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