The day before the final TKT course exam, I have many feelings, including nervousness… I have to thank to my teacher, Ellen, because she helped me to discover how an excellent teacher is; everyday she motivated me for being a better person, not only a better teacher. Personally, the most important thing that I learned during this course was looking for students succesful learning process, and, at the same time, I can continue learning a lot, from students and by myself, beacuse a teacher teaches students, but, who teaches teachers?

This is not the end, actually, I think that the learning-teaching process never ends. It could change daily routines, but If you have the motivation and specific goals, you can look for necessary tools, skills development, appropiate aids, and you can continue developing qualities for a good teacher. Instead of finishing a process, I think it is the beginning of it.

I do not have teaching experience, but I can distinguish my goals as a teacher and I can identify my weaknesses and qualities as a person, for using them when I will be a teacher.

For example, I know that punctuality reflects how organised your life is… I had to work on it.

 http://primchucounseling.blogspot.com/2012/01/value-of-month-punctuality.html

On the other hand, I need to work on planning. It is pretty difficult for me, I do not have enought experience, but looking for resorces and appropiate materials, also, designing more dynamic lessons, it will let me to improve classroom development, and pace of each lesson. I need to avoid boring atmosphere form the calssroom.

http://animewzic.blogspot.com/2010/04/what-boring-class.html

For example, everybody loves games…

http://www.teachingenglishgames.com/

Other important aspect that I must have to remember is: How can I pretend to teach if I do not have clear ideas, or enough knowledge?? a clear example about how the learning-teaching process works.

Many people have a good custom to ask other people about how do they feel… But how do you feel being a teacher? I think it is normal having many feelings, even depression if a class was not as successful as you think, or happiness if your students made a good job. I hope it leave you a good taste in the mouth.

<iframe width=”420″ height=”315″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/dNLTBpFDjag” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

Through this course, I have learned a lot, but not only for me. This video shows important aspects for the learning-teaching progress. Personally, the most important thing is being able to help other people, in this case, helping students. It is an incredible feeling seeing a student which has gotten some knowledge, after a hard period of time, long studing sessions, homework… You as a teacher has the power to change people lifestyle, like instilling reading love. Last week, while I was reading ¨The TKT book¨, I was not only reading, at the same time, I was thinking about how to apply teaching concepts… I was completely absorbed in my thoughts…

When a normal class goes on, many unexpected things happend, not only related to the class development, also, students – teacher beahvioral problems. Teacher’s control temperament shows how professional a teacher is… Imagine how a teacher would end if she / he always plays the back talking students game? Maybe a little crazy. Unnaceptable behavior always happen, but, How does the teacher react? On the same way that children?

I think behavioral problems have many origins, and sometimes is on the classroom where they are exposed.  We as teachers mut to confront that, but, What can I do? Despite psicological origins of back talking (like domestic violence or child abuse), some students shows a defensive reaction to some teacher’s requests. We can help students to control themselves with simple actions, not solving violence with violence, as it used to be.

Look at the child’s situation and surroundings. What kind of talk occurs around them? How much sarcasm, fighting and back talking are them exposed to? Make sure a child is not modeling behaviors he encounters regularly. Remember, children imitate, they copy what they see.

Establish behavior expectations and stick with them. Simplicity and Firmness works with children, also in adults.

Praise good behavior and appropriate actions/reactions. Realize that it is hard to handle life’s disappointments, and responses often have to be learned.

After trying to design a daily and a monthly lesson plan, I have realize that planning is one of the most helpful tool for teachers, but not only for us, even for our students; A good plan reflects your real intention of teaching… Personally designing them was more difficult than I had thought plans were, and It is easier to improvise your class, but your students expect a lot of you, you are a motivation for them (in certain ocassions) and sometimes you learn more than they. But, when you see finished your work, you make better with yourself because you are not only making a task, you are creating a set for Teaching and Learning.

According to myself, categorizing or classifying some important aspects during a class can help us to identify advantages or disadvantages of some kind of activities, or can help us to understand, in a certain way, things that our students need… I know that many students (including me, of course) had problems to evaluate a task and then make it (we need time to reflect or analyze the task before producing it, the silent period) , but I think that using Bloom’s Taxonomy things are easier. Maybe I have not understood all the complex concepts that it involves, but on a simple way, I got that there are some essential parts in an activity or task, which not only make planning easier, also, it helps students to be productive and at the same time, they learn the specific aims from the task.

After many attemps of using Bloom’s Taxonomy, I tried to make another one, I hope that it helps my students and at the same time, It helps me a lot.

During a class, students watch a video about the local zoo, the animals it has, the food they eat, the space and the place where they live.

ZOOLOGICO DE MORELIA – YouTube

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVo5yV5w_6c

1. Remembering: Can you recall information?

Students make a drawing about the animal that they most like, it must include the kind of food that the animal eats, and if the animal looks healthy or unhealthy, if they think that animals has a good quality of life.

2. Understanding: Can you explain ideas or concepts?

http://www.bazaardesigns.com/6123-wild-animal-cartoon/

Students write a short paragraph with some relevant information about the animal they chose. It must include if they think that the animal is better in the zoo or in their natural environment, explaining their reasons for their points of view.

3. Applying: Can you use the information in another familiar situation?

In pairs, students talks about the animal they chose, their natural enviroment, some charachteristics, and they have to convince why you should visit that animal.  Next time you go to the zoo, you can only go to see five animals. Which ones would you see?”

http://mrbarlow.wordpress.com/

4. Analysing: can you break information into parts to explore undrestandings and relatioships?

In gropus of 3, students disscuss about the advantages or disadvantages of visiting some animals in the zoo ( For example, danger, boring, fun).

5. Evaluating: Can you justify a decision or course of action?

Students have to evaluate the place were choosen animals live, they have to criticize the living areas and make a list highlighting improves and critical points of the animal’s living areas. Students expose their work in front of the group, inviting their classmates to giving love to pets and  emphasizing fighthing against animal mistreatment.

6. Creating: can you generate new ideas, products or ways of viewing thigs?

After work exposure, Students write a letter to the Zoo Director explaining why they need to pay more atention in some important aspects like renovating their chosen animal’s area, strengthening cages or protections, or any relevant aspect they had considered on the task before and how this renovation would help everyone, viewers and animals alike.

.

http://www.spicecomments.com/comments/pets/15

Taxonomy (from Greek taxis meaning arrangement or division and nomos meaning law) is the science of classification according to a pre-determined system, with the resulting catalog used to provide a conceptual framework for discussion, analysis, or information retrieval. In theory, the development of a good taxonomy takes into account the importance of separating elements of a group (taxon) into subgroups (taxa) that are mutually exclusive, unambiguous, and taken together, include all possibilities. In practice, a good taxonomy should be simple, easy to remember, and easy to use. 1

Bloom’s Taxonomy is a classification of learning objectives within education proposed in 1956 by a committee of educators chaired by Benjamin Bloom who also edited the first volume of the standard text, Taxonomy of educational objectives: the classification of educational goals (referred to as simply “the Handbook” below). Although named for Bloom, the publication followed a series of conferences from 1949 to 1953, which were designed to improve communication between educators on the design of curricula and examinations.2

A simple application of the Bloom’s Taxonomy

Writing an essay about Environmental pollution.

Creating: Designing, constructing, planning, producing, inventing…

Environmental pollution affects us, It is changing our lifestyles and our health.

Evaluating: Checking, hypothesising, critiquing, judging…

My neighbourds always produce a lot of garbage. Goverment does not care about water waste.

Analysing: Comparing, organising, deconstructing, interrogating, finding

Forty years ago, we did not have natural disasters or important climate changes. In the next 20 years, things will be worst: earthquakes, tsunamis, storms…

Applying: Implementing, carryng out, using, executing…

What can I do for reducing Environmental pollution? I can separate organic and inorganic garbage, or I can recycle things. R&R (Reduce and recycle).

Understanding: Interpreting, summarising, paraphrasing, classifying, explaining

Make some interviews to discover what people think about pollution, Visit the goverment for asking about possible solutions.

Remembering: Recognising, listing, describing, retrieving, naming, finding

Causes of natural disasters, definitions of Recycling, reducing, organic and inorganic garbage… 

I know that these are not the essencial parts of an essay, but I did a task wich involve all the steps mentioned before. It was sent to SEMARNAT ( A mexican institution dedicated to taking care of the enviroment and natural resources), It was acepted and then, It was carried out. So, Categorizing really works!!

1.  http://searchcio-midmarket.techtarget.com/definition/taxonomy

2. Orlich, et al. (2004) Teaching Strategies: A Guide to Effective Instruction’, Houghton Mifflin

The Blooming Butterfly poster by Learning Today is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Benjamin S. Bloom was born on 21 February 1913 in Lansford, Pennsylvania, and
died on 13 September 1999. He received a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Pennsylvania State University in 1935 and a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Chicago in March 1942. One of Bloom’s great talents was having a nose for what is significant. His most important initial work focused on what might be called ‘the operationalization of educational
objectives’.Taxonomy of 3 educational objectives: Handbook 1, the cognitive domain (Bloom et al., 1956), a publicationthat has been used throughout the world to assist in the preparation of evaluation materials.
The cognitive taxonomy is predicated on the idea that cognitive operations can be
ordered into six increasingly complex levels. What is taxonomic about the taxonomy is that
each subsequent level depends upon the student’s ability to perform at the level or levels that precede it. For example, the ability to evaluate—the highest level in the cognitive
taxonomy—is predicated on the assumption that for the student to be able to evaluate, he or she would need to have the necessary information, understand the information he or she had, be able to apply it, be able to analyse it, synthesize it and then eventually evaluate it. The taxonomy was no mere classification scheme. It was an effort to hierarchically order cognitive processes.
One of the consequences of the categories in the taxonomy is that they not only serve
as means through which evaluation tasks could be formulated, but also provide a framework for the formulation of the objectives themselves. Bloom was interested in providing a useful practical tool that was congruent with what was understood at that time about the features of the higher mental processes. 1

First of all, I would like to know some important aspects about an important person which I am going to talk about, I love reading, I love biographies and history. A little contribution for a cultural panorama.

1. The following text also appears in
Prospects: the quarterly review of comparative education
(Paris, UNESCO: International Bureau of Education), vol. XXX, no. 3, September 2000.
©UNESCO: International Bureau of Education, 2000

I must to be clear, I do not need to see any video from a class, I am a student, and I have not realized that on my school, there are very few teachers which motivate us… I do know where I get the motivation to follow up, sometimes I have felt that I am not able to do the tasks that my teachers assign to me, or I have felt that I do not have enought intelligence… During my life as an academic, I only have had a teacher who trusted on me, who were extremely patient with me and who encourage me to continue studying. I think that the high levels of dropout in schools has a correlation with motivation form teachers to students and with the tools that a teacher use to make the learning of a certain subject easier for all the students, not only for a little group of them (favoritism).

There is an application called Voxopop, this is an excellent tool for improving in talking in English… Sometimes we could not find anyone who wants to talk in English with us, but this site not only helps you to find somebody, also you can create your own talk group! I am fascinated with this! And you can choose the topic of the conversation or join to a talk group if you are interested…

I would use it as part of a speaking class, but, as a way of being in touch with my students, and, at the same time, they could share their opinions, experiences and anything (according to the rules of the talk group, which, basically, would be: If you have something interesting to say, go ahead, but never insult or be disrespectful with a member of the group) to improve speaking skills.

The sugestion was took from

http://tefltecher.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/tesol-spain-thingy/

http://www.google.com.mx/imgres?q=speaking+%2B+cartoons&um=1&hl=es&sa=X&rlz=1W1RNRN_enMX437&biw=1093&bih=399&tbm=isch&tbnid=22gnY58mBNtm9M:&imgrefurl=http://www.offthemark.com/cartoons/speaking/pg/2&docid=i_k_GZuzEbk_6M&imgurl=http://www.offthemarkcartoons.com/cartoons/2004-04-12.gif&w=240&h=320&ei=6oqXTtOAAcHpsQLZ2Z2qBA&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=781&vpy=23&dur=362&hovh=256&hovw=192&tx=110&ty=175&sig=117122745032789234384&page=1&tbnh=95&tbnw=71&start=0&ndsp=17&ved=1t:429,r:7,s:0

A Literature Circle is somethig amazing, I love reading, I enjoy it a lot, but on this kind of activity there are diffent tasks which are assigned to 3 or more people, and all of them can involve and  take part of the text. According to the task and the kind of text, you must to develop a differnt subskill related with reading… Reading for detail, for example, could give more information but also could encourage you to make questions for a better understanding of the context and the intention of the author… but this skill is different that Predicting, because on the first one you are making questions and on the second one you are giving answers for possible questions…

Reading skills: Scanning, Reading for detail, Deducing meaning from context, Understanding text structure, Reading for gist (Skimming), Inferring, Predicting… (1) We always practice them unconsciously when we read something. Reading is a complex activitity which helps everybody in many aspects, not only for getting information.

(1) Spratt, Mary. Pulverness, Alan. Williams, Melanie. “The TKT Course, Modules 1,2 and 3″. Cambridge University Press 2011. United Kingdom.