Shakespeare

 Final Project MSBL2014

• Shakespeare's Padlet, lesson plan and ready-to-download activities  included (Fran, Elena and Pilar) 

NORWICH

NILE COURSE 2014

Reflection

 Wednesday  24^th of July.

The benchmark you have set for these reflections is very high and I don’t want to bore you with a deep reflection because I know you have worked so hard lately.

 I know your brain is crammed up with ideas and guidelines about the projects and the experiences of your time in Norwich but let’s call our wandering thoughts together in order to concentrate on our sessions from yesterday.

 First of all I want to thank the Nile teachers and the teachers from Madrid for having shared all their inputs and knowledge about teaching. Next year, it will be my first year in Tirso de Molina, a bilingual school in Vallecas and after this course I have a certain experience of task-based activities and high order thinking skills. I hope I won’t have to give up Blooms taxonomy due to low level of English and lack of motivation among the students.  As a matter of fact I will leave no stone unturned to make English and literature cool and attractive for our beloved young adults.

Yesterday we started with Carole. The title of the session was “Topics and Language Development”. She gave us 6 words related to travelling and she asked us to write sentences with them. The words were: travel, trip, excursion, journey, expedition. We realized that it wasn’t such a piece of cake as we had thought at the beginning and that we had different opinions about key points of the words especially with travel used as a noun like in “travel broadens the mind” and “my travels around the world”. Xavi added the word “outing” to the list and he recommended us the book:  “The bottle factory outing”

Then, Carole showed us a photograph from the Antarctica. We had to practise visual literacy and express our impressions and feelings about it: silence, cold, challenge. Then we saw another from Shackleton in two different moments of his life, we had to guess in which year the images were taken. We also had to give the reasons for having chosen a certain year. She gave us slips of paper with the different events in the explorer’s expedition and we had to establish the right order in groups.

After this, we really had to face facts. Carole proposed an activity for coordinating skills and we panicked on the spot, even before listening to details about the activity. She gave us a map with the coordinates and we had to find out the route the explorer had taken. The language we used was quite useful for teaching purposes: adverbs, comparatives, modals and some swear words out of desperation as Fran pinpointed. The bottom line was clear, it had been a cross-curricular, task-based activity which required high order thinking skills and patience too.

Carole asked us whether we usually gave out tasks taking into account the different skills and levels in order to tailor activities according to the students’ capacity which could be very useful in this case.

She finally gave us a sheet with a whole set of activities for “Tale of Endurance”: pre-activity, procedure and extension and we had to debate about our opinion and suggestions. We decided that Carole’s adaptation had been the best one because it was challenging, cross-curricular, task-based and on top of that, it implied the use of important words and grammar structures.

Macu made a remark about the possibility of homework with dead or living people biographies to practise either present or past tenses.

After the coffee break we had to complete gaps in a text about Shackleton.  We had the missing words on the other side as scaffolding support but she asked us to do it without looking at the words to raise the challenge and introduce other possible words in the gaps.

Our creative task was to design an advert. We had to imagine a powerful  phrase to lure people to apply for a job to travel on this ship. We talked about conditions, requirements, qualities, qualifications;the artists in the groups made lovely drawings. We really got the giggles thinking in sentences like: “have you ever killed a bear?” among others. When we saw the real ad from 1915, we were flabbergasted at the sincerity of the advert offering low wages and months of darkness. It triggered a very interesting and thought- provoking debate about honour in Victorian times and the kind of people eligible for this job.

She gave us an activity about a list of items we could save from the ship before sinking and we had to decide priorities and to propose activities. Fran said we could assign roles to the students, like a doctor or a cook in order to decide the most necessary tools for each of them.

We watched a video clip made by Tim Jarvis which recreates the voyage made by the explorer, with the same food, clothes and conditions but with a support vessel as back-up and the duration of 2 months compared to the 2 years of the original expedition. We talked about the differences between both trips. By the way, Carole downloaded this video clip on the moodle platform.  Students could recreate this story.

Our last scheduled activity at the Assembly House was a lecture by Ben Goldstein about “Building speaking skills”. Ben is a teacher trainer, he has written course books and he has produced teaching materials and, as most of us, he has a bee in his bonnet concerning the importance of spoken language.

We were confronted with real feedback from students who complained that nobody really taught them to speak English. As writer of course books he said he was a biased critic, nevertheless, he pinpointed that books simply focalized in vocalising grammar. He explained that it’s very difficult to replicate the intrinsic unpredictability and relative complexity of spoken English in the classroom. We looked at an example of speaking exercise using present continuous which lacked of personalised practise.

He quoted some theory from the book “English Language teaching textbooks” by Nigel Norhood.  This author thinks that the spoken language work should reflect what we know about the nature of writing and tasks should focus on discovery rather than production.  The speaker said he would concentrate mainly in spoken English and in dialogic pedagogy.

 Concerning spoken language, the real conundrum is how people can get messages across successfully and as an example we saw through David’s experience, a student in Barcelona.  This student was fed up with certain methods used by teachers, like guessing at photos or comparing images .What he wanted was to be connected to reality and to have a link between what he was learning and his real life. Goldstein went through the differences between spoken and written English with certain irony as when he refers to sentences like: “the only moment I enjoy is…” defined in grammar meta-language as cleft sentences. In spoken English we use basic conjunctions like “so” and “but” which are underrated among teachers insisting in “therefore”   and “nevertheless”; certain words can be placed at the end of the sentence in spoken English: though, probably, still, almost, even. There are new uses of some words like "so": “the phone is so last week” or even in" like" used in the progressive form:” I’m liking this book”.

He quoted Thornbury’s principles:

1-      Productivity

2-      Purposefulness

3-      Interactivity

4-      Authenticity

He insisted in the process of awareness-raising, appropriation and autonomy. He proposed speaking tasks about communication breakdowns in real life and the solutions to repair them. He stressed the importance of comparing second language structures with the mother tongue.

He wrapped up the speech with dialogic pedagogy, that is to say, sharing and processing information, respecting the learner control of meaning, the learner affectivity and the learner’s individual knowledge. To put it in a nutshell, the student must take control and must have an insider perspective rather than an outsider manipulation.

We watched a scene from French film “Entre les Murs” “The Class” and this reflected very well the ideas exposed by the speaker like the necessity to keep abreast of new uses of spoken English and the importance of real world contexts to create the link with the real life.

22nd july 2014

Good morning everybody!

Once again, yesterday was a very intense, productive and funny day. As we approach the end of the course (time flies!) it seems there are still many new things to discover!

Claudia opened the morning session introducing the concept of ´literary circles´ and its use in the classroom context. From all her ideas and proposals, I think we all got the feeling that these literary circles are very flexible, open and creative, allowing teachers a lot of variety in organisation, design, grouping, timing, activities, students´ roles, etc.
All this implies a new methodology when dealing with literary texts.

To illustrate this topic, Claudia brought in some of her students´ posters. She explained how she organised different roles giving some examples (the artist, the analyser, the head honcho and the connector) and the activities proposed for each of them. The result was incredible!

Later on, we discussed the use of all these ideas in our classes and realised that developing and mastering literary circles with our students is a complex process because we must not forget that there´s a lot of scaffolding in all these activities and our pupils will need training and guidance on higher order thinking skills. But no doubt, the effort is worth it.
Therefore, we should follow Claudia´s advice: ´Everything takes a lot of time, so start small´ and I would like to add ´Start small and think big´ and never forget ´The sky is the limit´. Thank you Claudia, we really got the taste of it.

After that, we continued talking about the concept of ´flipped classroom´ or ´flip teaching´ (something totally new for many of us), as opposed to the so called ´mainstream education´. It´s a form of blended learning in which students learn new content online by watching video lectures at home and what used to be homework is done in class with teachers, who offer more help and interaction with students. It is certainly a new path we can explore.

To finish this session, we thought about how to use CLIL activities (like the ones we did in the castle museum or in the market) with our groups back in Madrid. Claudia suggested a good idea: exploiting visual tours through different settings in English! This resource is cheap and we only need a computer and the internet.

After the coffee break, we had a lot of ´British humour´ with Johanna. We learnt new vocabulary, expressions, jokes, phrasal verbs, etc. She displayed a lot of activities that we can also use in the classroom.
By the way, do you know what is the longest word in the English language? If you want to know the answer to this ´comic mystery´, please, post your ideas on the blog. To help you I will post some clues on.


In the afternoon, Johanna let us discover new strategies to work on language through literature. Firstly, we talked about writing and receiving letters, something that nowadays seems to be old-fashioned. Then, she used some letters from a novel titled ´The Queen of the Tambourine´ by Jane Gardam. Through these letters, we focused on linguistic aspects such as emphasizers (´do´/ stressing ´be´) and politeness, paying special attention to softening expressions (modal verbs, etc.). It was a different approach to exploit linguistic issues from a literary text, something very useful if we want even our low level students to be involved actively in the classroom.

And to finish, I would like to mention a quotation that summarizes my feelings about the activities developed yesterday: ´Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn´.

REFLECTION ON 18th JULY SESSION

“A teacher who loves learning earns the right and the ability to help others learn.”
― Ruth Beechick, An Easy Start in Arithmetic

Hi everyone!
Before starting with my reflection I've decided to include a quotation that explains a little bit why we are teachers, why we are here and where we are heading...

Yesterday, we first had class with Claudia and as usual she anticipated what we were going to do that day which is something that I'd really like to start doing with my children (yes, they're twelve and thirteen- year-olds, but I like to call them "children").

We had a little chat about the mystery activity and drama techniques that we could use in the classroom. I like the idea of not unveiling the ending so that we are increasing our students' motivation to discover it themselves. Right after that we were introduced into a discussion about our own regional curriculum and whether it is flexible or not. As everything we do in our lessons is linked to prior activity, the six heads of department that didn't take part in the mystery dramatisation would be the "scribes" and would jot down all sorts of ideas that might come up. So, my six colleagues were mingled and after some minutes of talking they shared with the rest of the group quite a few things that are worth being pointed out:
-It's a flexible curriculum and nobody is strictly controlling what we teach or what we don't teach. To a certain extent we are free to choose the books we want our students to read.
-Grammar is not so flexible BUT cross-curricular contents and vocabulary can be coordinated with other departments.
-We, teachers have the feeling of being juggling all the time, since the Comunidad de Madrid is very demanding and wants us to be teaching literature, preparing our students for official exams and many other things...

I´d like to highlight Elena's contribution because what she said is something that I hadn't thought of until she mentioned it: the curriculum in our community is the same that we all had at university. It is extremely ambitious and of course our students are not mature enough to read certain books. I have the strong feeling that we are not doing things well in Madrid. NOT because of us (we are all putting our heart and soul into this project) but because of our "beloved politicians and legislators" who are not teachers and don't have a clue of our students' level and needs.

Although this activity has been especifically designed for teachers, I really liked the way Claudia organised it and it's a technique to be used in our class whenever we prepare a debate around a topic.

After this, we were given a handout about food in Britain. The exercise was simple as it consisted in reading a series of statements and decide whether they were true or false. This is a good anticipation guide for pre-teaching a topic. It makes you think and therefore it arouses your curiosity. The activity is later completed with a text. A piece of non-fiction that contains facts and figures but it turns out to be a very usable text since it can fit many levels, the statements are short and clear, cross-curricular contents are present (Maths, Health and Safety, culture) and then it may lead to higher order thinking questions (one of the key elements in this course). Claudia brought the session to an end by "challenging" us with a market quest, a little bit of movement and exchange with the locals which is always nice, especially with this weather. This quest made me think of the possibility of incorporating CLIL activities whenever my students go on a trip (not necessarily related to my subject but to other subjects too).

After the lunch break we had class with Jo and her "How-to-be-British lesson" another fantastic idea to introduce culture and stereotypes. We started completing a copy with certain pictures and statements that depict British stereotypes such as wearing eccentric clothes, speaking other languages or feeling proud of being British. As soon as we finished we moved on and watched a video in which people were interviewed  about their image of the UK. Most of them highlighted aspects like the diversity and respect for the individual, beautiful green landscapes, a long and rich history or tea. I also love these things about Britain. Our next task was to learn a bit of slang for a bit of fun and so it was!! We had the chance to learn expressions such as "get your knickers in a twist" or "Bob's your uncle" (my favourite ones). Slang is the toughest part to teach in a foreign language, it is demanding. You need to be updated constantly and it tends to change fast but at the same time it is a great activity to be done with students as they are learning real and useful language.

Just to finish off the day we dared to try one of those citizenship tests that British students have to take at school and I'd say that we are pretty much British. Amazingly I got 87.5% and made me think that I know more things of British history and culture than of my own...FOOD FOR THOUGHT.

BTW: I can't publish this without saying how FANTASTIC the "Nile's got talent" was and how the Spanish team absolutely NAILED IT!!!! Congrats to Xavi, Jaime and Patricia? (the Primary teacher) and of course all the teachers who contributed because all of them made us have a WONDERFUL evening!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PS: "God Save the Queen" and remember that "This course is sponsored by Comunidad de Madrid".

Recap July 17th

Allan Pulverness started his class yesterday asking us why we teach literature. For a couple of minutes we thought about it and shared our ideas with the person sitting next to us. Then some of us expressed our points of view in front of the class. This is something that I do with my students too. I like to give them something to think about when we start.

After that Mr Pulverness proceeded to show a powerpoint in which he showed us how to teach literature in a way that is attractive for our students. He insisted in the idea of the many grey areas that we may find when reading with our students in class and he also pointed out that in many cases we will be unable to provide our students with correct answers because quite often there are no right or wrong answers when it comes to reading. He also expressed his disbelief in multiple choice questions. Which is something I am going to have to think about since I quite like them.
After that we read a Raymond Carver short story and a D H Lawrence poem. We were pretty much free to choose the way in which we were going to approach our texts, and that is something that I also intend to do more and more with my students. I plan to give them a wider range of activities to choose from.
I really liked the way in which Mr Pulverness finished the class giving us the chance to write a reaction to the poem or the short story...if we wanted to because we are free to do whatever we want about it since it is not mandatory to write anything. That is again something that I normally do with my classes and it is rather surprising to see how many students actually want to write voluntary compositions.

After the coffee break we had drama class with David Farmer.
Some of us are naturally born actors and Mr Farmer knows exactly how to get the best of us. we did some exercises that I see myself doing with my students in "Ampliaciôn de inglés" in the not too distant future, ie, next year.

I loved the Stop/walk/clap exercise  (simple and effective, a fantastic warm-up). I liked the Whoosh game very much too and the way in which he taught us how to teach Shakespeare with the "Twelve lines spoken by a character" exercise, that I am planning to use next year too. The "Traditional South American story" was fantastic, probably my favourite exercise of all.

Time flew and it was time for our lunch break

When we came back with spent two hours with Claudia Rey working on our projects in the computer room. It was hard work, but we all made progress.

16^th July 2014

Have you got the stomach for a little bit of poetry? Joanne’s opening line introduced the topic of our first lesson, although we first made a detour, by visiting some “memes”. A “meme” is a neologism meaning a piece, both verbal and visual, widespread by the social networks, in an infectious, viral way.  A very famous one that has been circulating for the last two years refers to our profession: “What my Friends Think I Do” shows several pictures caricaturing the way we, teachers, are regarded by our friends, students, student’s parents or society: sunbathing, entertaining, arresting and punishing…  As a warm up exercise we were asked to create in small groups our own mental associations. We seemed to agree: we were nursery assistants for our their parents, who sometimes think a school is a teens’ warehouse; prison guards for our pupils; lion tamers or sheep shepherds, for us; firefighters for our mothers... 

Teachers’ social prestige is a topic we had dealt with the day before in our discussion groups with professionals from other countries: we usually have the impression that our hard and crucial job is despised by society: we are the ones who lacked the entrepreneurial spirit it takes to succeed in life, we are the unambitious ones who have settled down and live comfortably, although modestly, at the taxpayers’ expenses, enjoying excessive holidays. The reverential respect our grandparents felt for their children’s teachers is long gone, and in many cases we are seen as enlightened servants.

As a response to the unfair criticism that we usually have to put up with, sometimes even from our own friends, Taylor Mali, poet and teacher, proposes a hilarious poem/monologue “What do teachers make?” Joanne asked us to predict what the poem was going to be about by answering that question. Some anticipated many of the writer’s answers: “little money, a difference…” We all found the poem inspiring and energizing. After being asked by a cocky lawyer how much a teacher makes (meaning money), Mali gives him a lesson about the essential role we play in society. Building up minds, consciousness and spirits may not be easily quantified in terms of money, profit or revenues, but it DOES make a difference. Like this devastating and everlasting economic crisis is showing us, the countries more dramatically stricken are the ones where education expenditure is seen not as a long term investment, but as a burden.

The afterwards discussion got us into whether or not we should show this video to our students: NO, it seems we are showing off, or revealing a defensive attitude; YES, to see their reaction, how they or their parents see us… The discussion derived into the difference in behaviour and discipline between our Spanish student and the English ones we had observed in our visits to some local schools last week. Silence and order is a must since day one in British elementary schools, something assimilated by the kids. Some of us argued that it is just a cultural matter: we, Spaniards, either adults or children, are simply a louder society and therefore discipline is more difficult to achieve for us. The high levels of noise pollution in Madrid are an indicator that we are a society that doesn't seem to worship silence.

We continued with some reflections about our methodology: Should we make reading comprehension questions? There were considerable arguments for and against, depending on the students’ command of the language.   Should we have as an aim that the students love the text they have in front of their noses? No, but the aim is for them to respect it and reflect about the reasons why it is considered important, whether or not they like it. The lesson finished with an anonymous but insightful quote: “start and end a lesson with the learner”, that is, make it meaningful for them.

After the break we received a very special visit: Sara Jane, a 15-year old teenager who expects her marks and her entrance in the A levels. To have a first-hand witness was a very interesting experience: Her first shy and then increasingly confident answers were very revealing in matters such as bulling management at schools, leisure and free-time activities, everyday life of a British teenager, and aspects of the educational system quite different to ours: their strict dress code, the few homework hours they need,  and the fact that in their A levels they are allowed to study three, and only three, optional subjects, whatsoever. Among the most inspiring things she said, her concept of a good teacher: someone strict but accessible, helping and friendly. The lesson ended with a teen language activity, in which she and Joanne acted out the slang words in a context.

The afternoon lecture by Sandie Mourao in the Assembly house was especially stimulating for me because of my interest in visual arts, illustration and drawing. “Pictures, words, and the gaps between” dealt with picturebooks, a concept linked with the graphic novel, although usually aimed for the youngest students. By means of pictures, other contents can be conveyed as a side-effect: kids can see how characters look different, and yet equal, from each other. Mrs Mourao showed us extremely creative examples, such as “Wolves”, a book inside of a book with three different endings, or a cumulative story called “the House that Crack Built”, about the consequences of drug abuse. Twelve of us acted it out, reading a line each, and creating a hip-hop effect. A mutually enriching connection between words and pictures can create something new, proving that in art, literature and education 1+1=3.

Reflection on July 15th

We are already past the halfway point of the course and there’s still a lot to be done and to be learnt.

We all loved to see Carole back in the classroom as we found last Friday’s lesson on Van Gogh really inspirational. And the same applied for yesterday’s lesson.  To start with, Carole presented us with some little whiteboards and markers and asked us to write something that we recalled from the previous lesson, either a word or a sentence. Then she arranged us in a circle and asked us to hold our boards up so that everyone could see our sentences or words and ask questions related to them. This proved a nice warm-up activity and a good refresher strategy as well. I think everyone fancied the idea of the little whiteboards for classroom use (our students are bound to love it) and some of us started speculating about prices and all that. If we order in bulk, we might get a discount! Maybe we should ask for a quotation.

This activity provided the springboard for a thorough analysis of the Van Gogh lesson. We completed a grid in which the activities we had done in that lesson were described in terms of their aims, the level of cognitive demand according to Bloom’s revised taxonomy and the language support provided by the teacher. In this respect, it was interesting to consider the language that our students might need to work on before doing the activities. In general, everyone seemed to agree that some additional help would be needed including work on language bits such as vocabulary related to painting, verbs of perception, agreeing and disagreeing and so on.

To wrap up the lesson, Carole gave us with two follow-up activities, and we discussed how they could be exploited in the classroom. Ideas included running dictation, and some interesting variations were suggested in terms of groupings, roles of students and turn-taking. The song by Don McLean was also very successful, and some of our colleagues could be heard singing the song to themselves in high spirits (Any guesses?). The song was the last activity and also the cherry on top of the cake. This was our last lesson with Carole and we all gave an enthusiastic round of applause to her.

After the coffee break, we had the Nile Cultural Exchange session. In groups of four or five teachers of different nationalities, mainly French, Swiss and Spanish, we discussed a number current educational issues, in particular with reference to teachers’ working conditions, provision of ICT resources and other facilities, the curruculum and so on. Then, back in our classroom, we had a little feedback session in which information was shared and similarities and differences between educational systems in different countries were pointed out. After the lunch break, Claudia  gave us some time too to comment on what we had learnt, and also made some flattering comments about our level of proficiency in English. We had this little moment of blowing our own trumpet that we all liked so much.

Before starting the lesson, Claudia brought us this new material she had just been sent. The Thinking Dice are perfect for getting your students using their higher order thinking skills.  In Claudia’s session we worked a little bit more on poetry, and this time we focused on imagery, including visual, auditory and touch images. We started off by listening to a video of a performance of sonnet 29 by Shakespeare, and then we moved on to poems on swimming and on baseball. Claudia provided us with the reference of the material she uses, and you can find it here if you are interested. Once again, Claudia insisted on the idea of not killing poetry, and providing a little dose at a time. Our last afternoon activity was an Edgar Allan Poe mystery, The Purloined Letter. Two groups had to perform the play for the third group, and these had to discover the mystery. Both performances were well received by the public, and actors and actresses tried their best at delivering their lines, but fortunately this is not how most of us have to earn our living!

On a completely different note, our Touchable Dreams evening session gave us an idea of the symbiosis between poetry and music. We all enjoyed the music, the poetry and the performance. 

Reflection 9th July 2014

On Wednesday 9th July we were so lucky as to visit 2 secondary schools in Norwich: Notre Dame, a catholic school, and City of Norwich, an academy. I was in the group who visited Notre Dame. When we arrived, we were divided into two groups so that we could join two different lessons (French and Technology) and some students showed us around the school. Then, we had the chance to speak to two teachers at the school who very kindly answered all the questions we had for them.

The first thing I noticed when I went into a classroom was the huge amount of material resources available, including a computer, an Elmo camera, an IWW and lots of classroom furniture including coloured drawers easily accessible for the students. There were IWWs in every single class. However, what striked me most was not the material resources, but the human resources. As the students were touring us around the school we could actually see most of the teachers using the IWW.

The group I was in went to a technology class where we found 4 teachers and 21 students. Well, let me explain: there was the Technology teacher who explained the lesson and assisted the students. There were two technicians who also assisted the students and who made it possible to divide the class into two groups (although they normally just have one technician) and a support teacher for a hearing impaired student. We were in heaven! I really like the idea of support teachers going into the class with the students and helping them there. The support teacher not only helps the student s/he is assigned to. Just having two adults in the class immediately helps with behavioural problems. Students who have any disability, Special Needs students and immigrant students who do not master the language may have a support teacher.

When we had the chance to speak to the two teachers at Notre Dame we inquired about the Modern languages lessons, as we were shocked at having students doing a listening or reading a text in i.e. German and answering comprehension questions in their mother tongue. The German teacher said that that was the way their GCSE exam was, so they were preparing them to pass those exams. Thus, we can see how the external exams are based on comprehension and not on production. Nonetheless, what I like about having the exams at the end of the 4th year of secondary school is that their curriculum sets the contents for the external exams, not for every year of secondary school as they do in Spain, so teachers have 4 years to organize and cover those contents.

Finally, teachers were on strike on 10th July for different reasons, one of them being the Performance Related Pay which is due to start in UK in September. According to this, if a student gets a B in their 11 Plus test and then they do not do as well in their GCSE tests, the teacher will see his/her salary reduced. It is unreal and unfair not only for the teacher but specially for the student to have a system exclusively based on results. What governments do not realize is that we, teachers, do not work with statistics or production numbers. We work with people, persons who are in front of us every day, who have lives that may or may not be easy. They should realize that a student is not an unalterable construct, who once good at Maths will always be good at Maths.

When teachers evaluate students work they take into account the whole process, the students effort, the progression from the beginning to the end of the year, their attitude in class and towards the subject, not only the exams’ results. If we were only to consider results, what grade should we give the politicians who still haven’t found a way out of this economic , social and political crisis? Should they have a performance related pay? I would rather think there could be an effort and responsibility related pay.  

REFLECTION ON 8th OF JULY.

VISUAL LITERACY by Claudia Rey.

First of all, what do we understand by Visual Literacy? Most of us agreed that V.L. is the ability to produce meaning from images. Observes have to be able to anlyze the history, the culture, intellectual components or ethical, aesthetic...Since observes are our own students, we  need to select the image taking on account several issues such as age, knowledge, background... Image should be meaningful as well as challenging to produce communication.

JAMIE KEDDIE, an expert on V.L., turns the cake up-side-down. `Every picture does not tell a
stoty´.
`We are the ones who create the story´. To proof his definition we watched  a video by him: `Brilliant toilet´.

VISUAL DIAGRAMS can be used in many ways during our lessons and for different purposes: grammar, Literature, vocabulary, events, .. Very useful the list of visual organizers together with a graphical representation of all.
We ended the season with Claudia by doing a Mystery Log activity, based on some pictures from the Norwich Castle Museum.
We also had a task for the following visit to an English school. Would we be able to recognize the five skills- Group Work, Bloom´s Taxonomy, CLIL, Critical Thinking and Visual Literacy- we have been working on?

SPELLING MYTHS AND ENCHANTMENTS by Johanna Stirling.

Very interesting to try from the cauldron of the History of English Language and taste its potful with all  kinds of different ingredients: Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse, Latin, Norman French, Printing press, Dictionaries, more French, Latin, Greek, other languages. Some History is GOOD for our students.

Is English spelling chaotic?
Only 20% of the  words are irregular but these are the most common.
The great majority, nearly 50%, belong to the Phonololical system. The rest are sorted in other systems such as: Morphololical, Graphonic and Etymological.

Six steps for spelling: learning and teaching

1. The look-say-cover-write-check-spelling chart.  Excellent!
2. Rules as a general reference and pattern.
3. Multiple choice= the seed of doubt. Shapes of words better, or spelling gym.
4. Testing is NOT teaching. Always taste the words in context.
5. Homophones should NOT be taught together at early stage . Later they can be useful.
6. Technology. Is it ruinning spelling?

Thank you Claudia and Jo for your generosity. We are learning a lot.

REFLECTION ON FRIDAY 11TH  JULY 2014

By Anabel López

Friday the 11th was a great day. We met two new course tutors, Carole Robinson and David Farmer and we enjoyed our visit to the Castle museum with Claudia in the afternoon.

 During the First Session, Carole developed a superb lesson on CLIL on one of my favourite painters Vicent van Gogh. She used a nice way of awakening us introducing ourselves as we threw that tiny rubber duck, which was later on used to catch our attention and indicate time was over. I am considering to use one of them in my classes.

She explicitly mentioned her objective at the beginning of the lesson, what we should focus on for our next session, which was scaffolding and critical thinking.

As I was doing my reflection for today, I can firmly state that her lesson was a perfect example of scaffolding, starting from the  lower order activities, which were more procedural at the beginning, with our own dictation of words of the vocabulary that would lead us to the presentation of the topic. As if we were building a skyscraper, each step led us into more complex activities followings Bloom´s taxonomy, ending with the HOTs or higher order thinking activities, which develop our critical thinking. We worked  the four skills in the language, the activities were task-based and they were student-centred. We also worked individually, in pairs, in a small group and as a whole class.

After the presentation stage, we should reflect on our self-awareness as learners and decide whether we were visual or auditory, splitting the class in two groups. The visual group watched and discuss the documentary  Van Gogh - In His Own Words - YouTube and the auditory group, listened and discussed. Then we watched and listened together.

I consider I should previously do more activities with my students to help them develop this self-awareness of the kind of learner they are, a concept that was also mentioned in the lecture by Anne Margaret  Smith, so that they can take advantage of their own learning process and that can help us design our activities.

Finally in the last stage we had to choose our favourite quote from a list of Vicent van Gogh´s  in the documentary and interpret what he meant. A clear example of critical thinking, going beyond his words. My group and some other people chose this one.

" Love many things, for therein lies the true strength. And whosoever loves much, performs much and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well."

I consider we can use this procedure to any topic and level.

 

The Second Session was Drama and language Learning by David Farmer.

From the very beginning we knew it was going to be fun when we moved away all the tables. We were given lots of games and activities that we can use with our students,  no matter what their linguistic competence in English is, everybody will enjoy the activities and I feel they can be really motivating  for those disruptive students whose level of English is a little bit lower  than the average in the classroom.

I would include the activities in three blocks, those games of attention, such as the 1,2,3 and its variations, games for practising vocabulary or different categories and a specific grammatical structure, for instance the `The sun shines on someone who...´ or `What are you doing?´ And finally the third group those of miming and Freeze Frame or Tableâu, which in my opinion are great to be especially used for our literature lessons. It is a wonderful way to make literature alive.

Third Session

We continued the afternoon doing `Mission Possible´, another way of preparing activities at a different stage of complexity and abstraction LOWs and HOTs as regards Bloom´s taxonomy and enjoy the Castle Museum, which is one of the jewels in Norwich. We can prepare similar didactic units enjoying any museum in our city, working  this virtual literacy and then later with  realia. 

 

A new approach to grammar

If you are interested in David Crystal's new and fresh approach to grammar lessons, you should read this article published today in The Guardian.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/mind-your-language/2014/jul/11/mind-your-language-grammar-day

NORWICH CASTLE FIELDTRIP 2014

MSBL useful webs /Norwich 2014

This entry was created to have all the important and useful sites at hand

VISUAL LITERACY

• Jaimie Keddie Lessonstream to work on visual material. Ready-to-use lesson plans
• The Mojenho Daro

LITERATURE/STORIES, ETC.
Check what is out there first at Popular young adults fiction(goodreads) and spine breakers(read some reviews)
To get some lesson plans Britlit (British Council)
Suggested reading list at Notre-Dame School in Norwich (England)

• To get reviews Shadowing site
• Interactive Novel 253
• Readability test Tool
• lovereading4kids

SPELLING

• Johana´s Blog thespellingblog and the spelling page in facebook
• Look Say Cover Write and Checkand Spelling and Grammar games
• Spelling City
• Create your own word shape pictures

POETRY

• Poems Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Rhyming Dictionary

PICTURE BOOKS

• picturebooksinelt Sandie Mourao Wolves (Emily Gravitt)

INTERESTING LESSON PLANS and other stuff

• NASA
• Magic moments
• Online Etymology Dictionary
• The English Language Centre by Johana
• Make and Share videos with animoto

Thank you Johana for your contribution , again 

A.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/0/25119209  (BBC Secondary resources)
B.  http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/
C.  http://www.collaborativelearning.org/activities.html
D.  http://www.tes.co.uk/secondary-teaching-resources/
E.  http://www.senteacher.org/print/
F.  http://www.topmarks.co.uk/
G.  http://www.dvolver.com/moviemaker/make.html
H.  http://www.classtools.net/
I.   http://lessonstream.org/
J.  http://www.esldiscussions.com/

K.  http://teachers.net/lessonplans/subjects/literature/

REFLECTION 10th JULY 2014

We are nearly half through the course, it is unbelievable how time flies. Our conversations on the schools we visited Notre-Dame School and City of Norwich School haven´t stopped and poor Analia couldn´t say everything she/we had reflected on. Claudia got us back on track by presenting “the Fast and Furious Activity” in which the purpose was not only to use graphic organizers and already seen teaching activities but also to recycle vocabulary and newspaper articles. Finding your partners by miming was fun. We sure could use this activity. Thank you.  

It was also interesting going back with Jo to yesterday´s lecture “Language Learners and SpLD”, (by Anne Margaret Smith) we all agreed on some general interventions that we could use in whole group instruction (check your notes).The second bit of the afternoon started with My bonnie lies over the ocean, I could think of a few colleagues that could register for “Nile´s got talent night”...and I am not telling!!! 

We were delivered our fieldtrip instructions to Norwich Castle as well as our assignment on the visit, plus  the instructions to carry out our end-of-the-course project. 

The rest of the session was dedicated to poetry. Interesting activities with Brian Patten´s Hair today, not her tomorrow poem. Again good activities that involved comprehension, reading, listening and speaking skills that we can easily put into practice (I enjoyed the Reading and Reacting game).

To top a busy day we went dancing Ceilidh which is a more riotous and eclectic variation on English Folk, Barn or Country dancing.  I hope you all enjoyed it ...And I now know for sure that Macu and Fran are next in the list for " Nile's got talent night". 

misshernando´s wiki (Middle and High School) and misshernando´s blog (Adult students EOI)

REFLECTION 7th JULY 2014

NILE NORWICH - COURSE MSBL 2014

REFLECTION 7^th JULY 2014

NAME OF THE STUDENT: Blanca M. Garcia Munoz

                 

LITERATURE: YOUNG ADULT FICTION Teacher: Alan Pulverness

In this first approach to ‘Young Adult Fiction’ we agreed that reading implies not only associations, memories or feelings, but also leisure moments that belong to the reader. Reading is also form of connection with different realities. The reflection which arises when analysing the DIVIDING LINES AND GREY AREAS WHICH ESTABLISH THE LIMITS OF YOUNG ADULT FICTION AND ADULT FICTION is that it is possible to propose a criterion in order to determine the qualities of writing for young adults which make a book appealing for them. Teen fiction is quite a new phenomenon, and it is a kind of in-between stage. There are some aspects to be taken into account when determining the grey areas which make a book suitable for teenagers, such as the CONTENT. The content is not a matter of age-appropriateness. Teenagers want a book to be a page-turner and unputdownable. Sometimes book may have fantastic elements, suspense and mystery, but in general teenagers want to feel identified with the protagonists or the plot. There are also some aspects which are essential, like READABILITY, because books should push teenagers to improve their language, or the PROTAGONIST, the NARRATION and the FORM. In general, a SENSE OF REDEMPTION is provided, and also a good RESOLUTION. We have to bear in mind that teenagers like testing experiences, they are looking for BOUNDARIES. Nowadays, the web promotes interactivity from readers and there are ‘spine breakers websites’. It is patent with the books which were proposed in class.

LITERATURE: INTRODUCTION TO BritLit Teacher: Alan Pulverness

This new resource provides teachers with materials (forty ‘kits’) in which language and literature are carriers of cultural awareness. It is also a potential for the involvement of authors. One of the main reflections that we should do as teachers of a foreign language and as literature teachers is that we have to place students in the real role of a reader if we want them to be really engaged in the reading. In BritLit the after reading principles don’t involve comprehension questions or multiple choice questions. We can ask our students to do other tasks, for example, design a cover, write a summary, write a report… For these reasons, we have to look for the interpretative response of our students, asking them to work in projects, and understanding that in this case the INNER PROCESS IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE PRODUCT. Nowadays living authors may contribute with short stories, and readers can have access to contemporary images of the UK, with a great level of accessibility through BritLit. There is a wider involvement of authors in person or online, so the reader (student) may be directly in touch with the teacher, the author and literature itself. Another important point of reflection for teachers would be to think about which kind of support we should give our students without discovering the story and which kind of activities would go around it. A useful reflection is also that the accuracy when decoding texts, the recognition of lexis and the meaningful and expressive interpretation imply a wider level of implication in the reading process. Meaning is variable because it depends on the interaction between the reader and the text, and that is the reason why there are different understandings of a text. This is something that we could see when analysing the work ‘Visiting Time’ by Emma Brockes, in which speculation leads to a better understanding of the text.

CLIL: LANGUAGE THROUGH ART & BLOOM’S TAXONOMY Teacher: Claudia Rey

No doubt that dealing with paintings in class applying CLIL and Bloom’s taxonomy encourage higher thinking order.   The first activity we developed in class, analysing Picasso’s ‘First Steps’ or ‘Mother and Son’, directly applied to language and to content and was task based. In the same didactic unit, students can work in group and individually, and explore all the levels of thinking order and cooperative work. In fact, it is a very useful task to develop CRITICAL THINKING. There are other tasks, like Spot the difference, which also promote cooperative work and accuracy in descriptions. Also the students have to develop a strategy to play this game, they need to organise themselves, follow a specific order in the questions or divide the picture into a grid. Another interactive activity which students love is discovering a mystery through different letters which are going to be read in groups. The students of different groups will interact with the students of other groups following a different organization so that the activity will provide them with a fantastic opportunity for cooperative and interactive work, critical thinking and higher order thinking. My final reflection is that if the activities we propose in class are appealing to our students they will be more interested and motivated, and motivation is one of the most important aspects in the learning process.