We finish with... Session 4

Hello people!!

In this new post, I’m going to explain an unusual activity we performed in session 4 of the course. I have said unusual because it was new for me and I think for most of my classmates too. This session was called the ‘Library class’, and with it we learnt different methodologies which we can use to teach literature in our English classes. 

We started the class by choosing a book from a variety of them that were placed in a row at the front. The majority of the books were English classics from some famous English authors like Dickens, Poe or Shakespeare, among others, and the level range was also varied. 

Our lecturer gave us the opportunity to choose the one we wanted so, once we all had one in our hands, we had to choose some methodologies from a variety of them that were explained in booklets around the class in order to create some activities related to some aspect of the book, and it could be intended to be done as pre-, actual or post-activity. The provided methodologies were: cooperative learning, collaborative learning, problem-based learning, task-based learning, project-based learning, games, simulation and role-play.

The book I chose was "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, and I did the task with one of my classmates. Before choosing the method we took a look to the different suggestions we had, and finally we decided to work with the Problem-based method as it was quite new for us and we wanted to have a try with it, and with the Collaborative method. Both are styles usually used with active learning which follow a student-centered pedagogy. With the use of both methods we wanted our students to work in groups and learn about a subject through the experience of problem solving. Therefore, the goals we could achieve with their use were effective problem solving skills, self-directed learning, effective collaboration skills and intrinsic motivation, so that’s why we found them a very good option to develop.

The creation of the activity supposed a challenge since we had not read the book before, so we had a quick look to it and by taking some ideas from the activities that were proposed at the end, we designed the following post-activity that include information and steps to follow in order to solve the problem:

Problem: Imagine that the animal fingerprints were not found by the police on Camille’s neck. If you were the police, how would you find the murderer?

Brainstorming – Hypothesis: In this step students would be split into discussion groups of 5 people each one, so they have to take a first thought about how to solve the trouble.

Re-structure the problem: Here, the groups would have to throw the irrelevant points away and organize their members to look for possibilities.

Solution of the problem: At this point, students would have reached an agreement so they would have created the alternative or solution.

As a conclusion, I can just say that this session was very positive for me; I learnt lots of methodologies and strategies to use as a teacher, both to teach literature or other language fields, since all of them can be applied to achieve any linguistic point, just the teacher has to be conscious and has to know how to apply them successfully. 

The “library class” strategy can be very appealing for students since it becomes an active way to explore a book or a short story before or after reading it. Unlike the traditional way of reading a book at home, this strategy can engage students into reading, so I think that the use of these active strategies by teachers should increase considerably.

Therefore, the active participation makes students to get involved in the teaching-learning process easily when the teacher is able to encourage them with information related to their interests and daily life, so this fact should be taken into account by all language teachers.

This has been all for now!!! See you on the assessment part!! 

Traditional Class... ¿Contradiction? Session 3

Hi people!!

Today I’m going to present you a different class compared to the active learning we’ve been seeing these days. It seems such a contradiction, though, but session 3 of the course I’m writing for, followed the traditional system of teaching: lecturer talks in one direction and students listen to her. However, it appears as necessary as well, in small pieces, though, in order to present the content, but always followed by a practical task or activity to ensure that students have understood it by practising it.

In this session, our lecturer presented us different theoretical notions related to the teaching-learning process. First of all, she explained a basic difference between: approach, methodology and strategy. A teaching approach is the direction that an instruction follows, so it comprises the whole teaching process. Within the approach all the principles and methods used for instruction are included, so different methodologies can be used within an approach depending on the task or activity the teacher wants to perform. For example Cooperative and Collaborative learning are two methodologies that can be used within the Communicative approach. The last concept, strategy, refers to the different tools or techniques that can be used to perform a methodology, so, for example, we can present a cooperative task in which students have to fulfill the activities with the use of ITC or a discussion. 

This explanation was very useful for me, since I’ve been taught different approaches, methodologies and strategies during all the year, but it wasn’t till this moment that this difference came clearly defined to me.

After that, we reflected on the purposes of Active learning. We said that this methodology makes information more interesting, so it catches students’ attention easily. It develops students’ linguistic skills as well as skills about life, together with cooperative methods that form them for life (interpersonal skills). I totally agree with these considerations, since to attract students’ attention is one of the best strategies to make them have interest and learn a second language. For me, motivation is the basis of learning, and the active learning helps with it.

However, we also commented that the best option to teach a language is to integrate both methodologies, that is, traditional and active teaching, given that with the traditional you can strengthen the basis in order to assure it with more active ways to practise it.

Traditional Teaching

Active Teaching

We specially talked about the use of word clouds in the teaching-learning process. We mentioned different ways to use them into the different parts of the teaching, namely, pre-teaching, actual teaching and post-teaching. I have referred to this teaching strategy in the previous post as we used it in the station 3 of the active activity we completed in class, so I can just stress again its usefulness because of two things, its simplicity and its originality.

In the end, we made a distinction between Simulation and Role-play. They both are strategies used in active teaching and they could be confused at a certain extent because both of them imply the performance of a role, but we find the difference in the ending of the task. In a role-play, the participants have to ‘act’ and play a defined role, so the ending is already known by the ‘actor’, but in a simulation the participants do not ‘act’, they discuss and negotiate as themselves, so the conditions and decisions are impossible to know, there’s an open-ending. 
In my opinion, the use of both strategies can be positive since to act out some role can make students understand and put themselves in other people's shoes, but with a simulation is the student who expresses his/her own feelings, so there is a personal development.

As I said before, it is certain that this session had a more theoretical nature, but it was very valuable from my point of view in order to set the basis and be able to go to the next step by practising the theory with active tasks that will make our students to understand the content better.

See you soon!!!