Just a Peek EFL Writing Community joins Slice of Life in 2012 Day 20

Reblogged from Just Plain English:

Hi there everyone! We are a writing community of EFL learners who would like to go beyond the classroom in our exploration of writing in our foreign language, English. We want to really write, and the Two Teachers have given us our opportunity. Although we will not be writing for any prize, we will be winning valuable writing and readig practice.

Read more… 39 more words

Hello Ellen! Is this slice of life challenge like the previous one? Should we post in your blog or this can be dobe directly to slice of life chanllenge blog? Greetings!

Important question!

Image form http://autism-quest.blogspot.com/2008/09/auditory-problems-in-asd.html

Hello readers!!!

Today I am listening to an English programme and something interesting occurred. The fact is that I am a person whose mother tongue is not English. The other important fact is that I am from Mexico, and as you might know, we are neighbours to the USA.

Well, it is expected, for a person like me who hasn’t been to Great Britain, to learn and be used to the American English, but curiously I find it more easy to follow conversations between British people than Americans.

Do you have any idea why this happens? Do you know other cases like mine? What is your personal experience?

Please feel free to comment.

Thanks

Hello Readers!

 

I have been doing some things to prepare myself for my new style of life. Next week I start working as an English teacher in an elementary school in Morelia.

I’d like to thank all of you who have helped me in my preparation. I know I need more help, so I will be posting  here if I have difficulties.

There is another blog of mine (mocwrites.wordpress.com) where I publish another sort of information, feel free and comment in both sites.

Thanks again.

Bloom’s Taxonomy

Some days ago, weeks to be more exact, in my class of  “Comprension Auditiva y Expresión Oral”, as they call it, I implemented some aspects of Bloom’s Taxonomy without knowing it.

After reading those articles about this learning process I was able to recognize the six steps and could apply them better in my next exposition.

Here you have the comparison between  our (because it was a team work) two presentations.

In the first presentation we asked our classmates to do some exercises, the incomplete taxonomy was as follows.

We talked about Lazaro Cardenas’ life and at the end we had a chatting club in which I asked my classmates some questions  about the biography.

REMEMBERING: We asked our classmates to say the names of Cardenas’ relatives.

ANALISYNG: We asked them the following question about Cardenas’ marriage: What was the problem of marrying a soldier?

EVALUATING: There was another question about the private life of Cardenas and his wife. We asked them what would they have done if a daughter of theirs wanted to marry a soldier.

CREATING: The last relevant question we asked was about some reforms in education that Cardenas did. We asked them What would have happened with education in Mexico if Lazaro Cardenas had not created the IPN?

Some days ago, and after reading and understanding the Bloom’s Taxonomy, my team gave the last presentation of the course. As usual we assessed our classmates through the conversation club. This time with Bloom’s Taxonomy in mind.

We talked about senses.

REMEMBERING: We asked our classmates to recall the five senses.

UNDERSTANDING: The activity here was to explain in their own words about one of the five senses.

APPLYING: We asked them to tell us a situation where senses can be affected because of pollution.

ANALYSING: Students had to think about some other alternatives to prevent blindness.

EVALUATING: We presented some cases of senses which are more developed than the others. We asked our classmates to tell us some pros and cons of those cases.

CREATING: We asked them to create an ad campaign to take care of our senses.

That’s all for the Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Morelia MEXTESOL

Hello readers!

This time I post the links to MEXTESOL and to the local chapter, Morelia MEXTESOL.

http://www.mextesol.org.mx/

http://moreliamextesol.wordpress.com/

In those sites you might find useful information.

Thank you for reading this blog.

My Learning Phylosophy.

Here is the link to my glogster “My learning Phylosophy” I hope you enjoy it. If you want to leave a comment leave it here.

http://mocshire.glogster.com/my-learning-phylosophy/

Collaborative Work

Collaborative work rules today. Since we have become more dependent on technology, we do some things through internet.

Working in a collaborative way is one of the most common activities we do via internet and all technology that supports it.

For me, collaborative work through internet is new. That is why I felt myself a little unuseful. I am used to work personally and to direct all my colleagues, but this time I had no opportunity to keep on telling them to do their tasks. I could not feel myself as a leader and I was lost in the project we were asked to present.

Besides this experience was a little uncomfortable in the beginning, now I am applying this method and using  this platform in my other school. And believe it or not, leadership has returned to me, now through internet.

image from http://grupoeducativa.blogspot.com/2011/01/educando-ninos-lideres.html

Mini post. Againg in the net.

Hello everybody!

I had been busy doing my homework from school. I cannot left my classmates alone doing work that affect my evaluation, so I had to make sure they did things correctly. Next weekend will be the same ( I bet it will),  but this time I have to do other homework first.

Enjoy my posts.

We have to what? Talk?

After I have visited the site http://tefltecher.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/tesol-spain-thingy/, I have been thinking about what some “teachers” have said about other ”teachers”.

One day, one of those teachers said that we, as future teachers, must learn to speak, and that grammar doesn’t matter when teaching another language. Personally I think that both, speaking and grammar, are important. And people who say things like that should not be called teachers.

Well, now I should say that the most difficult skill  that students have to learn, is to speak. There are many different causes. It doesn’t matter what the cause is, teachers should pay as much attention to this point of the learning process as they do to with the grammar thing.

Another memory (from high school) I have is a good teacher of mine, who really taught me grammar, and made me speak in English. This teacher, whose last name is Tzintzun, used to ask us to record a tale as if it were an audio book for the end-of-semester project. He used to form groups and assigned us a tale. All the students must participate at least during two effective minutes. This way all students got involved into the work and helped each other by the time they had fun recording the tale.

Now that technology is more accessible for more people, there are much more options to take advantage of.

I would use VoiceThread http://voicethread.com/ with my IMCED classmates (the majority of them do not speak English). Using VoiceThread I am able to help them talk in English and teach them English grammar. The advantage of using this tool is that it allows users to have conversations around media such as images, videos, documents or presentations.

Literacy Circles

What is a Literacy circle?

The answer is not essay, but in general, it is a technique to read texts. It is developed in groups, so the reading is less boring and more active. Each member of the group is asked to read a portion of the text, so the group covers the text faster.

In literacy circles the four skills of communication are practiced. Readers have to read his part, analyze it and share they ideas, opinions and thoughts with their mates. They discuss the text and take notes. After all the main goal of literacy circles is to build knowledge in a collaborative way. In some cases it may be fun.

Regarding to the graphic organizers for a response to a story I would use the story map organizer.