Training courses. What I would like to do in the future

As a teacher I know that I have to study and recycle my knowledge every year. It is important to learn more and more during our life. As a plurilingual teacher I know that I have to improve my skills and develop new strategies in teaching.
On the one hand, a way to acquire knowledge of work practices and refresh pedagogical skills is to participate in teachers exchanges and going abroad in order to learn and develop new strategies. At the same time, I would improve a foreing language.
The participation in structured courses in other countries inside the European Unión is an excellent idea. It could be also interesting the possibility to travel to other school in a foreing country with our pupils and share experiencies with other students.
On the other hand, If we stay in our school, we can be active too. An interesting idea is to share our own material and resources through a personal blog or platform. Sharing information and experiences amongst teaching professionals is a good idea and we can do from home.
I am really concerned in CLIL teaching so I am interested in courses which let me learn new kinds of resources, programmes, apps, etc. Through CEFIRE we can find interesting courses and materials for teachers.
In concluision, depending on our needs, we can choose among a big variety of training courses. In my case, nowadays I prefer share information through platforms or a personal blog, but in the future I would like going abroad to acquire new knowledge in a foreing country.

The most important thing I would teach my students about my subject in a CLIL context

Both learning and teaching in a CLIL context means a change on the way to teach our classes. Although the main feature of a CLIL lesson is the education and not the multilingualism, we have to take advantage of this new approach and upgrade students learning.

In a CLIL approach we not only teach academic contents but also we have other contents to develop such as communication, cognition and culture.

So, teaching and learning goals are much more extended. In a CLIL lesson we have to develop thinking skills through HOT activities. So, we will enhance the learning process. For that, we can prepare an develop our own material in order to adapt it to our students taking into account their level and sociocultural environment. For instance, I would start a CLIL lesson reviewing the vocabulary acquired previously. I would continue it presenting new vocabulary necessary for the lesson and  after that I would introduce the content through activities which let them develop their learning skills. I think applying  instructional scaffolding in our teaching is useful to focus class work, because I consider that is an essential element off effective teaching. The teacher as a guide in order to move students progressively toward stronger understanding.

So, the most important think I would teach to my students in my subject it would be help them to increase their autonomy to learn the contents about a subject through a language different than their mother tongue.

Otherwise, if we talk about the assessment, this have to be formative and summative. I would asses not only their learning in contents but also the language, such as language components, language use or language competences and other components as learning skills or general behavior. Also, the tools I would use for this purpose could be portfolios, rubrics, tasks and exercises and exams and tasks to evaluate contents. 

Advantages and disadvantages of using the ELP with my groups

The ELP is a tool which let us evaluate the levels of the language. The ELP is designed for promoting autonomy, reflection, multilingualism and mobility in order to enhance learning throughout life. Also, provides a way of teaching and assessing all languages in Europe. It has three obligatory elements: a language passport, a language biography and a dossier.

From a pedagogical point of view, the ELP is a tool that can be used correctly or badly.

On the one hand, I think the advantages are important. Sometimes, students are unmotivated, because they think that their progress in learning languages is locked. They finish the course and have the feeling that they have learned nothing.

So, the self assessment through the use of ELP during the course after the lessons (and also  at the end of the term) let them incentive their learning in order to achieve linguistic goals. If students can realize that are improving, they will be  more motivated.

Other important advantage is that the self assessment in an integrated way develops learners autonomy. They are more confident, their attitude is positive and more mature, and this is a benefit for the whole of the class.

On the other hand , a disadvantage that I can find is that sometimes they do not understand completely the utility of the ELP, and this produce them boredom.

In conclusion, I think that teachers have to encourage them to use the ELP and present it as an effective tool for their learning for the present and the future.

CLIL Ideas

CLIL methodology is a new strategy of learning based in a double work where subjects are taught trought a foreing language wich let students learn about the contentent and learn a foreing language at the same time.

A foreing language is used as a tool in the learning of a non-language subject.

Not only CLIL is a dynamic and flexible concept but also is a way to provide value-added to educational outcomes for the widest posible range of learners. So, the major concern is Education and not multilingualism.

The essential elements we have to take for aplying in our classes are mainly speaking slowly, to use an appropriate level of language, to use mime, gestures or visual aids, to repeat frequently, to connect the content with student's life and to use appropriate the 4 language skills depending on the age (speaking, writing, reading and listening)

An important idea about CLIL it could be that this methodology upgrade social and cognitive developement of students. Therefore we can talk about five CLIL dimensions wich help us to understand this process:

1. The Culture Dimension
2. The Environment Dimension
3. The Language Dimension
4. The Content Dimension
5. The Learning Dimension

So, we have to take into account some points about CLIL methodology: it takes 5-7 years for students to become academically procicient in English, language acquisition is not a linear process, learners acquire best when they create, discover and costruct their own meanings, language is a means not an end, and when learners are interested in a topic, they will be motivated to acquire language to communicate and errors are a natural part of language learning.

In conclusión,  learning at the same time a foreing language is the added value. Learners develop fluency in English by using English.

My favourite teacher

When I was young I used to think that History was a subject absolutelly boring and uncomprenhensible. But in the third course of the Secondary School I had a teacher that could change my mind.
 

She was able to transform the History in a mountain of fabulous stories about people who lived many years ago. She teached us the subject like a friend who is gossiping something about her o his neigbourhood. Our History classes were full of stories about kings, gladiators, maidens and soldiers. Sometimes she seemed like a novel writer who is explaining how has writen her book, in which places she has inspired or the feelings that she wanted transmit.
 

I think that their lessons were so successful because she explained all so easly that we enjoyed learning. Although we had to resume the units and memorize some important dates, we learned how to use mental maps in order to understand and remember all that she had tell us before, we used to do timelines to fix the maining history moments and we started to speak in front our classmates to explain them a part of the lesson.

 

For all that reasons, not only the History started to be my favourite subject, but also now I am a History teacher and I really enjoy with my work.