MI Inventory

Last class the teacher gave us an inventory to recognize our type of intelligence and also to use it with our students with the same purpose. This inventory will help us to prepare our classes in accordance to our students needs.

I worked with:
Cooperation...Yes
Order...Yes
Cleanliness...Yes
Collaboration...Yes

Multiple Intelligences Theory

Recently, we talked about Gardner´s theory that proposes different ways of knowing, understanding and learning.
He mentions eight groups of intelligences, that are the following ones: bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, linguistic intelligence,
logical-mathematical intelligence, musical intelligence, spatial intelligence and naturalist intelligence.
I worked with:
Cleanliness...Yes
Order...Yes
Cooperation...Yes
Collaboration...Yes

REPORTED SPEECH

Recently we worked with Jenny, making a dialogue between a guest and a receptionist of a hotel. This dialogue consisted in make a reservation. Then we made a reported speech of this dialogue, for example if it was in present simple we had to change it into past simple. It was interesting.

I worked with:
Order...Yes
Cleanliness...Yes
Cooperation...Yes
Collaboration...Yes

CLASS WORK

Recently we were talking about some common cases in the classroom. We specially worked with one that asked what would we do if a student didn´t want to express his self in english. At first we commented that we would ask him the reason of why he doesn´t want to talk, and then undertake the possible solutions.
I worked with:
Cooperation...Yes
Collaboration...Yes
Order...No
Cleanliness...Yes

Class work

Last class, we worked using the internet to describe the activities that we made in classes.
Now we are blogging.
I worked with:
Collaboration: Yes
Cooperation: Yes
Order: Yes
Cleanliness: Yes

CLASS WORK

Recently, we worked in class with a list of activities trying to recognize actions that could be considered as communicative activities. We thought that the following are communicative activities: giving a prepared speech, acting out a scripted conversation, improvising a conversation and describing a picture to other classmates.

I worked with:

Cleanliness: Yes

Order: Yes

Collaboration: Yes

Cooperation: Yes

Class work

Today we were talking about one of the communicative english skills: speaking, which is a productive skill, and also we answered a task about an imaginary situation...what would we do if we were in a foreign language class and we must talk about oil pollution. We had to describe our thoughts and feelings about it.

I worked with:

Order: Yes

Cleanliness: Yes

Cooperation: Yes

Collaboration: Yes

My evaluation

Recently, we worked in class with a list of aspects which helped us to evaluate our performance as teachers, some of them talked of the strategies that we used in classes, and if we could know the type of learning of our students. Up, an example.

I worked with:

Cleanliness: Yes

Collaboration: Yes

Cooperation: Yes

Order: Yes

Checking

One aspect I missed to mention is that we were checking our plannings and evaluations.
Order: Yes
Cleanliness: Yes
Collaboration: Yes
Cooperation: Yes

Essay

TEACHING SKILLS

There are many skills recommended for teachers, but I think that some of them are more important than others. In this essay I would like to talk about some skills that I consider are necessaries in our work, helped by an author that I think is an important figure in the educative field, Michael Saint-Onge.

When we arrive to the classroom one of the main objectives that we have, at first is to introduce the students to our subject and content, and it’s necessary to capture students attention so I think that one skill that could help us would be:
- Prepare interesting classes
But, how can we make this possible? I think that a factor which would help us is showing our content brightly and useful. About the subject Saint-Onge (1997) mentions the suggestions of Klausmeir and others (1973) “Offer new stimulus with preference of using those that are familiar to the student. Raise questions before telling the information immediately. Vary the speed or intensity of the verbal communication. Make the student participate in the discussion or the learning process, more than demanding him his passive attention. Answer to the students interventions with the purpose of take care over their participation” I think that the last paragraph is very important because I could observe in my practice that the students answer better if you as a teacher can offer them known stimulus connecting them with new ones.

Other skill that I consider important is
- To have a good control of our voice
And why do I consider this aspect important? This is because I think that a good level in our voice could help us to make us understandable and because for example a high level of volume in our voice could be offensive to some students and also harmful.

- Be able to manage some stressful situations in the classroom
In this section I referred especially when some students are determined to ruin the existing discipline. I consider that to be able of make our class and atmosphere respectful is necessary to introduce known rules by the students and that if one of them do not obey, it is going to be consequences. This is important because this way we can teach them to be responsible of their acts.

- Develop strategies of planning
I think that other important resource as a teacher is be able of make plannings establishing general objectives of learning and also specific and particular objectives, because this way we could trace a path in the learning process, and also take part in the unexpected situations.

- Build the appropriate didactic material
When we present a content to our students it is influenced by the form in which we present it, that’s why I think the didactic material is very important, so I consider as the first step to prepare it, asking the students interests and realizing the way in which they learn, then we can focus in our activities without loosing our objectives, because it doesn’t matter a nice activity if it doesn’t reach our goal.

I would like to end this essay by saying that there are a lot of worthy skills in our work, that we can develop and that they depend on our needs and goals.


References;

SAINT-ONGE, Michael (1997): Yo explico, pero ellos…¿aprenden?
1ª Edición, Editorial Mensajero.

Class work

Recently, we talked about the four communicative skills in english language: reading, speaking, listening and writing. We discussed that we can classify this skills in two groups, the receptive and the productive skills and also we worked identifying the functions of some expresions in accordance with the context.
I worked with:
Order: Yes
Collaboration: Yes
Cooperation: Yes
Cleanliness: Yes

Back to school

Last week we came back to the Normal Superior and we could share our experiences of the practice season. We discussed some similar situations, specially related with aspects like school discipline, activities to reach our objectives and our plannings. In general we talked about the things that we liked the most and also of the situations that we didn´t like, all of this with the purpose of improve.

I consider that I worked with:

Collaboration...Yes

Cooperation...Yes

Cleanliness...Yes

Order...Yes