Reading skills: Suggestions to promote and motivate students to read more...

Reading is one of the easiest skills we can develop when learning English.
Why? There is no time pressure, normally you can read on your own time and in some occasions you can understand the meaning without having a high level of English.
I must admit I did not like reading when I was younger but as I grew older I realized the importance of reading and creating a reading habit.
Thanks to reading, you can improve your English in many ways as it demands a research for the meaning of new words in the dictionary.
It teaches you how to spell certain technical words but most important you can learn how to structure a phrase and improve your writing skills.
Therefore "reading" is very be transversal and can be used to develop the 3 other required skills further which are listening, writing and speaking.
As future English teachers, we will have to find ways to promote reading, like making a competition between groups, making boards on different subjects or topics found on the books they are reading.
We have to remember that, like I mentioned before, teenagers do not like reading so we may have to start by reading the lyrics of the songs they like for instance.
To start with, there is not such a thing as the perfect method for this but a number of different methods that you can use with the classroom depending on their moods and their energy levels.
When you teach a foreign language you must think of your students as small children that require time to acquire the new vocabulary through flashcards associations and illustrated books.
Always introduce your students to the reading process with small readings and increase the number of pages as you go along in their development process.
Another method is to read 2 minutes individually with the student in the classroom every fortnight. This also allows you to correct their accent although this is not the main priority, which is to get them to read something they like so that they begin to get the habit and the pleasure of reading.
Creating a place dedicated to books like a small library is also a very good idea to keep track of all the books and offer them to your students to read at least one every 3 months.
Let's not forget that our students need feedback so we need to evaluate them through some sort of  questionnaire or summary. We can also suggest a notepad containing the following information:
Book's title, date when the book was read and 3 lines in English describing their overall opinion.
We can also ask students to evaluate the book they read by adding a smiley face at the back of the book where we have previously glued a piece of paper to record this information.
By doing this, the student has an idea of the kind of book it is but we also track the popular books and the not so popular ones.
I think that reading is much more important than we think if we want to develop the other 3 skills as they complement one another so, let's start reading more!!.

Power Teaching: A self-explanatory visual introduction

Power teaching, another way of keeping our students entertained and managing them in the classroom.



Power teaching: another method of explaining a subject in the classroom.

By now you must have read a lot through my other colleagues' blogs about this subject so I am just going to say than an image it is worth than thousand words
Hope you like it.

Assessment and Testing

This evening's class was about the question how to assess and test our future secondary school students.

After listening to Iñaqui's speech I can see that assessing the students is not an easy task.

One has to take into account many other things than just the final assessment. 

It is suggested that when assessing the students it is not only very important  to consider qualitative factors but also quantitative factors.

When deciding your students' marks, whether to give a pass or a fail or to increase the students' marks you can also make use of elements like students' participation in the classroom as well as reading, writing and listening exercises or even by checking who has and who hasn't done their homework.

Therefore, to what extent do we really need an exam to find out our students' learning curve?

Personally, I think that each person studies differently. Some of us leave it all for the last minute and others prepare their exams thoroughly. Some students may prepare an exam very well and still fail because they have not revised the points that have come up in the exam, so is it really the right way to evaluate students' work?

What about if a student had a bad day? The exam does not take these substantial and circumstantial factors into account.

In fact, one week after the test we seem to have forgotten everything, so what do we gain from this?

All in all, life is already a test so why making our lives so difficult with so many exams?

Exams increase our workload as teachers and anxiety among students, so what is the real point of going through the pain of having the students sit exams or us preparing them? Can we not find alternative ways to evaluate our students without going through the hassle?

Do we not have enough feedback by just watching their daily work and improvements?

I guess it is also a good way to observe and correct our students' mistakes or doubts but my opinion as a student and as a future teacher is somehow divided but if I had to choose I would go for continuous assessment.

The need for new technologies

Today’s class was about new technologies and how we apply them in the classroom to motivate and stimulate the students.

I am fascinated by new technologies and I enjoy learning how to use them although sometimes I spend a great amount of time doing so.

I have worked with IT and I am always keen on learning more about them although I do not describe myself as native in new technologies.

Iñaqui explained to us how to use two types of digital blackboards by two different manufacturers:

e-beam and smartboard.

After Iñaqui’s explanation, I now would like to see the real "Mackoy" so I think I’ll have a look at one working when I get a chance.

Iñaqui talked about the use of blogs in the classroom and digital blackboards.

I love new technologies but I must admit that technical details are not always well explained or easy to understand in the manuals. Therefore, you need to know the basics to understand how to use them and what to do if a problem arises.
You have to be able to sort it out too. This is the difficulty I see but as professionals as we are, we will need to anticipate a plan B and possibly even a plan C when something goes wrong.

In my professional life so far I have dealt with technical problems and I strongly believe that the rule of thumb is to find out the root of the problem. For this reason, it is important to remember all you did from the very beginning in order to find the solution to a technical problem. This requires patience, which is not always easy to have if you are surrounded by thirty or more students. Although these days you may encounter that some of your students may know more about technology than you do and who knows, this may also be an opportunity to develop other skills in the classroom.

Moreover, continuous training is required in order to keep up-to-date with new technologies and if this is the price to pay to keep motivating our students, so be it.

Having said this, are we all ready and motivated to keep up with them?

Time will tell but these days we cannot live without them, they now form part of our daily lives and it is going to stay that way. Therefore, we need to have an open mind and try to accept them as a support tool for our lessons and not as a teacher replacement.

They can be a complement to our jobs and not a threat. They can be expensive and they risk being obsolete very quickly in a short amount of time but its use and the results obtained by the students can also be very rewarding for a teacher, so let’s stop being afraid of them and use them effectively!

Multiples Intelligences

Howard Gardner's theory about multiple intelligences:

Do we all learn in the same way? The answer is no.

So why should we teach everything and everybody in the same way?

We cannot continue teaching everyone with the same old classical methods.

We need to get to know our students and see how we can stimulate them better to learn a foreign language.

This is part of Gardner's theory which talks about 8 different types of intelligences:

Verbal/ Linguistic
Maths/ Logic
Spatial

Bodily Kinesthetic

Musical

Interpersonal

Intrapersonal 

Naturalist

Here you can find a video that explains how you can apply these intelligences in the classroom:

For more information please visit the following link:

Multiple intelligences

Kagan's disengagement article

Disengagement: Achievement Gaps, Discipline and Dropout - Treating the Disease, not just the Symptoms.

"Two women are standing on the bank of a swift river. Suddenly, they see a man in the river. He desperately struggles to stay afloat, as the rapid current is carrying him downstream toward them. The women both jump in, pulling the man to safety. While the brave rescuers are tending the victim, a second man, also desperate and screaming for help, is carried by the current toward them. Again the women jump into the river to the rescue. As they are pulling out this second victim, they spot a third man flailing about as he is carried downstream toward them. One woman quickly jumps in to save the latest victim. As she does, she turns to see the other woman resolutely walking upstream. "Why aren't you helping?" she cries. "I am," states the other. "I am going upstream to see who is pushing them in!"

This education specialist uses this metaphor to explain that in education as in other areas in life, we need to treat the symptoms but not the actual root of the problem.

So far we have only treated the surface and for educators discipline problems, achievement gaps, and dropout were treated independently treating only the surface of the problem.

It is vital to treat all of them as a whole and not only the causes and consequences to stop students from leaving the school.

He chooses cooperative learning as a way of motivating students rather than working individually.

A good example of this is Roundrobin which is based in writing a story with the whole class participating in it.
This increases motivation and promotes creativiy among good and not so good level students.

http://www.kaganonline.com/free_articles/dr_spencer_kagan/262/Disengagement-Achievement-Gaps-Discipline-and-Dropout-Treating-the-Disease-Not-Just-the-Symptoms