Taxonomy of Educational Objectives.

How are you friends in this hot summer day!!?

Today I'm going to share with you some new information that can help you or that you can add to your new knowledge.

This is the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives:

(SWBAT) Students Will Be Able To...

1. Knowledge

- Define

- Identify

- Write

- List

2. Comprehension

- Set up
- Describe
- Give
- State

- Translate

3. Application
- Relate
- Describe
- Determine
- Apply
- Reduce

4. Analysis
- Identify
- Enumerate
- Analyze
-Evaluate

5. Synthesis
- Write
- Design
- Construct

Writing Instructional Goals and Objectives.

First of all I'm going to define what a goal is?
Goals are broad, generalized statements about what is to learn.

Listing your well-written goals' course and objectives is a good idea for you in order to know what your expections for the course are and place them in the syllabus is a good idea aswell because in this way you share them with your students.

There are 3 types of objectives:
* Cognitive (Mental skills)

* Affective (Beliefs and attitudes)

* Psychomotor (Physical skills)

When you create your own objectives they should specify 4 main things:

1. Audience - (Who? Who is this aimed at?)

2. Behavior - (What? What do you expect them to be able to do? Use action verbs to describe an overt, observable behavior.)

3. Condition - (How? Under what circumstances will the learning occur?)

4. Degree - (How much)

This is often called the ABCD's of the objectives and it's a wonderful way for you to do them.

A new semester has begun!

How are you fellows?? I hope you're doing ok!

Well, a new semester has begun in this 2012 and that means new challenges to go through and new experiences to know about, primarly because this semester I have to teach to Junior High school students and to be honest I'm kind of nervous about that because working with adolescents could be sometimes a little bit difficult and dealing with them and their hormonal changes, their moods, psycological changes and love problems could be tired aswell.

In class of didactics 2 we started to learn and review some things about working with adolescents and how we can teach them and manage a good class.

First of all we have learned 3 important things that are useful at the time of teaching and they are: Warm ups, icebreakers and time fillers.

I'll give you some reasons to use them:

1. To focus or re-energy on the first 5 or 10 minutes of the class.

2. Break the ice with new students.

3. To fill a small block when your lesson plan runs short.

4. To replace a lesson that students can't grasp or are bored with.

5. To have a hand for emergencies.

6. To use them when you are called in the last minute to substitute a teacher.

We are learning how a lesson planning is a good way to make decisions in advanced about what to teach, how to teach and the time assigment of every teaching procedure. We have seen some others aspects like why is a lesson planning so important and the benefits that teachers get from their lesson planning aswell.

The principles for a lesson planning are:

- Aim

- Variety

- Flexibility

- Learnability

And the lesson plan format is:

1. General objective

2. Materials

3. Time

4. Warm up

5. Presentation

6. Language notes

7. Practice (Controlled, semi-controlled and free practice)

8. Wrap up

9. Homework.

This is just the begining of my return to my blog!

I will share with you some other information through the semester.

bye bye and take care!

Front Of The Class

This time I will share with you my comments about a movie which was based on a true story, this movie is "Front of the Class".

The movie is based on the true story of Brad Cohen, a young man diagnosed with "Tourette Syndrome" who defies the odds to become a teacher.



What makes his teaching great?

His teaching was based in his sickness (Tourette Syndrome), it helped him a lot to discover that he should be the teacher he never had, because he was always surrounded by people and teachers who didn’t understand him at all, that’s why he hated school.

Which values does he teach his students?

In his process as a teacher he taught a lot of values to his students and the principal was:

Respect: He taught his students that it’s ok to be different, be yourself.

Some others are:

Pattience

The fact of having a positive attitud.

Be honest

Responsable

Have a good auto-control

Flexibility

Optimistic attitud

To no give up easily in any situation, no matter how difficult it'll be.

In the movie occurrs Bullying and Teasing and here are the definitions of each of them:

 What is bullying?
Bullying is when someone keeps doing or saying things to have power over another person.
Some of the ways they bully other people are by: calling them names, saying or writing nasty things about them, leaving them out of activities, not talking to them, threatening them, making them feel uncomfortable or scared, taking or damaging their things, hitting or kicking them, or making them do things they don't want to do.

What is teasing?

Teasing is when two or more people who are usually friends push, chase, or joke in a playful manner.

What struck me about the movie?

Well, what struck me the most was the desire of being a teacher, because he fought until he got what he wanted (The oportunity to teach), despite all the difficulties he had.
That inspires me to fight for everything I want and don't give up easily.
Every effort has its rewards.
Also struck me the fact that he changed a lot of things through his teaching.



What's the most valuable lesson from the movie?

To me the most valuable lesson is that it's ok to be different, it doesn't matter the way you are or how you are, we are all equal.
You have to respect others and be original, be yourself.

What you aspire to be and what you wanna do through out your life?

I would like to be a great teacher and change the world step by step, I wanna change people minds by my teaching. I just want being part of a different world where everybody respect eachother.
I would like to be source of inspiration to my pupils and help them in everything.

Finally I just want to invite you to see the movie, it is a source of inspiration for everybody.
It will help you a lot and will change the way you see some things.

How PPP (Power Point Presentations) helps you to understand VYLs (Very Young Learners).

In my Didactic English class I saw a serie of presentations about how to teach VYLs and they helped me to understand and to know a lot of things about children.

Children learn by doing and playing.

When you are teaching them you have to use things that are very interesting to them and also use situations that are familiar in order to do their learning easier.
Be an actor/actress when you are teaching them, enjoy together, develop their listening skills by singing funny and entertaiment songs,develop their reading skills by story telling.

Also develop their writing and speaking skill in a funny way and make them work in pairs or groups. Don not forget to use controlled, guided and free practice.

Always assess your puplis.

Don't forget to do it and see if your goal is being achieve.

TVYLs (Teaching Very Young Learners)

To start my blog I just want to share with you my point of view about TVYLs.
Teaching very young learners is not as easy as it seems to be. It requires a big effort becuase they're children.
So it means that they are so different among them. You will find different kinds of learning and behavior and that's why you have to be prepared for that.
For teaching TVYLs you have to be creative, in this way you will create interesting teaching material in order to get their attention. Also be funny, because children don't like boring classes, use a variaty of activities to amuse them and use your time properly, the period of time you will get their attention is pretty short. Don't forget KISS (Keep It Short and Simple).

Another important point is: be tolerant, because like I said before there are different kinds of behavior and some of them will be quite anoying for you.
Create a good class atmosphere to motive children to learn. Planning a good class management will help you to teach easily and remember to have a back up plan in case of emergency.
Don't forget, children learn by doing. So, use things and activities that likes them to do and play.