Blog de Rebeca

On the 11th December my group and I did a presentation on how to write effective classroom materials. The first thing we did was to explain to our partners how an expert on that matter (Rachael Roberts) conveived a successful lesson.  According to Rachael Roberts, a lesson should be more than a pile of disconnected things. A successful piece of material is something that is more than just a collection of worksheets or activities. In the lessons in which those activities will be carried out each stage should be a natural progression of the last stage. Those materials she mentions should be interesting, engaging and relevant and when selecting them we must take into account what the students need to know in order to understand them. So, we must think about what background and cultural knowledge will they need in order to engage with the material. Rachael also mentions that in a class there should also be a balance between heads up and heads down (moments in the lesson when students

Students involvement in school learning is essential and concentration, pleasure and interest are key concepts when talking about this. If the level of these three factors is high students involvement will be stronger. However, anxiety is a feeling which students can also experiment during the learning process. This feeling hinders learning and it happens when the student cannot cope with the challenge proposed because it is too difficult. In those situations, we must remember Vygotsky's zone of proximal development which is defined as "the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers" (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 86). Therefore, thanks to the teacher's guidance, students will be able to overcome these difficult challenges even though they do not have the required abilities and autonomy

I have been giving private lessons for five years and this year I have started working as a teacher in a language school. Therefore, after a few years of teaching I would like to say that when I teach english I always try to engage my students in learning by interacting with them, doing interesting activities or games, making questions which are related to the topic and that can be of their interest... I would say that it is vital that our students actively participate in class. According to my view, the role of a teacher as a person who simply reads aloud the coursebook should come to an end. We must innovate, make our students feel that they are capable of everything, show them the importance of English in today's society in order to motivate them to learn and take advantage of new technologies which are an excellent tool to do more our lessons more dynamic. All this is precisely what I have been doing so far.

Questions are essential in learning as they are one of the best ways to gain deeper insights. It is a well-known fact that we learn by asking questions and precisely for this reason we, as future teachers, must bear in mind some things when making questions. First of all, it is important to know that there are two different types of questions. On the one hand, referential questions are the ones to which the teachers do not know the answer when they ask them, as for example: Do you like pasta? What do you like doing in your free time? On the other hand, display questions are the ones to which the teachers know the answer as for example: What do we add to the third person singular in the present simple? The important thing about this is that it has been proved that we tend to make display questions and therefore referential questions should be increased. Those kind of questions really make the student reflect, when talking about display questions students do not have to think so

Scaffolding Scaffolding refers to a process in which teachers model or demonstrate how to solve a problem, and then step back, offering support as needed. .Scaffolding enlists the instructor as an “activator” whose role is to facilitate the student’s incremental mastery of a concept. Scaffolding technique: A good scaffolding technique when talking about reading is to preteach key and unknown vocabulary before reading a text. The teacher should review with the students the words most likely to give students trouble. If you don't do it pupils will probably lose interests or fall asleep while reading the text because the will find many vocabulary that the do not understand. Apart from that, as a consequence of not understanding the text they can also get frustrated or bored. You can introduce the new words by using photos or in context with the things you know students are interested in. This would be a more dynamic way of teaching vocabulary and a perfect tool to avo