17th of July Visit to the library at the Forum

 Friday 17^th July    2015

Lesson 1   ICT (Johanna Stirling)

The teacher showed us useful websites to explore for teaching literacy.

You can find the Forum by going to www.nile-elt.com  > Sing In > My courses Madrid Primary > ICT > websites for Literacy 

a)   Into the book: http://reading.ecb.org/

      Choose: reading strategies

·       Summarizing

·       Visualizing  (some books you can find here)

·       Questioning

·       Evaluating

·       Prior knowledge

·       Synthesizing

·       Making connections

·       Inferring

b)   Ready to Read:  http://www.imcpl.org/readytoread/?p=6150

      It links to stories, videos stories.

c)   Storyjumper: https://www.storyjumper.com/

      It is a free website but if you want to print you have to pay.

Here you can create pictures and stories and also write it.You can get photos and  write about  the story you want create. Also, you can write the title and write the name of the author on the cover you choose and do the same thing on the back cover.

     The book you have created you can show the others and share with your family and friends.

d)   Story quest: www.literacytrust.org.uk

      Here you can draw different  types of pictures but in different order. Children point to the correct order.

   

All of these websites are very nice stories tales for making projects,…

We practiced in groups and we discussed about them and some of us thought they are very long stories with difficult structures. We think they are fantastic ideas. They are good resources to make a book or any activity but we need a lot of time in lessons and lessons are not so long at schools.

After this, some colleagues recommended literacy websites they usually use:

    www.jueduland > angles 365.com (activities, stories)

    www.cilingmesoftly.wikispaces.com

   There is a lot of kind of resources. It is private but you can see grammar, literacy, science, writing…

   www.experienceinbillingualism.blogspot.co.uk

   www.sheppardsofware.com  (Interactive games) It is free.

   www.newsinleves.com   it is good for 5^th and 6^th grades. There are different levels:

   1, 2, 3 depending on the students: level 3 (6^th grade)

Lesson 2

Languages Elements of connected Speech (Johanna Stirling)

We reflected about understanding for speech:  

Why is it difficult to understand?  Because in CDS is too fast or vocabulary is not known. 

Audios in CDS are more difficult comparing with videos. Also in real life (on the telephone, radio)

We listened to a conversation in two different ways and we thought about it:

    - Which is more difficult?

    - Similities and differences (topic, intonation, quiet, fast)

    - Which conversation is more realistic?

    - What makes it difficult?

 According to statistics: 

·       Too fast to process  (*)

·       Not listening properly

·       The words are not spoken clearly  (*)

·       Unknown words.

·       Panic!

(*) they are the problems most important.

We reflected about our lessons with our students.

  

Teacher talked about  how do we teach listening:

·       predicting

·       listening for gist

·       listening for specific information

·       inferring

We practiced with some examples using:  CAN / CAN'T  and we reflected about it. Depending on the regions the pronunciation is different.

We wrote a dictation and we analysed in groups the sentences and the most  important  ideas: stress, intonation. We reflected about what do we expect to hear and what do we hear.

Lesson 3 

Visit to the library in the Forum  (Matgosia)

           

             

The teacher introduced the librarian. She showed us resources for children with special needs:

• Tales with noises, sounds, textures.
• Stories sacks that contains the book, puppets, dolls.
•  Books with big letter in the text.
• Others with big pictures in movement. 

 Also, she showed us the most  popular book: "Minecraft" and other ones.

                                          

The librarian talked about the different  places in the library, timetable, activities and programmes.

Finally, we had free time for looking at the books and we had the opportunity to take resources and books to help us to find inspiration  in our project.

20th July 2015 ELEMENTS OF CONNECTED SPEECH & MUSIC AND SONGS

20^th July 2015     

 Teachers: Johanna Stirling and Malgosia Tetiurka

REFLEXIONS ON OUR WORK

ELEMENTS OF CONNCTED SPEECH

First of all, in pairs we tried to recall the “Elements of Connected Speech”, worked with Johanna on Friday.

All along, we find out that the most important difficulties we cope with when listening to a conversation are fast talking and non-clear spoken words.

From my point of view,  whenever we speak very quickly,  non-clear words arise, so they seem to me like one single statement rather than two.

However this leads us to think about why we or our students get wrong understanding, for what we will move forward towards micro-listening.
Through this technique we help our students to understand elements important to consider what words are stressed on a conversation, these been usually the important ones or the new ones; or that in the same context, positive and negative messages only differ on which word is stressed as in the example:                                      
                                                      You can take the exam again!

                                                      You can’t take the exam again!

Micro-listening also helps us to understand that speech problems also come from factors such us ellipsis (when we miss up a word), elision (when we miss up a sound) or linking (where we omit sounds or add intrusive ones).

My reflexion on this issue is that although we, as teachers, should be aware of these problems, the plain truth is that, when I talk my first aim is to make myself understood for what I find quite difficult to think of what sound or phoneme I am missing out. Probably, as Johanna said, because this part of speech has been ignored, perhaps because there are so many different accents in English that it would became a very troublesome issue to teach. Another reason could be that we need or completely bilingual teacher or native ones to teach us this elements of speech connection.

Johanna recommendation, BOOK: Face2Face (pre-intermediate level, 2^nd edition, Oxford)

LINK MAZE

Next activity consisted on finding out what the intrusive link was. The task was to solve the maze and find the correct letter after following the instructions.

I found it a little bit difficult to play this game, not because of the content (linking words) but because of the rules of the game, quiet complex to follow directions turning the page, what make me think that we should be very careful with the activities we provide our students with. They must be easy to undertake so as they can concentrate on the target, whether it is grammar, pronunciation or spelling. We do not want our students to miss the real aim by getting  stressed on how to do it.

VIDEO

Next activity consisted on watching a video about two people having a conversation in an ironmonger’s, one as the client, the other one as the shop-assistant, where in a funny way, these elements of assimilation, linking, ellipsis, elision etc make the whole scene a complete misunderstanding, in spite of the fact that both were native speakers.

My reflexion on this activity is that although I found it a bit difficult to understand for my level of English, I also think it is important to teach our students that these elements of connection speech are so important that some times they can produce a complete lack of communication.

SONGS: HEAD, SHOULDER, KNEES AND TOES

We worked on different versions of the son Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes by singing and acting out as if we were cats, monkeys, giraffes, etc This gives the song an adding amusement for the children to enjoy it, which adds an extra value.
Some teacher mates suggested another ways of working it such as, adding odd sounds when a part of the body had to be said, or stop the music and children have to say what are they touching.


My reflection on this is that songs can be worked on a huge amount of varied ways. All depends on what you need to work on and on your imagination.






PARTS OF THE BODY VOCABULARY LABELLING

This activity consisted on dividing the class in three groups and drawing someone's body on a long piece of paper.



 Each groups had to label as many parts of the body as they could remember in two minutes.





Afterwards they had time for spelling revision .

Then they had to move to other groups' work so as to   check if they knew all the words and if they could find any they hadn't come across.

Then, each group had to count the number of correct words they have to check which group was the winner.

Finally, the most pedagogically important aspect of the game started when each group had to organise the vocabulary they wrote down in a great variety of ways:

                   According to the number of syllables.

                   According to the  stress pattern.

                  According to the silent letters they contain.

                  According to which part of the body they are situated.

                  According to their position: internal, external organs.

Again teachers imagination never stop and they came out with many different ideas.

My reflection  about this activity is that I find all these activities very useful in order to extent the vocabulary, as they are dynamic, amusing, and what is more important, let students be part of the learning process, as we can ask them how they would like to organise their own vocabulary. As a result, they will always surprise us.

TEACHING WITH SONGS AND MUSIC (MALGOSIA TETIURKA)

After lunch we worked with Malgosia on how to teach songs and music.

For all the activities we did we learnt that not only we can work on a song based on its lyrics but that on the contrary, we can also work on words to make up our own songs and stories.

Thus, in groups we were given some words, each person chose one and drew the word provided.

Afterwards with our drawing we had to invent  a story and act it out.

How can we help our students with such type of activities? By given then with a specific structure we may find necessary for them to use. Furthermore, as they are using their own drawings, the learning becomes far more meaningful.

.



The same happened with the following activity: "The Twelve Days of Christmas".

After singing the song with the original lyrics, students are given the opportunity to come with new presents for each day of Christmas

In addition, in pairs they have to draw what they are going to be given at Christmas. Each pair in in charge of one different day. The result comes up as the following

As a way of conclusion I would like to mention that considering the level of our students , our aim should be not only accuracy but to motivate our students so that they want to keep on learning.

Songs and  stories are funny and  amusing. On my opinion we should take into account that they can become the secrets paths that will lead our students towards motivation. Without forgetting that the more meaningful, the better.

Music is happiness, and happy students are successful pupils. Laugh while you learn should become our motto.  

JULY, 14TH - NATALIA MONTERO

JULY, 14^TH  - NATALIA  MONTERO

READING SKILLS

In Spain all children are to be taught English as a foreign language from the age of six according to our national curriculum. By an early age, children are expected to know how to read and write in English.  There is no discussion on this issue, it is compulsory. However, one of the main discussion topics is about the best strategies to help our students develop their reading skills in the target language. Educational research does not state any clear conclusions, as it depends on many factors, such as:

+  the pupils’ existing literacy skills in Spanish

+ their level of oral English

+ the access to books

+ their motivation for learning

+ support for reading in their families

+ in English sounds don’t simply match letters, as it happens in Spanish

I think most teachers agree English is a tough language to learn to read. At the same time we all want our students to become good and passionate readers. How can we accomplish this challenging goal? Well, take a look at these techniques and strategies for teaching reading we discussed today with Malgosia.

A)     Creating an “English” environment in the class can be a great start. For example,

+ labelling  objects and furniture

+ hanging wall charts demonstrating  the day, date, month, year, weather and season.

+ creating a students’ birthday calendar

+ using a notice board to write messages

+ making a poster with key classroom language

B)      The physical arrangement of the classroom itself can promote reading. For example, having a “reading corner” allows a space for kids to pick up a book and read on their own.  Creating a classroom library with a good collection of attractive books supports literacy instruction.

C)      Read aloud stories while children follow the text and images in big books. Children become familiar with written words and develop love  for books through being read.

WRITING SKILLS

Writing is one of the most difficult skills our learners have to face. The ability to write doesn’t develop naturally, it requires a lot of time and effort. Students usually find writing activities tough and difficult. So, how can we help our young pupils enjoy writing?

Step by step, pupils can be encouraged to write short paragraphs based on a model (for example a party invitation, an e-mail). We can also help our students to write a text with the help of prompts or questions. What I think that is very important is that our students are given sort of a framework to help them organize and structure their writings. It’s also important to plan some activities that allow children to be creative and personalize their compositions. Teachers need to bring into the class a variety of strategies to cater a great diversity of children’s needs and interests.

Here is an activity we work with Malgosia that can help students develop their writing  skills and it is fun. It consists of giving a student s piece of paper and ask them their favourite word in English. Then, the teacher collects all the pieces and gives out a different word to each student. Every student has to draw this word in a large piece of paper to make a mural. As they finished, they are divided in groups and asked to write a story using as many words as they can from the mural.

STORYTELLING

Stories offer many opportunities for learning and can be exploited in many different ways. Silvye shared with us all her material. She gave us many ideas to develop activities based on a traditional tale. We learned how to design very simple activities for children to participate in, such as bingo, snap, cards games and so on. These activities will strength their language skills.

COMMUNICATIVE GAMES

I do really think that communicative games are a great tool to have our students speak in English. As teachers, we all know that games provide a fun learning atmosphere and offer a break of the routine. The advantage of communicative games is that they provide a meaningful contest to use the language. In this kind of games there is usually an information gap, one of the students know or has the information the other needs to complete a given task, it can be finding some differences, completing a grill and so on. 

July, 22nd, 2015

Marisa Ventas Fernández
This is my reflection about the 22nd of July. This morning we had a session in the morning before the break divided into two parts or activities. First at all, Johanna Stirling showed us a video about how teachers are checked or helped in Great Britain in their teaching program with children in the schools.
We could watch on the smart board an example of how a teacher is being observed by an inspector and later, she is being helped by her, with different instructions.

The inspector gives her advices about her classes, all in a very polite and helpful way.
Later, we talked about our reflections about the video in relation with that.
At the second part, Amaya a Spanish teacher in Catton Grove Primary School came in to Nile to explain to us  what her job consists on. Actually, she is an EAL teacher because she is responsible for the students who come from foreign countries and for their adaptation to a new educational system.
One of the points that she talked to us was the behaviour and  its control, because for us in Spain it shows us a lot of difficulties. For this reason, she explained to us how they organized this item with cards (yellow, red and green), stamps, stickers. More or less these techniques are being done by us in Spain too.
For me as a teacher in relation with the control of the behavieur we should follow the same rules in the team of teachers to control the students.
After the break we continued working on our projects.

In the afternoom we went to the Assembly House to know Gillie Cunningham. She worked as a teacher and teacher trainer and she has been involved with Cambridge University Press in examinations and she is the co-author of Face to Face and adult course.

During the conference she talked about errors and mistakes and about different methods of knowledge  and the language adquisition but the most important issue could be our attitude as teachers to our students´mistakes .
As a reflection  I think that the lecture has been very usefull, so nice and funny and it was a plesuare to listen to her because her ideas were so clear and we can learn about her different  points of view.