If you ask me what kind of books do I like reading,my answer will be adventure ones. I was a teenager, I used to go to the shopping mall with my older brother. We bought the cinema tickets, ate something and then wait for the movie to start. As we had to wait at least an hour, we used to go to book stores and spend our time there. My brother would always pick adventure books,but there was one which called my attention. There was a 30 year old man on the cover with his thimb up, asking for a ride. So I stood up and went to look for a copy of that book.
As I started reading, I couldn't stop. We bought the book.That night I arrived home and read it until I fell asleep. The following day at school I didn´t pay attention in class because I was reading the book. By the second day I had already finished reading "Vagabundeando en el eje del mal". The trip that Juan Pablo Villarino describes in that book is something new, a trip though the middle east, the land which everyone is afraid of. He writes in such a capturing way that you can't stop reading.
After a few years he travelled around Latin America with his girlfriend. They also wrote a book about that trip.
If you like adventure and travelling book, I highly recommend Villarino's book.
English
jueves, 24 de agosto de 2017
miércoles, 12 de julio de 2017
The True Gifts of a Dyslexic Mind
Dean Bragonier comments in
this talk the topic of the gifts that dyslexic people might have. These are entrepreneurship,
engineer, architecture and arts. But he also mentions that dyslexic people have
a tough time with phonetic decoding and that it takes five times more energy
for a dyslexic.
After this, he talks about
the history of human learning, saying that at the very beginning, humans
learned by observing and then imitating kinaesthetically those actions. However,
during the industrial revolution, when the printing press was being spreaded
all over the world, the door for dyslexic people was closed.
"People who cannot
read or who have difficulty learning how to read, feel the same level of shame
as people who have engaged in incest" Dr Kaufmann
Dean also explains how
difficult it is for children in primary school to be labelled as the "dumb
student". And that 35% of dyslexic people drop out of high school. Also,
that a 70% of juvenile delinquents have dyslexia. nevertheless, one out of two scientists
in NASA is dyslexic.
He recommends using other
tools than the archaic text to teach our students and to empower them to
discover their real gifts
Link:
miércoles, 28 de junio de 2017
Studying? Exams?
Up to this point in our lives I think that most of us can tell that we have gone through a million and one exams. Oral or written exams, they both make us think of a variety of things. How am I going to handle all this information? Will my brain remember all of this? What is the best strategy to remember and to learn this topic?
Since we were little kids in primary school
we all have been through different studying techniques, we don’t use the same ones and it also depends on the subject or topic that you have to study for. Teachers at school try to teach you how to study, but to my mind there is no universal recipe. Eventually as we grow up and start to understand “the studying situation” we will develop different techniques on our own. We as teachers can also try to help our students to find a way in which they will remember more things, but all this is only advice. They will develop a technique of their own. Trial and error. You will eventually find out what works out best for you.
Regarding the proper situation of sitting for an exam, I’ve been through different stages along my life, it hasn’t been the same. As a young student I had the pressure of my family to pass all my exams, I never had to sit for an exam in December, best student, carrying the flag by the end of the year. But as I grew up, and started college, I realized that getting good grades is not everything that matters. You can get a ten because you know the questions that are going to be asked, or you got lucky and the teacher assessed you on the only topic you’ve studied, or you just studied a lot. So there are a lot of things that influence your grades. Getting tens doesn’t make a better person o student. A good student is someone who is responsible, tidy, manages to get always on time to a lesson, doesn’t interrupt, helps her/his classmates, etc.
So I try to show my students all of these factors, if you are a ten, good for you! But the other things matter too. I love when they do and outstanding work and they are very happy for it because they have worked a lot. That’s a good student. Not the one who got a ten just because he sat half an hour and managed to finish something just to get away with it.
Another thing that we have to take into account with our students, which I don’t why at a superior level isn’t taken into account, is that different ways in which they need to be assessed. Some have to be assessed preferably by an oral exam, others written, some others can just be assessed by multiple choice activities and so on and so forth. At college level this isn’t taken into account, as we are all adults, it is taken for granted that a traditional written or traditional oral exam is enough. If nowadays we are enforcing the subject of multiple intelligences at school level, why this isn’t guaranteed at superior level? We are raising students to a kind of pedagogy that won’t be available for them when they finish school.
jueves, 8 de junio de 2017
miércoles, 31 de mayo de 2017
I found this Ted talk very thought- provoking. It makes you think about the way in which we talk in our lessons, the way address our students and also the people who works with us. It's really worth watching it!
TED TALK- HOW TO SPEAK SO THAT PEOPLE WANT TO LISTEN
miércoles, 17 de mayo de 2017
Why having a school nurse is so important?
Today a situation in school made me think about this. Children might get injuries or hurt any time, or maybe they have a disease that make them need a health professional by their side. O what if they faint?
Today at school a girl fainted and her father arrived at school earlier than the ambulance. We are teachers, not nurses or doctors, but we also have lives in our hands.
I found a BBC article that talks about the importance of a school nurse that I would like to share with you
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-22106939
Today at school a girl fainted and her father arrived at school earlier than the ambulance. We are teachers, not nurses or doctors, but we also have lives in our hands.
I found a BBC article that talks about the importance of a school nurse that I would like to share with you
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-22106939
sábado, 6 de mayo de 2017
Macrofunctions, Microfunctions and Grammar
Step 1
|
Show students a
video from the Olympics, stop the video every time a new sport appear and
clarify vocabulary. As they watch the video, hey will have a worksheet to
match the different sports to the proper names.
|
Step 2
|
Watch another short
video and ask students to raise their hand every time a sport the know
appears.
|
Step 3
|
Listen to a news
report, students will have o identify the different sports that the reporter
talks about and fill in the dialogue (worksheet)
|
Step 4
|
Listen again to the news
report and ask students to identify words RELATED to sports
|
Step 5
|
Role play. Students will
have to work in pairs. One of them is going to be the reporter and the other
will be a sports woman/men. The reporter will ask three questions related to
sports and the related vocabulary already seen, the other will have to answer
|
Step 6
|
School Olympics.
Students will have to organize a little tournament for their class, the main
vocabulary being sports.
|
Task
|
Macrofunction
|
Microfunction
|
Grammar
|
arrived to your school. She/he can communicate with you only in English. You
are selected to show her/him the school
|
Exchanging goods and
services
|
Giving instructions
|
Demonstratives:
This, that, these, those
Adverbs of place:
Here, there, etc
Yes/no questions
|
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