Training courses and sharing good practices

Which training courses would you like to have access to as a teacher? Why? Which is, in your opinion, the best way to share good practice amongst teaching professionals? Why?

From my point of view, it is very important that teachers complete our formation with training courses during all our professional life because in a society like ours, which progresses really quickly, it is essential that teachers recycle us constantly.
Usually, during the career you learn some general concepts about education and about how to teach. But then, when you are working, you need to put them in practice and sometimes you feel that you do not know how to manage some situations.

From my experience, it has been very interesting attending courses when I’ve started working, because when I had to think about how to design an activity or how to apply a tip, I had been thinking in my real students and classes. Nevertheless, it is true that you have less time to dedicate to formation; but if you organize yourself, you can find time for all.

Fortunately, nowadays we have many opportunities to improve and recycle our educational practices. For instance, we can search on the internet about our interests and follow some blogs or youtube channels. We also can attend a course organized by a university or other educational organizations such as CEFIRE or we can apply for a scholarship in Erasmus+ programmes around the world. We are going to explain the advantages of each of them.

On the one hand, it should be noted that there are many free and interesting learning web pages on the Internet. I find them good because here you can find resources, activities and ideas of other teachers who work in the same level or subject as you and who probably have the same challenges and problems than you. Besides, it is a good way to share useful information and experiences because you can keep in touch with professionals from all the world.

On the other hand, you can share good practices amongst teaching professionals in the communities of practice. They are promoted by our autonomous community with the CEFIRE and their work groups. With this type of training, a group of teachers that wants to develop a work project and elaborate materials is able to do it in an independent way.

Other option available is the Erasmus+ Programme. Its purpose is implementing actions and improving the mobility of individuals in order to promote innovation and exchange of good practices.

In conclusion, if you want to improve your teaching style, you have a lot of opportunities to do it through courses and different work groups related to your subject and interests. This is why there are no excuses to be up to date to the new educational methodologies.

Here you can find some interesting websites where you can find more information about this:

http://www.erasmusplus.gob.es/

http://cefire.edu.gva.es/course/view.php?id=6301

The most important thing you would teach and how you would assess it

If you were not limited by the demands of the national/regional curriculum, what would you say is the most important thing you would teach your students about your subject (in a CLIL context)? How would you assess their learning?

The first think we should consider is the subject that we are going to teach because depending on the type of CLIL instruction, we will focus on the language, on the content or on both at the same time.

Here you have a clarifier graphic where you can see the importance of each of the points.

In the variant A (CLIL in subject lessons), it is given more relevance to the contents of the curriculum of the subject. English is just used as a vehicular language. However, in the variant B (CLIL in foreign language lessons), the most important thing is the language and contents are the means through students develop their language skills. Last, we have variant C (balanced CLIL) where both items are considered at the same level.

As Massler, Stotz & Queisser (2014) explain, the way as the teacher should assess in each case is completely different.

If I used variant A, I would base the assessment on the subject curriculum using different tools such as tests, writing development explanations or oral questions. I would use the foreign language just as a way of communication the knowledges.

In the case that I teach variant B, I would base the learning aims on the language, specially doing activities to practise the four skills: speaking, writing, listening and reading. The main objective will be acquire the communicative competence in the foreign language.

Supposing that I was using variant C, I would focus on the curriculum and on the language. The idea is to mix both in a fully integrated teaching and learning process. For doing that, projects can be very useful in where we can assess all the aspects considered using rubrics.

The next point we must take into account is the kind of assessment we are going to implement. According to Assessment in CLIL, there are three different types of assessment depending on when we evaluate the students.

The diagnostic assessment is made at the beginning when you start teaching in order to check the level or the abilities of the pupils. Then, we have the formative assessment, which is realised during the learning process for being sure that students are going on and understanding new knowledges. Finally, we have the summative assessment that is accomplished at the end to get a final information about the goals achieved.

In conclusion, using CLIL offers a wide range of possibilities of teaching adapted to the needs of the students and can have great results in their learning.


Bibliography:

Assessment in CLIL (Cefire)

Massler, U.; Stotz, D. & Queisser, C. (2014) Assessment instruments for primary CLIL: the conceptualisation and evaluation of test tasks, The Language Learning Journal, 42:2, 137-150.

Advantages and disadvantages of using the ELP

Taking into account my personal teaching context, what would be the advantages and disadvantages of using the ELP with my groups?

First of answering that question, we need to reflect on what a European Language Portfolio (ELP) is. The Council of Europe introduced the European Language Portfolio as “a means of helping language learners to keep track of their language learning as it happens and record their language learning achievements and their experience of using other languages and encountering other cultures”.

According to the European Centre for Modern Languages, using this resource has many advantages for the learners, the teachers and the policy-makers.

A learner who uses the ELP is all the time conscious of his own learning process in an autonomous way. He can organize his knowledges and self evaluates his own learning. That is why learning becomes more efficient and effective and, at the same time, very motivating.

The ELP also can be very interesting for teachers because they can benefit from the two functions of it (Little, 2002). In its reporting function, it presents additional information of the student language learning experience. This helps reporting language learning achievement in an internationally transparent manner. In its pedagogical function the ELP is engaging learners to share responsibility for the learning process, to think critically when they plan, monitor and evaluate their learning and to develop appropriate target language use.

At last, the ELP is a good tool also for policy-makers because it promotes linguistic and cultural diversity in classrooms, schools and societies. And therefore, the ELP can be an appropriate key in promoting democratic citizenship.


Nevertheless, the use of ELP in classroom can also have some disadvantages. For instance, in Primary school pupils maybe have difficulties to understand the descriptors to self-assess their learning process because it is too abstract to them. Another disadvantage could be that students cannot be honest with their own evaluation because is easier to get a good mark in their learning abilities and skills. If we look through teachers’ perspective, we should understand that implementing the ELP could demand an extra effort in order to learn how to apply it in a correct way in their classes.


In conclusion, the ELP has more advantages than disadvantages. That is why it is an effective tool to develop linguistic and cultural competences of students, at the same time that it is an useful instrument for children and teachers in order to support the evaluation of their learning process.


Before finishing, I’d like to share a video of How We Succeed in Language Teaching by David Little, which is about some of the advantages explained above. I hope it helps you!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBFqWdEdq9s



Bibliography:


http://www.coe.int/en/web/portfolio

http://elp.ecml.at/UsingtheELP/tabid/2323/language/en-GB/Default.aspx

Little, D. (2002). The European Language Portfolio: structure, origins, implementation and challenges. Language Teaching, 35, pp 182-189.

Presentation

Hello friends!

I’m back again! It is a long time since I don't update this blog. But now I'm going to use it again for the subject Assesment and continuous professional development that I'm studying right now. For those who don't know me yet, first of all I'm going to introduce myself. I'm Isabel Gómez de Membrillera Desantes and I’m 23 years old. I work in a catholic private school in Burjassot called San Miguel Arcángel. I’ve just started this year working as the special education teacher for the Primary School and the English teacher for the preschool students (3, 4 and 5 years old). It is my first job experience and I’m really enjoying it and learning a lot!

I studied Teaching at the University of Valencia from 2011 to 2016 and now I’m studying Training for teaching in English at the UCV. At the moment, I have a B2 level in English language by the Official school of languages of Valencia, but I would like to get a C1 certificate soon. I can also speak Valencian and Spanish. The last one is my mother tongue. Besides, I studied French when I was at school and I got a A2 certificate by the Official school of languages of Valencia. But it is a long time since I do not use it, so I do not feel that I can have a fluently conversation.

I’m really interested in education and I like learning about new methodologies that help children to think and learn more effectively. I think that teachers have a very important task because we are contributing to build people of the future. So that is why we must try always to do the best and improve our teaching process. In order to do that, here I'll write some posts with reflections about the english teaching and assessment process.

Hoping that you like it, best wishes.
Isabel