PLANNING

A didactic planning for each area will be elaborated by the team that teaches in the same school year.

Didactic plannings must include:

·         Sequence and timing of the contents.

·         Profile of each key competence or relation between the evaluative learning standards and each competence. It will make the ealuation easier. 

·         Evaluation criteria.

·         Sarategies and instruments for the students' learning.

·         Methodological and didactic decisions.

·         Procedures of elaboration and evaluation of the curricular adaptations. 

·         Didactic resources.

·         Students' materials, including textbooks. 

APPROACH, METHOD, DESIGN, PROCEDURE…

GRAMMAR TRANSLATION METHOD
The first level that we are going to analyze is the Grammar translation Method:
• In the presentation, there is a long list of vocabulary items.
• The vocabulary is always translated.
• Phonetics
• Explanation of the grammatical rules (they explain the grammatical rules in Spanish)
Main Objectives (till the XX century):
• Reading and writing
• Grammar structures and translation
• Study of morphology and syntax.
• Memorization of grammar rules and long list of vocabulary items.
• Teacher-centered. (the teacher is the centre of the class)
• Textbooks are fundamental.
Some aspects that can be analyzed:
1. No use of the second language in the class, except for translation; they usually use Spanish and they use English only for translations.
2. The vocabulary is learnt by memorizing long list.
3. Reading and writing are the center of the class: no place for listening and speaking.
4. Grammar and syntax are extremely important for language learning. Grammar is taught deductively.
Deductive: Teacher gives the rules and the students apply them.
Inductive:  they need to deal with the English discovering.
This Grammar method should attach on the need and necessities that the students have.

DIRECT METHOD
1. Classroom interaction was conducted exclusively in the target language (lengua como objeto de estudio).
2. Only everyday vocabulary and sentences were taught.
3. Oral communication skills were built up in a carefully graded progression…
4. Grammar was taught inductively.
5. New teaching points were introduced orally.
6. Concrete vocabulary was taught trough demonstration, objects and pictures…
7. Both speech and listening comprehension were taught.
8. Correct pronunciation and grammar were emphasized.
Summing up/ Main objectives
• Objectives: Conversation, discussion.
• Use of the mother tongue is forbidden.
• Mainly oral production and listening.
• No translation.
• No grammar rules. Inductive.
• Lot of imagination and inspiration.
• Tiring for the teacher
• A problem for shy students.
Summary of a lesson:
• Presentation of the topic in the target language.
• Students repeat (chorus, whole class, groups, rows, …)
• The teacher explains a topic normally from real life situations. She uses objects, mime, etc as the language used in the target language.
• Use of songs and games in the classroom.
• Use of wall charts, posters, and visual aids used in the classroom.
• Listening and speaking are promoted from the very beginning.
“Children at an early age like playing with the spoken language”

AUDIO-LINGUAL METHOD
The audio-lingual method, Army Method, or New Key, is a style of teaching used in teaching foreign languages. It is based on behaviorist theory, which professes that certain traits of living things, and in this case humans, could be trained through a system of reinforcement—correct use of a trait would receive positive feedback while incorrect use of that trait (cualidad) would receive negative feedback. They use vocabulary, phonetics, sentence patterns and the construction of drills.

APPROACH, METHOD, DESIGN, PROCEDURE…

COMMUNITY LANGUAGE LEARNING METHOD (CLL)
Community language learning (CLL) is an approach in which students work together to develop what aspects of a language they would like to learn. The teacher acts as a counsellor and a paraphraser, while the learner acts as a collaborator, although sometimes this role can be changed.
Examples of these types of communities have recently arisen with the explosion of educational resources for language learning on the Web.
• It was created especially for adult learners who might fear to appear foolish.
• Teacher becomes a language counsellor
• Students work in small groups
• Teacher coordinates, guides, helps…
• Students feel confident

SUGGESTOPEDIA METHOD
Suggestopedia (US English) or Suggestopædia (UK English) is a teaching method developed by the Bulgarian psychotherapist Georgi Lozanov. It is used in different fields, but mostly in the field of foreign language learning. Lozanov has claimed that by using this method a teacher's students can learn a language approximately three to five times as quickly as through conventional teaching methods.
Suggestopedia has been called a pseudoscience. It strongly depends on the trust that students develop towards the method by simply believing that it works
The intended purpose of Suggestopedia was to enhance learning by tapping into the power of suggestion. Lozanov claims that “suggestopedia is a system for liberation”; liberation from the “preliminary negative concept regarding the difficulties in the process of learning” that is established throughout their life in the society.
• The only major linguistic problems in the language classroom are memorization and integration.
• The result of the appropriate use of suggestion is an enormous increase in the individual’s ability to learn. (lozanov)

THE SILENT WAY
The Silent Way is commonly defined as a teaching method for foreign languages in which the teachers are mostly silent and use rods and charts as their main teaching tools. Although Silent Way teachers do use rods and charts most of the time there can be Silent Way teaching without these tools while at the same time there may be teachers who use the suggested tools but do not really follow the Silent Way.
• Teaching should be subordinated to learning.
• Students should be able to use the language for self expression.
• Students become independent by relying on themselves (confiando en si mismos).
• Only the learner can do learning.


TOTAL PHYSICAL RESPONSE (TPR) / COMPREHENSION APPROACH.
Total physical response (TPR) is a language-teaching method developed by James Asher, It is based on the coordination of language and physical movement. In TPR, instructors give commands to students in the target language, and students respond with whole-body actions. The method is an example of the comprehension approach to language teaching. Listening serves two purposes; it is both a means of understanding messages in the language being learned, and a means of learning the structure of the language itself. Grammar is not taught explicitly, but is induced from the language input.
• Also named comprehension Approach.
• Listening comprehension first.
• Use of commands to direct behavior.
• Commands are given to get students to perform an action.
• The action makes the meaning of the command clear.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Mk6RRf4kKs
Analysis of the video watched.
Learning the keywords, understanding the meaning. Listen, watch and do. It’s important to this methodology to follow exactly the same order.
It resembles to the learning of their first language, however, the time of exposition with the foreign language is very short (3 hours a week). The children will search the function of the language. The classroom is an artificial setting, but other places as home and others are natural settings.  It’s important to motivate your students and congratulates them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkMQXFOqyQA

NATURAL APPROACH
• Observing how children acquire their mother tongue.
• The child chooses to speak when it is ready.
• The teacher helps his/her students to understand him/her by using pictures and occasional words in the students’ native language.
• Students are permitted to use their native language along with the target language.
The natural approach is a method of language teaching developed by Stephen Krashen and Tracy Terrell in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It aims to foster naturalistic language acquisition in a classroom setting, and to this end it emphasizes communication, and places decreased importance on conscious grammar study and explicit correction of student errors. Efforts are also made to make the learning environment as stress-free as possible. In the natural approach, language output is not forced, but allowed to emerge spontaneously after students have attended to large amounts of comprehensible language input.

COMMUNICATIVE APPROACHES
Everyone has a natural desire not only to understand himself but also to communicate with others. The closer people live together, the more this desire becomes a necessity.
• The first step in any learning process must be the identification on interests, needs and motivations.
• Language as a medium of communication
• Communication embraces function and notions.
• Communicative and meaningful activities.
• Learner centered approach or motivation centered approach.
Concept of need:
• Ways in which the learner will be called upon to use the language in situations he may meet.
• Personal and social development of the student, including the development of study skills and self-reliance.
• Meaning is paramount.
The communicative approach is based on the idea that learning language successfully comes through having to communicate real meaning. When learners are involved in real communication, their natural strategies for language acquisition will be used, and this will allow them to learn to use the language.
CLT/ Communicative language teaching
• CLT represents a reaction to previous methodological principles.
• They support what was called “the development of communicative profiency in the target language”, rather than knowledge of its structures.
Three main principles can be inferred from CLT practices:
- The communication principle: learning is promoted by activities involving real communication.
- The task principle: learning is enhanced through the use of activities in which language is employed for carrying out meaningful tasks.
- The meaningfulness principle: the learning process is supported by language which is meaningful to the student. Activities should consequently be selected according to how well they involve the learner in authentic and meaningful language use.

FUNCTIONAL APPROACH (ENFOQUE FUNCIONAL)
• It’s a process of “thinking in English”.
• If you want to ask for the age of a person… then… how old…?
• Functions instead of grammar exercises.
• Listening, speaking, reading and writing, according to needs of the students.
• Grammar aspects may be studied when students benefit from them.
• This process comes at the end, not at the beginning.

HOT POTATOES: KIND OF ACTIVITIES

Hot potatoes includes six applications: These applications enable you to create interactive:

• Multiple choice
• Short-answer
• Jumbled sentences
• Crosswords
• Matching and ordering
• Gap-fill exercises.

They can be uploaded to the World Wide Web.

Hot potatoes is freeware, and you may use it for any purpose or project.

• Jmatch: matching and ordering.
• Jcross: crossword
• Jmix: jumbed sentences
• Jcloze: fill in the gaps
• Jquiz: multiple choice, true or false, text entry or short answer.

Hot Potatoes suite: THE MASHER

The masher is a tool for automatically compiling hot potatoes exercises into units.

Imagine you have five hot potatoes exercises that form a single unit materials and you want to build HTML from all the exercises, with the same colours and appearance settings; you also want to link the exercise together using the navigation buttons, and create an index file for the unit. The masher will do it for you.

SHARED ASPECTS

Files designed with HP should be saved in two different formats:

HP FILE (extensions: jmt, jms, jqz, jcl, jcw)

HTML FILE (to be used with any web browser)

JMIX

A Jmix activity produces a jumbled word or sentence activity.

Letters of a single word may be jumbled, or the words of a sentence.

Jmix uses the standard and drag-and-drop types of output files should be saved in towo different formats.

JQUIZ

Jquiz can create four different types of questions:

Multiple choice

Short-answer

hybrid (a short-answer question that turns into a multiple choice questions after several attempts), and

multi-select (in which the learner has to choose several of a set of options, then check the choices).

JMATCH

The Jmatch program creates matching or ordering exercises.

A list of fixed items appears on the left (These can be pictures or text), with jumbled items on the right.

This can be used for matching vocabulary to picture or translations or for ordering sentencesto form a sequence or a conversation.

MULTIPLE CHOICE JQUIZ

The learner choose an answer by clicking on a button.

If the answer is correct, the button caption will change to a smily face :-) and if it is wrong, it will change to an x.

In either case, the student will see the feedback specific to that answer, explaining why it is right or wong (assuming you write the feedback when you make the exercise!).

If the answer is wrong, the learner can continue choosing answer until a correct answer is selected.

Once a correct answer is chosen, the scaring is “frozen”, but the learner can still click on buttons to see the feedback for other answers without penalty.

JCLOZE

Jcloze program creates gap-fill exercises.

Unlimited correct answers can e specified for each gap, and the student can ask for a hint and see the letter of the correct answer.

A specific clue can also be included for each gap.

Automatic scoring is also included. The program allowa gapping of selected words, or automatic gapping of every new word in a text.

REMEMBER

Files should be saved in the same folder.

HP does not include software for the edition of images, sound or video.

Suggested software: Gimp, Youtube editor, Audacity,...

Use long names, without spaces.

Browsers read spaces as : 20%

There may be naigation errors. Reading_in_English …..Reading in English.

STYLES OF READING APPLICABLE TO THE READING CLASS

Reading aloud or reading silently?

Silent reading: Scanning, skimming, intensive and extensive.

Reading aloud

FOR: 
• In the first years of primary education storytelling plays an important role in the process of learning.
• More effective if the story is told (or read) aloud due to the fact that learners become more involved and consequently more motivated.
• Students can show that they recognize written and spoken forms and the relationship between form and meaning.
• At early and intermediate levels can be used to check bottom-up processing skills or simply pronunciation.

AGAINST
• It is not a very authentic activity.
• It is a boring activity because while one student is reading, the others can easily lose attention.
• It’s not an interactive activity because students only have to recite.

Silent reading 

• The most common and natural type of reading.
• Different goals can be pursued depending on the predetermined purpose of reading:
Scanning: search of specific information within a text: relevant dates, numbers in a directory, times on a timetable or key concepts in an academic text.
Skimming. Very common in everyday life; used to get a global impression of the content of a text (the gist of the text). Requires a definite reading competence because it implies an overall view of the text. It Develops students’ self-confidence since they obtain a lot of information without needing much reading.

Intensive

• Focuses on linguistic and content accuracy.
• It is very important in some educational contexts because it is used to exemplify different aspects of the lexical, syntactic and discourse systems.
• Full understanding of the literal meaning presented in the written passage.
Extensive:

• Oriented towards grasping a general understanding of the text for the purpose of enjoyment or learning.
• Texts are usually long such as books or articles and reading them takes extended periods of time.
• Extensive reading is not usually performed during class time but it is known that this activity helps students to improve their reading abilities.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE FOUR SKILLS

It is an obvious fact that languages are spoken before they are written. There are people who communicate perfectly in the spoken language without being able to express themselves in writing.When introducing the skills we should know:

- What stage the learners are at in the acquisition of their first language skills,
- To ensure that we do not interfere with the learning process of their own language.
- Only when reading and writing have been acquired in L1 can we begin the task with L2.

• At beginner levels in particular writing practice should be aimed at:
- Reinforcing the learning of linguistic elements which have been practiced orally,
- Without forgetting to introduce our pupils to vocabulary practice and the structures of written language itself

• Integrated skills: It means that we can create activities, tasks where the four basic skills are practiced.
• Integrated reading and writing: Reading and writing are closely related:
a) Reading is a source of input and model for written language.
b) There is a continual process of feedback between the two skills.

A) Reading as a source of input and model for written language:
- Students need to receive language, a comprehensible input, by means of reading a sufficient amount in order to develop their capacity.
- Beginners should be given models adapted to their level.
B) Continual process of feedback between the two skills
- We constantly read what we have written to revise content and grammar, organise the text, etc. so there is a continuous feedback.
• Integrating speaking and writing: When we are writing something we usually “try it out” by pronouncing it internally in what is known as “inner speech”.

SPECIFIC SKILLS ATTACHED TO WRITING

• Writing is clearly a complex multifaceted process requiring the ability to manipulate many sub-skills simultaneously:
- “Involves being creative, spelling, grammar, punctuation, choice of appropriate words, sentences linking and text construction”.

Graphic or visual skills

• Spelling: Difference between pronunciation and spelling in the English language.
• How can our students improve their spelling?
• We advise them to:
a) Select priority words to learn,
b) Get plentiful, regular practice,
c) Know about the language
d) Learn techniques,
e) Develop an interest in words,
f) Check their work,
g) Have confidence in themselves.
• Punctuation: Learning how to use punctuation correctly is a slow and laborious process. It should be started from the very beginning.
• Layout: there are certain conventions on how to write a letter, construct a paragraph, and organize a written text and so on that are culturally determined.
• This refers to the students’ skill in making efficient use of grammatical structures and constructions.

Expressive or stylistic skills

• This includes the learners’ capacity to select the most appropriate meaning in a range of styles and registers: sociolinguistic competence.

Rhetorical skills 

• This refers to the ability to use linguistic cohesive devices – what we call “connectors” and “modifiers”- in order to link parts of a text into logically related sequences: discourse competence.

Organizational Skills 

• The organization of pieces of information into paragraphs and text.

IWB TRAINING: FIRST WE HAVE TO CONNECT IT

The characteristics, the management and the benefits of PDI are actually amazing. We will have to use them in an immediate future . I have to admit that every time I find more advantages on the use of interactive whiteboards. It's just a matter of imagination, which is not an easy task but productive. Many are against finding no sufficient to produce attractive material for students’ motivation. It is not only a matter of generating attention from our students but also encouraging their participation and autonomy, with merely creating entertaining as well as educational activities.
We can generate IWB-based activities such as visual, movement and participation for children. However, if we want to use it, we must connect it first. It is a very simple process:

• Video Connection:
• HDMI
• RCA
• VGA
• USB connection
• WiFi or RJ45 (network cable)

APPROACHES TO READING IN A FOREIGN/SECOND LANGUAGE

Bottom-up process (desde abajo hacia arriba): 

Based upon the assumption that the reader starts from decoding the most specific levels of the language before grasping the most general ones. The reader first recognizes individual letters, forms words, these in turn make up phrases, then clauses, sentences, texts… Later on, he/she makes use of his/her linguistic mechanism to make some sort of sense of the data. There are numerous activities to develop the learner’s bottom-up strategies and subsequently allow him/her to process the text in this way.

a) Identifying words by letter combinations.
b) Difficult sound clusters (strange sound on letter combinations)
c) Re-ordering scrambled words and matching
d) Discriminating minimal pair sounds
e) Reading and stress

Top- down process (desde arriba hacia abajo):

The process starts from the higher levels of processing and proceeds to use the lower levels selectively.
Background knowledge plays a key role, since the reader combines what he/she already know with the new information from the text to achieve a personal interpretation.
Activities for top down process:
a) Deducing from context:
E.g. can you deduce form context the meaning of resort, hike, and sunbathers? Are these words essential for the comprehension of the passage? Why?
b) Relating written text to general world knowledge: Relate his/her world or background knowledge to the written information from the text.
c) Drawing inferences: The reader not only needs to understand explicitly stated information but also implicit messages.

Interactive process:

a) Eclectic approach: the reader depending no his/her purposes, the type of text, etc., activates different strategies which shift from bottom-up to top-down and viceversa. This has come to be known as interactive reading.

MY 2.0 CLASS

Todo maestro sueña con tener un aula completamente equipada, donde poder desarrollar sus funciones y enseñar en un clima de aprendizaje óptimo. La distribución de la clase es fundamental para determinar qué tipo de relaciones se darán dentro de la escuela. Nuestra labor como docentes es procurar la comodidad y la armonía para propiciar que el aprender y el enseñar transcurran de la mejor manera posible.

Vivimos en la “Era tecnológica” en una sociedad basada en el conocimiento y en la información, por eso, las TIC representan la cúspide a la cual todos los docentes quieren alcanzar o llegar.

He planteado la siguiente distribución en forma de “U” porque considero que a nivel comunicativo es primordial el tener contacto visual o lo que coloquialmente conocemos como “el cara a cara”, evitando las “clases del cogote” tradicionales. De esta manera los estudiantes no sólo atienden sino que participan, observando al mismo tiempo al resto de compañeros, sin perder de vista a la figura del guía que se presenta en primer plano ante ellos. Los propios alumnos podrán autorregular su aprendizaje, colaborando y cooperando de forma activa. Al mismo tiempo. Mi aula “soñada” presenta una zona donde poder desarrollar actividades grupales, así como un espacio para la lectura donde podrán disponer de su propia biblioteca virtual, con colecciones de libros de diversa temática. En lo referente a material tecnológica, he optado por distribuir un portátil para cada alumno, así como optar por los recursos más sofisticados a la vez que interactivos para el aula, tales como: proyectores, PDI, “touch - table”, tablets, TV, sistemas informáticos infantiles… además de estar provisto de un software actualizado (de última generación). Lo que es más, se tendrá en cuenta la seguridad en toda la red del colegio, especialmente aquellas que estén al alcance de los pequeños, con el fin de realizar un uso de las nuevas tecnologías segura para ellos. Por ellos todos los dispositivos con acceso a Internet contaran con un antivirus actualizado. También he propuesto tener un “rinconcito natural”. O sea, un lugar donde poder acomodar a una mascota. Intentando así que los pequeños no sólo interactúen con las TIC sino que también se vean motivados a relacionarse con “lo natural”, cuidando de seres vivos y fomentando el interés por la conservación y estudio del medio natural.

Definitivamente, no es posible aprender sin hacer o practicar. Los alumnos necesitan de contacto directo con las nuevas tecnologías si queremos que adquieran habilidades digitales. Adquiriendo de forma natural el uso de las TIC

Para el diseño de Mi Aula 2.0 he optado por la página http://www.teq.com/classroom. No obstante, existen otras herramientas muy útiles

·          http://kaplan.floorplanner.com/start#details 

·          http://classroom.4teachers.org

DOWNLOAD FROM YOU TUBE

Una buena forma de no estar sujetos a la velocidad de Internet es descargando los vídeos de You Tube previamente. Para eso, podemos usar como ya hemos visto el navegador Fire Fox. También hay páginas web como:

-       http://www.youtubebyclick.com/

Esta página, permite descargar vídeos e incluso cambiar el formato a mp3 y mp4.

(Imagen) Os dejo un vídeo sobre un tutorial muy interesante sobre cómo usarlo, de esta forma maximizamos los recursos de los cuales hacemos referencia.

Itunes es otra herramienta a través de la cual podemos descargar contenido multimedia, al mismo tiempo podemos lleva parte de nuestra biblioteca según nos convenga y podemos transformar de mp3 a CD o al contrario.

Tube Get: es una página web por medio de la cual podemos descargar y posteriormente convertir.

Vimeo es otra herramienta como Youtube pero no tan popular.

-       http://vimeo.com/

Muchas veces los vídeos aparecen rodeados de anuncios de todo tipo. Lo que no mucha gente sabe es que podemos deshacernos de ese tipo de elementos. Algunas de las herramientas capaces de eso son:

-       A Cleaner Internet: es una forma de eliminar la publicidad alrededor del vídeo mediante un complemento como “safari”. Proporcionándonos así un Internet más seguro para los estudiantes.

-       Chopping Videos: nos permite cortar los vídeos (Tube Chop), acortándolos y editándolos.

Por último otra herramienta muy útil es ZAMZAR que sirve para añadir subtítulos a los vídeos, ya que a veces los docentes se encuentran con estudiantes con necesidades especiales a los que hay que integrar en el desarrollo normal de la clase.

Es imprescindible que atendamos de forma eficiente y eficaz a todos los alumnos. El buen docente debe saber crear situaciones que busquen la comprensión de todos. Qué mejor recurso que el de las TIC para adaptarlas a las peculiaridades de cada persona.