My Intervention Point: Meaningful Activities

Entry One: 

“A total of 40 words were written in front of them, since they had to choose only 15 for their bingo chart.

The activity seemed really attractive to them, since a kind of competition was created to win the first place: The one who completed the whole chart before the others.” JOURNAL NUMBER ONE

Entry Two: 

“Sometimes they couldn’t get the meaning of the word, so I had to use Spanish for them to feel comfortable during the activity.”

JOURNAL NUMBER TWO

Entry Three: 

“Students began participating counting numbers from one to ten (1 – 10) challenged by certain rules. After noticing how enjoyable was to participate in those activities, students felt engaged to use the target language with random vocabulary. The following exercise was creating a huge snake shape, where everybody was lined up, with a head and a tail.

In the order they were seated, they had to say a word in English, following the sequence and remembering all the previous words said by their classmates. Students felt the tension of saying words in English at the same time they were struggling to avoid forgetting the words in order.”

JOURNAL NUMBER TWO

Entry Four: 

“This was not that high-order thinking activity, and maybe students could not remember those words a week before, but I feel I managed the objective: To show them that English is not something to be afraid of, to make them feel they could use the target language in a very harmless environment.”

JOURNAL NUMBER TWO

Entry Five: 

“Going through a lot of circumstances has supported my own idea that learning English as a foreign language has to be more a delightful experience, rather than an academic process to complete a set of requirements”

CONCEPTUALIZING TEACHING ACTS: 1 What Do you Usually Do as a Teacher?

Entry Six: 

“English ended up being easy for me during my school years, since I liked looking up for meanings, listening while reading the lyrics and understanding as much as possible all the songs I liked."

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Entry Seven:

"Since my objective was not to be a teacher, I dedicated my time to improve my vocabulary and my two strongest skills: Listening and Speaking."
AUTOBIOGRAPHY

JOURNAL NO. 1

I.E. EL ROSARIO - TESALIA

7TH GRADERS

MAY 2015

The advantage of working at I.E. El Rosario is that you have your own classroom. So students get to respect things that they feel are not their belongings (as it happens in normal classrooms). The class started when students arrived at the classroom and found words in the board. Those words were organized randomly all over the board.

The first task for them was to create a five-column and three-line piece of paper, where they would choose words at random. Those words were related to physical appearance, occupations, places, food and hobbies. A total of 40 words were written in front of them, since they had to choose only 15 for their bingo chart.

The activity seemed really attractive to them, since a kind of competition was created to win the first place: The one who completed the whole chart before the others.

As words were coming out from a plastic bag, I was teaching them the meaning through mimics, small drawings and short explanations. Sometimes they couldn’t get the meaning of the word, so I had to use Spanish for them to feel comfortable during the activity.

At the end of the activity, the student who completed the chart first was the one who had to remind the classmates about the meaning of those winning words. When doing it, some kind of positive tension was created, since the student showed some willing for completing the task.

After 3 students trying to tell the 15 meanings of their own chart, a student was the one who remembered those meanings, finishing the activity. This vocabulary game allowed my students widen their vocabulary in order to complete a task called FAMILY TREE. In this following activity, they had to present their family in terms of physical appearance, likes and dislikes, and occupations. In so doing, students felt comfortable since they already know the meaning of the required vocabulary.

JOURNAL NO. 2

I.E. LUIS CARLOS TRUJILLO POLANCO

8TH GRADERS

FEBRUARY 2015

Working in a new place is challenging since you have to face students from different backgrounds, without even knowing their behavior and their attitude towards English. So the class began when the teacher (me) entered the classroom. The students were skeptical since an unexpected silence dominated the classroom. I started greeting my students in a very basic English, noticing their faces when realizing the teacher was speaking in the target language.

Some of the students started pronouncing some words to get in touch with the new environment, although most of them were afraid of doing it. Rules were set to facilitate class participation, and a numbers introductory activity was explained.

Students began to participate counting numbers from one to ten (1 – 10) challenged by certain rules. After noticing how enjoyable was to participate in those activities, students felt engaged to use the target language with random vocabulary. The following exercise was creating a huge snake shape, where everybody was lined up, with a head and a tail.

In the order they were seated, they had to say a word in English, following the sequence and remembering all the previous words said by their classmates. Students felt the tension of saying words in English at the same time they were struggling to avoid forgetting the words in order.

When a student broke the sequence, there was an empty spot at the snake’s tail, so that student had to move there. A very short Penitence was waiting at the tail of the Snake, and was just to introduce themselves with name, age, likes and dislikes, besides some additional info they wanted to say.

This was not that high-order thinking activity, and maybe students could not remember those words a week before, but I feel I managed the objective: To show them that English is not something to be afraid of, to make them feel they could use the target language in a very harmless environment.

JOURNAL NO. 4

CIUDADELA EDUCATIVA COMFAMILIAR COMFALAGOS

9TH GRADERS

MARCH 2011

One of the things I find really hard is to face a population where different incomes influence the classroom population. So the class has its ups and down since English level was easily influenced by the students’ background. Some of them came from private institutions and some of them, from a very low income public institution.

A very basic vocabulary for describing places was set to do the activity. They had to describe a place in terms of size, elements of it, surrounding places, colors, shapes and so on. After practicing inside the classroom, and giving them a basic structure to create the explanation, they had to prepare the oral presentation of their place.

By couples, they had do create a drawing in which they had to explain to their classmates the place they were in charge of. Without writing any word in the poster, the just needed to make the classmates understand the specific place. After creating the poster, I gave the instruction of taking all the materials needed to start a small tour all over the school.

Since we were visiting so many places, the idea was to stop in those selected places and perform a mini-presentation. The students in charge of the place just had to stand up (everybody else had to sit down) and present their drawing, comparing it with the real location. After some places had been presented, I started creating some discussion questions in terms of using comparatives and superlatives.

Since the school was so big, at the end of the activity students were tired of walking around, but engaged with the activity.

MY BELIEFS ABOUT MY WORLD

ENGLISH

We are now living in the fashion epoch of English. Latin is a clear example of how languages take over the world to create some kind of empire to direct people’s mind in a single direction. As Latin used to be the dominant language many centuries ago, we are now living in the dominant world of English. I believe this language has been dwindling its power, since we are at the beginning of a stage where Chinese or mandarin will be the next Powerful Language of the world. Being the current tool to empower education, English needs to be used in the way students learn to accept different cultures and value their own culture.

LEARNING

Regardless the place you are living in, the people you interact with or the education you can receive, learning has to do with personal interests. A waste of time is trying to impose some general knowledge to a person who is not interested in it. Taking this into account, learning is a process that needs to respect multiple intelligences and personal interests; otherwise, the learning process won’t succeed and the teaching entity will go into frustration. You learn what you want, you learn what you are interested in, and you learn what you really like.

TEACHING

Only those who have the power to change the world, will be the ones to have the power to teach. This process shows how important is for a person to open somebody else’s mind and build up solutions in a specific context. Teaching gives you the ability to master certain skills when facing problems, unexpected situations and unwanted outcomes. Teaching is the best way to understand and feel how people feel about the world, as well as being an incredible opportunity to become an action researcher to constantly improve your students and your personal life.

LANGUAGE TEACHING

Contextualizing this matter into our Country, to me Language Teaching one of the most outstanding strengths we have as members of this particular society. It is not about saying that the other sciences are easy to teach, but, from my humble perspective, entering a classroom before noon or after noon, and convince 40 souls with many personal needs that English is one tool to overcome bad situations in their lives, create a challenging environment where we as teachers need to become real heroes. Using a cross-curricular approach (As I prefer doing), language teaching an endless enjoyable world, since we can use many perspectives, many subjects and students' interests to convince them about our goal: Enlighten the path to enjoy English

CONCEPTUALIZING TEACHING ACTS

1. What do you usually do as teacher? With what kind of rationale?

My experience as an English teacher has given me a wide range of elements to support the idea of living my professional art surrounding a single word: ART. Going through a lot of circumstances has supported my own idea that learning English as a foreign language has to be more a delightful experience, rather than an academic process to complete a set of requirements

As explained in my teaching metaphor, I always squeeze the brain of my students. Having sequenced knowledge, most of the students where I am working now, sink when facing real situations, what we know as Problematic Situations. So, my students have to push themselves when giving an opinion, at the same time I offer exercises to enjoy the language learning.

2. What is your mind engagement like in the professional exercise of teaching?

Constant reflection is my personal law when facing the teaching epoch (Pre – while – post). Since entering the current master’s program, I have deeply understood reading, studying beyond the basic requirements and going deeper into information, is the key to succeed in this field (As in any other I guess). This is why, my mind engagement focuses on constantly improve the activities I have found meaningful in different groups. I like mastering activities and not changing just by fashion.

3. How would you characterize your professional, personal and experiential knowledge of teaching?

There is one key factor that I have learned to value though experience: EXPERIENCE. Regardless the repetition of the word, my personal development has been really enriching due to those mistakes I have made since the beginning of my days as an English teacher. Step  by step, mistake after mistake, has led me through an experiential path that has given me a delightful experience when facing any group of students, whether they like English or not.

4. How do you see the relationship between theory, research and practice?

 There is something basic when moving forward in your life: You need to know the history, in order not to commit the same mistakes, but to improve the good results you have already had. In this way, practice of teaching English needs to go through an initial stage of understanding what has already happened in a particular context. In this sense, after consulting the theory, research on-action and research in-action is really important to understand your students’ interests. Once you know what kind of fruits your students like, you can create the best fruit salad to delight your students’ palate.

5. To what extent is there a cause-effect relationship between teaching and learning?

Learning is a constant process that can or cannot depend on teaching. Of course, when relating teaching to learning, there is going to be a highly noticeable improvement, but only when contextualizing the knowledge in matter. To example this, teaching seasons in Neiva is kind of low-representative, than taking Latin-American  students a whole year to the US, where they will feel all 4 seasons, instead of learning them by heart. This is why, teaching needs to be contextualized to become some kind of acquisition. 

REFERENCE

Kumaramadivelu, B (2003). Beyond Methods: Macrostrategies for Language Teaching. Yale University Press

MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY

1985 Was the year in which my mom gave birth to her only child, on a September morning around 8:08 am. Clinica Neiva was the place where she began to shape a story that nowadays is proud of being raised among a family of excellent women and a real queen.

My first contact with English was a sunny afternoon, when living at my grandma’s house. My uncle came into the house with this kind of black album that simply caught my attention since the moment I listened to the first track: Enter Sandman. At that precise moment, I began feeling some attraction towards lyrics in English, meanings and everything surrounding the language, in relation to this Black Album.

English ended up being easy for me during my school years, since I liked looking up for meanings, listening while reading the lyrics and understanding as much as possible all the songs I liked.

Not all my experience was a delightful one. When studying at Salesiano school, as a sixth grader, I was just about to flunk my school year due to English. My uncle, the same one gave me the chance of entering this English world, had to show up at the school in order to save my life. Without even thinking about some way out to this problem, he faced the English teacher in charge of mi final grades. The surprise was that my English teacher (a beautiful woman) and my uncle had already met before, since they were teenagers. So a couple of eye blinks later, I was ready to move forward in my path to become the English teacher I am today.

As time was passing by, I developed certain skills (listening and speaking) that led to a stage where I had to represent my school (Claretiano) in and English contest called WHO WANTS TO BE MILLIONAIRE, challenging private and public schools from Huila. I had a nice performance, being in the final four, but unhappy since none of the four took the biggest price: A trip to Cartagena during one week for free. Anyway, I finished high school and entered the University, taking advantage of my English level. I was the fourth in the list out 45 students.

Since my objective was not to be a teacher, I dedicated my time to improve my vocabulary and my two strongest skills: Listening and Speaking. I never liked reading and writing that much. I enjoyed mi University time, taking advantage of those foreign trips, which in my case led me to the United States. Being at camp (my first experience outside of the country) taught me to value my land, my people, my country and my roots from the very first moment I got there.

Being at the States was the first time I really felt I wanted to contribute people to develop their skills in order to value their own land, in my case, people from Huila and Colombia in general. I really liked the fact that every student working and learning with me, could understand the importance of valuing their native country and exploring their own department before falling in love with a foreign place.

After being at the States, which was in 2006, I continued with my studies, graduating on May 15, 2009. I was already working in some English Private Institutions, widening my experience and learning as much as I could. In 2010 got my first official job, having an amazing experience since I learned a lot form tiny mistakes that built up the experience I have today. In 2013 I began working with the government, waiting for my final stage of accepting an official Job after going through the evaluation process.

 Working in Palermo, La Plata, Tesalia and now, in Paicol with the government, has given me a wide range of elements to acquire the basic experience to change my students’ world. I like pushing them to follow their dreams in what their likes are. Besides this, joining the Master’s Program at Surcolombiana University has allowed me to improve mi view of how to approach my students. This wider view of the teaching and learning process of English is facilitating my life nowadays, since English stopped being my job, turning into being my life and my passion. 

Teaching is for those who feel and believe in the inner power of changing the world. This is why I stand for Howard Gardner’s study (Gardner & Hatch, 1989) on Multiple Intelligences. Díaz and Heining-Boynton (1995) state that “everyone possess all intelligences, most of us have an intelligence more developed than the others. It is possible to develop any of them to a moderate level” (adapted, P. 5). We can see that the first case, was a clear example of Bodily/Kinesthetic Intelligence development –skillfully controlling body motions, showing a keen sense of direction and timing – , and the second case was the Logical/Mathematical intelligence development –logical reasoning, categorizing facts, sequential thought 

All in all, I must say that the brain is the most perfect machine a human being has been granted with. Multiple theories have explained how the brain works, and personally, I value the findings of Tserdanelis & Wong (2004) related to language functioning and the brain. I must say I follow a little bit more the theory of Waldemar De Gregori, the person who suggests that the brain is divided into three parts: The central part (Operational Brain), the right part (Intuitive brain) and the left part (logical brain), which give a structural basis of a very deep study of the brain.

But if we as teachers or future professors want to understand what really happens in the brain during the learning process, it is very important to go deeper into the theory of Waldemar De Gregori, and the text related to the function of the multiple intelligences. We cannot focus on a single branch of the tree, but we must go through all of the different approaches of the brain, both physiological and behavioural.

Tserdanelis & Wong have shown step by step how we produce language, and it is a very important step in our profession and in our professionalization process to be able to identify how it works, so we can create a better language learning environment in order to get the best results in terms of teaching English as a foreign language. They even point out those language disorders in the brain, giving us hints to identify and work on those weaknesses from our learners.

The theory from Waldemar De Gregori and the text about multiple intelligences have a little bit more specified division of the human behavior, describing the personality of a learner in the process of acquiring any knowledge, and in our case, the process of learning a foreign language. A very clear difference between Tserdanelis & Wong and Waldemar De Gregori is that language production is focused on different sides of the brain:

Tserdanelis & Wong suggest that all that has to do with language is produced in the left hemisphere of the brain. While De Gregori points out that people who have language facility, and have a very easy way to deal with words in all ways, are the ones who are strong in the right part of the brain (Intuitive).

So my metaphore has to do with this belief: The world is made for winners, for actors of change, regardless the profession or the personal development. I support, as seen in the picture, all my students' interests since the really feel they want to develope their intelligences the way they feel like. From my point of view and beliefs, teaching is about developing my students' brain towards a personal growth for social improvement.