Second Story Writting lesson: Recording Session

Today, 29 April 2015, the students of 4th grade of Primary School, have recorded the story that they created the other day. It has been a great experience, and I've checked how motivated they are about this activity, since is something totally new for them. 

At first, they were a little bit nervous, because they didn’t know what they had to do exactly, but finally we have had a lot of fun while recording the voices because they started to laugh suddenly after saying something wrong, etc.

As, they still have some difficulties to pronounce most of the words in English, I’ve written them their sentences in a paper with the Spanish phonetic transcription, so that it would be easier for them to say. Another problem that I've perceived has been the lack of intonation while reading the text. To solve this problem, I read first the full sentence with the correct intonation, and after they repeated it. So, the results have been very positive, and I think that the final project is very satisfactory.

Initially, my idea was to do devote a session to learn how to create the video all together using the Windows Movie Maker, introducing this way the use of the Information and Communications Theology to the activity. But, as we don’t have enough time to do this, I’ve had to make the video by myself. In my opinion, this is a pity, because the activity would have been very complete by doing this, but the managing of the time is not in my hands as I’m only an intern. However, to introduce a little bit about the use of the ICT, I’ve taught each student the steps they have to follow to record the voice and to save it in different formats.

After recording the voices, I have handed them a paper with the sentence they had narrated where they had to illustrate the scene, to join the pictures with the voices and make the final video.

And… this is the result of all this process. The students of 4^th grade of Primary and I hope that you enjoy it! ☺♡

Challenging game in groups

As 3rd and 4th year students are already almost finishing their textbooks, Charo (the English teacher) asked me to organize some special activities to review the vocabulary of the topic. So, I started to think about what could I do to make students have fun and learn at the same time.

I’ve always believed that games should have more importance in the schools for a very simple reason: playing is children’s most recurrent and motivating activity at these ages. So, it’s not comprehensible why teachers avoid it when children start 1^st course of Primary School, that is to say, when they are 6-7 years old. Then, games and motor activities are replaced completely by textbooks and homework as if one thing was an impediment to achieve the other.

Many studies have researched about the benefits that playtime in schools can offer to children’s development. Among these benefits we can highlight the socialization skills, i.e. how to get along with others, as it offers everyday excellent opportunities to have fun with other children and to deal with the arguments and difficulties that will surely appear. It can also encourage the problem-solving, as during the playtime, children will find many different problems, and plenty of chances to learn to solve them both alone and with others. Moreover, it can also help to reach an emotional release, as moving around is important to burn all the repressed energy accumulated by kids who must battle to stay calm at a desk during the classroom time. Finally, the language skills developed when kids play school games together are also invaluable. Working together as a team or resolving a conflict during the game, children will develop the language skills to face many different situations.

Taking into account all these aspects, I decided to prepare a game in groups, similar to the Trivial, as I think this game fulfills all the requirements. So, I made cards of 4 colors (blue, red, yellow and green), each one corresponding to different challenges which are as follows:

THE HANGMAN: The blue card corresponds to the Hangman challenge. This is a very common game among children that can help them to review the alphabet, and to pay more attention to how certain words or sentences are written. It also intervenes the guessing factor, as children can imagine the word or the sentence at issue, stimulating certain mental processes, that are not through other kind of activities. 

GUESS THE WORD: This challenge consists of guessing the word or the sentence that is written on the card, by the mimics or the clues given by one of the members of the group. For example, in 3^rd grade they had to guess the name of an animal by saying physical characteristics or the things that they can or can’t do. On the other hand, 4^th grade students had to guess which action of the day their classmate was referring to by miming. The evaluation of this challenge is quite positive because students definitely loved it. 

SPELL IT! From my point of view, this is the most simple and useless challenge of all, because it only consists in spelling a word. So, although it can help to review the English alphabet (since most of 3^rd and 4^th grade students haven’t learned it yet), and to pay more attention to the correct way of writing these words, students were not very motivated doing this challenge and it is far from my objective of communicative learning.      

DRAW IT! Finally, this challenge consists in guessing a word by the drawing of one of the members of the group in the blackboard.  Students liked this challenge and they were very motivated by doing it. Furthermore, we can encourage students’ communication in the foreign language by proposing them to ask questions like: is it a monkey? 

4 sided dice

To carry out this game, first of all we divided the classroom into four groups considering they were compensated. After that, one member of the first group had to roll a 4 sided dice, and to do one of the challenges explained previously, according to the color of the dice. If the answer was correct, they won a point, and the first having two points of each challenge was the winner.

  

As a general review of this game, I can say that it can be very useful, but we need to know very well how to handle it to take advantage of all its possibilities. We have to establish from the very beginning what our objectives are, and how we pretend to accomplish them. In my case, I’ve not checked properly students’ previous and final knowledge in order to see to what extent this activity has been useful. Nevertheless, I’m happy about how I’ve managed the group problems that have emerged, since I’ve checked how has improved students’ way to organize the groups and to respect the time of participation of each student. 

4 sided dice model

Final result in 3rd grade class

First Story Writing lesson

Today, 24 April 2015, the English has let me to carry out a story writing activity in 3th and 4tg grade of Primary School. The main objective of this activity is to review the grammatical structures and the vocabulary of the Unit that they are studying at this moment in the textbook, to introduce the most common structures of the stories (past simple, past continuous, etc.), and to start using the language for a purpose (create a story) and not just study it like an abstract concept as it is usually done.

First of all, I’ve explained the activity to the students very clearly, combining English and Spanish, using body language, pointing things, etc. We have reviewed the structure of the story and I have introduced its concepts in English through flashcards.

            

After introducing these concepts, I’ve stuck the flashcards in the blackboard, and together we have started to establish certain aspects of the story, like for example the main and the secondary characters. For the 3rt grade story, the characters had to be wild animals as it is the topic of the Unit they are studying.  

When the main points of the story were established, we have started to create the story in chain, that is to say, a student said a sentence and the classmate sit next to him/her continued the story with another sentence, etc. This way, we ensure that everybody takes part in the creation of the story. As they don’t know most of the structures to tell a story in English, we have let them express their ideas in Spanish. The only rule was that they had to use the vocabulary and the structures of the textbook Unit (Wild Animals and actions in 3rd grade and the hours and daily routines in 4th grade).

While the students were narrating, the English teacher was writing it in English in the computer and projecting it on the interactive whiteboard, so that they could see immediately how their ideas were written in English.

The evaluation of this first day is quite positive because, although it was my first time doing this activity, the results have been good regarding to students implication and motivation. However, there have been some errors that need to be improved during the next lessons. For example, in the 3rd grade lesson I have let too much freedom, so they have lost the thread of the story, and forgot to introduce the vocabulary of the topic. Furthermore, as I was always rereading the story to reorient them, we haven’t had time to finish the story. Otherwise, I’ve corrected these things in the 4th grade lesson, guiding more their interventions, and the difference has been important as they have had time to finish the story and to decide democratically the title.

Another big problem that I have detected in this activity is that the last students of the chain lose the attention, and don’t listen to their classmates as they are creating the story. So when their turn arrives, they are not able to follow the story. Possible improvements for the next time would be don’t follow the order, but jump from one student to another, so that they need to be concentrated all the time as they don’t know when their turn will arrive. Moreover, it would be a good idea to introduce the activity reading an example of a story created by the teacher or by another group of students, so that they have a reference. Another alternative would be to divide the class into three groups and each one would have to develop one part of the story (beginning, middle or end) by themselves. I think that this alternative will be more effective when students are used to this kind of activity, as they will already know how it works and, therefore, they can be more independent creating the story.

In the next lesson, students will read and record the story and, after, they will do the illustrations in order to put it all together to create a video that I will upload to YouTube. They are highly motivated about this idea, and I think that the final result will very interesting and will help them to see English from a different point of view, as they have used it to communicate something to the rest of the world.  

And... this is the story created by the students of 4th grade...

THE STORY OF TOBY THE CAT

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Tom who was 8 years old. One day, he woke up, had breakfast and brushed his teeth. When he left home, he found Toby the cat. Toby was gray, with white spots and small. Tom decided to adopt Toby and put it inside the schoolbag. At nine o’clock, Tom arrived to the school and met with his friends Henry and Jerry. They asked him where had he found the cat and why had he adopted him.At half past ten, the cat started to meow. The teacher asked the students: what was that?. Tom asked: A cat from the street, probably. But the teacher didn’t believe him and decided to search inside all the students’ schoolbags. Tom was very nervous and worried, but suddenly the bell rang. At the break, he hid the cat in a tree. After that, another boy took Toby and put him inside his schoolbag. At half past twelve, Tom went home and when he was going to pick up Toby, the cat wasn’t in the tree. Tom went home very sad. At eleven o’clock, he went to bed thinking about Toby. Suddenly, someone knocked the door. It was the boy, who had taken Toby, with the cat in his arms. The boy said to Tom. Don’t worry about Toby. He is mine He had escaped. He is safe with me.

THE END


(Watch the result)

Maths lesson: The π number

I have to admit that maths has never been my favorite subject, especially in 1st  and 2^nd of Bachillerato. I think, that it’s because I found it too much abstract, like something that I’m never going to use for nothing in my life. A defender of this subject would claim that they are essential for the daily life, and I agree. So, the main problem is how have they been taught traditionally.   From my point of view, this subject should be especially taught in a manipulative way to relate the mathematical content with its applicability. However, we all know that normally teachers only focus on teach the arithmetic operations by following the textbook and the activities proposed on it.  So, I cannot understand how someone like me, who doesn’t want to study nothing related to maths in the future, can be motivated by learning derivatives and integrals, without knowing to what they are for.

So, when the maths teacher of 6^th grade of Primary School proposed me to give a math class, I knew that I was not going to follow the textbook to the letter. Then, I started to think how could I teach the concept of the π number, and how to use it to calculate the length of a circumference in a manipulative and active way. Fortunately, nowadays we can easily find a lot of resources about nearly everything online, so we just have to select what we consider the most suitable to what we want to achieve and try it, improve it, and share our experience like I’m doing now to help other teachers in the future. Therefore, I found this video and I thought that the activity proposed could be effective. 

The activity consists of cutting different circumferences and students have to encircle them with a woolen string to check that its length is three times and a bit the length of the diameter, it is to say, that the length of the circumference is π x the diameter or π x the radius x 2.

The results of this activity were positive in general, since students understood very quickly the concept of π and its relation to the length of the circumference. At first, they were a little bit confused as they are not used to study Maths this way, and they thought that it was a kind of game, but finally they assumed that we were working, and that they needed to pay attention and be concentrated.  So, we need to take into account that to teach Maths (or any other subject) by these kinds of activities, they cannot appear by fits and starts, but to become a working routine.   

I would have liked to prepare an entire Didactic Unit of Maths to plan my own activities to check if it’s possible to fulfill the objectives raised by the textbook, to compare students’ results, to do a test of motivation, etc. But, although it hasn’t been possible, I’ve loved to research a little bit more about maths teaching and to have had this opportunity to face a real class. After all, as I defend a global Education not divided on subjects, I think that we should not focus only in our specialty but try to experience a wider perspective. 

First lesson of CLIL

Today, 21 April 2015, has been performed the first lesson of the Physical Education CLIL Didactic Unit The Little Red Riding Hood in the 1st course of Primary School.

The lesson has started doing a headcount of the students, in which children had to answer “good morning” in English after the teacher said their names. He vocalizes a lot, and always uses body language to make himself understand better. This is a very important point, because although children maybe don’t understand all the words, they can relate them with a gesture, and this way guessing the general meaning of the sentence.  The teacher also used a lot of words that children already knew, like numbers, routines, expressions… in order to make them feel closer and more comfortable with the foreign language.  

After the headcount, the teacher has ordered them to sit in front of the blackboard where he had placed the first five flashcards of “The Little Red Raining Hood” tale. Then, he has asked them if they knew what this tale was and if someone could tell it to the rest of the classmates in Spanish. One girl has told it, and then the teacher has repeated it in English, with the flashcards and the with body language help, using Spanish sometimes, etc. He has also empathized the words he wanted them to learn basket, pick up flowers, grandmother, etc.

Then Juande has explained the first game, whose main goal was to work laterality (right and left). To do so, he has divided the students into two groups: wolves (boys) and Little Red Raining Hood (girls), and he has numbered them. Then, each group has sat down separately making a circle, and when the teacher said a number and a direction, the member of each group with that number had to run in that direction, and try to catch the other (in the case of the wolves) or sit down in her place (in the case of the Little Red Riding Hood). If the wolf caught the Little Red Riding Hood, she had to sit down inside the wolfs’ circle. This game has occasioned many problems as children haven’t developed well the laterality concepts even in Spanish, so they didn’t know how to play correctly, and they just run to catch the other in any direction.

The second game was named “Picking up flowers”, in which the same two groups had to do a relay race consisting of picking up flowers (cones) put them inside a basket (hoop), comeback, and hit the next classmate's hand. So, the first group putting all the flowers inside the basket was the winner.

Finally, they had sat down in front of the blackboard again and had ordered the flashcards that the teacher had previously removed.

From an overall perspective, I think that it has been a good and productive lesson. However, I’ve seen some problems like, for example, that children seemed to be so concentrated on the tale that they were not paying attention to the vocabulary. On the other hand, as I’ve already mentioned, the first game has been a little mess, so the teacher has decided to repeat it in the next lesson, but helping the students to identify better their right and left hand, putting a sticker of a different color in each one.

Structure and description of the Physical Education CLIL Didactic Unic

This CLIL Didactic Unit is going to be developed by the PE teacher of the school San Roque from Silla  in the first course of Primary School, and it will be the research topic of my TFG. It will consist of six lessons, that will run from 21 April to 19 May 2015. 

The title of this Didactic Unit is “The Little Red Riding Hood” as it revolves around this folktale, and the main objectives are that students:

• Use their motor skills adapting the movement to the situation
• Improve their spatial concepts through games
• Identify and apply spatial vocabulary to real situations
• Value tales as a resource for learning and fun

So, in order to assess and to check that students have reached these main objectives, we will observe them following these evaluation criteria to identify if they:

• Know their motor skills and use them in the correct way
• Identify the main special concepts
• Apply special concepts to game situations
• Respect the main rules of the class, games. Activities and task
• Implication in the activities generated by the tale

Through this DU we want to develop the next key competences:

• Linguistic and communicative
• Learning to learn
• Social and civic

To that end, the material resources that we will need are:

• The Little Red Riding Hood Tale
• Flashcards with the food
• Flashcards with the characters
• Physical Education resources (cones, balls, hoops, bench…)

The assessment process will be mainly focused on the observation of students’ progress, but there will also be a final test in which students will have to answer some questions to check if they have acquired the basic vocabulary and to know more about their opinion of the CLIL lessons, and a final task in which pupils will have to organize the flashcards in the correct story order, and to label all the characters in a memory-motor game.

As in any other CLIL DU, each lesson needs to plan different content, communication, cognition and culture learning outcomes. In this specific one, these are:

• CONTENT

o   Physical Education contents:

§  Laterality: left and right

§  Spatial concepts: in front of, behind, next to

§  Motor skills: running, jumping, walking

o   Cross-curricular contents:

§  Orientation

§  Healthy food

§  Respect for classmates

• COMMUNICATION

o   Language for the topic:

§  Vocabulary:

·         Spatial concepts: left, right, in front of, behind, next to

·         Actions: Jumping, running, walking, dancing, singing

·         P.E materials: ball, bench, hoop, skipping rope

·         P.E structures: circle and row

·         Healthy food: orange, lemon, vegetables…

·         Tale vocabulary: wolf, granny, closet, cake, box…

§  Structures:

·         Let’s make a…

·         I go running/ jumping

·         Move to the left/right

o   Language for interaction:

·         Numbers

·         Daily routines: good morning, good afternoon…

·         Expressions: Have a nice day, thank you!...

• COGNITION

o   Applying orientation (left and right) to action games

o   Remembering characters of the tale

o   Applying spatial concepts to real situations

o   Ordering the tale by using flashcards

• CULTURE

o   The tale as a cultural resource

o   Tales and morality for young children

o   Environmental knowledge and respect

About my TFG (End Of Grade project)

As any other student of 4th year of any degree, the idea of ​​the TFG worries and scares me. Choosing a topic interesting enough to investigate about and which has not been too much written before, is not an easy thing to do. Even when the topic is chosen, as we have never faced the realization of a work of this nature, we cannot avoid having a feeling of insecurity and uncertainty, not knowing whether what we are doing is right or not.

Personally, when I started the internship period I had no idea what my TFG was going to be about. I had thought to do it about games as a motivational resource to learn a foreign language, since I work in a language school teaching English to children of all ages, and I have seen their implication and their facility to learn vocabulary and grammatical structures while playing entertaining games adapted to their level. However, I didn’t know how could I carry out my research about this topic in school.

One day, Juande (the head teacher and the Physical Education teacher) told me that he was going to perform a CLIL Didactic Unit in the first course of Primary School as a trial, because the school wants to teach the subject of PE using this method next year. He told me that it would be a good idea to make my TFG about this subject, so I suggested the title " Teaching Physical Education through English as a foreign language: CLIL" to Luís (my TFG tutor at the University) and he gave me the nod.

Setting the title and the topic of my TFG gave me much more security, because it is a subject that has not been almost studied before, and on which I will be able to make an observation and an analysis of results as the school itself is going to put it into practice.

So, the purpose of my TFG is to check whether the adoption of English as the language to teach the subject of Physical Education, promotes the communicative competence in this language as the problems of comprehension and expression in English that the most of Spanish students have at the end of their compulsory education period denote the ineffectiveness of the methods used to teach this language in our country until this moment. Therefore, it is essential to investigate about other alternative methods as the proposed (CLIL) which allows a greater contextualization of the contents.

The methodology by which I intend to carry out the development of my TFG, is the research on CLIL and its implementation in the first year of Primary Education of the School Sant Roc from Silla, in order to see firsthand the results and to intervene and adapt our actions to the progress and to make practical proposals that can be relevant to other teachers.

So, the observation and the teacher notebook will be the main resources that will allow us to record and evaluate both, the progress of students and the results.