Tinkering Schools in Chile!

How can we apply this project to a public Chilean School?

To be honest, I find it is extremely hard to achive a goal like this, because first of all, Chilean public schools do not count with the materials that "Tinkering Schools" requiere. Actually, there are some schools thta do not even have the resources needed to have regular classes, so it is almost impossible to think of having extra materials.

Secondly, I feel that before starting working on new huge projects like "Tinkering School", we, as future teachers, do have to solve the enormous problems education qulity has and children difficulties too.

These problems have been hidden for a long time and now, it is time to fix them if we really want to improve the whole country educational conditions.

One of the most serious problems to resole is the great distance thta exists between the established Curricuum and the real teachers practice at schools. We need to make students get closer to what is being asked for them to know and together with thta, we ought to relate those contents with their daily live and experiences.

Having that and other problem solved, we could start thinking of creating a project like "Tinkering School", where chidren would use their imagination and creativity, together with the development of some skills thta are kind of "forgotten" during regular classes, like kinesthetic and artistic skills.

Besides, by doing projects like thta, children woul be also learning how to solve problems in a funny and good way and that knowledge woul help them to acquiere a more tolerant and optimistic presonaity.

However, everything should be done little by little in order to not commit any mistake thta affects children development, instead of making them feel better. As a last advice, I think thta if we want a real improvment, we do need to be together. That is, to include al schools around the country and encourage all of them to start thinking about there is always a solution to make a better place to live in.

Bye!

Sound using lesson!

First of all, I have to say that the idea of using sound from the places where children are being taught, it is a very good idea which also helps them to learn more about their own culture.

Besides, as Gardner says, to use visual and auditory strategies are essentials tools when we are learning not only a second language, but also every kind of new content. It is a tested fact that humans become much more motivated and interested in things when they can actually observe stuff related with the issue they are learning or they can see that that issue is present in their ordinary lives.

For these reasons. I think that I would make classes where sounds and pictures were present. However, the first thing I would take in consideration before starting teaching by applying that mehtodology, would be the fact that not all my students are going to have the same skills developed, so I would have to start by givinh them easy sounds to recognize.

For example: if I wanted children to learn about animals I would pick some sounds animals made up and make children listen to the sounds and point the correct picture of the animal they are listening to.

Another good way to use sounds in a classroom is by making children listen to Chilean English speakers, in order to show them the accent we acquire as non native speakers. This would also help children to see thta in spite of the fact English is difficult all of them can learn it and getable to communicate succesfully.

Finally, I would definitely make children record their voices during all classes if it is possible, to let them identify how they have improved their languages and help them to eliminate their pronunciation and hesitations mistakes.

As it is a fact that we mantain ourselves concentrated the same minutes as the age we are (Ex: if a child is 8 years old, he would be concentrated no more than 8 minutes), I would make them tests with listening parts which take no longer than the time they can be focused on the topic.

These are, briefly, the ways in which I would use sounds in my claroom.

Using sound in the classroom!

Hi, I hope all of you are more relaxed after the oral interviews.
Here it goes the first part of the assignment: the new vocabulary.

*"FIRE UP": to motivate someone to do something in an entertainig way. Ex: "As future teachers we do need to fire students up with the idea of learning a language".

*"THRESHOLD: a moment inside our minds where an stimulus is insufficient to produce an effect.

*"READ INTO": to find an addittional meaning to something already said.

* "MIND´S EYE" : the imagination we have.

* "BACKGROUND NOISE" : a strange noise which contaminates sound measurements that can not be separated from the desired signal.

* "PUDDLE" : a small pool of liquid on the ground, especially from rain

http://www.wordreference.com/

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/

Fernanda Perez´s presentation!

Some questions that came up to my mind are:

1) In what way women´s social participation has changed through these years?

2) Do children modify women´s lifestyle and they give up being independent?

3) Which are the visions tha men still have about women?

Alejandra and Freddy`s presentation!

To be honest, their presentation was one of the ones I liked most. I rally enjoyed the relation they made between the film and the real society.

They showed through the movie, the painful discrimination the main character experienced due to his malformation.

The way in which his is seen as a freaky person is a firece representation of human being`s cruelty.

My classmates used an appropiate Critical thinking when they compared our society, which not only discriminates when someone has a physical disease, but also when people dress differently from the common citizens on when people like someones fromt he same sex.

In my personal opinion it resukts pretty harmful for me to notice these kind of problem inside the society, As future teacher I belive we have to demonstarte pupils thta in spite of being different every human being has the opportunity to be acknowledged among others.

Critical thinking Topic!!

Vania and I are going to talk about the film "The Pianist", form the yar 2002 and directed by Roman Polansky.

Saved

Walking bored without an aim
Under the bridge my whole life changed
Hearing your bark so sad I felt
And crying wished to see your face
Your eyes sparkled like dark nights
And suddenly you tossed your cry
There was the moment when I said
Hey, come with me, now you are safe.

Poems!!!

Necessity

Running fastly but with pleasure
From the river to your house
I just glanced at you one time
But I saw how your eyes shine
Since that day I have been floating
Between flashes like sunshine
Beauty means your face today
I need to gaze at you again.

Success is a Continuous journey!

Hello Classmates and Hi Sabrina!

Having listened to Richard´s speech, a lot of ideas of why we fail in our Language learning process came up to my mind.

As he metioned in the video, we tend to believe that just by doing a big effort to achieve a goal, we become good enough. So, there is no need to keep on performing our skills or looking for new strategies to make the achievement even better.

Due to this fact of thinking we are completely "wise", we suddenly have to face a harder reaching (like doing an essay), and we fail it horribly. Consequently, we get furstrated, sad, unmotivated, and we find that the whole world is unfair, without realizing thta it was our own fault.

On the other hand, a very imortant issue Richard included in his speech, is that success is a "continuous journey", which takes a lot of time and must have feelings like, passion, work, focus, push, ideas, improve, serve and persist.

However, most students do not come up with all those feeling in their mind, and that is why the commit mistakes and start thinking that they are not going to be succesful ever.

A reason of why they have this lack of positive attitude could be because they belong to a low social class level, so they think that they cant not afford to a better life. Maybe, they are not supported by their family or they just have lost their sense of achievement due to a bad moment in their life.

And this is something that as future teachers, need to change in students´minds. We do have to switch their thinking and make them know that they can ba able to do everything they want, if they wok hardly every single day and put as energy as they can in their projects.

But first. we must modify our own feelings to help others. We have to get convinced that the only way to keep our will to win the goals is with continuous and very hard work.

PS: If you want to watch my video, please go to Vania`s blog.

An important success in my life!!!

Hello everybody!

If Ihad to choose one personal success to talk about, I would definitely select when I was 5 and got lost with my friend Ludmila in Tigre, a part from Rio de La Plata

It was on December. The weather was extremely hot. For this reason Ludmila and I only wanted to swim in the river, but my mother didn´t let us to do it. She was visible angry at my behaviour during the lunchtime because I hadn´t eaten my sandwiches.

So, we made us wait until 4pm instead of 3pm. At the beggining, udmila and I were patient, but when se sw some other guys submerged happily in the quiet river, we decided to run away from my mother´s sight and go playing with the rest.

We ran like 200 meters and arrived to the bank of the river to have a race with the children there. The objective was to swim until the very end of the first part of the river. This was a long distance since the place where my family was having a nappy. But we accepted the rulers enthusiasticlly.

The race started and we swam as fast as we could, without taking care about we were suffering some inuries in our bodies because of the rocks from the river. But the play went bad because Ludmila almost got drowned and I lost our will to win when this happened. So, we left the rece and walked out of the river. However, after helping Ludmila to feel more relaxed and to stop sobbing, we paid a look at the place where we were, and sadly, we realized that we had gotten lost.

The first feeling for both of us, was to began crying desesperately. But wisely, we stood up and we started walking and looking for the right way. There was a momwnt where we considerated asking for help but no, We were brave.

After about an hour and a half of being looking for my family patiently,Ludmila and I found the way, where we should have stayed. When we got closer,I saw my mothr screaming desperately whereas my brother was asjingpeople if they had seen us.

I asked Ludmila not to talk about we had gotten lost. She agreed .

When finally, my mother saw us, she angrily told us where had we been. In a vey surprinsing voice,I told her that we had been swimming just in front of them all the time and that when we heat her screaming we decided to come back and see what was happening.

She was kind of angry the rest of the evening but at least she didn´t realized about our adventure .

Until these days Ludmila and I remember that experience as the first time we bravely resolved a problem by ourselves.