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"'.