2nd Teaching Practice Post - My School

Hello everyone! I want to introduce a little bit about my school, Can Vidalet. It is located in Esplugues de Llobregat and it is only one line. It means the English teacher has lessons with all the groups from P3 to Year 6. 

This is my first experience in a school like this. I always have been in big schools with at least two lines and for example the school which I attended when I was younger was from P3 to Batxillerat and with three or four lines.

My teacher, Núria, is a substitute because the main teacher is ill and he's being off for almost two years. Núria is from Valencia and she's just 28 years old. So, we are very close and we talk about many educational related things. I am very happy to be with her, because I am seeing the side of the substitutes.

I think it is pretty interesting and I hope I will be learning a lot during these weeks and I will be posting more things as soon as I can.

Oops! CLIL

I forgot to post about my feelings and beliefs about the CLIL unit I did with Laia and Clara.

The topic we chose was 'Gaudi in Barcelona'. We all like this architect and we thought he is a symbol of our city. Our studenrs should know his work well as it is part of our culture.

Based in an art subject we can work many many things: history, art tecniques, orientation in the city, etc.

That's why we were and still are excited about the activities that we've planned. We tried to include TIC as much as possible but in a logical way. Because it is the subject of art they should also to manipulate materials and create with their hands.

Hope you enjoy it as much (or more) as we did doing it.

Adriana

1st 'TEACHING PRACTICE' post

Hello everyone!

This is my first week in the new school for my PRACTICUM 3!! I am so excited this is my first time following the English Teacher :) 

I am enjoying it and I am sure I will learn a lot from this experience.

Here you have this beautiful picture with the perfect quote for the moment. 

I hope I will learn a looot and here you have my statement of intentions, it's a bit long but and it doesn't look like a blog post, but it was the first task.

Adriana

Statement of intentions

The next practicum period is just around the corner, with it we all should ask ourselves what we do expect to achieve with this new time in the school. Even this is always a moment we expect to arrive impatiently and illusion, we should do this retro inspection, to help us to get as much as we can during this month.

The two schools where I did my practicum 1 and 2 were very different. In the first one I went to Menendez Pidal in l’Hospitalet and for the second one I went to Costa i Llobera in Sarrià. Obviously the areas where they are located are very different and one of my objectives in the last practicum was to observe the differences between the two realities. The school Can Vidalet is pretty similar to Menendez Pidal, it is located in Esplugues. The area is almost the same and also the kind of students. I would like to see if they work the same way or not, and I will try to keep track of everything, so I will be able to think about it during the weekends and not do all the big work of reflection at the end.

I am very excited to follow the English teacher during her daily life in the school. Even more, when the school told me that the English teacher teaches in pre-scholar too. I studied to be kindergarten teacher before this degree and I miss the little ones a lot.

At the moment the school has a substitute teacher for English, I don’t know the reasons yet but I am wondering if the substitute knows the students already and also how are they going to do my assessment. I am glad I would be able to speak to her, because probably I would start as a susbtutute.

It is very important to me that the school gives importance to the languages, in this globalized world we won’t go anywhere without being fluent at least in three languages. In fact, last year I decided to start studying Swedish, because I found a very interesting school there called Vittra Skolan. Most of my friends keep asking why I did choose Swedish. Now that I love the language and the culture I don’t think I could have done a better election. Even if I never move to Sweden I think that the more number of languages that you speak the better. It helps you to understand better with people from around the world and picking up new languages becomes easier.

Languages open us doors not only professionally, they also teach us about cultures, they allow us to know more people and to share our experiences, etc.

The company that I work for in the summer, called Education First is Swedish and with them I have learned many values about learning new languages. Their business is the language travel, not only for teenagers in the summer that is my sector. They also offer all kind of trips and courses for people from 8 to adults.

Sometimes it is hard to see my future as an English teacher in a public school, with the social situation we are living right now, I thought and sometimes still think I would have to go to another country in order to find a good job. With this third practicum I would like to come back to my origins and remember why I did started this degree in the first place.

The only weakness I feel for this time, is that I work Monday to Friday tutoring students from 5 to 16 years old and Saturday and Sunday in a coffee shop, where I finish at 11:30 pm. That makes me be very tired, but I will make everything I can to be over this situation.

This is going to be the only practice period in which we will follow the English teacher, in fact, it is going to be the very first time seeing what we want to do and also to do our interventions in the subject we want. I won’t lose out on the opportunity and I will try to do my best and learn as much as I can everyday of this month.

To do all this I will start going to the school with a smile and a very positive attitude, trying to collaborate, wanting to learn and tasting each little moment that this experience is going to offer me.

#11 Conclusions

Last entry!

This is the last entry from 'Didàctica de l'Anglès'. I will start soon with the second part for 'Pràctiques 3' but I would like to give my opinion about doing this blog.

First of all, I would like to say I really liked it. It is an easy way to rethink about all the things we talk about in class, as well as you write and express your thoughts in English.

Sharing my opinions with my partners and also read theirs has been helpful to understand concepts from the subject. Some of my classmates gave me different ideas with their blogs. Like in real life each personal blog is different and unique, so people is.

So, I would like to thank all the people who read all my lines and enjoyed (I hope) the different topics of education I wrote about.

I am writing this last entry in my break from my job so I will share a picture of some of my collegues in the Christmas Dinner we made.

Thanks a bunch!

#10 My PLE

Hello everyone! This subject is coming to its end and this is going to be my last entry before the conclusions. 

I want to talk about my PLE. We had the oral presentation last Friday and while I was watching the ones of my classmates I thought: Ohhh I should've include that or I like that page too, why I didn't post it? But at the end, your PLE is always changing, I will be including new pages and I am sure that in few months my Bymballo would be bigger that what it is now.

In the following image I would love to share with you my Symbaloo page, I've drawn circles in order to separate the sections it has. 

As you see easily in this picture, the colors help to understand better how I did organize it. I check all those pages at least once per week and some of them everyday and more than twice in a day.

I hope you like my webmix, if you want me to share it with you, don't hesitate in sending my an email or a message so I will do it as soon as I'm able to. 

Thanks!

Adri

#9 What about Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)?

Von Humbold said one century before I was born “You cannot teach a language, only create the condition under which it might be learning”. Therefore, as a teacher I ask myself which tools do I know to create this condition?

 

We studied more than once what CLIL means; we also said it must be done correctly in order to make it useful and effective. But I can't keep asking myself HOW am I going to do it?

After reading Do Coyle's article I could organize my knowledge about this topic a little bit better. But I thought I had to do more research in order to create a meaningful concept about it.

Our main goal as teachers is to developed our students skills so they will be ready for their future in this changing century we are. This world is in need of creativity, problem solving and innovation to face the challenges in the global economy. Some young people are creating new platforms and schools to help other young people to develop their creativity. This is the case of The college of everything, I met the creators in Madrid some months ago and their task is being so effective I am trying to organize something for teachers with them so, we will work on this in the classroom.

But going back to the CLIL topic, I think what makes CLIL so useful is that it involves memory, speed, attention, problem solving and flexibility. Working in teams or groups, the students develop social skills as well as they build their own knowledge. 

What has to do the teacher? The teacher makes the correct questions that make the student to feel like learning. The activities must connect with the real world and the relationship between teacher and students should be equal. 

Using different tasks make the learning look like scaffolding, a way of learning in which the student is the center and it goes through all the steps, building his/her learning. Using English or any non-native language in a subject lesson gives meaning to the foreign language.

In words of Chris Lehmann, CLIL turns information into meaning and meaning into wisdom. 

Check this video out

#8 School-Home Relationship

We’ve been talking in class about the relationship between the school and the family. I think as teachers we should work in this relationship as much as possible because running with the same purpose than the families should be a priority. All we know that is there are discordances between what we do in the school and what the parents say at home (and vice versa) our students won’t achieve the same goals as if we were following the same objectives.

I tried to simplify my entry about this topic answering these questions.

• What? Constant information is given from the school to the families and feedback. The students explain what they have done, what are they working on…
• Who? The School (teachers, students, head of department, head teacher…) to the families and also the family informs to the school about news and relevant important.
• How? Sending letters (like the one we did in class), a class blog, inviting the parents to daily activities, sharing experiences, etc.
• When? ALWAYS or at least one time per week. Parents love to know what their children are doing in the school.
• Where? Physical meetings, letters, magazines, pictures or online contact.
• What for? In order to keep a good environment between both spaces and also to make the students feel confident and loved.

{Pictures from SweetFineDay}