The End

Learning is a result of listening, which in turn leads to even better listening and attetiveness to the other person. In other words, to learn from the child, we must empathy, and empathy grows as we learn. Alice Miller

Social Service is coming to the End

Instead of teaching children, I have learnt more from them! This social service has been a grateful experience; sharing, teaching, listening, having fun, running, planning, talking, singing, being concerned and mainly learning. I have grown as an educator. Two days ago I was in 4th. grade developing the class and one of the girls was trying to look at the others notebooks looking for the information for the exercise they were answering. After a while she said: "Teacher I don't have that notes because I didn't come that day" I showed my notes and she stayed the break time copying everything instead of going outside.

Events like these make me feel happy and successful because I might influence in this girl the interest in learning English Language.

Saying goodbye is frequently sad!

I'll keep in my heart children' thankful faces saying goodbye. They said no word, just quiet like thinking what will be happening next.

I'd like to thank my Unidad Receptora for the oportunity they have given me. Professor Irma and the others teachers always were so kind with me.

Thanks to the students, my colleagues and my professor Daisy Giles. 

 

Joint Productive Activity

 

Designing bracelets

I wanted to choose a fun activity. Thinking in the low economic status, I thought in making bracelets and if we were good in the business we could make a few for sell. We were working in the Joint Productive Activity all together; children and teachers.

Children were so excited choosing the beds, the colors and thinking in what design they were going to do. The two hours went really fast, it was nice to watch children who are restless, that day they were concentrated working. The environment was perfect; fun, relaxed, enthusiastic and the responsability was seen everywhere.

Here are the models showing their designs. 

 

 

 

"Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes"

                                                                                                                           Oscar Wilde

I have made one more mistake. Now the mistake was with a word search activity. I'm always rushing in the last few months, I needed a fun and reinforce activity so I thought in a word search activity.  I made one for my classes.

In the first group which was 6th grade, we were having fun, looking for the words, time was passing and everything was going on perfect. Few students told they were finished, they also wanted to color the words while  they were waiting for their classmates.

Suddenly, a student claimed: "calculator is wrong".

I felt terrible to hear that, but yes, he was right, there was a mistake, ups. After that I asked them to write the correct word. Here there is the sheet. I already correct it but you can notice.

 

Reading my peers' blogs

"If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself".           

                                                                                                                    Confusius

 

I have spent several hours reading my peers' posts in their blogs or even their comments in others blogs. I remember when Daisy used to tell us to read the others' blogs, and I used to think: " but ... at what time? I'm always too busy for spend hours reading my peers".

Well, the objective of this post is to say that I've spent many hours reading and commenting about the material I've read.

 

Daisy; one more time you are right! I've learnt a lot from my peers. Reading about their experiences in teaching, evaluating, making games, designing activities, handling difficult situations, etc. I've gotten ideas for my classes and my future teaching.

 

Peers, thanks a lot for the different topics' explanations, now I 've clearer the Situated Learning, Partner Professional Dialogue, Joint Productive Activity and observations. Reading you all,  will never  be wasted time.

 

It has been a pleasure!

 

 

 

A good strategy proved!

I want to share with you a  strategy I used with the three grups I teach.
We were in the practicing part, the question and short answer of the verb to be.
The objects in this activity were the classroom's items. I wrote on the whiteboard these words:

             Question                                                  Answer

 I asked for the first volunteer and I wrote the name under the firts word:

              Question                                                 Answer
              
               Luis

He chose one classmate:

               Question                                             Answer

                Luis                                                      Johan

And then Johan was ready to ask another classmate:

                Question                                            Answer

                Luis                                                    Johan
                Johan                                                  Pedro
                Pedro
The question was:

what's this? and they were holding or pointing the subject, and the answer was: it's a ....
It was succesful for them because they knew they needed to ask after they were answering. And for me was a perfect strategy to learn all the names, to see each of the children in front and his/her name written in the white board helped me.
Thanks for reading.

Unespected news

As a teacher there are many reasons to be happy but there are also many ones to be sad.

Yesterday, in the 6th grade group I noticed there was a boy who wasn't there before. Is this your first class with me? I asked. Yes, he claimed. And we continue the class.

During the recess, the teacher told me that this handsome boy was during three months in a reabilitation center.

I share this because I was surprised.

Partner Professional Dialogue

Now, that I have done the activity related with the Professional dialogue, I am inclined to believe that partner professional dialogue is a crucial stage in the teaching-learning process. It is similar to peer coaching, which might help teachers to reflect and find out how they are doing with their teaching. In this case the Professional dialogue might occur between English Language Teachers in one or more than one conversations.

During the development of this activity we as teachers need to reflect on our teaching practice, it is related with the context in where we are teaching. I conclude that most of the teachers could benefit from becoming reflective teachers and having professional dialogues with partners.

For instance when I had the first dialogue with my colleague Miss Diva, she tried to situate in my entire context despite she does not teach children. I explained the goals of the course and how I was expecting to achieve them. It took time to talk about details; what was happening in the classroom, the development of the classes and students’ behavior. Indeed all this was necessary for the reflection on action process.

One advantage of choosing Miss Diva to have the dialogue was that she is my very close neighbor, so for the second (some hours) conversation she had reflected in my teaching practice and she was ready to comment some strategies. Even I needed to make changes in my planning.

My colleague was present in one of my classes as an observer, I remember we have seen this in other subject, the teacher observing, I liked and I consider as I mention above: most of the teachers might benefit with this practice. Although we can feel uncomfortable to have an observer and most to be criticize but the sole aim of this is to help us in our performance.

.

“The only source of knowledge is experience:”

 Albert Einstein

Learning involves participation in a community of practice. I agree with this sentence because we can learn a lot from the books but …there’s with the practice when we really know what we know.

Relating with the social learning theory which posits: “that people learn from observing other people”, in Spanish we have a very famous sentence: “al lugar que fueres haz lo que vieres.” Or either way with observation we can see what happens with this or that action. It helps us to know something from the acting of others.

We never finished learning. We start learning from our mom when we are infants and we continue learning throughout our lives. Sometimes the learning gets from a hard experience or as a result of a difficult action.

Another famous phrase in Spanish: “la práctica hace al maestro.” The teachers might count from their teaching with the experience of what to do or how to work in different situations. Teachers must keep in their journal of “teaching practice” the most important events of their dairy routine.

“Initially people have to join communities and learn at the periphery.” I totally agree with this statement, and I consider it is the way it should be, because we need to see where we are getting in and then get in.

"Legitimate peripheral participation" provides a way to speak about the relations between newcomers and old-timers, and about activities, identities, and communities of knowledge and practice. I relate this with a person when is training to somebody else who will take his/her place.

Learning is in the conditions that bring people together and organize a point of contact that allows for particular pieces of information to take on relevance; without the points of contact, without the system of relevancies, there is not learning, and there is little memory. Learning does not belong to individual persons, but to the various conversations of which they are a part. We all are part of a society and we give and receive during the process of living which is process of learning.

Gardner (1999: 24) puts it, 'intelligence is better thought of as "distributed" in the world rather than "in the head"'.

Subject Pronouns

I'm happy to share this activity: subjects pronouns.
When I presented each of the pronouns helping me
 with the poster pasted on the board, I could feel
satisfied of my draws. Children from the three
different groups perfectly got them.
We were reviewing all of them and the results were
 positive. Next wil be the verb "to be".
                                                                                      

 A HUGE MISTAKE MADE

I has made a mistake with my 4th grade students!.

I was planning to present the months of the year and when I found the words in the internet with nice draws and colors, I decided to use them for my three groups.

I printed the squares as big enough for students to see them and I was ready.

The first group was 4th grade and my surprise was when students couldn't read italic. 

Students from the others groups didn't have any problem at all.

Everyday we learn and with these experiences shared we can get better teachers.

Things are happening!

I 'd like to share what happened today in my 6th grade class.

Because this school does not have enough teachers, children from 2nd grade work in the 6th grade classroom, they share teacher and classroom.

Last semester I worked with these 2nd grade children for my thesis, I taught them during the whole semester and now I'm not teaching them.

Every day when I get to the class, Teacher take the 2nd grade children out of the classroom to work in different place while I'm teaching but yesterday they stayed there because the 6th grade students were going to copy the days of the week from the blackboard. The class was going to be short of time.

What happened made me feel so happy!

Three of the 2nd grade Ss were getting ready to copy the words. And they did, when the Ss of 6th grade asked  me to check over their jobs, the small children were there with their perfect work done.

 







 A shared lesson plan

Objective: Ss will learn the alphabet’s pronunciation.                  And Ss will know how to spell their names and last names.
Grade: 4th, 5th and 6th grades                                                        Level: A1
Time	who	materials	activity	comments
5 min	T-Ss	n/a	Warm-up	T will talk about any topic. Greetings, weekend or weather.
10 min	T-Ss	Flash card	To present the alphabet. Letter by letter.	Adding the alphabet’ song
5 min	Ss	Notebooks and a pen or pencil	Ss will copy the alphabet on their notebooks	T will write around, giving support and answering doubts.
15 min	T-Ss-T	Wb, markers and eraser	Spelling names	When T spells a name Ss will write it. Ss will spell their name and T will write it on the wb. Each at a time.
5 min	T	Notebooks and a pen	T will sign the alphabet on Ss notebooks	T will  make the corrections needed if the alphabet has some mistakes
5 min	T-Ss	n/a	Feedback and homework	T will tell Ss the homework.

This is the lesson plan I used with the three groups. I'd like to share with you what have happened.

In sixth grade; the students worked really fast and I had to add another activity. They even spelled their last names.

In fifth grade, the lesson plan worked perfect; with time, and activities.

In fourth grade, the spelling names' activity didn't work at the first try, either at the second try, until the third one.

I already made my action plan but I'm sure it will be working at "different speed" in eacg group.

See you next time.

My Action Plan

Thinking in that this might be the whole English language they will learn before they go to secondary, I feel these are the most important points for my students to learn. The same action plan is being used in the three different groups. I'll share how  the learners will be doing in each class. Let's see.

 

Dates

February 25- June 28, 2013

World View  

 

Goal: To bring the students within the English Language in an A1  level.

 

IMPLEMENTATION			EVALUATION
What needs to be done?	By whom and when?	What resources?	What evidence indicates progress?	How and when will evidence be gathered?
The knowledge of: Alphabet, numbers, spelling names, how, what.	By Edna Dittrich in February	Whiteboard, markers, eraser, flash cards, flipcharts.	The Ss participation	With the Ss notes, homework and participation.
The introduction of: Greetings, days of the week, months of the year, colors, verb to be, where.	By Edna Dittrich in March	Well-known peoples’ photos, flipcharts, wb, markers, and eraser.	The use of the information taught.	With a test at the end of the month
Family, school objects, possessive adjectives, who.	By Edna Dittrich in April	School objects, family’s pictures,	The description of the Ss’ family, the identification of some school objects.	With the evaluation during the development of the classes.
School subjects, occupations, pets,	By Edna Dittrich in May	Magazines, glue, sheets, scissors, flipcharts, school’s schedule form	Ss will participate actively with the use of English, identifying some occupations and making the school’s schedule.	At the end of the month with the different assessments; quizzes, practices and activities during the classes of the month.
Countries, nationalities and languages	By Edna Dittrich in June	Maps, flags, pictures, globe.	The Ss will fill a table with some information about famous peoples’ first language and nationalities.	Final exam

 

Perfect starting!

I'd like to share with you what has happened in my first day. I bought some notebooks for the students because the economic status is very low. But I have gotten more than what I had paid with their smiles when they received their notebooks.

The principal of the school introduced me with the students and she left. I started with talking about my school, and my career.  It was time to talk about the servicio social but some of the children interrupted and they asked: ¿cuánto va a costar?  ( how much is it going to cost?) and I answered: ‘nothing, there is not payment required’. And I told them about what the servicio social is. They were so happy. 

Needs Analysis

With the clear idea of what information was being required I visited the school and look for the relevant population. After talking with teachers, students, director and few tutors I gathered some data related with the needs there are in the school. I also carried out some observations of the students during their classes.

After analyzing the data collected I got to these findings. This Elementary school works in the afternoon shift. The students do not have English classes. The reason is the money, if they want English classes they must pay for it. The students are from very low economic status.

There are less than 15 students per group and this year there is not 1^st. grade anymore because people from  the government is closing this shift in 4 more years. Most of the students showed interest about the English classes, Teachers also would like to participate as students. All of the population is beginners.

Next, will be the development of a plan for the groups. There is an e-board in one of the classrooms I can use. So, here I am ready to start with this huge challenge.

Giving to my community a bit of what I have gotten.

I found a placement for my Servicio Social.

It'll be at the Escuela Primaria.

I'll work in three different groups.

Children from 6th., 5th., and 4th. grades will be my students.

I

Loving what we do is one of the reasons we have for being happy. I think my teaching has been good. I consider the development of my classes has been successful including; planning, teaching, design of material, feedback, assessment, and evaluation of the learners performance.

The responsibility and trying to be always on time are two features that my students deserve from their teacher. And they also might recognize. Enthusiasm must be included in the majority of my classes. One more characteristic of my classes would be the use of ‘gestures’ and the body language.

Teaching for learning. When a learner is not getting the information for acquiring the knowledge, I like to explain and explain to this student until s/he gets it. I consider myself patient enough for teaching.

Reading is my weakness. What I need to improve is my reading and also my reading comprehension. To development of this skill is aimed in the near future. Reading any kind of articles, novels, texts, essays, books, newspaper will help me. And with the improvement of my reading, my writing must be getting better, too.

The academic lectures are also my weakness. Preparing for TOEFL, I could notice that the academic topics in the listening part are difficult for me to understand. And the way I could develop listening skill is listening the radio, watching the English news on TV and also watching movies. All this would give the opportunity to understand more every day.

To sum up, I love teaching, I consider myself with the personality and the preparation needed for teaching. The weakness will transform in strengths in a while, they have just started.  

Teaching English in my town