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IES La Serna. Leading our students into literature

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Revista Digital Educamadrid

Fecha de publicación 22 de octubre de 2013

Resumen

Los profesores participantes en un curso de nivel avanzado del Plan de Formación en Lengua Inglesa 2012-2013 de la Comunidad de Madrid, titulado “Teaching English through Literature” ponen de manifiesto sus exceptivas, las dificultades encontradas y los aprendizajes adquiridos. Esta actividad les ha proporcionado una mayor confianza en su trabajo así como nuevas ideas para favorecer un aprendizaje más dinámico, interactivo y divertido que han podido poner en práctica con sus alumnos de 1º de ESO.

Experiencias

Nivel. 1ª y 2ª de ESO Bilingües

Autores

Paloma Cándano Ochandio, Sonia Barba Martínez, Gema Fernández Domínguez, Ana Mª Poyatos, Purificación Teno Rubio, Ana Mª Sánchez Fernández,  Fernando Gil Delgado, Mercedes Bravo Denisa, Gabriela Plesca

IES La Serna (Fuenlabrada)

Context

We are all Secondary Level English teachers. Currently, some of us are teaching at Bilingual Schools, in either “Section” or “Programme”, while the rest are waiting for their schools to be appointed Bilingual or wishing to teach in them. We embarked upon a course in the Madrid called advanced course for "Teaching English through Literature” which was financed by the Spanish Ministry for Education. It took place during the summer programme "Plan de Formación en Lengua Inglesa 2012-2013" in the Fundación International Studies during the month of July.

General objectives

Many of us became interested in taking part in this course for a number of reasons:

  • The importance of reaching our “new” students base: our Secondary Schools are in the process of becoming bilingual, and this has presented new challenges for us, teachers. These include: instructing subjects to students with a higher level of English than before, with more developed oral, aural and written skills, who have become used to interacting, listening and talking, with native speakers, and who are also accostumed to the use of digital boards and materials.
  • Our interest in expanding our knowledge of British and American Literature, in particular children´s and classical literature from these native speaking countries.
  • To explore literary resources: learning how to use different kinds of literary texts through knowledge of suitable works and authors.
  • The acquisition of the new skills and techniques required to present and teach Literature to our students.
  • An effective approach to the Advance Curriculum through Literature.
  •  How to approach technical issues and difficulties.

Difficulties

In the beginning, and in particular the first two weeks, most of us found the initial difficulties that we needed to deal with:

  • A lack of clarity in terms of what the course implied, arising from the fact that the majority of us had never instructed to bilingual groups prior to this.
  • The fatigue we felt after embarking on the course the very first day of our “holidays time” after a hard academic school year.
  •  A general apprehension in relation to the use of new technology and digital resources.
  • The shock and discouragement we generally felt at the huge amount of work required. We were supposed to be instructed what to do and how to do it, but in reality we had to use our own ideas in terms of how and what we wanted to teach.
  • Groupwork: Working in groups, for most of us, was the hardest and most challenging pressure.
  • The general lack of awareness of the importance of sharing our materials or sources.

At this point, we looked forward to August more than ever.

Experience

Discovering new possibilities

Clearly, some of the techniques presented were not unknown to us, however, many others were, particularly the concept of introducing Literature to our students through technology.

As regards to literary texts we discovered that:

  • Literary texts are truly realia
  • These kinds of texts, and in particular contemporary ones, often tackle topics and issues close to our students experiences, so they can easily relate to them.
  • Using literary texts in the classroom may increase the amount of reading our students do (which in some cases, as we are all aware, is virtually zero)

Poma y esquema de poema
         

We also learnt:

  • How to introduce fairy tales, fables, legends, drama, poetry or short stories and authors in different and dynamic ways to 1º ESO and 2º ESO students.
  • How to grab and maintain the students´ interest in the topic, which is probably the most difficult aspect of our profession. The course allowed us to rediscover new teaching methods such as the use of “advance organizers” to present a topic or “graphic organizers”, which are carefully designed to review or analyse the topic which we are working with.
  • Different methods of class organization; “Socratic circles”, for example, a very useful way to revise a story, or a chapter of a book, which ensures the participation of all the students. It also facilitates checking whether the students have done the work or not. With this method, students are organized in a large circle so they can see one another. This distribution allows all the students an opportunity to show and share their opinions about a book and to reflect on the questions posed by the teacher while interacting with other students.

  Video including an example of Socratic Seminar about the tale “The Emperor´s New Clothes”

Esquemas

 Another interesting type of class organization which we put into practice was “fish bowls”; This is similar to the aforementioned “Socratic Circles” which gives all the students the possibility to talk in class, to express their knowledge and conclusions as well as listening to others and interacting in a natural way. The class is divided into two groups: an inner and and outer group. The inner group is formed by around five students while the rest of the class makes up the outer group.

Only when a student has made a meaningful contribution to the class topic can he/she leave the inner circle for the outer, and is then replaced by a student from this outer group, and so on. Those in the outer circle must pay attention to what their classmates say to know what they are talking about in anticipation of entering the inner circle. In order to help the class conversation flow, the teacher can ask “open ended questions”. These both methods, amongst others, will lead to better organised lessons and will allow students to speak, listen, read and write, while the teacher´s role will be that of facilitator or guide.

  • How to focus on literature to promote the four skills: speaking, listening, reading and writing.
  • Technology is not longer and abstract notion for the future. It has become a reality here and now. The usage of Google’s email facility, in its complexity which would require a separate course can be very useful in relation to group work, as all group members can collaborate instantly and changes can be saved immediately in Google docs.
  • Assessment through rubrics, in other words, graphics which show our students what skills they are expected to develop when studying a new topic. Before assessment, students are given the rubrics in advance, so that they can be prepared for what they are expected to know or learn. These assessment rubrics can be accompanied by “peer rubrics”, which are used for the students themselves to comment on their classmates´ work at the end of a session or a unit. They give positive and useful feedback since students´ work is commented and analysed by their peers.

 

Planning

  • The importance of sharing both materials and sources, something Spanish people are not generally used to doing. We have been taught that using the Internet is very useful; many teaching resources are available on the web and we can borrow them freely as long we respect copyright.

 

Curiously, one of the greatest aspects of the course was something, which in the beginning we were not overly enthusiastic about: the opportunity to work in groups. We had the opportunity to elaborate and develop our lesson plans with our peers and to share experiences, opinions and to distribute the workload according to our different skills. We also had the opportunity to discuss different methods of presentation. We reached the conclusion that each group resulted in a different experience, and that coordination is not always an easy issue. As an extension of this, some other times, seeing our peers making such a big effort, gave us the impetus and energy to carry out our own tasks as good as possible.

An important lesson learnt from group work was that when working individually, you are freer to do it your way but it requires more time and less ideas. Working in groups allowed us to divide the work amongst various members, reach agreements and negotiate the best techniques and texts. There is no doubt that time employed was lessened and the quality of the outcome was more enriching and superior.

The group work and oral presentations were also very revealing as we took our students place and went through the difficulties that they usually face when they are asked to perform an activity or project, so now we can better lead the instructions and steps we give them.

For many of us, our technical expertise was non-existant, but the necessity of working with computers has built up our confidence in searching on the net, making use of “links”, and becoming familiar with concepts such as “blogs”, “glogsters” or “wikis” and the advantages of using them for teaching purposes. The elaboration of lesson plans with this kind of visual support awakes our students´ interest and helps us to centre the topic we want to address. The “personalization factor” is also interesting for students, as they can step into the characters´ shoes, and thus sympathize with their reactions and understand the plots better.

Trabajos de los alumnos

Final conclusions

Although the course was a very intense learning experience, we all share the belief that we have broadened our teaching techniques as well as the methods we used to help our students learn in a more dynamic, interactive and enjoyable way. We feel far more confident in our ability to teach Literature to our students; our activities were carried out with First of ESO students in the Bilingual Section of La Serna High School in Fuenlabrada (Madrid) and were displayed in a more practical way. We can now vary the type of activities we were used to employ, usually focused on reading comprehension rather than social issues, discussions or some other forms of interaction.

We, on the behalf of the entire group, cannot ignore neither the encouragement and support we received from Victoria Fontana and Fernando Wegner nor their helpful classes, or those from Jenniffer Schmidt, who offered us new interesting discoveries in assessment as well as positive and constructive feedback.

We, and in particular those of us who cannot travel abroad because of our personal circumstances, greatly appreciate the Department of Education proposal for English courses and we hope that it will continue publishing such an interesting offer in years to come.

Some weak points which we find should be revised for the coming years, would be that it was generally agreed that we spent too much time explaining our lesson plans and we would have preferred to have worked in groups for a longer period.

Furthermore, before elaborating our lesson plans we should have devote more time to the technology classes in order to better address our teachers´concrete objectives.

Now, after “learning by doing” we feel grateful for the results and the pleasant working atmosphere of the course as well as for so much effort finally organized into a big number of lesson plans we took home. We are also grateful to have met peers whose experience is of great value for the teaching. We are sure we achieved more in a single month than we could have in an entire regular school year.

Only a short time ago, we didn´t feel we could face the new syllabus but now, full of new and innovative ideas, we are confident and ready to switch to digital boards, and teach Literature in our English classes

Imagen de la presentación de las actividades

Presentation of different activities worked out of English literature

Bibliography and web pages

Reading and writing

Reading

http://www.educationworld.com: the educators best friend.! Lots of worksheets and lesson plans organized by topics

http://www.eslreading.org/: English language learning materials for students and teachers

Writing

http://my.hrw.com/support/hos/hostpdf/hostmsprompts.pdf: Writing Prompts for middle school - practical activities; gives ideas for exploiting writing, prompts related to expository or informative texts, persuasive, how to discourse, descriptive texts, narrative, literature and non-ficition texts

http://www.eslwriting.org/: ideas, lessons and activities for exploiting writing.

http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/922: Good tips and activities for writing, based on authentic material.

http://www.readwritethink.org/: guided writing activities

Listening and speaking

http://www.elllo.org/: listening library on line

http://www.piehole.co.uk: listening to specific English accents, female and male voices and different aged people

Videos

http://www.storyofstuff.org/: SUPERB videos on current affairs explained through the use of cartoons (very simple and visual)

http://www.youtube.com/user/APPUSERIES: cartoons based on children´stories.

Assessment/rubrics

http://teacherplanet.com/: lots of rubrics organized by topic,  level, subject

http://rubistar.4teachers.org/: for creating rubrics. You can log in for free and it is easy to use

All about rubrics, you can find all types of rubrics, good to get ideas from

http://teachforjune.com/rubrics/samplerubrics.pdf: easy rubrics on listening, reading, speaking and writing

methodology

Lesson templates/plans

http://www.lessonplans4teachers.com/daily_lessonplan_templates.php: all types of activities, lesson plans

http://www.pennsbury.k12.pa.us/pennsbury/Departments/Curriculum/Best%20Practices/EEI%20Lesson%20Design.pdf: some ideas on lesson planning, good to have a look at when planning a unit.

Teacher resources

http://www.eslteachersboard.com/cgi-bin/lessons/index.pl : lots of resources for ESL teachers

http://712educators.about.com/od/discipline/tp/disciplinetips.htm : 10 useful tips for discipline and classroom  management

http://www.eduplace.com/graphicorganizer/  : interesting types of graphic organizers

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ : all kinds of resources (news, readings, listenings)

http://www.scholastic.com/home/ : lots of resources (printables)

http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resources/: free subscription, lots of resources, shared activities.

http://busyteacher.org/: free subscription, lots of resources.

http://lessonstream.org/browse-lessons: wonderful ready to use lesson plans. Different levels, Have a look!!!

http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/worksheets/index.shtml: lots of good printables

http://www.grupovaughan.com/ : 24 hours of diverse programs-bilingual English/Spanish

Literature

http://www.sldirectory.com/libsf/resf/bookplans.html: lesson plans to teach literature

http://www.discoveryeducation.com/search/page/-/-/lesson-plan/literature/index.cfm: lesson plans for literature

http://www.webenglishteacher.com/romeoandjuliet.html: lots of different activities on literature

Poetry

http://www.poetry4kids.com   to listen and watch short and engaging poems for kids.

http://shelsilverstein.com/indexSite.html : easy poems to work with children

http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/home.do : poems and activities

http://www.poets.org/index.php: poems and tools to exploit poetry in class

Drama

http://shakespeare-navigators.com/ : to work on Shakespeare´s dramas.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/shakespeare/60secondshakespeare/themes_index.shtml : fun ways to work on Sh´s dramas

http://www.enotes.com/lit/study-guides/category/Drama: lots of lesson plans on drama

https://sites.google.com/site/englishclassinperformance/home: abridged version of Shakespeare´s plays with stage directions

Narrative

http://www.bbc.co.uk/learning/schoolradio/subjects/english/aesops_fables   : to listen   to fables.

http://www.manythings.org : speaking and listening American literary authors

http://knowingpoe.thinkport.org/default_flash.asp : fun activities on Poe´s works

Online library

http://www.gutenberg.org/ : over 40.000 free ebooks (mainly classic literatura)

 http://es.feedbooks.com/ : cheap ebooks

 http://openlibrary.org/ : 1.000.000 free ebooks

Foto de grupo de los participantes

Código QR

Creative Commons by-nc-sa
Revista Digital EducaMadrid
Fecha de publicación: 22 de octubre de 2013