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!!!

Session 2 (part 1)

Hi people!

Today, I’m going to explain you what we did in session 2. Our group got together and we split the class into 2 parts: first part for the activities in the Station 2, and second part for Station 3. In this post, I'll explain Station 2, and Station 3 will be explained in the next one.

Station 2

This station was centered again on both short stories we saw in class, “Lamb to theslaughter” and “Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s coat”. In this station we were asked to get into a simulation, a learning strategy that consists of a given-task which requires participants to resolve a problem of some kind using their own life experience and character, that is, they do not have to “act” a role, because the role a person has to play is not specified.

In this way, a disaster was presented: a major environmental disaster was going to happen in the earth and it would bring an end to all humankind. Only 7 people could survive in a deserted island in the Pacific because it would be not affected by the disaster. We, as a group, had to decide which 7 people would be saved and which must stay behind, so, in order to perform this task, we had to work with the collaborative strategy, that is, all the members as a group had to decide and agree on a solution.

As you can see on the worksheet, we had 12 characters from the short stories studied, so we must come to an agreement on why save one or another. We had a deep discussion on the matter, it was quite interesting because we first consider as an important fact their profession but when we had more or less all the survivors, we realised that we didn’t have chosen almost any women. We changed our mind and included some more women since without them the humankind was not possible to procreate so it would die out. Finally, we came to an agreement and designed a glogster to present it: Salvation Island– The Chosen.

After doing the previous work, we didn’t have much time to finish the other activity we were required to do. We were asked to create a smart card in which present the island, and this could be an example I made by my own:

The fact that we had to choose the 7 survivors was also related to more significant aspects, as prejudices and human rights. It was certain that at the beginning we had some prejudices towards the homosexual, the priest or the top model, but finally we decided to include them into the list because these features were not really important, the significant aspects were that the homosexual was a SAS officer, familiar with surviving under extreme conditions, the priest has experience in agriculture and the top model was a young girl ready to procreate, so they could contribute to the group situation very positive qualities.

Moreover, the task included a webpage were we can give a little help to poor people (freerice.com), so in this way, we could help the characters of the short stories to survive from the environmental disaster but at the same time we could also help real people. Here was used the service-learning strategy, a strategy which uses what students learn in the classroom to solve real-life problems. In this case it was in an insignificant way, but service learning can be related in a considerable way into the classroom, bringing learning to life (for further information you can visit: National Service-Learning Clearinghouse).

Finally, the task also included some questions for us to think about the possibilities of use of the digital tools: Glogster to create the glog, and Kerproof to create the smart card. It was interesting for me again, since I could grasp some ideas from my classmates about the uses of the digital tools in the different parts of the teaching process.

So, here you have the station 2 explanation, see you soon!!!