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.

21st of July (EXTERNAL EXAMS AND ORAL, POEMS AND WORK ON PROJECTS)

We started the lessons  doing lots of activities about external exams and creativity in the classroom   and then we went on  the project we are doing.

THE FIRST SESSION:


It was about external exams. First, the teacher was talking about the negative part of external exams for our students and also teachers. Here are some of her conclusions:

• External exams have a washback effect on learning.
• Teachers have the exam at their backs and it is a negative influence for their teaching.
• Students feel exams as a kind of punishment
• To keep motivation with grammar activities in pupils at the 6^th grade/year is difficult.
•  Both, teachers and students have lots of pressure all the time due to this kind of exams.

After this reflection, we did some activities that the students might find them more enjoyable and could give them a kind of motivation to learn grammar structures and to practice oral activities without any pressure. She also gave us, as teacher, some resources to prepare our students for these exams.

ACTIVITY 1: It was connected with grammar. We practiced the order of the adjectives
 in a sentence.

The teacher put some picture words on the floor with adjectives and nouns. Then, students should join the adjectives and nouns according to the meaning. After that, some volunteers were performing the dragon story that was built with the information given by the pictures words already done. The whole students were repeating aloud the sentences with the vocabulary and the structure given.

After that, we saw some videos about drama and stories by Michael Rosen dealing with the same idea of activity that I have already done.

ACTIVITY 2: It was connected with production of sentences in order to build a story.

The teacher told us  that she would like to have a pet and, using FORTUNATELY/ UNFORTUNATELY we were encouraged to give sentences to complete a story. What was important here was not to create a coherence story but, to have some kind of reaction, a productive activity trying to be creative.

ACTIVITY 3: It was related to how to improve oral production in the foreign language.

It was a kind of competition game. The teacher had already prepared a set of easy questions adapted to the level of the students. The main aim of the activity was to be familiar with ordinary sentences. It was a kind of competition doing 2 lines of students and four students in each line. Those who were the fastest in answering the questions should be the winners.

ACTIVITY 4: It was connected with the development of correct pronunciation in English, as a foreign language. 

She gave us a web site to practice and get in touch with native pronunciation, that is

                                              Robobraille.org

ACTIVITY 5 : It was also a grammar activity dealing with connection of verbs and their complements to do phrases. So, we played a game of cards related to collocation. It was useful to practice phrases.

Also, the teacher recommended us some books to practice grammar activities these are

                           “Teenagers” by Gordon Lewis. Oxford.

                            Mini flashcards. Languages game. Copy Kit English

Finally, she gave us some pieces of advice to prepare the external exams such as, to give the students strategies for clarification, to prepare the speech and, to try more advanced structures without been afraid to make complex sentences.

Here, there are some pictures of the activities reported.

SECOND SESSION: LITERACY ROUNDUP

The teacher showed us some activities related to production of poems:

• 1.-A shopping list about feelings
• 2.-The reading of some poems
• 3.-Doing poems individually and reading aloud with the whole class. 
• 4.-Reading aloud a tongue twisters, first in group and then with the whole class

• 

                                        Here there are some pictures of the poetry session with Malgosia.

THIRD SESSION

We were working on our projects in the computer room. we are doing a lesson planning for primary education children in groups of three that we will present to our colleagues on Thursday.

My personal reflection about what we did yesterday  is that all the activities that we did  were very useful for teachers to prepare the students for Trinity and Cambridge exams, easy to do with students, enjoyable on the students part, they create a relaxing atmosphere in the classroom that is good for the students learning. These activities are able to work  all the skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening. 

Most of the activities that we have done in this training course in Nile are very useful for us, as teacher, to improve our teaching practice.

15th of July: LANGUAGE HUMOUR AND MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCE WORKSHOP. Marga Gelabert

DAY 15^TH JULY  - written by Margarita Gelabert.

1^st.Session: LANGUAGE  HUMOUR (Teacher: Johanna)

The first session was about language humour and at the beginning, the teacher wrote on the board questions to discuss in groups of three:

When did you last have a good laugh?

What about?

What really makes you giggle?

Do you ever tell jokes?

Is there really a difference between English and Spanish sense of humour?

We shared the ideas  all the class together and we  agreed that the  situations  that make us laugh are the  unexpected moments or unexpected answers. We also talked about the "punch line" which is the funniest moment in a situation or a joke.

Some other relevant ideas were that depending on different  people’s culture  we can have different sense of humour.

The teacher gave us some exercises to match phrases with their meaning about “laugh” such as…

-She’s got a really infectious laugh: she sounds like a witch

-She’s got a bit of a sick sense of humour: She cracks a lot of tasteless jokes about death and people having accidents.

-She’s  got a very dry sense of humour: She’s quite sarcastic and dread pan

Some other expressions came around:

-Rolling on the floor laughing

-To roll about laughing

-Burst out laughing

-An infectious laugh

-Make somebody laugh

-Have the last laugh

-He, who laughs least, laughs the most

-Burst out laughing

-Have a good laugh

-Laugh at somebody

-Laugh with somebody

-Laugh your head off

-Roll about laughing

Also, we said there are different kinds of humour, not just depending on your culture but also looking at every moment or each person’s personality:

-Black sense of humour

-Sarcastic

-Mischievous

-Schoolboy/puerile

-Sauce

-Irreverent

Also Johanna recommended us to read a book related to the subject: “Watching the English”     ( by Kate Fox)

The teacher also gave us some questions and answers in order to match them and get some jokes for children

The teacher also taught us how to play jokes with a child:

A: What’s …………………………………………….?

B: I don’t know, what’s ……………………………………………..?

A: Answer

We also practised some answers for a joke, like:

-Oh, stop it!

-Oh, that’s awful/terrible/really stupid/an old one!

-I don’t get it


In my opinion, all the activities were very useful. I think everything was interesting because we kept learning some structures and vocabulary about this subject that is so cultural/ colloquial and we, sometimes, don’t understand when arrive to another place. We need to teach our students that most of the time everything relates to the context we are in. That is why we need to learn not only the  language but also the different culture: If we don’t know about it we won’t be able to understand different situations or how to act in a different culture.

 

2^nd Session: WORK ON OUR PROJECTS

We need to prepare a project in groups about a subject in order to acquire the contents and methodology we have learned about teaching, so we had some time to work...

3^rd session: MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES (Teacher: Malgosia)

In the third session there were some workshops to attend in order of your preferences. One of them was about the "Multiple intelligences" and  was taught by Malgoshia. It was developed this way:

First the teacher explained  that there is no prove of the existence of multiple intelligences. In order to find out if it was worth for boys to go to school, government in France asked some specialists to make up some IQ test. The first were taken in France at the end of last century. Some years lather specialists realised that even some boys who had had good results in an early age, were not able to rule businesses or work on specific things (and the other way round) as they grew up so people started wondering the reason why  that  happened and some psychologists introduced the theory that it was because there are different kinds of intelligence:

-Linguistic

-Visual-Spatial

-Bodily-Kinaesthetic

-Intrapersonal: Understanding self

-Logical-Mathematical

-Musical-rhythmic

-Interpersonal: Influencing others

-Naturalist: Knowledge of Natural World

In order to analyse ourselves and the intelligence we have more developed we took part in ten activities:

-Act 1: Stand up and talk to other people you don’t know about your plans for the week-end: Intrapersonal.

-Act 2: Stay quiet for 1 minute: Interpersonal.

-Act 3: Draw in the air an 8 with a thumb: Visual-spatial.

-Act 4: Touch knee-hand: L/R, R/L Visual-spatial.

-Act 5: How many seconds are there in 24 hours?:  Logical-mathematical.

-Act 6: Essay about a perfect minute: Linguistic.

-Act 7: Direct an orchestra: Closing your eyes, first one minute with music, one minute without music and another minute with music: Interpersonal, music and rhythm.

-Act 8: Draw a picture of a minute clock: Spatial.

-Act 9: Find similarities and differences in two people’s hands: Intrapersonal.

-Act 10: What did you prefer from the above and what didn’t you like at all? Why?

Everyone said their opinion and we could analyse the different situations.

After these exercises, the teacher gave us a sack with pebbles from where we had to catch one and without showing them to anyone we  wrote a description in a paper. We gave these descriptions to the teacher and then, getting somebody else’s, we had to look for the right one to match.

After getting our pebble, we did another exercise trying to find a word to describe it and write a poem out of it.

People felt differently about the diverse activities so I would say  that  means that each person  has developed different kinds of intelligence.

This was the end of the workshop which, in my opinión was very useful. I could see that we need to find out each student's  aptitudes to see what is the best way for them  to learn and what activities they need to be involved in so they acquire contents. Sometimes the more comfortable you feel the more you learn.