Reflections week 10

Dear friends,
I would like to send an special thanks to our tutor Donna, all of you and to my students who were with me in all this process..

The most rewarding aspect of the course was definitely put in practice everything we learnt here. We were able to work with our students using all this technological tools in benefit of their own learning. With the final project our students were part of their own learning process in an interactive and dynamic way.

             

EVE

Reflections week 9

Dear Friends,

It has been an excellent week…. We did it… you finished our projects. I remembered when we were in week one and I got very nervous about the project. I will like to send special thanks to my partner Luchito, my coworkers and Donna for all the support you´ve given me during all the process of completing my project.

Thank you to all my students at ESPE who still working on the project…. 

 

I want to welcome you to see some of their blogs…
 http://dcuasi.blogspot.com/
http://www.englishclass5624.blogspot.com/

http://www.taniaydome.blogspot.com/

http://englishcvillacis.blogspot.com/

http://martitamcld22.blogspot.com/

http://katherinepaladines.blogspot.com/

http://consueparrabril.blogspot.com/

http://gabyenglish11.blogspot.com/

EVE

Tecnology and Teachers

It seems that we as teachers have to be one step forward ... and that is why courses like this are important in teachers training. It is important that teachers are prepared enough in the use of new technologies and communication so we can guide our students in their learning process in a better, faster and dynamic way.



After exploring ANVILL and some of the different tools and exercises we can that technology is a tool which could help not only the teachers but also the students in their learning process. As my friend Gabby said there are an infinity of activities that we can choose from in order to ay our class more dynamic and motivating for the students. One of the most impressive tools is VOICEBOARDS. Here students are able to practice their pronunciation at home on their own. There are also other tools which students can keep in touch with their mates and with the teacher such as the forums and chat...

We as teachers have to take advantage of these interesting tools in benefit of our students..

Reflections week 8

Community service…… Huigra Ecuador…

Dear friends I will like to share with you some on the activities we did this weekend. Some of the teachers from ESPE and approximately one hundred students from the Linguistics career went to do community service in a small town called Huigra (seven hours from the capital city). There we have the opportunity to share our experience as teachers, give training, paint the schools, fix the classrooms, and work with the people from the community… this experience is something that I cannot describe … it is mixture of emotions… but the most important thing is that we did something to help the community..

EVE

http://www.huigra.com/

Reflections week 7

During this week we talked about the use of computer in class and about autonomous learning. The use of computer can make the class more effective considering that we do not lose any time… if the teacher is well prepared … we can use the time to focus on the students performance….

  

It is important that the students know in advance what they are expected to do … and you’re the goal of the class, or lesson is… In that way they can do their best… of we want autonomous learners we as teacher have to guide them.. Lead them in all the activities we want them to do…

 

EVE

Cooperative Learning....

Dear friends,

All of the topics seem very interesting to me but I the article about cooperative learning the most. First of all because I was not sure about the term with collaborative learning, cooperative learning is a teaching strategy which involves creating groups in class. The key point is that each student in each group should have a different level of ability or ability. Why is that, because the purpose of the cooperative learning is that each member of the team is responsible not only for his learning but the learning of the group. Therefore the students must help each other in order to succeed in every task given.

Week 6 "What a week"

I am going to start by saying “what a week” traveling from one place to another, studying for your promoting, finishing your thesis can be very exhausting be but is definitely worth it.

Let´s talk about Power Point Presentations.

Creating presentations in power point is an interactive way of teaching and also of motivating the students. The first benefit is because this program is very easy to use… because it is an application of Microsoft office and almost everybody has access to it. Another benefit is that we can introduce whatever we need in order to create an interesting presentation. In other words in each slide we can include texts, charts, pictures, graphs, animations, sounds. This PPP make it more visual for the students to understand the lesson and for the teachers this kind of presentation saves time in class that could be use for the students to produce the language…

Power Point Presentations also demand time from teachers, because we have to find, analyze and select the materials we are using in advance… this is also an advantage because we are actually planning the lesson.

For students this is another way of studying .. during class they will not be worry about copying the class, because they already have the information… during class they will be worry about understanding it…

HAPPY MOTHER´S DAY

Dear friends,

I do not want to miss the opportunity to which you the best …. Happy Mother´s Day

For all that you have given me,
I can return but love. For you
Bound up the wounds I did not see
And gave me hopes and passions new.

I can return but love for you,
Whose unmoved faith my heart did move,
And gave me hopes and passions new,
And loved me till I turned to love.
Whose unmoved faith did my heart move?
The mother of my heart, not blood,
Who loved me till I turned to love.
And I became the soul I would.
The mother of my heart, not blood,
Bound up the wounds I did not see.
And I became the soul I would
For all that you have given me.

http://www.poemsforfree.com/foral2.html

Reflections week 5

Dear friends,

We can start by saying that project-based learning, the use of proper rubrics and alternative assessment can indeed help the student to become more autonomous. First of all because project-based learning provides the students with complex tasks based on challenging questions or problems in which they have investigate, reflect and come up with solutions, decisions and possible alternatives. All this process has to be done by themselves with the guide of the teacher.

                                         

We have to remember that the assessment of student learning is the process of evaluating the extent to which the students have developed their knowledge, understanding and abilities and a simple score does not give us that. Therefore, it is necessary to focus on a continue assessment; on other words, to assess our students in a daily basis, assess the students in their daily accomplishments, a reading task, a conversation practice, on their communication skills.... There are other ways of assessment for example peer, w e also can use check lists, and rubrics what is important is to focus on how on our students’ accomplishments ……

Rubrics are also the key for a good performance students have to know exactly what they are going to be graded on so they can do their best on the different tasks they are asked to do.

                              

EVE

News

Dear Friends,

This last Saturday all Ecuadorian have to vote for a New Constitutional Referendum… If you want to get some more information you can go to

http://news.yahoo.com/topics/ecuador

Reflections week 4

 Dear Friends,

I agree with the fact that “the best way to achieve something huge is by doing little things little by little”… It is also amazing to realize that we are already finishing our fourth week. Creating a lesson which is really interactive was something that I have never done before; knowing that this type of lesson will not only improve their skills but also will motivate our students is awesome….Everything that you can image that will benefit our students is on the web and it is available for us at any moment… it is up to us to choose which the best sources are  and work with them…. I will try as soon as I can with my students at the university….

EVE

Argumentative Essay ... Lesson Plan

Dear Friends,

The activity is going to be about writing an argumentative essay about a current issue in or country. This May 7th all Ecuadorians will vote for a new Constitutional Referendum. One of the questions deals with the freedom of speech, so our writing tasks will be to search for relevant information about this topic and to write for or against it. Previously students have to search about the new Constitutional Referendum related to the question freedom of speech.

Objective of this lesson
Given the sufficient grammar structure, vocabulary and information related freedom of speech students will be able to write an argumentative essay about freedom of speech. With mature opinions with supporting ideas measured by the 10 steps of an argumentative essay, coherent opinions and support their criteria and writing an essay rubrics.

http://www.nald.ca/library/learning/flemings/geninfo/general/lbs5/essay.htm

http://www1.aucegypt.edu/academic/writers/

Dear freinds, what do you think...???? should I add somthing more...???? take something out..??????

Using the Internet in ESL Writing Instruction

Dear friends,

According to the paper "Using the Internet in ESL Writing Instruction" written by Jarek Krajka, the internet and the technology have created opportunities for teacher in the development of authentic material which purpose is to offer new, interesting and didactic ways of learning. The three basic elements are web pages, e-mail connection and creating class websites. The key point is to use these resources available for us with a proper plan... In other words we just can not take on-line activities randomly, it is necessary to have a main goal for the class and the leaning process and have to be related with the syllabus.. The searching process is also crucial.. to chose among thousands of sites, takes time and accuracy to select the best sites which are proper for students.

One of the benefits of on-line instruction is that students have the opportunity to experience or learn from updated, interesting issues. There is also the variety of sources available from which the students and teacher can choose. The activities in on-line instructions can also be done in different places and different time not only in a classroom and also can go further..... blogs, virtual classes, conferences, etc.

There are several ideas for writing from which we can choose: a letters to friends, formal letters, writing a biography, description of a person, an essay, notices and advertisements, descriptions of festivals or ceremonies, reviews of films, books or plays, newspaper reports, among others. I personally liked the argumentative essay because my students are university students so it is sometimes for the to do essays even in Spanish. So I recommend the following link which has ideas of how to write an essay.
http://www.ohio.edu/linguistics/esl/writing/index.html

Four Week ….. My birthday..

Four Week ….. My birthday..

Let me share with you the incredible moments that I spent with my family and friends for my birthday…. And at the same time let me thank you all for supporting me in this learning process…. 

EVE

http://www.facebook.com/carlos444sol/posts/10150593128220525?ref=notif&notif_t=feed_comment_reply#!/profile.php?id=100001428165465

Listening is it THAT important???

It is amazing to realize that we listen more and we talk, write or read. However, it is also frustrating to know that we as teacher do not focus on this skill when we teach a language. This article focus on the question of how to help learners develop effective listening skills brings attention to the methods we use and the type of materials we introduce our learners to. http://www.elthillside.com/up/files/article4.doc

First of all it is important to be aware of the aim of all listening lessons which should be to allow learners a greater degree of independence when confronted with listening to the foreign language in a real world context. There are different technique that wwe can use in our classes in which we can use technology in developing listening. There is the radio, TV, videos, Internet, DC rooms, etc. It is important to tell at ESPE we have that opportunity to use this means in pro to the learning process.



There is a listening vocabulary exercise that looks really interesting. It is a Physical Description vocabulary - Listening Memory Game. This exercise has to be done in la laboratory because students need to turn on their speakers or put on their headphones.

http://www.eslgamesworld.com/members/games/vocabulary/memoryaudio/description/index.html

Delicious

I have to tell you that is my first time using delicious. It was really interesting to you that there is a way you can get your favorite sites any where you are without using your own computer. Taking in consideration that "Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows you to tag, save, manage and share Web pages all in one place, with emphasis on the power of the community, Delicious greatly improves how people discover, remember and share on the Internet" http://www.delicious.com/help/getStarted.

My delicious page is
http://www.delicious.com/evealmeida_2804....
Please take a look at it..... hope it is ok....

Reflections Week 3

Dear Friends,

I can not believe that we finished week three. Let me tell you that in my country we celebrated Easter so we were a little busy with our traditional festivities… I invite you to take a look a little bit about Ecuador in during this holiday…

http://www.ecuador.com/blog/easter-week-celebrations-in-ecuador

http://www.detourdestinations.com/blog/2010/04/easter-in-ecuador-semana-santa/

Reflections week 2

Dear Friends,

It has been a difficult week but also full of challenges. First, we learned a new method of developing objectives for our classes, I which we have to take into account: the Audience, Behavior, Condition and Degree.  This method is called ABCD.

The second part of our weekly assignment had to do with a lot of searching which helped us to identify, analyze and decide which searcher are better and useful for us. This also will depend on the search we are doing. For example, I will recommend infotipia.com because is a customized safe-search of educator-selected site and also scirus.com because this search looks for specific information. On the other hand altavista.com is a general searcher... so it depends on what are you looking for and how much time do you want to spend on your search.

The third part was to focus on our students, methodology, resources and technology used in our classes. It was really interesting to look through our classes from a different perspective, because we could analyze our way of teaching, the things we need to improve and the needs we have.

How was your week??

EVE

Reflections Week 1

I am going to be very honest with you all, it was my first day creating a blog… I was quiet an experience. I never knew that there were different types of blogs for example Tutor Blog, Class Blog or Learner Blog as we could read on the Blogging for ELF. The blog that I like the most is the class one because it is a collaborative space for the teacher and also for the students. Also because with this kind of blog the students as well as the teacher are encourage to do further reading, writing and analysis, there is a closer relationship with the students.. In other words a blog can help the student being an autonomous learner with the guide of the teacher… Do you ….agree????