event we´ll be able to investigate about: different cultures, religion, music, geography and VALUES related to sports and acceptance among ethnicities. The lady refers to real people in a real world so we´ll all be involved not only in the results of the matches but also all the other news surrounding this big event. We strongly believe that this topic would fit perfectly well in the bilingual project. Together with Pope Francis and other possible new/events, the World Cupm will definitely be a "Global Theme". Apart from this new project, after winter holidays we usually develop Stories From Around The World that involves traditional stories from different countries.
As regards Video 3, we understand that we have to keep updated with technology, not only for teaching, but for our daily life. But we don´t think that electronic devices are the only way of sharing a common ground with children and teens. Sometimes, we plan lessons in which computers are needed but we don´t have the necessary ammount of netbooks for that day, or there is not internet connection or just 4 computers out of 14 could connect.
This situation can lead to develop Values and Skills such as : being flexible, patient, generosity, and finding other resources to achieve the same objective as the already planned in the lesson. (offline)

21st century skills

After watching the teacher from the video, we really felt identified with her proposal and the way we work in the classroom. Technology is an excellent tool to teach, learn and communicate, but information is overwhelming, even to us! So, we strongly believe that, summarizing is a necessary strategy to get the relevant information. While communication is happening, kids will develop critical thinking, connections to their own experiences and  consequently they will make all the information found their own.
Although our students are definitely DIGITAL NATIVES (they have the "digital finger", they enjoy using technology and they are terrible attracted to computers) they really need guidance to use internet and technology in general FRUITFULLY and EFFECTIVELY. We mean: select the relevant data, visit safe and reliable sources.

Do report cards really show children`s performance?

By Miss Patsy and Miss Anne

Every time we have to complete report cards we have the feeling that they are messy and too long, which may lead to confusion.

At the same time they are too time consuming and we are not sure if they really reflect children`s performance. Besides, comparing the Spanish legal report cards to ours they are very direct as regards subjects and values too: “convivencia” has a mark but this aspect is not unfolded into other categories.

Our idea is to create a prototype of a new, balanced, useful clear and tidier report card. Being aware that we are T B L followers, we thought of designing a report card that represents this approach. It would be for 2^nd cycle, but in case this model or a similar one is implemented at school, teachers that are specialized in 1^st cycle can adapt it since they have other routines, other success criteria for the learners and they are experts at this age group.

We are aware that there have been several attemps to modify the current report card but we decided to invest some time to design a more practical document. Another aspect that we would like to change is the translation into Spanish. Just to make sure that parents get the right meaning of each issue of the following course of action:

A) Upload a Spanish version of the report card in the school´s web page

B) Having a big prototype in the classroom the day we deliver the report cards (1^st lap) so parents are informed about the changes and can follow their kids performance guided by the teacher. By doing this we feel that we also involve parents in a deeper way.

ACADEMIC ASPECTS

Assembly Time	The student is able to:	A	S	N
	Have clear pieces of opinion
	Make an effort to convey meaning
	Connect with ≠ situations, stories, anecdotes, etc.
	Make good use of: Collocations
	Functions
	tenses
	Apply ≠ strategies to solve tasks
	Participate actively during Reporting Time
Written Work	Make a clear handwriting
	Avoid spelling mistakes
	Profit from dictionaries and panels
	Produce coherent pieces of writing
	Include new vocabulary and collocations
	Use punctuation and capitalization appropriately

MORAL AND ETHICS

Little time, big profit

Little time, big profit

Teaching strategies to employ in the first minutes of a lesson that enhance learning

 

By Patricia Muiños & Ana Castells Ruiz

W

 

e want to share how we take profit from the first minutes of the lesson. As teachers we are aware that learners are more attentive to participate and to get involved at the beginning of a lesson. So, we strongly believe that this stage of the day enhances learning.

Having applied Phonology Routine and Language Function Routine as part of our institutional plans, little by little we have been introducing new segments. We believe they cover children´s needs and interests that are above the syllabus.

A)   Reflecting moment:

When kids come inside the classroom, there is a question written on the board related to something that happened the day before in relation to attitudes and values. We expect this interrogative leads to comments that mention possible solutions that will be applied if the problem persists. For example: instructions have to be repeated once and again, and still, some students don´t follow them. The question is: “How many times do we have to repeat clear instructions in order to be followed?

 

B)    Have your say on… :

This segment was born after Japan´s earthquake. Spontaneously, kids started to bring pieces of news from different sources. We also noticed that boys focused more on sports, and girls more in singers, actors and actresses and models.

Actually we prefer to make a more guided activity presenting the piece of news so that they trigger reflection and brilliant comments.

For example: “We have an Argentinian Pope!”, Máxima Zorreguieta has been crowned Queen Consort from Netherlands.”

 

C)   Collocation Corner:

Having noticed that children made recurrent or classic mistakes, we created this instance to make them aware that words cannot be combined at random. We also noticed that when they produced, they used basic, simple vocabulary.

In order to improve this aspect, we created panels following these steps:

1)     Children select “key” words from each story.

2)     They search for the correct collocations using a net-book or a traditional Collocation Dictionary.

3)     When making the panel, we use different colours to classify different types of words.

4)     Students to take profit from this strategy whenever the speak or write.

 

D)  Vocabulary segment:

In order to help students preserve advanced, complex, relevant, rich vocabulary, we designed this segment.

The objective is to avoid kids using only restricted vocabulary, encouraging them to include these words by means of recycling. The steps we follow for this segment are:

1)     “What can you say about…?”

2)     They are allowed to *consult dictionaries,

                                   *give their own definition

                                    *mention synonyms or opposites

                                    *say type of word

                                    *tell an anecdote or experience

                                     *make connections with stories or movies

                                    *build a sentence containing that word

 

Conclusions:

To us, the benefits of these segments rely on the fact that not only we are covering Grammar and Vocabulary but also Ethics and current issues. What´s more, we believe that this segment helps children improve their fluency and it creates a warm up moment before the formal lesson which may make introverted or weak students feel more confident.