Final reflection

3 things I have learnt.

I would say that I've learnt more than just 3 things. But, one that I would like to keep discovering is the tools you have offered to do the elevator pitch. At this point of my professional career, I'm trying to get as many 2.0 and 3.0 tools as possible, i want to discover how they work and put them into practice with my students as soon as possible. It's always a good way to encourage them. 

I also would like to mention the thinking routines. They are very interesting to integrate in our planning, and also, if we already do this kind of routines it would be great to be conscious about it. Furthermore, I take with me some ideas about class activities that use Cooperative learning, as for example: 

1) Jigsaw - Groups with five students are set up. Each group member is assigned some unique material to learn and then to teach to his group members. To help in, the learning students across the class working on the same sub-section get together to decide what is important and how to teach it. After practice in these "expert" groups the original groups reform and students teach each other. Tests or assessment follows. 

2) Think-Pair-Share - Involves a three step cooperative structure. During the first step individuals think silently about a question posed by the instructor. Individuals pair up during the second step and exchange thoughts. In the third step, the pairs share their responses with other pairs, other teams, or the entire group.

Finally, the Blooms Taxonomy would be an important aspect to remember. 

2 things I will do in my lessons.

Rubrics is going to be one of the aspects I will implement during this year. I find them very useful, and if the items are short and clear, students can easily understand what they have to assess and how. It's a very rewarding activity. 

Moreover, from now on I will take into account the SOFT and HARD CLIL; and for sure I will offer a better scaffolding to my students. 

Last academic year I was working as an English teacher and I started to do arts and crafts in English, so it was the first year that the clay corner was done in English. 

1. Show and tell: there are many techniques that we can use when we work with clay. So in the first session I showed them some of the techniques they had to use during the term. I gave them a piece of clay and I showed them a picture with a technique, I made it while explaining the name of the technique, at the same time they started using it. 

2. Pre-teach vocabulary: there is a lot of material they are familiarized with in their mother tongue but they don’t know the word in English. All the classroom, material and objects are labeled in English. During the first session I also introduced the material we would use during the term, so I show them the material and say the name, as well as I showed them the label.

1 thing I will continue learning about.

I will continue learning about CLIL in general. For me it's a way to get a deeper knowledge and taking part in CLIL courses allows me to plan didactics units that I can put into practice. I can refresh my previous knowledge and learn a lot more from the people I'm doing the course with.

Module 5 reflections

Although talking about new technologies is very common topic to talk about nowadays, most of our students have a better technological knowledge than we had at their age. I would like to mention two aspects; on the one hand, new technologies recently are ceasing to be new technology, because ICTs are beginning to be included in our society and in our daily lives, so the adjective "new" starts making no sense at all. 

On the other hand, we can say that our students are already digitized. They were born in the information society and therefore they are taking part in a digital learning experience that we probably we didn’t. But that doesn’t mean that they are competent in the digital field. Many of these children surf the Internet and search information, but they should be taught to be critical about the information they find, to be careful with the websites they read, and above all, they should learn how to use text editors or 2.0 tools that can facilitate their learning and contribute to the development of their personal skills and abilities. 

We don’t want to create technophobes (students who refuse to work with new technologies) but with no intention of creating technophiles. We must find the balance between both of these terms. As teachers, we must ensure that our students not only develop their digital competence but also their communicative one. At a certain point, they have to be able to communicate effectively and appropriately in a digital environment. So you could say that what we want is that students use computers to obtain, assess, store, produce, present and exchange information, and to communicate and participate in collaborative networks via Internet. 

We have to foster the 2.0 tools in order to attend their needs and make their learning process more interesting, dynamic and profitable. 

Would you like to investigate a bit more about any subject?

Of course I would like to investigate more about everything. Nowadays I'm really into new technologies, that's why I would like to get used to using the three tools to create our own Elevator Pitch.

KIZOA

POWTOON

EMAZE

Moreover, I would like to find some apps to work on my topic "Ancient Egypt". I think that they will also get a bit more motivated if they work with tablets, and not just with laptops. 

The Elevator Pitch

Little bird tales

TITLE OF THE TASK: Let’s create our Egyptian story

AIM OF THE TASK: -Students will have to create a draft about a story. (This story will have to take place in Egypt, and their main characters will have to be Egyptians God, Cleopatra, slaves, pharaoh, priests, nobles, craftsmen, scribes, sphinx, among others). -Students, using the knowledge they have been developing during the whole unit, will have to write the story in a paper. -Students will have to act out the story, so they can work on the speaking skills as well as the pronunciation. - Students will have to get used to the Littlebirdtales 2.0 tool.

DESCRIPTION OF THE TASK: (What are they going to do? How are you going to organize them? Steps to follow and final product) Students are going to be grouped in working teams. (3 or 4 pupils in each group). Pupils will have to create a draft about a story. This story will have to take place in Egypt, and their main characters will have to be Egyptians God, Cleopatra, slaves, pharaoh, priests, nobles, craftsmen, scribes, sphinx, among others. They will have to follow the story structure: characters, setting, problem and solution. Once they have finished their draft, I will correct it, using the editing marks you can see in the Annex 1. They will get the feedback of the draft and then they will have to modify it. Once they have corrected they draft, they will have to choose which member of the group is going to act out each character. And they will have to practice pronunciation, intonation, etc. Later one, they will have to use the Littlebirdtales tool, in order to upload some pictures related to the story. After that, they will have to register their story, and save it. The result will be a video of their Egyptian story and its explanation.

WEB TOOL (link): https://littlebirdtales.com/

Tutorial about the web tool. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lqIPL-dAN8

I think it is a very useful resource because we tend to use the ordinary book to tell stories and show the images to our pupils it could be a little bit difficult because the images are small and not all pupils can see them. We can modify or adapt a story to make it easier or increase the difficulty level. We can also create our own stories depends on what we want to teach; so if we want to work some values we can make a story to transmit our students these values.

I think that using new technologies while they are developing a story and everything around it, pupils can learn a lot of things, as for example, they can interiorizes the differences between the genres, they can interiorizes the structures of the different kinds of texts, they can practice intonation and pronunciation, and so on. I think that if we foster the use of this resource we will maintain the motivation of pupils; they can make their own story. And we can plan that after they have finished their stories, students can show them to younger pupils. But we have to take care during the explanation about how does this resource works, and we will have to anticipated which kind of problems students can find during the elaboration process.

Portfolio module 4

The evaluation process is one of the main aspects that come into play in the process of teaching and learning. We have many ways to assess our students as well as assess ourselves.

In the formative assessment is collected different kind of information on how students face the proposed activities; thus, you can see the student needs that arise, how are they taking the learning process, etc., so we can re-plan activities to meet the new needs that are arising.

From my point of view, the main features of the formative evaluation are:

-Get Evidence on how the teaching-learning process is been developing.

-Design action plans to redress errors, review or strengthen any weaknesses found, assign extra activities and program individualized attention to students as needed.

On the other hand, we have the summative assessment whose purpose is to determine the degree of achievement of learning objectives by students at the end of each learning period.

In my opinion, both kinds of assessments are compatible.

The fact that the "summative evaluation" is conducted at the end of an educational period to reach a final decision on the student's progress involves using the results collected over the course with the instruments of the "formative evaluation" as for example: self-assessment questionnaires, grills peer assessment, observation sheets, daily shared student-teacher, etc.

Here you have some resources related to assessment, hope they are useful somehow!

KATHY SCHROCK’S GUIDE TO EVERYTHING (ASSESSMENT AND RUBRICS)

http://www.schrockguide.net/assessment-and-rubrics.html



EVALUATING IN CLIL

http://www.leraar24.nl/dossier/3072/clil-skill-evaluate-learning-feedback


RUBRICS CREATOR

Click http://www.rubrics4teachers.com/ link to open resource.


RUBRICS FOR TEACHERS

Click http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php link to open resource.


Assessment and rubrics

Click http://www.schrockguide.net/assessment-and-rubrics.html link to open resource.

Module 4 Thinking routine

TITLE OF THE THINKING ROUTINE: 3-2-1 Bridge A routine for activating prior knowledge and making connections

EXPLANATION: This routine asks students to uncover their initial thoughts, ideas, questions and understandings about a topic and then to connect these to new thinking about the topic after they have received some instruction. Whenever new information is gained, bridges can be built between new ideas and prior understanding.  The focus is on understanding and connecting one’s thinking, rather than pushing it toward a specific outcome.

RESOURCES: -Glogster to do do a whole class 3,2,1 bridge. -Video http://ebiblemovies.com/watch/the-prince-of-egypt-moses/online-free/ -Annex 1: what do we know about Gods?

HOW ARE YOU GOING TO USE IT? This routine can be introduced by having students do an initial 3, 2, 1 individually on paper. The topic is going to be Ancient Egypt; then students would write down 3 thoughts, 2 questions, and 1 analogy. During each lesson they will do different activities, watch a video, read a text about Egyptians Gods, discover how they used to count and write, etc. After each topic has been discovered students complete another 3,2,1.  Students then share their initial and new thinking, explaining to their partners how and why their thinking shifted.  Make it clear to students that their initial thinking is not right or wrong, it is just a starting point.

Module 4

Assessment is one of the most important aspects during the learning process. 

Teacher’s Assessment

Rubric :

Example 2

CATEGORY	4	3	2	1
Comprehension	Student is able to accurately answer almost all questions posed by classmates about the topic.	Student is able to accurately answer most questions posed by classmates about the topic.	Student is able to accurately answer a few questions posed by classmates about the topic.	Student is unable to accurately answer questions posed by classmates about the topic.
Enthusiasm	Facial expressions and body language generate a strong interest and enthusiasm about the topic in others.	Facial expressions and body language sometimes generate a strong interest and enthusiasm about the topic in others.	Facial expressions and body language are used to try to generate enthusiasm, but seem somewhat faked.	Very little use of facial expressions or body language. Did not generate much interest in topic being presented.
Speaks Clearly	Speaks clearly and distinctly all (100-95%) the time, and mispronounces no words.	Speaks clearly and distinctly all (100-95%) the time, but mispronounces one word.	Speaks clearly and distinctly most ( 94-85%) of the time. Mispronounces no more than one word	Often mumbles or can not be understood OR mispronounces more than one word.
Collaboration with peers	Almost always listens to, shares with, and supports the efforts of others in the group. Tries to keep people working well together.	Usually listens to, shares with, and supports the efforts of others in the group. Does not cause \"waves\" in the group.	Often listens to, shares with, and supports the efforts of others in the group but sometimes is not a good team member.	Rarely listens to, shares with, and supports the efforts of others in the group. Often is not a good team member.
Uses complete sentences	Always (99-100% of time) speaks in complete sentences.	Mostly (80-98%) speaks in complete sentences.	Sometimes (70-80%) speaks in complete sentences	Rarely speaks in complete sentences
Volume	Volume is loud enough to be heard by all audience members throughout the presentation.	Volume is loud enough to be heard by all audience members at least 90% of the time.	Volume is loud enough to be heard by all audience members at least 80% of the time.	Volume often too soft to be heard by all audience members.

Peer’s Assessment

Self-Assessment