Enjoying the course. Students are really working hard preparing their chants and activities for practising intonation. Tomorrow´s lesson is on Integrating Pronunciation in everyday classroom activities. Yay!!!

 

 

Critical thinking and problem solving

 

This was the second session of the workshop

 

Widening Our Real Learning Design has become a real passion in education, since most linguists have found that Learning English through content makes our students broaden their minds and develop skills which will be beneficial for later life.

 After defining CLIL as a dual focused approach to teaching which aims to introduce pupils to content areas such as Science, Technology or Social Studies using a foreign language as the medium to teach all or part of the subject, it is clear that we cannot separate CLIL from life skills such as Critical thinking and Problem solving.

Critical thinking definitions:

·         Critical thinking is thinking that analyzes thought, that assesses thought, and that transforms thought for the better.

·         A way of thinking that enables a thinker to think regularly at a higher level (than most people are capable of thinking

·         Thinking skills used for determining the accuracy, or authenticity of something and the ability to look for reasons and alternatives

Teaching critical thinking skills is an important goal of the modern educational system.  Teachers are no longer content to have students simply memorise facts, figures, and dates, they expect  students to  analyse situations and  ponder it with all available data.     

Questions are important catalysts in the critical thinking process because they encourage students to reflect on the knowledge they have acquired and to apply this to new situations, as it is one of the features of CLIL. Students are asked to understand, analyse, synthesize and evaluate content to reach the outcomes

A critical thinking approach helps students to ensure understanding and to express their ideas I their own words. They also get used to analysing what they have learned and to “think” about “thinking”.

 Problem solving:

Finding the solution to a problem after analysing, finding the best way of action, trying it out and evaluating.

 

 

 

Summer Course for Top Language Teachers of English - 2014

From January 20th to 31st we ran a 200-hour summer course for teachers of public schools and small private schools. The material we used for the workshop was based on the textbooks public schools use here in Peru.

 

The subjects we offered were: Making the most of the English textbook, Pronunciation, Developing Communicative Competence, Classroom Management and Language for Teachers. The most welcome were Pronunciation, Classroom Management and Language for Teachers.

It was a blended-learning course so at this stage we have finished receiving the participants´tasks but are still uploading some of their work in the different course blogs. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good things are a product of collaborative work so we would like to thank Colegio de Profesores del Peru, Región Lima Metropolitana, Instituto Nacional Pedagógico de Monterrico, ELTeCS Peru and ELTeCS LatinAmerica (a very warm hello to my dear Renate for her continuous support). We must also express our gratitude to Mr. Guillermo Rivas from SM and Marita  for their support and offer. We are really pleased to know we have such good friends we can rely on.

 

I am not going to say  how successful the course was since that opinion belongs to the participants  and also because I believe that the outcome of this kind of events is seen in the medium or long term when participants  try out ideas and improve their teaching practice. Perhaps the fact that the participants treated us, tutors, to a pizza and sodas may indicate how satisfied they were with the course? Anyway, we are following-up this group of teachers and offering more opportunities for increasing their possibilities of development.

 

It is  almost a month since the course ended and we received participants´contributions until a couple of weeks ago, we would like to share with you some of their contributions shown in the blogs we created for each course. Needless to say that we have tried to include the use of IT in the course, we used blogs and some mobile apps that were accesible to almost all of the participants. The initiative was very-well received.

 

The main blog is Summer Course for Top English Teachers (http://summerenglishcourse2014.blogspot.com/)    and from here you can link to each of the other course blogs. I  cannot tell you how proud we are of the hard-work and the effort participants displayed in their blog tasks trying to deal with time constraints but working collaboratively to fulfill all of them.  This has certainly been a very interesting learning event for all of us and we are looking forward to repeating and increasing the experience with new groups and levels.

 

This course is for

 

 Presentation on Soft skills

 

Sharing and working together

According to a research conducted in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Spain, Mexico and Peru by Universia, Peruvian graduates are not so satisfied with the level obtained when culminating their university majors. Satisfaction percentage of Peruvian graduates is 59% compared to over 70% obtained by Colombia and Argentina.The main reason for this dissatisfaction is the difficulty graduates face to get a job immediately after graduating. Only 33% could get a job that relates to what they majored in while the rest had to take whatever job available.

 

However, the percentage of people satisfied with their secondary school learning is higher: 68% students, 62% teachers believe secondary school was good, even if university professors disagree. They claim that after finishing secondary school students are incapable of doing analysis and synthesis, do not master a second language and have poor time management, all of them important skills for a professional. The strengths these students show are interpersonal skills and mastery of the IT tools, their weaknesses are the lack of linguistic competences such as oral and written communication.

So what kind of knowledge, skills and attitudes should a remarkable professional display? Human Resources experts say that the core skills are not enough, professionals need to develop competences that provide them with adaptability, ability to learn and willingness to improve (soft skills).

Follow this link to view a presentation on soft skills that I did for the 5th International ICPNA Conference in Lima, Peru. http://prezi.com/pqqioqnr2twi/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

April 22 is Earth Day, I hope you can find some of the suggestions I chose and shared here useful to raise your student´s awareness of this celebration and, most important, take action and make changes at home, at school and in the community to help preserve our natural resources.
 
My first contribution is a reading text taken from the page: http://www.teach-nology.com/themes/science/earth/ 
 
You can find worksheets, lesson plans and some other help about almost any topic and at different levels. Below you will read the teacher guide to Earth Day for introducing the topic and allow students to do further research or to follow it with specific actions on how to deal with the problems mentioned.

Earth Day is celebrated every year on April 22. The first Earth Day celebration was in 1970, and was organized by the United States Senator from Wisconsin named Gaylord Nelson to bring political attention to all Americans about how the earth was being neglected by trash and waste of water, electricity and natural resources, like gas. He noticed that there was a lot of pollution and waste in the United States, and believed that if enough people wanted to change the bad habits of turning the Earth into a garbage pile and making all the water dirty, then they could do it one person at a time. Now Earth Day is celebrated all over the world by many countries.

My next contribution to your class is a reading page on Global Warming and the Green house effect  that you can use to focus on specific problems and to initiate research on these issues by preparing your own questions on the text or, even better, asking students to prepare the questions. This page and some other sample pages can be downloaded from the same link above.

 You can send e-cards or ask students to make their own. This is an example of an e-card with a wonderful poem that you can send to your students or use in class for group discussion. You can  find the card in the link below.

 http://www.care2.com/send/earth-day-cards.html

An additional advantage of this page is that :

Sending a free Care2 ecard helps important organizations because Care2 members earn butterfly credits when they send free Care2 ecards. Credits can be redeemed for meaningful gifts like safe drinking water,carbon offsets, or help for shelter pets through amazing organizations.

Members earn the credits and they choose the gifts. Now it's easier than ever to make a difference.

Care2 connects you with over 350 nonprofits, elected officials, and millions of members so that you can take action and make your voice heard.

Last  but not least there is the song Heal the World from Michael Jackson but I found a version with slides that are not from the original video but that really motivate students to see how easy it is to make a change in the world. Warning: Watch the video first since some of the pictures could be really moving and may affect very sensitive people, so you need to decide if it is suitable for your class or not.

  Heal the World (link to video)

 

Remember : You can make a difference every day.

 

 

Classes start next week and most parents are worried about stretching their budgets to buy all the material and stationery that their children will need. However, I read in El Comercio on Monday that Education for children should no longer be based on pen and paper. The writer of this article (La Educación en un mundo cambiante) quoted Dr. Heidi Hayes Jacobs, who was one of the lecturers of the Seminar: Curriculum del siglo XXI: Educacion Esencial para un Mundo Cambiante held last year in Lima. The quote was: "The world is constantly changing and the enemy is the pencil" since, in his opinion, once something is in writing,it becomes static and outdated.

The writer of the article (Lea Sulmont, Facultad de Educación UPC) said she was worried about the curriculum and its effectiveness at integrating the necessary competences for this changing world. The writer´s concern was that the curriculum (contents, skills and evaluation) should be revisited so as to make sure we offer our students real opportunities of development in the global world.

 

It is true, she said, that the web and the technological applications allow access to updated content in real world and that evaluation could be done now with ppt, prezi, animations or simulations anytime and anywhere. However it is not only resources we should focus on but also the skills the students need to develop to access information, as well as to communicate, produce, collaborate and live in the XXI century.

I am confident that we, teachers, the most important resource an institution has, will do our best to incorporate technology in our classes and to organize activities that will allow students to develop the necessary skills for this century. So I wish my colleagues a Happy School Year full of interesting challenges, projects and success.

 

 

 

Induction: The Best form of Professional Development

 

The article starts mentioning that to redesign professional mentoring is not enough to have mentors but to have effective induction processes.

The main message of the article is that new teachers need more than just mentors who they try to reach whenever trouble arises and that institutions need to create a culture of professional growth and lifelong learning before beginning teachers ever see their first class.

 

Some of the characteristics of effective induction programmes are:

• They should help new teachers establish effective classroom management procedures, routines and instructional practices.
• They should promote unity and teamwork.
• They should train and support new teachers engaging them in the fulfillment of the institution´s mission.
• They should start with 4 or 5 days of workshops before school begins.
• They should integrate a mentoring component and some kind of framework for modeling effective teaching.
• They should provide opportunities for inductees to visit demonstration classrooms

Demonstration classrooms: Experienced teachers set up their rooms to model the first day of school in an effective classroom. Afterwards, observers discuss the strategies that new teachers found useful.

• They could provide  a SPA Day.

A SPA (Special Professional Assistance)Day is for mentees to spend a day with a mentor observing each other and then having lunch together to exchange ideas on what they have observed.

• There could be monthly support meetings and Curriculum facilitators

Curriculum facilitators: teachers to whom mentors and teachers can go to and who provide support, teach demonstration lessons, conduct informal teacher observation and offer sugestions for improvement.

According to Mr. Wong, what is needed is a sustained training programme to keep new teachers, nurture them and take them step-by-step through the year and beyond.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

I joined the TESOL CALL Interest Section Electronic Village Online (EVO) Sessions last year when I read the invitation sent by RELO Andes in ELTeCS and really learned a lot. I am sharing this with you so you can join the different activities this year; some of the courses are really demanding but learning is guaranteed.
"For five weeks in January-February, participants can engage with volunteer ESOL experts in collaborative, online discussion sessions or hands-on virtual workshops of professional and scholarly benefit. The sessions are free and open".
I have joined the session on podcasting and am really looking forward to learning more about this.

This is the link http://evosessions.pbworks.com

Enjoy your learning!!

 

 2nd Teaching Development Conference in Cuzco

 

 

 

 

On Oct 26th and 27th, ICPNA Cuzco and SBS organized the Second Teaching Development Conference which gathered people from areas such as Ayacucho, Arequipa, Cuzco, Puno, Lima, Juliaca and Puerto Maldonado. The event offered 4 Plenaries and 15 workshops which were repeated in three schedules to provide all teachers with opportunities to attend as many as possible. As it has been happening lately, the number of workshops that deal with Technology is increasing, there were 6 workshops based on Wikis, Movie-making, Kindles and Walls, Online tools and Teaching and Technology, this shows the increasing importance that the use of technology has in our daily teaching practice and it was really comforting to see so many teachers eager to learn how to integrate Technology in their classes.

 

However, it is important not to lose sight of the training in competencies for life for ourselves and for our students; abilities such as time-management, problem solving, self-confidence or communication skills can certainly make a difference. For the handout of the workshop Interpersonal skills aiming at developing competences for life follow this link

The welcoming atmosphere, participants' enthusiasm and interest made up for the inconveniences of struggling for air and coping with altitude sickness for the presenters who came from Lima and abroad and are not used to working at these high altitudes.

 

The event left all presenters and participants a warm feeling of achievement and looking forward to the next meeting in 2014.

 

See video with photos

1st Pearson Annual Summit. October 6th, 2012

 

 

 

 

 

Living in a Switched-on world: Teaching and Learning in Hyper-connected Times

by Nick Perkins

Mr. Perkins started explaining connectivity using two videos from the Lean Team Flying Machine to see how the idea of connectivity had changed from 1945 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVoPG9HtYF8&feature=related) to  2007 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjJSWoGbKKI). Hyper-connectivity is a synonym of interaction and now it is not only parts of the human body that are connected one to another but electronic devices are connected to expand interaction.



Mr. Perkins mentioned how in the past we all used our memory to store information we considered important personally and professionally speaking (home phone number, birthdays, anniversaries, etc.) Nowadays, there are few people who remember all this because they rely in the memory of electronic devices. Hyperxonnectivity provides extended cognition because it amplifies our own capabilities so we are no longer trapped by ignorance.

Some questions that may arise are: Does this mean that people have lost the power of their minds to store and retrieve information? Do we know less now than before? He replied that "The Internet has become a primary form of external or transactive memory where information is stored collectively outside ourselves."

Regarding education, he mentioned that students now have access to powerful sources of information that is neglected if we ask them to turn their mobiles off.

Some activities we can do to exploit the use of these devices are:

I-phones or mobile phones with videocameras can be used to record classes and upload them on Facebook (if the class has a Facebook) or in You Tube. Hence, if a student is absent s/he can catch up with the lesson without having to ask the teacher or another student.
 

Video-recording devices can be used to lighten up tasks and homework. For example, the typical topic of What you do on weekends? is transformed into a new experience by asking students to record a video on what they do and show it to their peers in a group discussion. The same may happen with a topic such as My home where students have more possibilities to develop their thinking skills and creativity. He showed the example of a student who recorded the description of her house as if it were through the eyes of her dog.
 

Text messages and Facebook can also be used to send homework or for real communication. He believes students and teachers should communicate using these networks since it is more unlikely that students fail to do the tasks as when they have to write texts on paper.

From his point of view, students should have the freedom to use these internet networks and the devices that make connectivity possible at all times since they will allow real communication even at simple levels. Students can send poems, songs, photos, anything that makes them use the target language.

He even commented on a situation where one student during an evaluation sent a text-message with the request to answer one question from the exam. In spite of the majority of the audience who would not reply the message, he is in favour of providing the information since in real life when we need it, we look for sources to acquire it and these sources are books, other people or the Internet. According to this, in my opinion, to go along with this hyperconnectivity what is needed to change is the way we evaluate students considering that the ability to retrieve from memory pieces of information is no longer evidence of knowledge but the real evaluation may be how to make use of this information.
 

To avoid the main disadvantage that is that students may use the internet in class to chat or check their mail or Facebook and not do the task, Mr. Perkins suggests the use of "technology islands": provide some time: four minutes for example, for students to use their devices for their own purpose. However, if during class time someone tries to use the devices for personal reasons, all the class is discounted minutes of the "technology island". As a consequence, next time any other student tries to do the same, the rest of the class will exert pressure on him/her not to lose their "island time" and the incident will not occur again.

Since more and more teachers are using electronic devices and the Internet, I believe we may need to change some paradigms about teaching, learning and evaluating to be coherent with the new tools and trends in education.

1st Pearson Annual Summit. October 6th, 2012

 

  Think again! Developing Competences for a new Language Learning Landscape

 by Jose Luis Morales

 

The talk started with the definition of thinking skills : learn, create, programme, adopt, adapt, relate positively to whoever people meet. I believe this is an interesting way to begin providing the basis for what we, teachers, need to help students to acquire.

 

Mr. Morales mentioned some important competences that were related to developing thinking skills which were all developed through inquiry. This is, to ask questions to ourselves and/or to our students to prompt them into looking for an answer that goes beyond a simple Yes-No answer.

 

Some of the competences that need to be developed, according to Mr. Morales are:

1. Logical reasoning: the ability to connect ideas and draw conclusions
2. Research skills: with the additional ability of assessing the reliability of the sources
3. Problem Solving skills: related to the above when looking for information to solve a problem
4. Understanding: organizing ideas using Venn diagrams, mind maps, etc.
5. Thinking Creatively: related to problem solving skills and leading to..
6. Thinking outside the box: to explore unusual points of view and strategies
7. Understanding your emotion: developing interpersonal skills and
8. Making and Testing Hypotheses: Using all of the above to understand and explain a situation.

Since questions are needed to prompt students to develop thinking skills, Mr.Morales finished his presentation with the features of good questions.
 
Good Questions should:

• invite reflections
• be short
• be focused
• be contextualized
• be riddle-like
• challenge
• provide scaffolding
• be open-ended
• be personalized
• provide language opportunities
• provide content opportunities
• invite creativity

 

 

 

On October 3rd 2012, SM and University of Dayton Publishing presented Ready, Steady, Grow, a presentation for Primary teachers whose presenter was Ms. Izabella Hearn.

 

Izabella´s presentation was really a workshop since it was full of practical ideas for teaching but not only that, it also provided the rationale behind the activities which is an issue that is sometimes forgotten in other such events. I truly believe that a good presentation is more than to keep people entertained, the coffee break and the freebies that are given at the end. It is the personal and professional quality of the presenter that allows us, attendees to take away inspiring ideas and urge us to try these out in the classroom adapting them to suit our own contexts. In other words, it is not what the publisher or the organizer gives us, it is what we take away with us that matters and Izabella gave plenty of opportunities to do so.

 

 

Since the workshop was intended for pre-primary and primary students most of the activities were geared to using CLIL, VAKOG (sensory learning), MI (multiple intelligences) and using both brain hemispheres.

Chants were provided that had to be sung with movement and rhythm, endlessly repeated since little kids love the safety of familiarity. There was room for exploiting pictures to create stories, to allow children to create their own stories, to sing after that. Izabelle provided ideas to practice pronunciation by asking students to imagine that the back of one of their peers is an imaginary board and to draw the morpheme of the sound while producing it and writing the letter in the air at the same time students repeat the sound so as to activate learning. For the same purpose, a song can be chosen to practise the critical sound and by dividing the class in two groups teachers can ask one half to stand up and the other to sit down any time they listen to the sound.

 

For VAKOG, she added olfactory and gustatory input to the already known visual, auditory and kinesthetic and mentioned the power of visualization so if the lesson is on fruits, it is not always necessary to bring realia to the class every time you teach that topic but to ask students to imagine the fruit, imagine (or remember) the smell, the colour, the weight, etc. until they complete the picture in their minds. Additionally, students can create their own fruits and teachers can empower them by making them experts in their invented fruits.

 

One of the most interesting activities, in my opinion, was to ask students to stand in pairs and for one minute Student A would ask as many questions as possible bearing in mind that they should be content questions not Yes-No. For instance, What sports do you practice? When was the last time you read a book? What is your favourite kind of films?, etc. Student B would just listen and when the minute is over, S/he had to remember some of the questions and answer them or - and I love this part- s/he could choose to answer only one question in as much detail as s/he wished. Brilliant! Intended listening, real communication and a better atmosphere was created during and after the activity. Since the questions asked are personal, students get to know each other better and the likelihood of bullying or any other classroom disturb is avoided because it is human nature not to hurt people you know or you have things in common.

 

Time was really short for all the activities she presented in spite of starting at 4:30 and finishing at around 8:00 p.m. but it certainly was worth every single minute. I would like to finish with this quote that, I believe, sums up the aim of her presentation: "If the child is not learning the way you are teaching, then teach the way children are learning".