Teaching English as a foreign language to children

Tomorrow we are doing a lesson on English teaching. We will comment on two basic documents, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and the Primary English syllabus of the Balearic Islands.

But anyway, I would like to highlight some points that I always try to follow in my Primary English lessons. I strongly recommend the following pieces of advice:

1. Start working oral skills. Example: I like fish. It is good for me,
   
2. Sing - use songs to practise and learn vocabulary and grammar patterns
3. Storytelling. Examples: Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan in Neverland
   
4. Use pictures, gestures and body to explain meanings. Example: What's the weather like today?,
   
5. Do not translate
6. Use English as much as you can, especially at the lowest levels.
7. Introduce L1 only in difficult learning activities for example, when children have to think about grammar or about the way language works.
   
8. After having introduced oral skills, start with written skills
9. Write and draw lists of vocabulary
10. Check previous knowledge before introducing new contents. Example: Are there any computers in our school?
    
11. Integrate vocabulary into the related grammar patterns. Example:Ibizan animals
    
12. Use the language learned to communicate -although it is a simple and basic idea. Example: A tour around my town,
13. Take advantage of the festivals during the school year: Halloween, All Saints Day, Christmas
    
14. Introduce universal topics to meet CLIL standpoints: Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Children's Day
    
15. Ask your students to do projects: specific final tasks in which students use all their language knowledge to achieve a goal -although it is a little goal. Examples: Introducing myself (oral project), My life (written project)
    
16. Ask your students to pay attention to the Art part of their final assignment/project/task. Example: My monster
    
17. Engage your students in doing their own Language Portfolio -electronic or not. Examples: Primary blogfolios
18. Use ICT to support your constructivist methodology
    
19. Work on children's attitude towards language learning and other important concepts: autonomous language learner, lifelong language learning, self-assessment. See the Portfolio web site to develop these standpoints.
    
20. Be a blogger. Create a blog for your subject. Example: We like English!

Interesting documents

Here you have got some interesting documents on e-learning:

HIGHSCHOOL.COM

BLENDED LEARNING GUIDE

LEARNING SOLUTIONS. E-MAGAZINE

DEFINING INTERACTIVE MULTIMEDIA DESIGN EDUCATION

And another really interesting matrix:

No Strings Attached: Wireless Laptops in Education.

TOP 100 TOOLS FOR LEARNING 2008

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2008 by the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies, Knowledge, Skills and Tools for the Learning 2.0 Age

Visit the web

Technology Integration Matrix

What is the Technology Integration Matrix?

The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) illustrates how teachers can use technology to enhance learning for K-12 students.

Technology Integration Matrix

Obama on Education

I think it could be a great language and teaching practice if we checked what Obama has said about Education during his compaign.

Would it be possible that a Spanish politician could say the same? Would Spanish teachers accept a plan like this?




Not bad...

NO CHILDREN PORNOGRAPHY

The Universal Children's Day is on 20th November. Post this picture on your blog to join the blogcampaign against pederasts.

Teaching through competence-based curriculum

Here are some documents about competences.
Our new law of education, LOE, focus on competence teaching as you all know.
But the Council of Europe has been developing the competence theory for a long time.
Here you've got some interesting documents about key competences.

KEY COMPETENCE FOR LIFELONG LEARNING. A EUROPEAN REFERENCE FRAMEWORK

Council conclusions on the European on the European Indicator of Language Comptenece

Don't forget the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages as it focus on linguistic comptence as we have said in older posts.

Special Needs Education Defined

I am sure you will love this video!!!!!

Special Needs Education Defined video

And here you have the text of the video. Enjoy it!

MY UDUTU

UDUTU is a new elearning platform. It's one of a number of "rapid elearning" tools now avaliable on the market thanks to web 2.0.
It's an elearning course authoring tool, which means that you can do your own lessons. It's quite complete as it supports video and audio, tests and it doesn't seem to be very difficult to use.
Anyway it's just another tool to give your students more learning opportunities but you cannot get any information of their work and marks in the course.

Here you have got two pretty good examples:

Begginer guide to online course design -What is online elearning?

Bill Gates steps down course

Happy Teachers' Day!

Today is WORLD TEACHERS' DAY! So, enjoy your day!

Teachers matter! is the slogan of this year by UNESCO.

"Teacher shortage, insufficient training, society’s lack of respect for the profession and the policies needed to tackle these challenges are the emphasis of World Teachers’ Day on 5 October 2008." (taken from UNESCO education website)

Read the World Teacher's Day message 2008 by UNESCO.

A new school year!

The school year is about to start!
Let's start singing as I would do with my Primary pupils. I have chosen a special song, very popular and meaningful for people but even more special for teachers.
Look at this video: Robbie Williams singing "My Way" (Frank Sinatra) at the Royal Albert Hall (London).
The audience is excited as we all may be now because of the new school year.
Let's transfer it into education too. I really believe that the sense of teaching , and the final goal, is that our children can grow as human beings and be able to live a happy life. So, that at any moment in their lives, not necessarily at the end, they can say about themselves that they have lived "their way".
Afther this simple thought just enjoy the song with the fantastic voice of Robbie Williams.

European Day of Languages

26th September is European Day of Languages, launched by the Council of Europe in 2001.

The Day has a wide variety of aims that we could summarize as follows:

# Increasing plurilingualism and intercultural understanding.

# Promoting -preserving and fostering- the rich linguistic and cultural diversity of Europe.

# Encouraging lifelong language learning in and out of school for all kind of puposes (study, professional, mobility and pleasure.

The European Day of Languages is addressed to all citizens, but I think that we, as teachers, have to feel especially concerned about the Day and its message.

Let's all spread the slogan in our schools:

Celebrating linguistic diversity,
plurilingualism, lifelong language learning

Great statement!

I have found this statement and I really love it:

Technologies should be like the sails of a ship
if well woven and operated by skillful sailors, the captain only has to indicate the direction.

You can find it in the following web: seed
Could we transfer it to our schools?
Are the sailors the teachers in schools? Is the captain the headteacher? Could ICT be truly integrated in schools by teachers able to manage it and the headteacher only be needed to coordinate the implementation?

You may also enjoy this other web: red-ink doctoral school.
The goal of Red-ink is the understanding of eduational technologies and e-learning.

First day ppt

Look at this powerpoint presentation. It seems to be the introduction of a class teacher in the first day of class. Notice the organisation of every important item such as behaviour, homework and activities in class. Really interesting, well done but maybe too strict and harsh.


Find more videos like this on Classroom 2.0

Teachers today

Do you really think that teachers do all this today? Or maybe, is it that teachers today should do all this?
Can we really change the world?

Google Reader

How does it work?

Laws

LOE in English

Balearic Island Curriculum

Primary English syllabus of the Balearic Islands

European Language Portfolio

I'm really fond of the European Language Portfolio proejctor ELP -PEL, as we say in Catalan or Spanish.

There is a lot to say about it and a load of information on the Internet. So, let's check some of the most interesting sites about it.

The ELP was born as a project to promote language learning throughout Europe.
ELP- Council of Europe

Then, each country has developed its own specific ELP student material.
ELP- Spain

One of the most important documents written about ELP is the ELP guide for teachers and teacher trainers by David Little and Radka Perclová.

In this site you can find all the main documents about ELP, the Recommendations of the Council of Europe and important essays on how to use it as a teacher.

Another site with lots of documents about ELP.

Daniel Cassany has also been researching the implementation and advantatges of ELP in our schools. Here you can see one of his ppt presentations about this topic.

Finally, it should be said that we ought to have started talking about the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment (Council of Europe, 2001). It is the main theoretical framenwork for all those people who are studying or learning a language. Therefore, the ELP has to be considered as part or at least as the practical part of all what the Common European Framework means.

Daniel Cassany

Daniel Cassany is probably one of the best authors in the world about teaching languages. His work is focused on teaching both a mother tongue and a second language, and is especially aimed at teaching writing skills.

He is also one of the best investigators in the European Language Portfolio.

Look at his web and enjoy learning how to teach languages. You will be able to apply any of his articles, books and research to your lessons.

You can start by reading a bit of his essays. For example, this on-line article about writing compositions.

Great paintings

Now, look at this other video in www.teachers.tv:

Great paintings video

Do you remember Sir Ken Robinson's speech? Do you agree with him? Do schools really kill children's creativity?

If you watch this video you'll see a great way of enhancing our children's creativity. Have you ever thought of integrating Art and paintings in your lessons? Have you ever thought about how a great painting could improve your teaching? In which subject of the Primary curriculum could you do a lesson like the one in the video? What aims would you have if you did a lesson like this one? What kind of activity would you ask your pupils to do?