WEBSEMINAR

Teaching towards the YLEs – activities that will engage young learners – Katie Foufouti

This webinar offers practical ideas to use in class while at the same time answer the following questions: 

  How can we make assessment friendly and enjoyable for our students?

How can we prepare our students effectively for the big day of the exam?

During the webinar, material will be used from the new YLE Skills course.2014-10-07.0217.M.D5C3B700AEB54ADB0A6DE75350D5F8.Movie.1024x (Source)

About the presenter: Katie Foufouti has been working as an EFL teacher and an ELT materials editor since 2007. She has taught students of all ages and levels in southern Spain as well as Greece and Bulgaria. She has experience in preparing candidates for the Cambridge Suite exams and has a special interest in Young Learners and assessment. She now spends most of her time writing (print and digital) English language learning materials mainly for Young Learners.

  

CPR

FIRST AIDS AND CPR

            I saw a cpr course at the beginning of this year in a school where I work. During the first month of this year ( April-May) there has been a campaign of cpr in Florencio Varelas´s schools. As I did not remember all the course I saw this two videos which helped me to remember it.

More workshops (5)

SUBSECRETARÍA DE EDUCACIÓN

DIRECCION PROVINCIAL DE PROYECTOS ESPECIALES

DIRECCIÓN DE FORMACIÓN CONTINUA             

TÍTULO DEL PROYECTO: La planificación de secuencias didácticas desde un enfoque plurilingüe  e intercultural.

FORMATO DE CAPACITACIÓN: Curso 5 de  encuentros

LOCALIZACIÓN: Provincia de Buenos Aires

MODALIDAD: Presencial

AREA: Lengua Extranjera (Inglés) 

Fecha: Junio  2014 

First meeting

In the first class, the teacher, Dabove Claudia, decided to start with a personal presentation about us, about our experience in the classroom. She wanted to know in which levels we have worked. Then she asked if we had the experience of working in a course where there was a child or group of children who came from another country. Then, she asked us how would we act if we meet students with this characteristic in a course, and the partners gave their opinions about it.

She told that we should use defined boundaries as discerned in classroom talk. This can involve different kinds of words (e.g. in register), different ways of speaking, turn-taking habits and sometimes all the above repertoires will include multiple languages as well. As teachers we have to recognize the distinct communicative repertoires in our classrooms and to explore them.

Then the teacher talked about a dynamic systems Theory and said that a dynamic systems theory approach to L2 acquisition recognizes the crucial role of the interaction of multiple environmental and individual variables at different levels of communication (word, sentence, discourse) and in different languages.  After her introduction to the theme, she asked us to make an activity.

THINK-PAIR-SHARE

Think of one or some of your classes. What communicative repertoires can you identify? Do these repertoires enhance or hinder the development of the classes?

Second meeting

We analyzed the activity that we did the last class and we worked with unit 4 in cuaderno de trabajo para 1º año de secundaria.  It is one of the materials that one can find in the public secondary’s schools or it can be found it in the web abc.gov.

The teacher assigned us the following questions about this unit.( the unit fixes English and Spanish words)

1. What languages are present in this unit?
2. What is the purpose of the text in Spanish on page 22?
3. How would you use this text with your class (es)?
4. How can you make the transition between this text in Spanish to the following text in English (interview)?
5. What scaffolding strategies can you use for task 4? 
6. And for task 5?

Then, each group had to discuss question 1 and 2 as a class, explain the answers to questions 3 and 4 and finally discuss the answers to questions 5 and 6 as a class.

Third meeting

The teacher began talking about translanguaging which present the following characteristics; the students are allowed to use their linguistic repertoire to make meaning in the classroom, teachers are dynamic bilingual educators who are adding to the linguistic repertoire that students bring into the classroom while working towards content mastery and teachers across the continuum of bilingualism provide home language as scaffolding when appropriate in adding to students linguistic repertoires and facilitating content mastery. Then, she gave some examples of translanguaging activities and non-translanguaging ones. After that she asked us to make in groups a card with translanguaging and non-translanguaging activities.  

Fourth meeting

In this meeting the teacher introduced a new concept dynamic bilingualism which suggest that the language practices of all bilinguals are complex and interrelated; they do not emerge in a linear way. Then, she gave us a short reading about it and in group we had to complete a graphic organizer. We had an example using the term affective filter.

We worked with others short readings about dynamic bilingualism, linguistic interdependence, translanguaging and the term transfer.

Fifth meeting

In this class, we did a sequence using the cuaderno de trabajo para 1º año de secundaria. We had to choice a unit and prepare a sequence making  use of translanguaging activities for a class.

workshops

Workshops

SUBSECRETARÍA DE EDUCACIÓN

DIRECCION PROVINCIAL DE PROYECTOS ESPECIALES

DIRECCIÓN DE FORMACIÓN CONTINUA             

TÍTULO DEL PROYECTO: Progresión y secuenciación de contenidos en inglés EP

FORMATO DE CAPACITACIÓN: Curso intensivo de 3 encuentros

LOCALIZACIÓN: Provincia de Buenos Aires

MODALIDAD: Presencial

RESPONSABLES: María del Pilar Martínez, Dirección de Formación Continua

AREA: Lengua Extranjera (Inglés)

Nivel: EP 

Fecha: Febrero 2014 

First meeting:

       The teacher Dabove, Claudia introduced herself and asked us to do the same, then she asked about our experience in the classroom and if we worked in Primary or Secondary school. Then she asked in which way we planned our sequences for Primary schools. After listening to the partners, the teacher mentioned the bibliography that we were going to use during the course. It was about the different manners of planning sequences for Primary schools. The available strategies were 1) Elaboration theory (context expertise sequencing and task expertise sequencing); 2) Posner and Strike theory (learning-related sequencing, world-related sequencing, concept-related sequencing) and 3) Gagne learning hierarchy theory based on nine instructional events and corresponding cognitive processes. We had to read the different theories and then discuss them in groups to choose the best of them for planning sequences. 

Second meeting:

In this meeting we exposed the reflections that we did about the different theories. Each group gave their opinion and the reasons of their election. After listening to the groups, the teacher told us that we had to make a sequence for a primary course following the procedure of Gagne learning hierarchy. Gagne suggests that learning tasks for intellectual skills can be organized in a hierarchy according to complexity. This theory stipulates that there are several different types or levels of learning. The significance of these classifications is that each different type requires different types of instruction. In addition, the theory outlines nine instructional events:

(1) gaining attention (reception)

(2) informing learners of the objective (expectancy)

(3) stimulating recall of prior learning (retrieval)

(4) presenting the stimulus (selective perception)

(5) providing learning guidance (semantic encoding)

(6) eliciting performance (responding)

(7) providing feedback (reinforcement)

(8) assessing performance (retrieval)

(9) enhancing retention and transfer (generalization).

That sequence would be the test to approve the course so we had to think on a sequence and carry all the necessary material to make it in the next meeting.   

School in Victorian Times

 School in Victorian Times

                     

    Although there had been schools dated back as far as the 6th Century many Victorian boys and girls did not have the opportunity of going to school. When Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837 education was still mainly for the privileged. Rich children might have a governess to teach them at home until they were old enough — if they were boys — to go to Public Schools such as Rugby (mentioned in the book, Tom Brown's Schooldays). The girls continued to be educated at home. Most poor children did not go to day school, but earlier, Robert Raikes had started a system of education based in churches, the Sunday school, and by 1831 1,250,000 children went to lessons in this way. That was about a quarter of the population at the time. 

 

      Later in Queen Victoria's reign a number of day schools had begun, including the British Schools, and the Ragged Schools (so called because of the tattered clothes worn by poor pupils). In 1870 a law was passed saying that children aged between 5 and 10 had to attend weekday school. The leaving age was raised to 11 in 1893. Even so, many children were kept away from school by parents and employers who would rather have them earning money.  

   

The Victorian School

                             Many schools were quite grim places, often with windows high up so that children could not see out. They were drab by modern standards, with very little on the walls except perhaps a stern text. Boys and girls generally were separated, having their own entrance and playground. Even though in smaller schools boys and girls were taught in the same classroom they would still sit separately. Some classes were very big, for example the British School in Hitchin has a classroom for 300 boys! Village schools would have had smaller classes, but often classes had a very wide age range.   

  Because the school classes were so big, everything had to be done in a regimented way. The teacher would write things on the blackboard which was copied into books and learned. A lot of teaching was repetition, learning the names and dates of kings and queens, or reciting the "times" table.

The Victorian Teacher

       

  Teachers were often strict and by modern standards very scary. Children soon learnt to do what the teacher asked, otherwise they would get a rap across the knuckles with a ruler, or a clip around the ears. Teaching was often the job of unmarried ladies (that's why you call the teacher Miss), and when you married you stopped teaching. Fewer men taught because pay was poor. Most teachers were not qualified by having a college education, they learnt "on the job" in a sort of apprenticeship. When it came to school leaving age, those with aptitude could stay on as "pupil teachers" where they would help the teacher in exchange for lessons.  

Some larger schools used a system of monitors. The teacher would select a number of the brightest boys and they would then be taught by the headmaster in separate lessons after school. The next day these monitors then took a group of boys each and taught them the things they themselves had just learned.

Victorian Child Punishment

     The Victorian teacher would use a cane 

to punish naughty children. The cane was given on the hand or the bottom, or sometimes given across the back of the legs. In public schools even prefects would carry and use a cane. All sorts of things might be punished: being rude, answering back, speaking out of turn, poor work, in fact anything that displeased the teacher. Children who had been caned usually kept quiet about it because if their parents found out they would probably be punished again. In Scotland a leather strap called a tawse was used in place of the cane. 

    

               Other punishments were given including lines and detentions, and some, if not all, the deeds were written in a punishment book or log. 

 Children who were slow at their lessons, or dumb, were made to wear a dunce's hat, a pointed hat with the letter D on it. They would then stand in a corner for an hour or more. Sometimes they stood on a small stool, the dunce's stool. At that time there was no understanding that some children had learning difficulties or learned more slowly, and teachers thought that these children were simply naughty or rebellious. Even left handed children were punished and made to use their right hand.  

School Equipment

           

  For every teacher the most vital piece of equipment was  the blackboard and easel. This could be used so that children could copy information or imitate the writing for practice. Children started to learn to write using a slate - a sort of small blackboard - on which they wrote with a sharpened piece of slate called a slate pencil. Pupils brought a piece of sponge or a rag from home to clean the slate, or some just used their sleeve! As they got older children would write in a book using a dip pen and blue-black ink from out of an inkwell. A book with ruled lines was used for handwriting practice, the copybook.

The first line was printed, or copied carefully from the blackboard, and then the entire page was filled with identical lines. If a mistake was made it stood out glaringly, and it is from this that we say you "blot your copybook" when you make a serious mistake.

      Arithmetic was performed with the help of a calculator, or the Victorian equivalent, the abacus. Those who practice with the abacus can perform calculations faster than their electronic equivalent!

Lessons

     Victorian schools concentrated on the 3Rs Reading writing and arithmetic. Most schools also included the 4th R, religion. To begin with, most reading was taught using the Bible, but it soon became evident that this was too difficult and so primers were introduced which had moralistic stories. Pupils would take turns to read a portion of the story. Object lessons were used particularly for younger children, where the teacher would show a picture of an object and the child would call out the name. Next the children might learn arithmetic. This started by learning tables, but would later include sums that were copied down and worked out. For more complicated sums an abacus (or counting frame) helped with the answer. Weights and measures were all recorded in imperial measurements: this included pounds and ounces for weight and yards and furlongs for distance. Money was also added up differently. In those days there were 240 pennies in a pound, not 100 as there are today. There were coins such as the halfpenny, the farthing, and the crown.

We have already mentioned writing, and it was considered very important to develop a fine hand, so a lot of time was spent practising copy writing. Another regular activity was drill, which was the Victorian equivalent of what we now call PE. This might involve running, jumping, stretching and lifting weights, and was often accompanied by music.

In larger schools each day there would be an assembly of the whole school, when there would be prayers, a Bible reading and perhaps even the singing of a hymn. Smaller schools would have this devotional activity in the classroom.

During later Victorian times additional subjects such as needlework and carpentry were added, and there might even be an opportunity for nature studies or drawing of natural objects, especially flowers.

The School Day

School began at 9.00am and finished at 5.00pm. There was a two hour lunch break to allow enough time for children to go home for a midday meal, although in rural areas they might eat at   the school.   

Playtime!

         Although most of the Victorian school child's life was rather dull, the bright light was playtime. Children would play with a wide variety of toys: hoops, tops, skipping ropes and marbles. There would be games of tag, British bulldog, hopscotch, and football, played with an inflated pig's bladder.

Essay about a Tale of two citiies. Theme: violence and revolution

The causes of the French revolution

1er parcial - American Revolution

http://youtu.be/6UxXPqWs4Hw

Essays about industrial revolution (4)

Topic: Rural vs. Urban life

Industrialization occurred first in Great Britain. The effect of industrialization was to transform agricultural societies into industrial societies. Technology had made it possible the development of machines which raised worker productivity and promoted the growth of large scale industrial enterprises. Manufactured products could be turned out more quickly and cheaply than before. In the long run, standards of living were improved in much of the world. It also generated substantial social change, which at time became unsettling, even violent. It encouraged urbanization and migration to cities; although at times city dwellers who worked in factories lived in squalid conditions. The problems of early industrial workers led to a number of calls for reform by social critics.

On the one hand, with new shopping districts, houses, transportation, theatres, taverns, hospitals, prisons and marriage markets, the eighteenth-century town was both an exciting and dangerous place to live. In the 1700s, England became the most urbanized of all European countries and boasted the largest capital city in the world.

Most towns possessed remarkably young populations. Young people were drawn to urban areas by the offer of regular and full-time employment, and by the entertainments that were on offer there: the theatres, inns and pleasure gardens, for example. London in particular was flooded with thousands of young people every year, many of whom worked as apprentices to the capital’s thousands of tradesmen. Other new arrivals gained employment as domestic servants to aristocratic families that began spending much of their time in elegantly built town houses. Many towns were grimy, over-crowded and generally insanitary places to be. London in particular suffered badly from dirt and pollution.

On the other hand, the crisis of the rural cottage industry, the independent farmer buying local supplies and selling in the local market, led the shift to an urban way of life and the village youth quit their clean healthy fields for a region of dirt, stink, and noise. Meanwhile this century had brought developments of agriculture and the spread of these encouraged experiments in new methods of planting. The enclosing of land by hedges was prevalent among the farmers of England. It was frequently legalized by the passing of Enclosure Acts by Parliament. The land was then re-divided; each tenant had his own fields in one locality and cut them off from those of his neighbors by neat hedges. The disadvantages were that the poor landless laborers, who were used to pasture his beast on the open common, found it closed against him and the yeoman could be ousted by the man able to afford the rent of a large enclosed farm.

         Despite this fact, the number of small farmers increased rather than diminished during this enclosure period, and the new agricultural methods must have provided plenty of employment.

To sum up, England's commercial boom affected the rural regions and small villages, and it did so in two significant ways. First, the government imposed Enclosure Acts encouraged emigration from the villages to the cities. This was done to meet the increased food demands of the growing population. As a result, capitalist farmers, often tenants of wealthy landlords came to dominate a world where all below them were reduced to landless labourers. Second, the higher wages offered by the urban centers attracted the rural poor. The quantity and variety of commercial goods coming into and displayed in the cities drew the attention of those in pursuit of material possessions. 

Topic: Transport

Before the Industrial Revolution, transportation in Britain was rudimentary, very basic. Roads were poorly built and maintained. Good were transported on river barges but this way was a slow and costly exercise. The railway network was nonexistent, limited to wooden tracks and carriages pulled by horses. It took several days to travel between towns. The growth of the Industrial Revolution depended on the ability to transport raw materials and finished goods over long distances. Technological innovations made in the textile and iron industries made production of goods faster and cheaper. Advances in team engine technology led to a number of industries adopting mechanization. As demand for goods increased, a revolution in the transportation industry took place. The three main types of transportation that increased in this time were waterways, roads and railroads.

Firstly, transport was greatly improved during the 18th century. Groups of rich men formed turnpike trusts. Acts of Parliament gave them the right to improve and maintain certain roads. Travelers had to pay tolls to use them so as to help to pay the money borrowed to repair the roads. Turnpikes trusts set up gates on either end of their roads where tolls could be collected. The first turnpikes were created as early as 1663 but they became far more common in the 18th century.

The earliest railways were wagonways linking coal mines to nearby navigable rivers. These had wooden rails on which flanged wheels ran. In the 1760s, cast iron plates were laid on the top of the wooden rails and in 1780s a new system was developed, the plateway where the wagons had unflanged wheels and the flange was cast ton to the track. This system proved unsatisfactory in long term because the cast iron plates were liable to break and also because the track was liable to collect stones or other debris.

  Secondly, some rivers, such as the Thames, Severn and Trent were naturally navigable, at least in their lower reaches. Other rivers were improved during the 17th and early 18th centuries, improving the transport links of towns such as Manchester, Wigan, Hereford, and Newbury in England. However, these only provided links towards the coast, not across the heart of England. It was the canals which were to provide the vital links in the transport network. As Industrial Revolution canal mania swept the country, Sankey Brook Navigation, authorized by Acts of Parliament in 1755, 1762 and 1830, opened in 1757 and was probably the first true English canal. It was in 1759 that Duke of Bridgewater decided to build a canal to bring coal from his estate at Worsley to Manchester. He employed an engineer called James Brindley. When it was completed the Bridgewater canal halved the price of coal in Manchester. Many more canals were dug in the late 18th. They played a major role in the industrial revolution by making it cheaper to transport goods.

Finally, early railways consisted of wooden tracks linking coal mines to rivers and canals. Carriages were pulled by horses. The railway industry developed rapidly once James Watt´s steam engine technology was applied to the railway. The first steam engine locomotive was built by Richard Trevithick in 1804. This train ran on smooth metal rails. The next successful steam locomotives were the Salamanca built by Matthew Murray in 1812. Railways became a popular and effective mode of transportation. The main benefit of railways was the speed at which goods could be transported. Other type of transport was the sailing vessels which had been used for moving goods around the British coast. The trade transporting coal to London from Newcastle has begun in medieval times. The major international seaports, such as London, Bristol and Liverpool were the means by which raw materials might be imported and finished goods exported.

Summing up, at the beginning of the industrial revolution, inland transport was by navigable rivers and roads, with coastal vessels employed to move heavy goods by sea. Railways or wagon ways were used for conveying coal to rivers for further shipment, but canals had not yet been constructed. Animals supplied all of the motive power on land, with sails providing the motive power on the sea. The industrial revolution improved Britain's transport infrastructure with a turnpike road network, a canal and waterway network, and a railway network. What is more, raw materials and finished products could be moved more quickly and cheaply than before. 

Topic: bridge between the rich and the poor

In the late 18th century, the industrial revolution began to transform life in Britain. England was undergoing the painful transition from a rural agricultural society to becoming a highly urbanized industrial state. This century had started the process of creating a more solid social and geographical boundary between classes. Until then, most people lived in the countryside and made their living from farming. Industrialization led to dramatic, sometimes unsettling social change. Masses of people moved to cities, and new social classes developed. Probably half the population lived as subsistence or bare survival level and a tiny minority of the population lived in luxury.

First of all, the concept of social class was an idea of a status hierarchy instead of class society which was a distinguishing key feature in the 18th Century. This hierarchy determined everything about a person. Among the differences in these classes were the attitudes that each one exhibited. Owning land was the main form of wealth in the 18th century. Political power and influence was in the hands of rich landowners. Social class structure was composed by the wealthy landowners, the most powerful group and the smallest amount of the population; gentry, it included gentlemen, merchants, wealthy tradesmen, and well-off manufacturers; yeoman, those who owned and worked their own land; middle class, the upper middle class included professionals and merchants and the lower middle artisans, shopkeepers, and tradesmen and the laboring poor which included all who worked in rural areas, did minimal jobs, and the urban laboring poor. 

In addition, family income determined the degree of comfort and security one enjoyed. The wealthy typically moved to elegant homes in the suburbs whereas the working poor lived in crowded areas in the center of cities in shoddy housing. Many lived in overcrowded tenements where family members were often forced to share the same bed, which increased the likelihood of incestuous relationships and disease transmission. The few open spaces contained pigs which lived in their own dung or depositories for human waste. Despite the improvements in farming food, for ordinary people remained plain and monotonous and for them meat was a luxury. In England a poor person's food was mainly bread and potatoes. The rich built great country houses with immensely comfort and owned beautiful furniture. However, the poor had none of these things. Craftsmen and laborers lived in 2 or 3 rooms. The poorest people lived in just one room. Their furniture was very simple and plain.

During the first 60 years of the Industrial Revolution, living conditions were, by far, worst for the poorest of the poor. In the eyes of the rich, the poor appeared a different race, linked by a few miles but separated by a massive cultural chasm.

The gradations between the rich and poor became ever more numerous, with a growing of respectable poor, labour aristocrats, and middle classes. Moreover, in the early 18th century England suffered from gin drinking. Many people ruined their health by drinking gin. Yet for many poor people drinking gin was their only comfort. Because of this, the very poor were often regarded as indistinguishable from a criminal or dangerous class had been carefully squirreled out of sight. This identification of a distinct criminal class amongst the poor reached its peak in the middle of the century. The situation improved after 1751 when a tax was imposed on gin and the middling and artisanal classes had redefined themselves.