Essay. Tasks and skills os English Teacher

Essay. Challenges of the teaching task

References

1.      http://www2.asialink.unimelb.edu.au/aef/conference/hanoi/pdf/P_Griffin.pdf

2.      http://www.odysseyofthefuture.net/pdf_files/Readings/EthicalCharDevWrkshp.pdf

3.      http://redalyc.uaemex.mx/src/inicio/ArtPdfRed.jsp?iCve=91612922004

4.      SEP (2002). Aprendizaje cooperativo. Atención educative a los adolescentes en situaciones de riesgo. Ed. CONALITEG

Essay. Didactic Sequences

As Piaget, Vygotsky believed that kids build their own knowledge, however, to Piaget the cognitive construction occurs more with the interaction with the physical objects. To Vygotsky, the cognitive construction is “socially mediated”, always is influenced by the social interaction; what the teacher teach to the student, influence in what the student “build”.

Vygotsky believed that, both physical manipulation and social interaction are necessary to the child development. Without the presence of the teacher, the learning will not the same. In the social interaction, the kid learns which characteristics are the most important, which must distinguish and which have to act. In a share activity, the teacher influence directly in the learning process. ^[6]

As Piaget as Vygotsky, are author of the constructivist theory, that in small words is that the child has to build his/her own knowledge though physical contact objects (Piaget) or social interaction (Vygotsky). ^[1]

Talking about “constructivism”, a tool that is use is the “cognitivism”. Cognitivism abandoned passive mechanical orientation of behaviorism and sees the student as an active processor of information through the registration and organization of such information to reach its reorganization and restructuring in the cognitive apparatus of the learner. Explaining that this restructuration is not reduced to assimilation, but a dynamic construction of knowledge too.That is, the processes by which knowledge changes. In Piagetian terms, the accommodation of knowledge structures to new information. “The cognitivism helps to the learning as a process which is inside, produced by the student as a result of the interaction between the information and the active student”. ^[4]

Putting together the constructivism and the cognitivism, we can make any activity relationated with them that is call “didactic activity”. When we talk about activities, usually we make reference to planed and designed activities, which goal is that the students make determinate objectives. In other words, in short words, we can say that a didactic activity is a designed activity to reach a goal. The activities and the sequences will have positive educative effects during the teaching-learning process.

The didactic sequences are set in order that the activities are going to be presented throughout the ones that are in the process of teaching-learning. So, the emphasis is in the succession of the activities, not in the activities as its own, statement that justify the meaning that get the connection of the activities.

The didactic sequences will imply a premeditate succession (planning) of the activities (an order), which will be developed in a determinate period of time (with rhythm). The order and the rhythm build the parameters of the didactic sequences; moreover some activities could be proposed without it (realized in a space-temporal context different to the classroom).

We should remember that the didactic sequence is oriented to the development of the “syllabus plan”, that is either, the smallest unit or the “irreducible” unit that contain the functions or basic elements of the process of teaching-learning: planning, develop and control. The “syllabus units” are the same as primes in math.

“The didactic sequences build the heart of the didactic, the “here and now”, the moment of the true that are in game either the success of the game or the failure of the process of teaching-learning” ^[5]. The didactic sequence implies short-term planning, that during the performance converges with the long-term.

According to Zabala Videilla ^[1], the activities of the didactic sequences should consider the following general or essential purposes:

·         Inquire about students' background knowledge and check your level is suitable for the development of new knowledge.

·         Ensure that contents are meaningful and functional and represent, and to represent a challenge or an acceptable challenge.

·         To promote mental activity and the construction of new conceptual relations.

·         To encourage self-esteem and self-concept.

·         To enable the autonomy and metacognition.

Although, provably, exist many didactic sequences as the teacher can imagine, the value made (of the teacher) consist in formulate and select the most convenient during the development of the course.

But the question, “which is the best didactic sequences?” does not have a general validity and universal answer yet, because it has to make a contextualized answer according to the space, the time and the circumstances ^[2].

Can we use the same didactic sequence the whole year? This is not a good idea, especially in the context of our disciplines that, since the inductive, it should constitute a permanent base of inspiration and innovation, but this could have it own exceptions ^[3].

It is clear that the didactic sequences have a variable duration according to the difficulty of the topics raised. In different schools the didactic sequence is for each period of time. We know that in some cases the teacher only cares to finish the contents instead of realize that his/her students already have the knowledge necessary.

Here is an example of didactic sequences strongly influenced Piaget, his methodology is to structure each class following four steps, promotion

1. Promotion or development of cognitive conflict
            Individual technique, motivating, presenting a problem situation.
            Student Activity: Reading a newspaper article
2. Recovery of prior knowledge
            Individual skills of inquiry, for example: questioning dialogue.
            Activity: The teacher transcribes on the board the main concepts addressed in the        article, and asks students about issues that require further conceptual.
3. Presentation of new content
            Individual technique, exhibition, through recurrent and exemplification preparatory         treatment.
            Activity: Students will take notes of the theme.
            Group technique, through analysis of experiences shared
            Activity: Students speak out on what conclusions can be inferred.
4. Location on the cognitive schema of the new knowledge
            Group technique, recapitulation and closure questions.
            Activity: Students answer questions and develop a conceptual outline of the subject

In conclusion I could say that all in education is linked; to talk about constructivism is to talk about behaviorism, cognitivism, metacognitivism, didactic activities, didactic sequences, Piaget, Vygotsky, Krashen and so for.

The didactic sequences are groups of activities that are interrelated; they have the function to make easier the knowledge. According to Saint Onge in one of his postulates, that the education has two models the spiral one and the lineal one, the sequence didactic has to be in both education models. We as teacher have to make background in the class (spiral model) but it has to be in a sequence (lineal model) from easiest to more difficult.

References

1.       http://basica.sep.org.mx

2.       http://redalyc.uaemex.mx/pdf/956/95605009.pdf

3.     http://www.eumed.net/libros/2007c/322/secuancia%20didactica.htm

4.     http://www.monografias.com/trabajos14/cognitivismos/cognitivismo.shtml

5.       http://www.secuencias.educ.ar

6.       SNTE (2011). “Principios de la psicología y la educación”, en Curso-Taller, Fortalecimiento para Docentes 2011. Tema 3. Dominio de los Enfoques de los Planes y Programas y Programas de Estudio de Educación Básica. Pp.23-26.

Field Work. The importance of the dialogue with the students to make better the communication and teaching

The communication between the teacher and the class is very important to know about how the students get involved in the class and with his/her classmates.

According to Carlos Monereo Font, the teacher has to read the class ie, the teacher has to know what is happening in his/her class. He give us a definition about a Competent Teacher: The Competent Teacher has to make more than 5 desitions per minute, the teacher has to get involved to the class. Even, the teacher hyas to maintain the controll in the class, for this, the teacher has to read the class.

During my practices at Escuela Secundaria Federal No. 5 "Jesus Romero Flores", I could notice that some teacher talk with the students about his/her performance in the classes and less than that, a few teacher talk with the parents of the student to make them known about his/her son/daughter.

During the brake and the changes of classses, I could make a kind of interview to the studdents to know about that communication between Techer-Class, Teacher-Student and Teacher-Parents' Students; and I got surprised because of the students' answers.

Some students said that, at least 2 teacher talk with their parents aboy their performance in the class.

Others told me that Tehe are no communication between the teacher and his/her parents because of their job.

So in this case, the student is completelly autonomus in the class and in the moment of the exams.

In spite of the students are autonomus, they said that all teachers talk with them about the califications and how they are in the process of learning. The reaccion of the studetns to this was so happy because the fell acepted with their teachers because they care about them.

Lesson Plan 2nd Practices.

During this practices, I coul not give classes because the fist day of my class was Monday and the school made the Ceremonni as every Monday and the other classes was the test Evaluacion Nacional de Logro Academico en Centros Escolares (ENLACE) tras was from Wndsday to Friday

Cover Letter. 2nd Practices

Lesson Plan 1st practices.

I did not give the fist class becaous it was 8th March, 2011, and the school organized a "party" for the women of the school

Essay. Learning Styles

 According to Howard Gardner theory, Intelligence Multiply Theory, I made a field work to know more about the students.

During the practices, the students answered a questionnaire related to Multiply Intelligence, from Howard Gardner.

A test aswered by a student is shown below.

This test was answed by all students in the secundary school. Next, I sow the final results of the questionnarie. It is orderd in a general result and in parts.

The table shown above is to show students aswers in the test of Multiply Intelligency. As we can see, the students have more developed the "Logical-Mathematical" and "Bodily-Kinesthetic" Intelligences.

In this table, the show results are from all intelligences, buta that are not develop. So, this table show that the students do not have the Naturalistic Intelligence developed.

In this table, we can notice that the students have a normal develop ijn the Intelligences, with the exception to the Naturalistic one. The other intelligences are normal, they are neither no developed nor developed. However, the students are more "Logic-Mathematics" because the majority have this Intelligence in a major range. We can notice that 12 of the students are in this range.

 Just 3 students have developed the Visual-Spatial Intelligence. But we do not have to forget to the students who has at least one intelligence developed. 10 students have one intelligence developed, but is not the same.





According to thes Field work, I can deduce that in the next practices, my lessons planes are going to be directly to the areas that the students have more developed, "Logical-Mathematical" and "Bodily-Kinesthetic" Intelligences.

References:

1.- Gardner, Howard, 1994. Estructuras de la mente. La teoria de las inteligencias múltiples. "La idea de las IM", "La teoria" e "Implicaciones y Aplicaciones". Pages 35-57, 95-104, 167-, 210, 252-270,379-381, 417-421.

Field Work. Level of knowledge of the students

Diring the fist practices, the students suold know about describes likes and dislikes of somebody, the difference between "is" and "are", and the students during the classes of the period of practices, they showed that they can do it avery time the teacher ask to them.

And in the Unit 3: Shopping and Clothes, the students already know clothes vocabulary and haw to describe what a person is wearing; this topic is from 1st grade in Unit 2: Actions in progress, were the students describe what people are wearing using adjectives. Morover, the students can recognize whan a satement is in present and how to change it to and negative or an interrogative statement.

In the unit 3: Hobbies Lesure and Sport, in 1st grade, the students describe sports the like to play and the clothes and material they have to use. And using the -ing ending, from unit 4 the students in the clss culd use it to make statements.

Essay. How do students learn?

                In today’s world, how students learn is just as important as what they learn. To we, learning is to get and get a lot of data and contents of reality aspects; but in her book Qué y cómo aprender, Rosa María Torres says that learning is constituted by a group of representative process of the external world of the objective reality, based on the information the our senses throw out the perception, so for this reason, our mind, or cerebrum, keeps data and then, he use it to build conclusions and have it in our memories.

                The actual students learn by different ways related to social, cultural, economics and politics needs. Students are taught the basic skills in all the fundamental learning areas. They are also taught to be active seekers of information and constructors of knowledge. This is accomplished through teaching methods that emphasize the following strategies.

·         Engaged Learning: Students are engaged in active learning when they read, write, listen, speak and view in a variety of settings to gather information and develop concepts important to everyday life. These concepts, together with basic facts, form the foundation for all learning.

·         Problem Solving: Problem solving is fundamental to all curriculum areas. Students construct knowledge of the world as they recognize problems, formulate solutions and arrive at conclusions.

·         Communication: Communication is central to learning to express ideas and understand the ideas of others. Clear communication also involves use of standard grammar, spelling, punctuation and capitalization.

·         Collaboration: Collaboration is an important process in a democratic society. Learning is often a social process that requires students to value and work with others.

·         Seeking Connections - Knowledge does not exist in isolation. Students learn that the content areas are connected. Such learning is essential to forming a comprehensive understanding of the world in which we live.

·         Technology: Technology allows students to reach beyond the walls of the classroom to obtain information on a wide variety of topics. Technology permits students to be active researchers and communicators in the quest for knowledge.

A huge part of the students make the things like their teacher say, they do not experiment and are creative people, because they do not want to make an effort during making a homework, have a lack of interest in everything they do, because they do not engaged the previous knowledge with the new and how to use it in the future.

Talking about “creativity”, why do students are not creative people? They are not creative persons not because they do not want (in some cases), is because in the school, the teacher, sometimes destroy the way the students form to make some objects that, maybe, cold be creative (Rosa María Torres, 1998).

Teens learn in different ways, no one has a better learning style than anyone else. Some students are “listening learners”, other are “seeing learners” and other ones are “touch/experience learners”; others, like Howard Gardner, in his Multiply Intelligence Theory, say that there are seven Intelligences (special, linguistic, logical-mathematical, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalistic, and “existential”). In “listening learners”, as it name says, the students learn by listen the classes; they only need to hear to the teacher what he/she is saying, like lectures, discussions, etc. The students that learn by seeing their teacher just see the board, a PowerPoint presentation, or something written to learn. “touching/experience learners” have a more develop their cerebrum; they combine two actions to learn. According to the Multiply Intelligence Theory, the people learn in different ways, the multiply intelligences, help to the people to learn successfully and make it easier. Other students can learn by asking, because they solve their questions and many others by reading.

But, to make the student study, he/she has to make a process to learn. Saint Onge, in his book “Yo explico, pero ellos… ¿aprenden?” says that the learning process is how the students learn; but he mentions that “to learn is to go to an objective” (to understand the sense of the homework and to control their own way to learn), “to learn is to get new knowledge in their old knowledge” (to understand the information), “to learn is to organize the own knowledge” (the students can organize the knowledge), “to learn is to develop strategies” (to know cognitive strategies and how and when use them), “to learn is to go by stages” (activation of the thought, manipulation of the information and the synchronization of the knowledge).

There are many models about how the student can learn. Astolfi, talks about three huge methods. One of them is the “transmission”. Based on Claude Shannon and Roman Jakobson, says that the learning is rustic, just communication, decoder/encoder. The students’ attitude is passive; their goal is to put attention to the class. Other one is the behaviorism, from Thorndike, Watson y Skinner, or “conditioning” for Astolfi. Its central idea is conceder the mental structures like a “black box” which we do not have access; other way to define is when the teacher says what the student have to do and how. The constructivism, now used, sees the errors like part of the learning, the student learn by errors and themselves correct them. The teacher gives the tools to the student in order to build their knowledge. Other author, Cassany, says that the best way to teach to our students is by the stimulus-response. We have to stimulate to our students to get involved to the class, this methods goes by the same way as the constructivism. We have to contextualize and make a communicative class, to work in groups and just guide them.

There are many others models to learn, but, in my opinion, I think that the abovementioned matter are the principals.

But the students really study the whole time, or just when they have an exam? Some students neither study for an exam nor for themselves. Buy, why is this? Sometimes the students do not want to study because their exams is constituted by choosing, they never can develop their critical thinking, the exams are just made for short answers, exactly answers, and they do not make to the student a critical person. The exams just mark the memorization and the intellectualism, instead of the creativity of their structural thinking. To this, Sternberg calls the “exams tyranny”.

Now days we hear about “learning to learn” but, what is this? Is a basic competence defined as the capacity to continue and to persist in the knowledge, to organized the own knowledge. In other words, the students are compromised to build their own knowledge by their own learning and experiences, is to develop cognitive and emotional aspects (UNESCO, 1996).

References

1.       Astolfi, Jean-Piere, 2000. Tres modelos de enseñanza. Aprender en la escuela. Page 131-139.

2.       Cassany, Daniel, 1998. Las habilidades lingüísticas. Introducción. Enseñar lengua. Page 83-99.

3.       http://archivo.abc.com.py/2007-05-18/articulos/330322/como-aprenden-los-alumnos

4.       http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:juKeJB2oX3wJ:cmapspublic.ihmc.us/servlet/SBReadResourceServlet%3Frid%3D1225157924125_677302487_13907+como+aprenden+los+alumnos&hl=es&gl=mx&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESiSc5HpjMf-nD5CUdpKuqgH4cszHm7BUNqoomvZWwHDeY8hdiMFiqfH_nTxET3g5JGYl6jZYc_fqGJrQLcE8lOh6fb5rutuelZBrnrLbm7eEEULmrLAj0LSWO_vFK1Ac11pX6Go&sig=AHIEtbTqNhkyM9AGUiEXMsbMsmpXVS7XLA

5.       http://olc.spsd.sk.ca/teachers/students.htm

6.       http://www.asd4.org/curriculum/strategies.htm

7.       http://www.worldwidelearn.com/education-articles/how-do-you-learn.htm

8.       Onge, Saint. Sexto postulado ¿Tienen los alumnos verdadera necesidad de los profesores? Yo explico pero ellos… ¿aprenden? Page 85-96

9.       Sternberg, Robert, 1997. ¿Qué es la creatividad y quien la necesita? La creatividad en una cultura conformista. Page 27-56.

10.   Torres, Rosa María, 1998. Las competencias cognitivas básicas. Qué y cómo aprender. Page 71-81.

11.   Torres, Rosa María, 1998. ¿Qué es aprender? Qué y cómo aprender. Page 180-181.

12.   UNESCO, 1998. Los cuatro pilares de la educación. Capitulo 4. Page 1-5.

Cover letter

Cover letter signed by the Principal of the Secundary School

Another kind of education.

What would I change of education?

Maybe, this is a topic that is going to be talked for many students.


In our area, specifically, we have to chage many things. In the program says that the English classes are sessions of 3 hours in a week; how can we, English teacher, are going to teach everything if there are only 3 hours classes.


But really, what would we do to make it "better"? The program says that the texts has to be originals made by natives speakers with a complete idea, it has to recreate real situations in daily life, to work in teams, it talks about that at the end of the secundary school, the student has to be competitive to establish a conversation with native and non-native speakers of the language. All this contexts, are going to help to the student to develop his/her four language skills of communication (Speaking, hearing, writing, reading).

In the Escuela Normal Superior have an English assistant, who teach us more vocabulary, phonetics and gramar. I could say that if the secundary schools would have assistants too, the contact with the language is gonig to be better, the students are going to interact with a native speaker, they can practice that four language skills of communication. there are not going to be any problem, because the whole context is going to be in English.

Conclusion of the first and second practices.

During the first practice, I did not know what kind of students I was going to teach, I was so neveous. I only have 8 students in the first practice, so they could understand more the function of the class, the objective and they could do almost everything I ask them. Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures to prove it, I lost my USB memory where I saved all my classes for this first practice.

For the second practice, I have more students (27 in each group). I did all by myself because I was the only teacher who was there, for that reason I could not take some pictures, besides that it was the last week of school, so I could not reach my "Performance Evidence" for all distractions.

Sports

Worksheet foud on Web to teach Sports that the students should know to express preferences.

2nd. practice. Lesson Plan 3

Lesson plan for the third English class