Season finale

English classes have been very dynamic and aimed to learning. We have learned a lot about how to teach a foreign language. Although at the beginning, we did not think that we could learn much by role playing, we have realized that it is essential to make and then analyze them. When you propose exercises it is difficult to take them to reality, but the role plays help to understand how to do them better and seeing what advantages and disadvantages do they have. Also, you can receive others impressions, therefore we get a broader learning.

We have to say that our project has been realized in a dynamic way and appropriately with the help of your advice.

So thanks to all of you and merry Christmas! See you on January!  

Wegoby song

Our teacher Harkaitz gave us the idea creating a song. So one of our project´s activity have been the creation of a song with the contents learned by the children. At the same time, with that song we have made a kind of video clip. We think that this activity can be very powerfull to motivate the children speaking English and aswell to show them doing useful things with their learning.
Even more, if the video clip contents pictures/videos taken by the children or pictures/videos of themselves, the result would be much more significant for the children.

Below we explain how to do it:

1.  In free online application named soundation.com you can create the rhythm or music like you want. There is a large variety of goods rhythms. Once you create the music, you must export it (File_export, we choose wav format).
2. Then, you record the voice, for that you need a microphone (some computer have it inside). In our case we didn´t got it, so we recorded in the mobile phone and then send it to the computer by email.
3. Then you need to downloud to your computer Audacity free application. After installing it (few seconds) and open it, you must import the music create before and the recorded voice (File_import or just drag them into audacity window). To finish you export it. It gives several format to export it, we have choosen wav format and it works.
4. Finally to do the video clip there is a lot of applications, movie maker, picasa... We did it in imovie, that it´s the same as movie maker but for mac.

We hope you´ll enjoy it

Presentations of the projects

All the groups have presented our projects. We have also learned many things on these presentations. We have seen a way to work the English by going to a farm. Usually this trips are used ass regular classes, not with the purpose of teaching English, and they can also be an advantage to teach English. It is important to join the topic they work in class and the topic of the English lessons, so this way we can take advantage of this trips to work the English vocabulary. It is very important and nice that children could manipulate and experiment for themselves the products, instead of using always images.

We have learned how to include the vocabulary through stories and songs. Choosing a suitable story for a task can be a little difficult for children but very nice at the same time. Using stories is very nice and effective way for this.

Another very original way for children to work new vocabulary is after showing them the pictures, doing a story with them and making them repeat what they have, by performing a series of questions, to help children acquire the new vocabulary.

We have seen in most of the groups that keep balance between the theory and the practical part using games, mimic, movement, etc...

In these role plays we have also collected a series of positive messages that we want to share in our blog. Firstly, we present vocabulary through images collected by the children. Children see those of images weekly in different formats, power -point and album. Secondly, each week children produce some things that they are going to use then to play (theater, map), other to have fun (create song), and the others to communicate (Skype, etc.). Thirdly and last, the vocabulary is highly related and at the end we set it all, so children can remember and keep it, while they extend their learning.

Our role play

Our group could not realize the role play based on “Uxue was born” project, so we did a role play about our future project. At the time we were creating the activities, we have had some doubts, but the most difficult aspect has been the how to make children understand the vocabulary they ignore. For this, we have thought that the best way is to present the initial vocabulary by images, pictures… And all this using a simple vocabulary.

In our project, when we add a new topic or vocabulary, we start introducing simple words at the beginning and then we introduce more complex words or sentences. But we are thinking that you they something after the theorycal part, they need some  movement  activity so that children don’t get bored and to get them motivated.

Therefore, to perform the role playing, we have collected some very valid advice. Our classes are 30 minutes long, we have divided classes in two parts.; first a theory part and then the fun part or movement part. In terms of the presentation of images, so this way the teaching  of the vocabulary is more easy and simple for children. Therefore  we will keep this part of the exercises and then we are doing something funny and constructive for the second part of the class. We were also recommended to bring  to class a worker (firefighter)  and to work mixing the Basque and English vocabulary. Following this recommendations we will capture these ideas in our project.

Project: Planning the lessons

Here we are going to explain how do we organize our project's lessons. It will last a month, so we had divided it in 4 aims, one for each week.

Week one: people in our neighbourhood.

All around the neighborhood there are many different kinds of people that do many different kinds of jobs. The first week of "My Neighborhood" month will help children identify and learn about many of these people and the important role that they play in the community. We would help children make connections to their own neighborhood by talking about all the different jobs in your community and the people that work there. Community helpers like teachers, postal workers, and firemen may be the most familiar, but we can also discuss what thier neighbors do and what we can do to help in the neighborhood. This is also a great opportunity to teach about diversity by discussing how people in their neighborhood are the same and different and how that makes the neighborhood special.

Week two: places in our neighbourhood.

This week of activities we are exploring the wonderful places around Egia. Based on our children's observation skills and using as reference the pictures they have taken around the district we are looking for the main buildings and places as sports center, library, park, supermarket, train station....We will talk about what offers each location and we will locate them in a map. 

Week three: getting around the neighbourhood.

How do we get around our neighborhood? Do we walk, drive a car, or take the bus? Maybe children like to ride their bike or scooter. There are so many different ways to get around district and we can use public transportation or bike sidewalks to make moving around even easier. You can talk about the ways that their family travels in the neighborhood. Encourage them to share with others which mode of transportation is their favorite. They can make even try a new routes to get to familiar destination. Don't forget that getting around the neighborhood can be a way to exercise too. Run, jump, or ride your scooter to the park on a nice day. 

Week four: communication with other class.

We would like to have conversations in english with other schools in Europe to improve our speaking skills and knowing their culture.

This week we are preparing a conversation to explain to another kindergarten class how is our district. It would be a simple sentence based conversation and it will be followed by a song. And to finish the conversation we would make some questions about their district.

Project: Context

In the following lines we are going to describe the most important features of our project's context.

How old are the pupils? What type of families they come from? What type of district they live in? What kind of school is it? 

This particular project is for five years old children, so its supposed that they have been learning english from last year.

With the purpose of giving more realism to our project, we chose a real school. The chosen one is Aitor ikastola, a publicized school, from preschool to primary, located in Egia, a district in San Sebastian.

Egia is one of the oldest neighborhoods of San Sebastian, a neighborhood with its own personality and characteristics defined from the point of view of population and sociology. Housing construction, the new courts, sports center Zuhaizti, new parking, etc.. complete the plot in this neighborhood. Different zones are distinguished: Center, Mundaiz, Atotxa, Aldakonea, Virgen del Carmen, Iruresoro, Tolaregoia, High Egia and Latxaga. The total population in Egia is 14.956.

Children of Aitor ikastola come from working class families.

Project: What will be about?

Our final project will not be an english project for its own, it will  be part of an interdisciplinary project. The topic we have chosen to work around will be our district, in this case Egia.

                                           

We want children to get involved with the project and with that purpose it is important to know what do children feel about their district and what things about their district awake most their interest. Once analyzed their interest, the project will depart from that points.

Furthermore, we would like to establish a relationship (take part in a cultural/language exchange) via Skype with an English preschool class, so we found interesting to introduce them to our district at the end of the project as the final activity.

Role plays

Most of the groups of our class have done role plays around "Uxue was born" project. After doing this role plays we have analized each of them. In those role plays we have collected some ideas that will be very helpfull for our project. We have realized that sometimes you plan some activities in a way, but many times you need to to go more in deep on them.

Therefore, we have learned that the exercises must beggin with a very simple vocabulary, and we must shoy images to children so they can understand what we are saying. The gestures and the body language that the teacher uses are also an essential part to make children undertand what the teacher says. We can not pretend them to sing a song when they listen ti it for the first time. And it is important to alternate the exersices freqyuently.

Our children's profile

We are going to perform a role playing based un "Uxue was born" project. For this, we were asked to choose a children's profile who is going to attend to the role playing classes.

The children we chose is a girl of four years old. She is a little bit shy but very quiet. She is basque and lives in Donostia. She has a good attitude for English in classroom. Althougt she is shy, she participates very well in class.

Activities based on "Uxue was born" project.

This week we have planned different activities related to the “Uxue was born” project. First of all, we decided to work around the family topic in the activities, thinking that this topic would match very well with the project and also that it would give a continuation to the family tree they had already done.

1st activity: Family album or short story

In this activity kids have to make a photograph album with their family members. This activity will help to introduce them to the family vocabulary (father, mother, brother, sister, grandmother, grandfather, pets...).

The older ones can make a short story using pictures, drawings and simple sentences talking about the day they were born, what was the weather like, which day of the week was, where were they born, which people went to visit them...

2nd activity: Who lives at my house?

This is a craftwork activity and we are going to need a house shape cardboard and different color stickers for it. Each color represents a different member of the family. For example: red sticker for dad, yellow for mom...

The kids have to fill their cardboard house with the family members that live in their house. So, if one kid lives with his father and his mother, he would have 3 different stickers on his cardboard. In the end we are going to put all the houses together an d make a mural with them, as the one that shows the photograph above.

3rd activity: Guess de card

We need cards with different family members pictures on them: grandmother/grandfather, mother/father, brother/sister, pets (fish, cat, dog),...

Then we ask for a volunteer, who will be the one that is going to guess the card. We put the flashcard on that kids back (we can hold it with a clothespin) so that he can´t it. The kid has to make questions to guess who is in the card. "Is it my...?" And other kids have to answer "yes" or "no", until, he/she guesses the family member that is in the card.

For the older kids we can use the same activity but to make it a little bit more difficult, instead using the "Is it my...?" question only, they can make questions about personal characteristics like: "Is she a girl?", "Is he older than me?", "Does she got long hair?"...

Discussing if Zerain´s proyect can be considerate as CLIL.

This week we have worked analyzing the "Uxue was born" project developed by the school of  the little town of Zerain. 

At first sight, we thought that this project could not fit in CLIL, because it mainly works with the first language (euskera) and only in a little part with the second.

Despite, CLIL project is usually used to work on a second language, we have  realized that CLIL is not exclusively for the learning on a second language, it is possible to make use of this methodology on the learning of the first one too.

Keeping that in mind, and taking into account how they integrate context, content and language in a fully interdisciplinary way, we have arrived to the conclusion that Zerain´s project can be undoubtedly considered CLIL.

Blue planet tales. Isn´t it a CLIL tool?

Now that we are working on CLIL, we have found an interesting tool that can be used on this methodology. In Blue Planet Tales´ website, we can download a variety of children’s stories based on some of history’s most important moments, available in both languages, english and spanish.

The extinction of the dinosaurs, the discovery of America, Laika, the first living creature in space, the Pirate Blackbeard, the discovery of fire, the migration of the birds ... All stories are well told and illustrated are magnets for children. They are attracted because they are part of reality, because they are adventures, because they know the value of success and failure and make them feel the story in first person. With interactivity to also have fun, with questions and answers to reinforce learning and all supervised by psychologists, speech therapists and teachers so that each story is a unique, fun, educational and very safe.

What is CLIL?

CLIL: Content and Language Integrated Learning

The CLIL is an approach for learning content through an additional language (foreign or second), thus teaching both the subject and the language. The key issue is to avoid working on the language learning exclusively. The main focus of the CLIL is the content and by the way when we are learning we practice and produce language (communicative situations). 

Now we know what CLIL is, but after reading different articles in class, we have realized that there is not a unique interpretation of this methodology, but there are many different versions of it. We have some examples of the CLIC project as the Artigal method, the one in Catalonia, another one in Zerain or the Reggio Emilian version.

All of them form part of CLIL, but they may respond to different situations conditioned by the context they are surrounded to, because we can´t work in the same way in each school. According to what Dahllof, U. says:

“Too much attention is directed  towards finding the ‘best method’, even though fifty years  of educational research has not been able to support such generalisations. Instead, we should ask which method or combination of methods is best for which  goals, which students and under which conditions”. Dahllof, U (1999).

English? Yes, but when, why and how?

Deciding the appropriate age to start learning English has been for long time, and still continues being a source of debate. Here, in the in the Basque country, since the implement of the “Eleanitz” project, in the early 90s, children start learning English at the age of four. But are we sure that this is the optimal age to start?

Some people argue that there is no necessity to start so early. In many other countries of Europe, kids start much later and they get even better results than here. Why does this happen?

In our opinion one of the keys would be the exposure to the foreign language. Maybe, in some countries start later, however, they spent much more time in contact with English. This aspect of giving much time to English in higher stages of the school has been seen like a threat to the euskera for many people, and this was the reason, to start teaching children English so early. The younger they start, they will have an earlier contact to English and they will not need so many hours of English in later stages. In conclusion, “Eleanitz” decided to give a graduate exposure for long time, instead of a higher exposure in older ages, when euskera is supposed to be more present.

After saying this, is quite obvious that having a high exposure is indispensable to acquire a language, but this does not guarantee a good competence of the language. It is also indispensable to have high quality learning. A naturalistic approach is meant to be the best way to introduce children to a foreign language, in other word,s the opposite of a grammar focused teaching.

In conclusion here are two key factors to take to account when learning a language. So if you have a high exposure and quality learning, you could learn English at any age.

Keeping in all this in mind, we had to decide for our project in which age should start kids learning English. Considering what we have explained before about exposure we think kids should start as early as possible, so four years would be a perfect age to start with it at school. 

Furthermore we have found other important reasons that support this idea of the early starting. One of them would be the pronunciation, children at this age have an advantage to acquire a good pronunciation. And the other one is that children at this age, learn by playing and do not feel under pressure.

 

First principles for our project

Here is the list of our principles for the project:

• In terms of grouping, we would like having diversity, this means, mixing children who have different levels in the same class.
• Integrating different areas with English learning like music, sciences, sports…
• Having fun with music, games, theatre, crafts…
• It might be interesting to work in different workshops: cooking workshop, drawing workshop, plastic arts workshop, literature workshop…
• The teacher will always speak English in class.
• Flexibility in general, always looking for the children´s needs.
• Going abroad, considering children´s age it would be better traveling in group with their parents.
• Focus on in pronunciation. It is known that pronunciation is one of the advantages at this age when you learn a language.
• Introducing children to the Anglo-Saxon culture, for example, showing them typical foods, dances, music, songs and celebrations.

In this list below we have collected some of the principles expressed by our classmates that we found interesting:

• Children should learn by doing.
• We should show to children that English is useful and explain them why is it so useful.
•  The importance of being researching teachers.
• Taking to account the process of learning, not the results.
• Using tools as Skype or Hangouts to maintain relationships with English speaking children.
• Respect the identity of the children.
•  Use of rituals at the beginning or the end of the lesson for example.

Remembering our experiences in language learning

In the last class we talked in group about our experiences learning foreign language, including the good ones and the bad ones.

When we learned a foreign language, in our case English or French, most of us felt that the most negative point was that almost all the lessons were based on too much time working on grammar and doing a great amount of individual exercises. This type of routines decreased our motivation and made lessons quite boring. Other people talked about the fact of having students with very different levels in the same class, put at a disadvantage to students with a lower level, because teachers tend to adapt the rhythm of the lessons for those who have highest level, leaving backwards the students with more difficulties.

On the other hand, we had also good experiences. One of the most important and more repeated in the group was having the chance of staying in an English speaking country. In the same way, and without going so far, making a friendship with native speakers would be very positive too.  Besides this, the classes based on group discussions, participation and games where very appreciated by us.

School in Brazil helps students learn English by correcting celebrities' grammar on Twitter

For the purpose of teaching English, a school in Brazil named Red Ballon challenged a group of children from 8 to 13 years to play as "grammar cops" for their favorite celebrities on Twitter. The kids identified grammatically incorrect tweets from artists like Justin Bieber, Rihanna or Lady Gaga and responded to those tweets indicating the mistakes and then the correction.

Check out the link below and watch the video above to learn more about the creative school.

http://jenesaispop.com/2013/08/24/asi-no-se-escribe-rihanna/

La educación prohibida

This documentary shows some testimonials from educators, all of them in the same way, arguing in the defense of an alternative education against the traditional one.  

In summary, this documentary helped us to open the mind and see that traditional education has large errors. One of the most important problems is that traditional does not respond to the children needs, it responds to the need of the society, and works to prepare children to fit in the society. Children are rarely asked about their motivations and neither involved in the creating of content or learning methods. Therefore, this kind of education does not help children to find or develop their real talents.

Although we have found really interesting points in their speeches, we would like to see all this theories in practice. It would help much more, instead of listening so much interviews, to see how these educators take this theories to practice day by day with their children. Because the problem that we usually find is that we listen a lot about these idealistic theories but, we really see very little examples about them. 

You will find the full documentary and more information about it in the next link:

http://www.educacionprohibida.com/

…4, 3, 2, 1, 0.Lift off!

Did you know that onomatopoeias are different in each language? Seems that languages interpret the same sounds or voices in different ways, that’s why we think that learning languages doesn´t  involve just grammar, vocabulary… Each language encompasses a whole culture.

From now on, we are trying to understand and explain the wide range of aspects to consider when we learn or teach a foreign language. We invite you to visit and participate in our blog with your comments whenever you want.

Thanks for reading! See you around here!

Ixiar, Zuriñe and Irati