Effort and teaching "recipes"!

What Peter Westwood and Wendy Arnold summarize in the report “Meeting Individual Needs” is the idea of how a teacher should act when knowing the differences and particularities of all of his/her students. It can sound like a simple issue but if we look at it carefully, difficulties easily appear. Should we adapt each activity or should students try to do the tasks even when the teacher knows that they are not prepared? Personally, I consider that we can’t hide obvious lacks of knowledge or aptitudes. As a teacher, I think that I have the responsibility of taking care of those children that are in my class and that involves teaching contents but also trying to understand how they feel and why they act the way they do.  It’s not like making students do tasks that are ready to do and that are easy for them. It’s taking into account all of the learning styles, backgrounds and knowledge so that when the teacher plans his/her methodology for that year he/she has enough information, resources and strategies to do his/her job as a teacher properly.

It starts from changing the view that we’re used to have about the roles in class. Students don’t need to be afraid of if they are going to understand the way teacher explains or evaluate. Now, our task is to make it become more bidirectional: students must do an effort to get to what their teacher expects from them but also the teacher needs to be professional enough so he/she creates his/her own “recipe” that works in class.

what I found while I was thinking about Multiple Intelligences and Literacy.

I was looking for some ideas about Multiple Intelligences and Literacies and I found this picture. I think it's the main idea of what we've been talking about since we started this course. It is important to know the background that every child has and what he's expecting of his/her own learning progress. The teacher needs to take in account what happens when he/she explains an activity or when he/she asks a task in class. I won't be the same for all children. The teacher must know if some children can understand the language we use. If it's not, what can we do? It's important that the students that speak other languages feel comfortable and not different. The whole class has to know that this isn't a bad thing (in fact, it's precisely the other way round!).

Multiple intelligences!

 

This picture is about Multiple Intelligences. After reading a Gardner chat, I've been thinking about this idea, the fact that there are different intelligences. The way we learn depends on how we've been taught and our natural aptitudes. Everyone uses one way or another to study, to learn and to live because that's easier for him/her. That's because he/she is used to it and that repetition makes him/her better at it.

In a class, every child finds easier some types of activities than others depending on how capable they see themselves doing them. As teachers, we must know what kind of learners are our students in order to make them more competent in that aspects in which they feel not good enough. It's not easy, but the teacher has to make an effort to create all kind of materials and activities. If not, only the students who are good at some way of learning will achieve the objectives, the others won't.

That's the reason why I think that knowing more about the Multiple Intelligences is necessary for a future teacher.

Looking back in the past.

I think it's important to look back in the past (sometimes, not always!) in order to decide the best option. As a teacher, I consider that I should do the same. That's why I try to remember how my first English classes were as a student. If I understand an activity not only as a teacher, the final result must be adequate for the students, the teacher and the dynamic of the class.

For this reason, I have been looking for the old folders I kept at home during years (so many years that I don't understand how it's possible that they have survived until now!) and this page is one of the things I've found! I've took my camera and I've taken this photo for the blog!

This exercise was included in my first English folder, when I was eight years old. That's when I was in 3rd grade (3r de Primària), which was the start of my English studies at school. I can remember that the purpose of this activity was that each student had to choose one of the characters of the student's book (which was Fantastic Fanfare or something like that). After then, we had to draw that character and the first sentence we had had learnt. In this case, it was: "My name is...". I felt that that was a challenge because that was a different language. My Catalan and Spanish oral fluency and writing was really good but I was quite scared of learning a new language but I was also excited. After the years, I think that was a great beginning and that my English teachers have encouraged me to learn more and more!