Backtalk: you don’t want to get in trouble right?

When teacher realize there was student back talking in classroom, she stopped writing the instructions for us on the board and wait until students, that were laughing and doing stuff in their cellphones, stopped too. Students noticed and they stopped doing that and teacher restarted writing on the board; students started talking again. She asked them to pay attention to class; students really didn’t care.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How it could have been avoided?

First time teacher does that reaction to class (stopped class) was okay, because students stopped and understood they were doing something incorrect in classroom. Second time she asked them to pay attention I

think she should add a warning for students to be prepared and conscious if they started talking again there would be consequences. Students should understand the warning and be conscious if they’re really wanted to be in a pickle. They should stop doing back talking and continue class trying to pay attention. What would happen if they don’t do that? Be fulfilled the warning (pickle).

 

Bloom’s such a genius

I mean, there are people whom look for details, they stop, drop and analyze!! As beautiful Ellen says. How great is that Benjamin Bloom took the time to been such a nice person and publish little details that English teachers and professional haven’t really seen? As teacher Bloom’s taxonomy makes me not to forget any stage or level as the ESL learner improves, we have to consider all levels and it has a sequence to get to the point when ESL learner is familiar to the language, confident and productive. Not forgetting levels in my lesson plans, in students improvement… is how I should use Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Using Bloom’s taxonomy

English for students at Advanced level 1.

Activity: Reading an authentic short story. “A rice Sandwich” by Sandra Cisneros. Here you can read it http://msmoore.wordpress.com/doc/a-rice-sandwich/

1. Recalling information:

Reflection questions like: When you were a Young chol was there something you wanted very much? How did you convince you parents to give it to you? (students describing)

1. Understanding

Students answering questions like: Who’s is the narrator of the story? Why does Esperanza want toe at in the canteen? Etc.

1. Applying

Instruction> “This exercise starts with a list of simple sentences, expand it by adding dependent or independent clauses. For example: Beth likes flowers> Beth likes flowers, and she enjoys spending time in her garden. (compound-complex sentence>grammar).

1. Analyzing

Student describing Esperanza (the character). “Use as many adjectives as you can” Why do you think she’s like that?

1. Creating

Students answering the following question: What does Esperanza learn from the story? Write a sentence that describes the moral of the story and then elaborate on your idea.

1. Evaluating

Starting group-talk involving teacher and students. Sharing their answers and participating.

P.S I want to be thankful to “Ms. Moore” who has the story right here at wordpress because I have it in a book and made me things easier 🙂

 

From the beginning

What about how you can help a person if you don’t help yourself? How you can get to know another person needs and understand his/her situation if you don’t know your own needs and skills to have a support to help him/ her?… What I mean, as a teacher I have to start since the beginning: remembering how was difficult for me to understand certain new topic, which were the learning skills I developed to learn and then reflect about what multiple intelligence I might I used. After that, maybe I reach an idea of which multiple intelligences students may have and then start with it. I have to start with something! I mean, at first I’ll use activities that for me are more useful as student is learning and if I don’t get the expected results then change them and considering another multiple intelligences and learning styles. But I must have a basis in which I can get my students to improve 🙂

 

One day you were a student

On March 31 we took a different class and I’m saying different ‘cause the environment was different: we took it from Ellen’s house 😀 yaaaay!!. The thing is that home environment makes us work harder to get focus on our tasks and activities we had had to develop during class: why? Because we were really comfortable being at Ellen’s home. One of our tasks was getting in groups of three or two people and then each team would be provided different themes in which we had had to expose in front of the class. Not only we had had to do a Power Point Presentation but also make an agenda for the activities each member of the team had had to do in order to get a group collaboration: involving dates, hours, etc. One of the challenges were that the presentation we’ll do in front od class should’ve be until April 21 and because of that we had had to settle the schedules and agenda of the upcoming activities of each member and ask for telephone numbers to get in contact with partner ‘cause we wouldn’t going to be able to see each other because of vacations.  I barely remember we had 15 minutes approximately to get organized with our team.

My team: Male and Rafa. Love them! We had three themes so we split the job and each member had had to search and investigate for one theme; mine was “The Input Hypothesis” now we had to be responsible to finish our part and upload the info to the Google presentation a certain day. After that, we will study the ppt. At the time we were adding info to our calendar of activities Ellen said: STOP, DROP AND ANALIZE!! And I was like: oh we haven’t finish… And then she asked us: Did you realize what you’re doing right now? …At the end she told us we had hadn’t do the Presentation and that the activity had a purpose: to understand what a student have to deal with a task, I mean, empathize and understand them one as a teacher. I totally got that: when you’re a teacher sometimes you don’t empathize, you forgot that one day you were a student and that every task has to be considered and made to a student’s measure. 

Ian James: a teacher going further

There are many of the application examples that I can’t see because they’re embedded from his blog I think (Ian James).

I really like VOXOPOP because besides the student being interactive and being prepared for speaking it also makes the activity enjoyable, that is because teacher can choose a topic of what the classroom may like and open the talk group and get started with the talk. That’s what I would do with my classroom and improving listening and speaking skills at the same time.

What I like from VOICRETHREAD it’s that how an image can make different points of views, points to discuss and is such a great please to listen and speak about your own opinion. I’d do pretty much the same thing as Ian James does. Upload an image, talk about what I think about an image and tell students to share their point of view about that image, interact.

Literature Circles in Fatima’s classes

Here’s an activity how I would use Literature Circles. You can download it here: http://www.laspillane.org/lit_circ_roles.pdf

Instructions: get a group of students and then put all cards face down and each participant can only chose one in order to play the card’s role.

*Cards are at the bottom of the pdf document (link).

 

Literature Circles

It’s the way to improve our analytic skills not only in book stories but also in real life. To understand the meaning of some lines or a topic become a variety of ideas and it’s so enriching to get an open mind and to see all angles of what a right resolution could be (considering all inputs). In this space you can learn and practice some values for example: tolerance, respect, help. And of course we know we’ll never know a language at a 100% but we can improve our language skills, as grammar, new vocabulary, correct pronunciation, and confidence about speaking aloud and telling people your point of view.

How could CEFR and ALTE affect me as an English teacher?

In a very important way because it’s a joy nowadays we can get worldwide recognition about studies we’ve taking and what about going to any part of Europe get a job by only presenting my certifications and get accepted. How cool is that? Learning same stuff and skills as in other countries? I’m referring CEFR. About ALTE the clear and great example I can say is here in Morelia (Mexico), here there’s the “Alliance Française” which is recognized by the ALTE and foreign people as in this case, Mexicans we can learn from same methods, strategies and do the ALTE recognized certifications.

CEFR and ALTE

CEFR is the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and it means it plays a central role y education policy. It provides a basis for the mutual recognition of language qualifications, thus facilitating educational and occupational mobility. It is increasingly used in the reform of national curricula and by international consortia for the comparison of language certificates.

ALTE is the Association of Language Testers in Europe. It includes many of the world’s leading language assessment bodies. ALTE members provide standard examination and computer based language tests.

Sources:

http://www.alte.org/members/index.php

http://www.cambridgeesol.org/sector/teaching/index.html