Activity 2 - Photo based reading comprehension

Below is the link to our activity with the photo:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/17tPOoyBsWP_QBs3WzmGPskMAAwK407XkqZA0or-ssMQ/edit?usp=sharing

Personal Reflection:
This photo is one of mine, and as a result, I obviously have a more personal connection to it. I chose it because the style of houses in the United States is very different than here in Spain. Also, I think it might be an interesting topic for students who are about to go to university and will have to live with roommates.

Some additional activities we could do might be having them write the history of their own house. Here in Spain many houses have been in the family for several generations. We could also expand the post - reading to include a more formal debate as to the pros and cons of living with other people and traditional residence hall living versus renting a house.

Reading Comprehension

I really liked the activity that we did at the beginning of class about "What would you do first" and what it supposedly revealed about our personalities. It is a fun, interactive way to start the class and a great warm-up.

Telephone ringing - work
Baby Crying - family
Doorbell - friends
Clothes line full (raining) - money
Sink about to overfill - sex

I was also thinking about other ideas for warm-ups to start class. I have a planner that has jokes for each week, and many of the jokes make use of a double-meaning of a word or similar sounding words, and things from current pop-culture. I know Ana mentioned that before she starts class she expects the students to have the date written on the board. I was thinking another "waiting" or warm-up activity along with the date would be to leave the joke on the desk and have them write the first part on the board, and then while they are waiting for the teacher to arrive they would have to try and think of the "punch line" to the joke. Most of the jokes are cheesy, but I still think they are good. Once the teacher arrives she could take 2 or 3 guesses from students as to what they think the "punch line" is, and if someone guesses it correctly they would get a prize and if not, simply reveal what the punch line is at the start of class.

For example, here is one of the jokes from my planner:

What's Forrest Gump's Facebook password?
      1forrest 1*.
( it sounds similar to "run forrest run" the famous line that Jenny shouts in the movie when Forrest is trying to run away from the bullies while he is walking home from school. ) It's not a great joke by any means, but it's still funny and I think it could be an interactive and enjoyable way to start class. If the students don't know that scene from the movie, it could also be a "bell work activity" to show them that scene on YouTube at the end of class. I included it here in case you don't know it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2-MCPa_3rU

Thinking outside the box - Lateral Thinking

I liked several of the activities that we examined today, especially the activity we did where we had to choose a place and an object and invent a story about what we would do with that object in that city.
I think it is important to engage our creative side or our imagination as much as possible in learning because it keeps us motivated and interested. I definitely plan to use this activity with some of my private students in the future. I am also really looking forward to using lessonstream.org. It is a site I didn't know about before and I am hoping I will be able to use it in the future.

I also really enjoyed the video of Ormie the Pig and it made me think of a site that I have used in the past with similar kinds of movies (no speaking). I have had a lot of success with it in private classes and in larger groups too. I thought I would share it here in case other people don't know about it. The name of the site is "Film English" and here is the link:

http://film-english.com/

Last year at my school CEIP Chans Bembrive we did a small project in our 6th grade bilingual art section with a lesson from this website called "Be Happy". Here is a link to the bilingual art blog for my school with a video of what we did. I hope you enjoy!

http://artinchans.blogspot.com.es/2016/06/what-make-us-happy.html

Key Competencies

Although I wasn´t in the first session, I really enjoyed watching the videos that were in the summary, especially the music video cover of Adele's "Someone like you." I'm a big Adele fan. Of all the key competencies I think C7 (Cultural) is the one that I relate to most. We add so much more to language learning when we incorporate culture. 

My experience living and studying Spanish in Seville, Spain in 2007 set the tone for and shaped my language learning. I not only fell in love with a language, but the country, and the people. I truly believe that if I hadn't had the experience of living with a family and studying Spanish in Seville, Spain I wouldn't have learned as much, nor do I think I would have pursued using Spanish language in my career in the U.S. or be back here in Spain today.

As a result, I am a fierce advocate for study abroad experiences, I even wrote my undergraduate thesis about this topic. As a future teacher I hope to be able to incoroporate the cultural aspect as much as possible in my English classes, because I want people to connect with English on not only a cognitive level, but also an emotional level, so that their learning can be deeper and more profound. 

  

Teaching Listening Comprehension

Today was our first session with Ana and I really enjoyed the class.

What I found most valuable about todays session was the structure that Ana gave us for improving listening comprehension and the listening strategies. I'm putting them here for myself for future reference. 

1. Pre-escoita: Unha preparación cognitiva para activar coñecementos previos que crea expectativas de percepción (psicholinguistic interaction between the reader/listener and the text). Esta actividade ten que ser simple, breve e ao alcance de todo o alumnado.

2. Primeira escoita: Elementos básicos: tema xeral, vocabulario (dar lista ou predecilo), algún dato fácil de extraer... Hai que evitar que se desanimen pola dificultade e que “desconecten”.

3. Segunda/terceira escoita: actividades máis específicas:

True/false/no information

Identificar información precisa para completar unha tabla

Opcións múltiples

Emparellamentos

E moitas máis posibilidades.

4. Post-escoita: pódense facer un número moi amplo de actividades dependendo do tipo de input,, nivel etc. Por exemplo, preguntas abertas (reformulación), trasvase de información: de oral a escrito, actividades de ampliación (buscar máis info sobre o tema en internet, reproducir a situación un role play...).

___________________________________________________________________________

LISTENING STRATEGIES

Listening for...... Listening in order to......

definitions define
details get meaning from
context
facts & opinions mark a route on a map
functions paraphrase
gist sequence
inferences summarize
predictions take notes
register & tone compare
synonyms describe a process
word associations predict

I am working with many private students right now who are preparing for the B2 FIRST exam and listening exercises are something they struggle with quite a bit, especially the longer ones (3 mins). I think I am going to try and implement this strategy of the pre-listening, 2 - listenings, and talking with them about different kinds of listening strategies. For example, in the exam they only have two chances to listen to the audios. I want to talk with them about listening for gist, and then listening while taking notes, and working those strategies. 

Activity - Session 1 (Powerful Posters)

Let's try this again. I'm not sure if what I'm proposing might be considered more of a "tarea", but I wanted to do something with all the protest signs that I read and saw in pictures from the women's march this past weekend. They are very powerful and I think it could provide a great activity for english classes. Below is the link to the full activity:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BmScnaFXiOVFAjl_6E_sCJku63LaqQs6dFUfwYq9iWU/edit?usp=sharing

CALL - Computer Assisted Language Learning

I had never heard the didactic term or acronym "CALL" before this class, but we've been learning about it or at least the tools used for CALL throughout most of this masters. For example, in our innovation class we learned about Edmodo, MOOCS, and briefly looked at moodle.

Maybe I'm very traditional, but I don't think I would be able to learn a language 100% on the computer. For me, language is a very social and communicative activity, and learning a language on the computer takes the social aspect away. However, it is definitely much more convenient than having to go to class, and you have the ability to study whenever you want. Online language courses are certainly a great option for people who are working full-time or parents who don't have a lot of time to go to a traditional class.

I currently work for a company here in Spain called 8belts, that offers online language courses based on "steps" (short phrases or words) and incorporates a lot of gamification in the program design. It is similar to karate a "belt 1" is a beginner with very little or no previous studies, and as you go up in number your language level does too, until you reach 5,000 steps as a "belt 8". The company intially started with Chinese, expanded to include English, and now they offer French and German too. Their claim to fame or slogan is that you can "learn to speak in ONLY 8 months". Their metholodgy is based on "steps"  that you learn one by one with a lot of repetition and review as well as studying a minimum of 30 minutes everyday. The students work in different "rooms" or "salas" where they learn new steps, listen to dialogues, and after a certain amount of time studying they "earn" a conversation with a native speaker. This is the part where I work. I have 30 minute conversations with the students via Skype. Most of the students I work with are people who are working full-time demanding careers such as doctors, engineers, and business managers, so it is a good option for the them, and the expensive price tag doesn't scare them away!

I have included some screen shots of the program and a link to the company website so you can get a feel for what the program is like. There is also a free trial for 8 days if anyone is interested in trying it out!

https://www.8belts.com/