WEEK 10 (31/01/13)

Today, we have devoted the class to take a look on different English text books. But before there have been two presentations. The first one based on Publishers' websites and the second one, in which I participated, was about implementing a reading program. In order to have a look to our presentation, I have added the powerpoint in my PLE. After the presentations, we have had the opportunity to examine different English books from different publishing houses and for different levels. Firstly, we have done pair work as we have discussed about one of the books with our partner following a questionnaire. Secondly, we have presented mutually our books and we have explained them the advantadges and disadvantadges. Finally, we have shared out impressions with the rest of the class.

As I have said before, this week in my PLE I have added all the material connected to the oral presentation. Therefore, we may find the powerpoint presentation. Furthermore, in our oral presentation we have used Triptico, a programme that I wrote about two entries before. This time, we have used it to create a game.

WEEK 9 (24/01/13)

Today, after the microteaching session on 'My wellbeing', which has been really interesting because of the use of ICTs when teaching, the session has been teacher-centred, that is, we have focused on how teachers have to behave to succeed in class. In this sense, I think that it has been very interesting because the different handouts we have received might help us in our Practicum II. In order to do this, our professor has given us a ten-level scale to take into account in order to achieve a good working atmosphere. Furthermore, we have read a chart with different items about what effective teachers appear to do; techniques to engage and motivate learners; different teacher behaviours and a short self-reflection questionnaire about it; some classroom routines and protocols and, finally, how to use questioning and elicitation techniques effectively in English.

This week, I have added to my symballo a webpage called Hotpotatoes that a teacher from the Master presented to us. Hotpotatoes is very interesting as it allows you to create your own materials easily, for instance, a multiple choice activity.

PRACTICUM I

I would like to devote this entry to my experience on Praticum I. I have taken this decision because I would like to add a tile of the Official Language School of Santa Coloma. During my internship there I learnt a lot about interactive boards, as the majority of the classes have one. This resource allowed the teachers to work on their books in a completely interactive way. However, one of the books that they used, The New English  File, do not have all their materials ready to work on this platform. But, this year they introduced new books in some levels which have all their materials ready to work completely interactively. It was thanks to these books that I discovered all the effects that technology has on teaching English. Because of this fact, I have also added in my PLE a tile for a programme called Triptico, which enables you to create many materials for the students and even, to simulate television quiz shows!

WEEK 8 (17/01/13)

Today, as usual, we have started the class with two microteaching sessions, one on School Reports and the other one on the Second World War.

Afterwards, we have continued with CLIL. Today, the teacher has shown us some activities integrated skills and she has given us many resources to take into account when we do our own CLIL. Additionally, she has also handed us out some handouts to exemplify how we can go beyond when teaching some of these skills to our future students.

This class has been really useful because I have discovered a webpage which I think is really interesting, lyrics training, and therefore, I have added it to my PLE. Furthermore, I have added a tile on Shakespeare because I forgot it last week and a tile for Prezi, which is a program to create presentations. I had not added it until now because I had the opportunity to see it in class and I really found it very interesting and engaging. Finally, I have also realized that there was not a tile to visit some of the tasks that I have done for the subject. For this reason, I have added Google Drive in my Symbaloo.

WEEK 7 (10/01/13)

Today, the class have been focused on CLIL. To start with, some partners have done a really nice presentation about the origins of CLIL and how to implement it well in class. Afterwards, the teachers have shared with us a powerpoint based on CLIL. Specifically, there were a lot of activities around the topic: Shakespeare in Art. I think that it has been a very interesting and useful class as many new resources have been presented to us, which can help us in a future to introduce CLIL in an engaging and interactive way.

Furthermore, throughout this class, we have seen different useful webpages as wordle.net and glogster, which I have added to my symbaloo. Indeed, I have used wordle to do one of the tasks, the one in which we have to describe ourselves as future teachers. This activity is also added in the webmix. To do it, I have writen some words in capital letters -the core ones- and in lower case, a list of adjectives, which describe me and therefore, can help me for my future teaching.

WEEK 6 (22.11.12)

This week we have started the class with another microteaching session. This one was about Oscar Wilde and even though, it might seem a boring topic, my partners have done it pretty well.

Secondly, we have learnt how to teach language skills. In order to do so, the teacher has introduced the information throughout two powerpoints. The first one, related to vocabulary and grammar and the other one connected to pronunciation. After that, we have made several funny activities/games to learn how to do it in a more practical way. It has been a very nice experience to play and share resources as it is sometimes difficult to work some aspects of English just by following a book. I think we have learnt different ways of teaching tough aspects of language in an engaging way.

Finally, connected with my symbaloo, this week I have decided to write my logbook in a blog page instead of Google Docs because it is more engaging and atracting for me. Furthermore, I have added two more tiles which can help us to teach English. This is because I am doing some particular lessons and when I was surfing the Internet I found several materials. One of them consists of different online games to practice some basic vocabulary, verb tenses, etc. The other one deals with different First Certificate's online resources and exercises.

WEEK 5 (15.11.12)

Today we have started the class with a microteaching session. The class was about hot food and I think they have done it really well. Afterwards, we had talked about Communicative tasks and we had made an exercise about the US Elections in order to learn how to plan an English session. To do so, the teacher had hand us in a paper with a chart, which I think it will be very useful to take into account all the different aspects in a session such as, the objectives, the basic competence that we want to work, the order of the different tasks and activities, etc.

This week I have added to my symbaloo two new dictionaries, a Catalan and Spanish one because I think that we will have to use it some day in our classes as we do not know everything about English, especially some vocabulary.