UAB 2014-2015
LEARNER REFLEXION LEARNING A FOREIGN LANGUAGE (ENGLISH) IN PRIMARY EDUCATION USING ICT DR. DOOLY, M.
CAROLINA GÁLVEZ SANTOS
Table of contents Introduction ................................................................................................................ 2 My objectives............................................................................................................... 2 Learning and developing through interactions .......................................................... 2 Assessment................................................................................................................... 3 Telecollaboration ........................................................................................................ 4 Project-based Language Learning ............................................................................. 6 About group Barcenois and our TEPBLL ................................................................. 9 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 13 Bibliography .............................................................................................................. 14
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Introduction Through this reflection, I am going to tackle the most important aspects I think I have learnt throughout the subject. Many of the issues outlined here could be developed more specifically. Nevertheless, this is not the case since I have tried to synthetize my feelings and learnings. It is merely a compilation of my thoughts, which have experienced some variation and could still change in the future since our mind also varies as the time goes by and depends on the context in which we are living. My objectives At the beginning of the course, I was obsessed with getting a good command of the English language. My objectives were to improve my fluency and to enlarge my vocabulary. Likewise, I felt the necessity of learning how to teach English embedding technology into practice and to different grades in Primary School (working with little pupils seemed difficult). Thus, I expected to learn a variety of strategies, which also helped me to teach English in other subjects, for example in Arts and Sciences. On the other hand, I was afraid of “starting” this subject, since technology was not one of my best “competences”. In fact, what I knew was the result of three-year studies at university, which was mainly: google drive, prezi, movie maker and a little bit of blogger. I did not have any idea regarding CMC tools and, therefore, how to use them to foster pupils’ learning.
Learning and developing through interactions I worked cooperatively throughout the course. I had the great opportunity to learn with the help of my classmates and I am sure these latter ones, on their turn, acquired new knowledge from my contributions as well: I always devote a lot of time to examining deeply the bibliography we need to read to carry out an activity or task. Furthermore, I am used to doing research whenever there is some aspects of an issue I do not completely understand. As a result, I learn much more than only by skimming the documents, and I feel self-confident and ready to discuss about a topic further. In addition, these interactions allow me to practise the new vocabulary learnt while reading, listening or 2
watching the sources provided by the professor. Consequently, I enlarged enormously my lexicon during this term, above all, the formal –academic– one. I think Dr. Dooly managed very skilfully to enhance our learning and development by acting as a model, providing us with a wide range of interaction strategies and methods so that we may be able to implement them as teachers in the future. Her “strategy”: Learning by doing. Indeed, we became actors every week; we were an active part of our learning and responsible for it too. Now I know the benefits of pushing my pupils to interact with different classmates on each session, using diverse methodologies that help avoiding monotony in the classrooms and, therefore, promote learners’ motivation. Likewise, I became aware of different methodologies to do group work, enhancing interaction among learners by assigning distinct texts and/or materials to different pupils and asking them to share information and compare it before explaining it to the rest of the classmates, who are organised in corners. Becoming experts is an interesting and complete strategy, which not only fosters learners’ autonomy to organise their work, but also their cognitive and communicative competences and skills. Moreover, we must take into account that by doing group work, teachers can focus on values whereas kids can learn to cooperate. By the way, if we ask them for selfassessment or peer assessment, we can encourage them to reflect on the whole process. Nevertheless, how should this assessment be in order to achieve our goals?
Assessment I agree with Dr. Dooly when she states that assessment is one of the most difficult tasks to be done by the teachers, especially when we are novice ones. Since there are different types of assessment, in my opinion, it is essential to know exactly what we are going to assess and, above all, inform our pupils about the goals they should attain.
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Lots of questions come up to my mind when I think about assessing: How can I be sure I am being fair? How can I really know if all the children cooperate with their classmates? In fact, I need more than observation when pupils do group work. During the course, I learnt that I needed peer assessment and good rubrics to give them. However, I wonder how teachers (particularly the specialist ones, such as English teachers) know that learners are not playing truant when they answer their questions and it is friendship and not reality that is being taken into account in their assessment. Perhaps, I will never be able to give a good response to this issue. Although, I am glad to state that the bibliography I have consulted, the information I have gathered from my peers and Dr. Dooly’s feedbacks helped me to build new knowledge on the basis of the learnings I previously had. In addition, they allowed me to compile a great deal of data regarding assessment; I am aware of different tools of formative assessment, such as field notes, running records, interviews, rubrics, exit slips –which I consider very useful-, and reviews, among others. I do consider formative assessment like a continuous process, where gathering information becomes essential to get to know our pupils deeply as well as to give them feedback about their learning process. In this regard, I must say that I am quite satisfied with the implementation of assessment in my Teaching Sequence –Practicum IV-, since I have been using different tools to follow learners’ knowledge acquisition. Also, I have been able to implement different types of peers’ evaluation and two distinct exit slips; I have created some rubrics to assess group working, too. Although observation with a camera is an excellent tool for teachers, I did not have the opportunity to check it because my tutor in Escola Collserola preferred not to record any image of the children. Telecollaboration In my opinion, Uni-collaboration website is an excellent tool for getting deep knowledge about telecollaboration. Certainly, I enjoyed going through it because I could find on it the answers to some questions and doubts I had since the beginning of the course. Moreover, it is very well organised and provides information in many different ways, i.e. written explanations but also varied videos to learn about this issue both quickly and easily. It was a pleasant experience. In fact, so pleasant that I decided to explore more than just only the information required by our professor. This is why I had lots of issues to
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comment on when we were asked to say “one thing we had learnt about the website�. The following ones are a sample of them:
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Project-based Language Learning I have learned what a project-based language learning is. Although last year I started dealing with this approach and I believed I knew what it consisted of, this course has allowed me to experience what a PBLL is by creating a real one. We started by reading through different articles concerning PBLL and its implementation in the classroom. In my opinion, the most interesting one was Promoting CompetencyBased Language Teaching Through Project-Based Language Learning.1Indeed, it was reading through it that I fully understood what a PBLL was. Why? Because Dooly defines it by using precise language and comparing it with other approaches, making the difference between them:
Furthermore, she describes the steps we need to follow when planning a PBLL (2013:8284) and provides a real example of PBLL designed for different student levels, from Primary Education through University.
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Dooly, M. (2013). Promoting competency-based language teaching through project-based language learning. In
M.L. Pérez-Cañado (Ed.) Competency-based language teaching in higher education, pp. 77-92. Dordrecht: Springer.
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On the other hand, I must admit I was very surprised when I read the troubleshooting section in her article, since I found out a compilation of the answers to the questions that had come to my mind while I was scanning her writing:
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Simply awesome!
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About group Barcenois and our TEPBLL I remember my first meeting... I was afraid of getting in contact with people I did not know; other students of different countries and different nationalities… Would they have the same interests as me? I also had doubts about how it would be working with people I have never ever worked before. Would they be concerned about the necessity of working cooperatively/collaboratively to achieve our goal, i.e. create a really good TEPBLL? Would they be fully committed to their group? I am aware of my level of exigency. Even though I cannot demand everybody has the same dedication towards the project as mine, I need that my team works seriously. Unfortunately, this is not easy to find (and so it was). I was nervous. I watched the introductory videos and I started engaging in what it was a new adventure for me. I took notes about the information that each “project mate” had offered in a 36-second recording. My classmates seemed to be very interesting girls. 10 pm arrived.
We presented ourselves and played a game to break the ice! We learnt about one another by guessing who was who. It was a very funny game, which was leaded by Lauren, who I think was one of the best project mates in our team. Indeed, as I stated in my peer evaluations, she had been working hard all along the project and contributed to sharing ideas with the rest of the group and providing new knowledge.
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Apart from learning from others, we have been able to practise plurilingualism. Lauren speaks Spanish quite well, and we taught her new words and idioms. In addition, we enriched our exchanges by saying some Catalan words and expressions and comparing them to Spanish ones. Therefore, we had the opportunity to experience the benefits of multilingualism and check that it does not matter if on some occasions we are forced to use other languages as a means of communication. Indeed, what it is important is to communicate, even if speakers use body language and other strategies. At present, I know that this is not forbidden, as Dr. Dooly announced last year on the third course of our degree. I believe that this subject should be clear to every teacher and pupil. To come back to the subject of our meetings, I would like to add that, in general terms, they developed very well, except for some technical problems we had with Skype on two occasions, which were solved by connecting on google drive and sharing our ideas, each of us contributing to our project. Therefore, at the beginning, it was great!
Nevertheless, as the delivery of our project approached, I felt I was alone. Only two of us, in some cases three of us, collaborated in the last and most important deliveries‌ I was very disappointed and angry.
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Yet life is hard! Given that people have different work demands, we should learn to deal with and try to do the most of us to feel good about ourselves. Therefore, I finally decided to relax and enjoy seeing how our project was taking shape (after many drafts done to improve it, following the advice of the professor and the suggestions of our classmates). The poster below represents the growing up process of the project, like a flower that sprouts…:
* This poster has been created by using MURAL.LY. Not only have I used the CMC tools that appear on the blog of the subject, but also other analogue resources. Now I feel sure when I need to search for different programmes or software on internet. In this case, I have chosen “Mural.ly” because Glogster was not for free anymore. 11
As I stated before, assessment is one of the most difficult tasks teachers have to accomplish for effective teaching. How can they assess pupils’ group work successfully? Is it possible to ensure equal participation of all the group members? Different assessment tools can be used to close monitor students’ learning process and detect lack of collaboration in group working, such as peer assessment, self-assessment, recordings, interviews between teacher and pupils, among others. In addition, I believe that it is essential to stablish clear criteria for the assessment of both the process and the product of group work and decide on the different assessment possibilities, bearing in mind the advantages and disadvantages of each one. The link below –or a pdf version- offers four tables that illustrate them, based on Winchester-Seeto (2002)2: http://www.cshe.unimelb.edu.au/assessinglearning/03/group.html http://www.cshe.unimelb.edu.au/assessinglearning/docs/Group.pdf
From my humble point of view, and taking into account some previous experiences in group working, I would advocate for the creation of a portfolio with assorted assignments, observational data and journal entries, among others. Likewise, each learner would receive two grades: a mark for the whole group -based on the presentation of the final product- and an individual one based on the analysis of the group work process (it could be one of the questions in an exam or a reflexion paper). As a result, teachers would have more evidence of pupils’ learning and participation. They would also have more work to do! However, I think it is worth doing so. Learners’ are worth it. Before finishing this section, I would like to point out that it was while I was planning our project that I had a “key” moment where, for the first time, I really started thinking of the objectives as SWBAT’s. I always tried to plan my teaching sequences carefully. At present, it is easier for me to do it since I think of the objectives to be implemented by asking myself about what learners would be able to do after each session. What is more, now I think of not only the contents to be taught but also (and above all) the functionality as well as the feelings of the pupils. That is to say, if they will feel they are taking
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Winchester-Seeto, T. (2002). Assessment of collaborative work - collaboration versus assessment. Invited paper presented at the Annual Uniserve Science Symposium, The University of Sydney, 5th April.
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advantage of the time spent in class and if they are motivated. Empathy is, consequently, one of the abilities I have improved throughout the course. Another fundamental issue is that, for the first time too, I really take under consideration having a plan B for each session. Thus, I will feel much more confident during the implementation of my teaching sequences. Conclusion In my opinion, I can affirm that I have reached the main goals of this subject, i.e. being able to teach communicative competences in English as a Foreign Language by planning and implementing through CMC tools “useful” and motivating activities and tasks effectively. Moreover, I feel much more self-confident and prepared to participate in international mobility programs and to promote multilingualism. Until this year, I had never heard about how to contact other schools in foreign countries to enhance pupils’ language learning. At present, I really think that all the schools should participate in a collaboration programme. In doing so, pupils’ motivation will grow and, consequently, they will improve not only their language learning but also their sense of interculturality. Besides, the fact that we, as students, have practised telecollaboration allows us to feel this need. In addition, we have had lots of examples to implement it as teachers, e.g. signing a contract of collaboration, which help learners to become aware of the importance of keeping their promises and engagements. Likewise, creating a PBLL has allowed me to experience the difficulties/constraints my future pupils will probably find when they do this kind of tasks. Therefore, I will be able to understand their feelings as well as to have more resources to solve their problems. To conclude, I can state I have learnt by doing, on the basis of constructivism and socioconstructivism learning theories, i.e. following Dewey’s and Vygotsky’s principles of teaching and learning. Throughout the course, I have learnt by being with my classmates and my online peers, being involved in making choices and decisions. Social interaction and instructional scaffolding were permanent features of our classes. Therefore, I have been able to integrate new knowledge generated as a result of my experiences and thanks to Dr. Dooly, who always pushed me to think critically and go beyond my first reflections. How? Providing in-class and online feedback, which invited me to raise questions myself 13
and find information myself too. Furthermore, I have learnt in a well-planned and wellresourced environment, doing purposeful activities and tasks related to my needs and interests. Finally, I would like to thank Dr. Dooly for modelling what a good teacher is and let me and my classmates experience it all together.
Bibliography Dooly, M. (2013). Promoting competency-based language teaching through projectbased language learning. In M.L. PĂŠrez-CaĂąado (Ed.) Competency-based language teaching in higher education, pp. 77-92. Dordrecht: Springer. Winchester-Seeto, T. (2002). Assessment of collaborative work - collaboration versus assessment. Invited paper presented at the Annual Uniserve Science Symposium, The University of Sydney, 5th April. http://www.cshe.unimelb.edu.au/assessinglearning/03/group.html
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