LAST DAY OF UNIVERSITY!!!!!!!!

After four years of college, the last day finally arrived. The last class of the career was Didactics of Foreign language with Maribel.

That day, Maribel first explained some things about the activities we had to do during holidays and about the exam. Later, Maribel and a classmate surprised us by playing some Christmas songs with the transverse flute and the piano. What a great moment! In the final part of the class, Maribel brought chocolates for everyone and we listened to typical Christmas songs. It was a fantastic day!

I have learned a lot during the course of this subject since the way of working has been more dynamic than in traditional classes. The most important thing is that we have not learned theoretical content and grammar as in other subjects, but we have learned how to work and teach our students with different educational tools.

On the other hand, I have to say that we have had to carry out numerous activities and there have been times when I personally have felt very overwhelmed but in general terms, I have taken a lot of new knowledge about this subject.

PRESENTATIONS OF DIFFERENT TOPICS

During the month of December, the unit 'Teaching English to Young Children' was carried out through group presentations in class. Each group was assigned a topic and this topic was developed in class through participatory activities with classmates as if they were our students. The topic of my group was 'Story activities' and in our presentation we explained a brief introduction about what is Storytelling. Then we did two activities with the class in which I have to thank my classmates for their participation. Finally, we explained some conclusions about the many advantages of practising stories in class.

I learned and enjoyed a lot during these classes as my classmates did numerous activities based on listening, speaking, reading, writing, storytelling and festivals.

As for me, this way of learning is more innovative and motivating than traditional classes, so I am grateful that our teacher has proposed that we be the ones who are the teachers on some occasions.

ICT IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING FOR PRIMARY EDUCATION

During the end of November and the beginning of December, we were working ICT in Primary Education. ICT means "information and communication technologies", and as we all know, the technologies are very important in our society.  ICT can offer teachers and children a powerful suite of tools to support their teaching and learning. There are many advantages in order to use ICT with our students. Here is a very interesting video on why use ICT in primary school:

I learn a lot in these classes as Maribel taught us many resources in order to practise and create our own ICT activities. I discovered Symbaloo, which is a webmix where you can add presentations, storytelling, interactive activities, games, etcetera.

From my point of view, it is very important to know new teaching methods so that our future students feel more comfortable and motivated in the teaching-learning process so I found there classes as the most interestinf in the subject.

SYLLABUS AND UNITS OF WORK

During November 18 and 19 Maribel began to explain the unit called 'Syllabus and Units of works'. First of all, she explained programming is one of the most important things in our process as teachers. Then, we talked about the key competencies that we have been working with since the first year of the degree. Finally, we learnt how to design a lesson planning taking into account two important issues:

-MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES by Howargt Gardner

-THE BLOOM'S TAXONOMY 

What I learned in this unit is how to create a syllabus since we have not been taught to do it in any course of the degree. What we did have already learned was how to make didactic units. 

In my opinion, learning how to do a syllabus is essential for teachers because in the future we will have to do them. Moreover, reviewing the multiple intelligences and the Bloom's taxonomy was very interesting in order to reinforce our syllabus.

APPROACHES AND METHODS IN LANGUAGE TEACHING

During the week of November 18 and 19 we have studied unit 3 'Language Acquisition and Language Learning'. First of all I would like to emphasize the difference between acquisition and learning. Acquisition refers to the “natural” way of picking up a language by using it in natural, communicative situations and learning means having a conscious knowledge about grammar, and conscious rules about a language are developed. According to the approaches and methods of the 20th century we find the Grammar-Translation Method, the Direct Method, the Oral Approach and Situational Language Teaching and the Audiolingual Method. Moreover, we there are some alternatives methods such as the Natural Approach, the Total Physical Response (TPR), the Silent Way; Suggestopedia and the Communicative Approach. The way to learn these methods were carried out through videos made by the class groups. Each group represented a method and taught how to carry it out in the classroom.

This teaching-learning method helped me to remember all the methods and approaches that we learned last year in a more motivating way. My classmates did a great job representing each method as if they were teaching in a real class and with real students.

As far as I am concerned, many of these methods are unfortunately still used in class even though they are quite obsolete. As future teachers, we must know the advantages and disadvantages of each method and carry out the most motivating for our students. We can also combine the methods and use each one as needed.

ENGLISH CURRICULUM IN PRIMARY EDUCATION

For two weeks we were studying the curriculum in Primary Education. Firstly, we took a look at the different education laws in Spain in the past. Then Maribel began to explain the Organic Law on Education of May 3rd, 2006 that was modified by the Organic Law for the Improvement of the Quality on Education of December 9th, 2013. After that, in groups of three people, we carried out an activity that consisted of designing an outline about the LOMCE and mentioning the different titles. In another session, we had to do, in groups of three as well, a comparison between which are the elements of the curriculum established in Decree 54/2014 vs. the elements of a didactic programming in the Order of 08.05.2014. 

What I learned from these classes is that it is very important to know the contents of the Curriculum as it establishes what we have to teach and what our students have to learn. Therefore, it is a guarantee of the minimum contents that students have to achieve.

From my point of view, these classes contained a lot of theory contents and sometimes could be a litle borring but it is very important to bear in mind that education law has changed a lot in recent years and unfortunately continues to change. There should be a fixed law that establishes the content well explained and mainly that establishes an inclusive education.

ASSESING YOUNG LEARNERS AND RUBRICS (CLASSES IN CONFINEMENT)

On October 21 and 22, I couldn't attend face-to-face classes at university due to a positive contact with Covid-19. For that reason, I had to remain in confinement at home. Fortunately, Maribel gave me the opportunity to follow the classes through Microsoft Teams, which I appreciated a lot since I could follow the subject at the same time as the rest of the class.

Those days, Maribel continued with the Assessment unit. She showed us a PowerPoint with different evaluation ways of assessment such as portfolios or Self-Evaluation. In addition, she explained different ways to assess Speaking and Writing skills. On the other hand, Maribel explained how to make evaluation rubrics and the steps we must take into account to carry out one.

What I learnt of those classes it was the advantages of portfolios because although I already knew them, I didn't think that they had so many benefits for the daily learning of the students. Besides, I learnt how to make appropriate and easy rubrics with the Rubistar website.

In my opinion, as future teachers we must innovate in our teaching process so that students feel motivated and show interest in learning. Therefore, we must know very well how to make a good assessment to give them the necessary tools to improve. Here I show a video that I found quite interesting about assessing young children.