Websites that might help

This day I realized about something that made me feel not good with my internship in the high school that I am. As I have been saying in all my reflexions, we as a prospectives teachers, we had to make classes meaningful for students, and not only that but have high expectations of them too. What I am going to mention is something that I think change everything about how I see my way of teaching in the future.
This morning I saw a student having problems doing his assignments , with writing and not only him but the others two Russian students, they don't really know how to write, they mixed their language with English and the writing is something hard to understand; I realized too that the teacher didn't care too much about it because I told him: "hey Mr. X, what about this kid, he is not doing anything..." and the only response that I received was a gesture with his face, like trying to say: "hm I don't care", then after that I pulled together everything, last Friday with the visit of some man looking for jobs for the students in the classroom because they already have enough age to work; and I know that it is OK in someway because they don't have enough money in their families but on the other hand that means that the teacher doesn't have high expectations of their future. After a while the teacher said that to me (I mean the gesture), I felt like I didn't know what to do I felt useless for them, because we had to help them with their writing, but in what I could help if they don't write anything just because they don't feel like they can do it. I took some minutes to thing about it and then I tried to start helping a Russian student with his writing, when I went to his desktop he immediately stopped what he was doing, and I started to speak to them about the first line, and we talked a lot so I told him you have a really good English!!...and he was kind of surprised about it, but it was true he really speaks very well, the problem is when he tries to put the ideas on paper then it is a mess and that because he have the problem of their first language as a interference he writes with the Russian alphabet some words, and he didn't know how to speaks well his own language either, so I told him if he is really interested in doing well, you have to put some of effort on this and do extra assignments for yourself, at the beginning he seemed like interested because I explained to him that he is not stupid (because his little brother bothers him because the little one knows how to speak English Russian write and everything very good), he just came to America not in a good age for learning another language, and even more because in his country he just started writing when he came here; and the other student who was complete ignore by the teacher didn't do anything and the only thing that he received was discipline from the teacher, nothing else, and it is even more sad because he is going to change school next week.
For an activity I really tried hard to look for something for them (the Russian students) but I could find anything good enough for them, but I found interesting thing about how to teach to struggling writers.

Interesting article:

http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=JvnbhQ2mM5gZ3WjwlmmJK0M8pv5mKdz0s1PLCQdF4krwYB0LndTk!-488057137?docId=5000635371

Some assignments that can be helpful for students:

http://www.jimwrightonline.com/php/interventionista/interventionista_intv_list.php?prob_type=writing


And some podcast:

http://podcasting-in-education.wikispaces.com/Examples+of+Educational+Podcasts

http://www.slideshare.net/pafarrells/reaching-struggling-writers-through-podcasts-presentation


I really think now that for me is more meaningful to teach English to students that really need it , like here, where you know than they can't survive without a good level of English, they are just been taught for having any job that a person can offer them, and that they can do it, not something more, not university nor something higher, and those kind of jobs are the ones that American people are not willing to do. On the other hand to teach to students that don't really need a second language, like in my country because we are surrounded by countries who Speaks only Spanish, they don't have the necessity as the students from here.

A case of efective language teaching

The most common fear that you can see in prospectives teachers is if their lessons are going to work or not, have a meaningful class with the engage students on it is one of the best feelings that a teacher may have in her/his life; just if you become a teacher because you love to teach and not if you only do it because you feel forced to do it.

On my second day of shadowing I already saw an effective way of teaching that I found really good for students; and that we studied in classes, learning through content and realia. This thursday morning we started the lesson with questions that had a lot of meaning for kids, then the teacher asked them to moved and looked outside the window, then the teacher asked them to watched very carefuly, and think; what things do they think that weren´t there 100 years ag, so only with that questions the students begun to brain storming their minds and think about it and they really were engaged on that, they said a lot of things like, the cars were older and oldfashioned; but another student said: "nooo!!, by that time the cars weren't exists"; and with that the kids started a kind of a little debate. After that the teacher asked us to get together with students, "two for each chilean teacher" he said, and the kids got together with their thinking partner, that is a very good strategy; because the teacher engaged us with the students in their work, and we started to think about how people come to the United States in the begining of times.

The class had a very good environment and the students were engage on the class because since they are from diferents countries, the topic that the teacher chose was meaningful for them, they started to think about how they came to this country and they gave their opinions about what hapened before in this country.

What Would you Like to Know about your Future Students?

I would like to know:

- What their backgrounds are.
- What they would like to learn in English class.
- If they have any kid of problems in their families.
- and what they expect for their future and how can i help them to reach that goal.

I think as a teacher I need to know everything about my students not only some superficial things but also something depper than that; our students are going to be kids with social problems, we already know that, we are going to teach in public schools in Chile. So we need to pay attention in what we are going to teach them, has to be something with meaning in order that we can make a difference.

My Mistake!!!.....

1-. ... would like to know who are you, what are you interest in, what are your hobbies or things that you really don't like, if you want you can upload some pictures of you or some stuff that you really are interested in or just a picture of someone you admire, can be a singer, actor, artist what ever you want. Be respectful on what you are going to upload.

Correct:

... would like to know who you are, what your interest are, what your hobbies are or things that you don´t like, and if you want you can upload pictures of you, or pictures of your favourite singer , or anything that you want to upload. Please be respectful on what you are going to upload.

3 Principles

Teaching Language Through Content

I think that this principles as the majority of them ir very important the students can acquire the target language faster if you teach English with things that students are interested in. If you only based your classes on grammar or structures they are not going to feel the laguage they may feel that they are learning something that is not interested to them. Moreover now we have the tools to apply more things in a classroom, such as technology, internet where you can find a lot of stuff that for kids can be real and have a true meaning.

Learning Takes Place in Social Interaction

We know that students learn better if they have exposure to the target language and if they can practice it, even better so that is why I think that working in groups can really be a big help to them to improve their speaking and realized that it is much better if you have help from your classmates. If a student is isolated I think that he/she can feel very frustated or she/he is not going to be very succesful at learning.

Faith in the Learner Expands Student Potential


Me as a future teacher of English in my country I can not allow me not to have faith on my students I really want to make a difference on this, because most of my teachers said to me and my classmates in our senior year in highschool that none of us will be succesful in life that we were lazy and all those kind of things that really made me feel stupid in a point of my life and I think that that was something that we are going to remember for the rest of our lives, I still have contact to some of my old classmates and now we are friends in facebook and all of us had success in our lives in many ways, some of them are happily married, others girls are studying what they wanted to study and they are in the last year of their course of studies, I knew that some of us are in a foreing country (Europe, USA, Canada), so the teachers that said that to us they didn't have an idea what we were capable of, that is why I think we have to have faith i our students every person has differents abilities and our labor as a teacher is to help them to reach their goals and let them know how valuable are their abilities.

Chapter 6: Learning take Place in Social Interaction

5.- Choose two od the many activities that will lead to social interaction that you can most see yourself using as a teacher in Chile. Describe how these activities can work and why they appeal to you. p. 156-168

Since we do not find that the activities that appears in Chapter six make sense for our teaching reality in Chile we have chosen just one, Cross-Age Tutoring.

We believe Cross-Age Tutoring activity can be the most suitable for our students in Chile. Owing to that most of the students feel that they can't not succeed in life, so they are not motivated with learning. However, if they see that someone older than them is interested in what they do or think, students realize that it is possible to learn any subject and be successful in it.

Now, We are involved in a program from the Ministry of Education called "Mentoring from Abroad", where we have to guide high school students who have a higher level of English in comparison to the average students of their class.

Despite the fact that it's a new project (Mentoring from Abroad) and we don't know which will be the results of its development, we think that it will be successful because those students have already participated in "The English Winter Camp", so they are already motivated in terms of learing English. That's why we think that they will be willing to participate, and the program will work.

Bilingualism & Biliteracy: 1st homework

I. Give a description of the students in your school.

For this profile I chose a public school (Liceo Tecnico Femenino)'cause I'm teaching English in several places.

Generally speaking the girls that attend classes are between lower and middle class. Most of them having serious problems at home. They are not the ideal student but many of them are fighting to obtain the best grades so they can have access to a better education environment. Girls are between 13 and 19 years old. Some of the girls are pregnant and attend classes in regular basis.
They wear a grey uniform and books from the Government are given to them. For the lower class students there are some special programmes to help them study normally.



II. Describe a learner in class:

Yassna Maldonado:

She's a 17 year old. She's in 12th grade (1ºE). She's a mother of a one-year-old baby. This student has just received a grant from the government (beca presidente de la república) given to
the highest scores in this high school. She's quite concerned on her physical appearance and her studies. She also helps her mother at work while she is taking care of her baby. She lives in Casablanca (about an hour and half from Valparaíso) Despite the fact that she has lots of problems with his fiance (the father of her baby), she attends classes in regular basis and have a clear view of what English means in her curriculum. She is always taking notes on every single matter in classes. She's good at learing new things and keeping things in order. She's also the treasurer of the class.

Fabrizzio Araya M.


Analysis:

I think that this situation is very often in my country with the public education, poor school with students who have a lots of problems in their houses is sth that you have to face daily and you have to know how to deal with that. As the teacher mentioned there are some students who really wants to have a better education and that is why they are motivated to have better grades in order that they can entered to a good University and change their economical situation.

In the case of the student that he chose Yassna Maldonado, I can say that is a great example of motivation, you can tell how she is fighting for having sth more in life and with the grant I firmly belive that it is her big first step to succed in life, it is going to be hard but she has the willing to reach all her expection and goals.