Unit 2On September 22nd, 2015 we made an activity where the teacher gave us a marker and depending on the color we were going to make teams, then she gave us some papers and told us some phrases like “swim with dolphins”, “ride a horse”, etc. And we had to write them on the paper. When we made the team we interchanged our phrase so at the end we could have another phrase. Then we had to look for a picture that related to the phrase, outside the classroom.When we came to the classroom again we made a circle there we told our classmates what phrase we had and we also recognized a mistake in one of our classmate’s paper but we had a different paper from the one we had at the beginning so no one knew who made the spelling mistake.

• This is my reflection for this activity: The teacher made us repeat several times the instructions of the activity to make sure that we understood. When we recognized one of my classmate’s mistake the teacher made us know that we should never correct a student directly, when we were checking our grammar in the circle, the student who made the mistake wasn’t exposed because we didn’t have the paper with the phrase we wrote at the beginning.

• The colors of the markers helped us not to spend too much time making groups and it is also a relaxing way of grouping.

• Components of Classroom Management:The teacherThe classroomThe learner’sThe teacher’s interventionThe behaviourThe teacher showed us a presentation and on a slide she put some colors and some topics, which were the same colors we had at the beginning with the markers and then we had to go to the front of the classroom and mingle around while there was the song “Happy” by Pharell Williams playing, when we stopped the music we had to face someone and talk to them about the topic we the slide had according to the color.

My reflection on this activity: Music was a way of setting time, it also helps students who are musical.It was also a kinaesthetic activity.So what does it mean? It is so good and effective to have different activities when you teach because we have different students with different learning styles so in order for them to learn we have to adapt to every learning style.

Learners’ styles• On Friday September 25th, 2015 we watched a video about types

of learners and teaching styles and strategies.

My reflection on this class:We, as teachers, should always establish rapport in our classroom and how do we do that? It means to be present and to be present is to know your students and know what they need and also to know how they learn. We also always need to have a PLAN B in case an activity isn’t working the way we thought.

Talking about learning styles, we usually have a dominant strength and a secondary one. For example your dominant learning style could be visual but at the same time you have a secondary one that could be kinaesthetic.

On Tuesday, September 29th we learned that there are different learning styles:Visual learners: Info in pictures, charts, etc.Strong visualization skills. There are “movies in their minds” of information they are reading.Visual-spatial skills such as sizes and shapes.They often pay attention to the body language (Facial expressions, etc.)Auditory learners: They can remember detailed information they hear during conversations or lectures.Well-developed vocabulary.Strong communication skills.Kinaesthetic learners: They tap their legs or move them a lot.They do well as performers, athletes, actors or dancers.

• In this class the teacher told us to design an activity for adults and my team and I decided to make an activity for kinaesthetic learners.

• On this activity we made them listen to a song about the weather, it was called “Always Changing” and then we started to mimic the it and encouraged my classmates to do the same.

My reflection on this activity: This activity was so much fun because we were all laughing and I think it is so good that the teacher allow us to decide which learners we wanted to make an activity for. That’s a 21st century characteristic, allowing your student decide what they want to learn.

Always changing

The weather is always changingIt reminds me of my feelings

When the sun is shining, way up high

I feel so happy, I could fly!When the win is blowing all

aboutI’m angry and I scream and

shout!

When it’s raining and the sky is grey

I’m sad and blue; I cry all day!When thunderstorms are

crashing outsideI’m scared and there’s nowhere

to hide!

But when it’s snowing and everything’s white

Then my life is magic and bright!

• On Friday, September 2nd the activity was to make a poster on one learning style. The teacher gave us a cardboard and markers. My team and I made the “Visual learner” poster and we drew some of the visual learner’s characteristics

• After we finished the poster, every team had to go to the front and present their poster to the class so everybody could learn some of the characteristics of the learning styles.

• My reflection on this activity: My teacher works as a facilitator with us, she always make us explore and research and it works because we learn a lot, on this activity we worked in teams and then we shared our conclusions with all the other teams so we could all learn about each other.

Focus on the learners• On Tuesday, October 6th we saw an interesting class about beliefs for

example there are belief systems, beliefs about teaching from students, beliefs about goals for example:

• Belief systems: there’s a belief than English is more difficult than Spanish or that learning grammar is the most difficult part because students translate things. People also think that it doesn’t matter how they speak, people will understand them anyway but a true native won’t understand at all. These are some examples but there are a lot more

• Belief about teaching from students: Students think that teachers should explain grammar rules and that their responsibility is to provide all the information (the teacher’s). I think these beliefs are from the traditional learning where teachers used to give the class and examples but didn’t allow the student to interact and I don’t think that way of teaching works anymore.

• Beliefs about goals: Students think that they only want to be able to make themselves understood. And some students are not interested on learning to read, only to speak because they need it for their jobs, etc.

My reflection about this class: I think there are a lot of strategies that we, as teachers can do for example paying specific attention to your students’ needs in order to make the class more enjoyable so they can learn faster. We should tell them that nowadays the teacher is just a facilitator of learning and the responsibility of learning is also theirs. Also they need to see that teachers have passion on what they do. “The love and joy behind your teaching is perhaps the strongest impression you will leave with your students” – MEENA SRINIVASAN, AUTHOR & EDUCATOR.

Interaction in the classroom• On Friday, October 10th, we had the best

class ever. I enjoyed it a lot and I hope we can do it again sometime soon. We made an activity where the teacher asked us to draw 5 things that represent us and then we had to explain why we like them or why they represent us. I drew a pair of pointe shoes, my mom, a world, two hands holding a heart and wrote FOCUS in one of the drawings.

• After we finished drawing, we were in a horse-shoe and we had to share our drawings and the reason why we drew them.

• I drew a pair of pointe shoes because ballet is a really special part of my life and I can’t imagine my life without it.

• Then I drew my mom because she’s the most important person in my life and I almost lost her when I was 11 because she had cancer and I’m so grateful that she’s okay and with me now.

• I drew a world because I love traveling and I would like to study or work abroad in the future.

• I drew two hands holding a heart because I consider myself to be generous, I love helping people with what I can.

• Then I wrote FOCUS, because I consider myself to be a very focused girl, I don’t like distractions.

My reflection on this class: As I said before I loved doing this activity because we could all learn more things about each other. We almost cried because to be honest we all drew things that were so important to us so they brought us special moments. I learned that it’s so important to get to know your classmates, we all said that we are going to be together for 4 years and we have to take care of each other, at the end of our lives it won’t matter what you did but the amazing friends you made, college friends are forever friends and that’s why I loved this activity, because of all the things that it left me.

The learner in the 21st century

• As we have already seen the teacher in the 21st century is a facilitator of learning and the students are the responsible of their own learning. We, as teachers have to make the classroom a comfortable place to work, we have to encourage students to work together to come to compromise or fully discussed solutions. You have to make your classroom cozy and teach with passion and connection.

• An important feature of the 21st century learning is SINERGY, which is the cooperation of students and their teachers to facilitate student success beyond what could be achieved by students or instructors alone. Also the essence of synergy is to value differences - to respect them, to build on strengths, and to compensate for weaknesses.

• In the 21st century there must be tasks focused on a goal and teachers must believe and trust that students can achieve more than they can do by themselves.

• During this class, we also discussed some quick fixes you can make to change the class mood, for example: You always have to have a PLAN B in case an activity doesn’t work the way you expected it to work, you can start an activity that makes students move in case they look bored or start an activity that creates a dramatic change of pace. We, as teachers should always be prepared in case something happens during the activities we had planned.

• We also learned about MIXED LEVEL CLASSES and it is so interesting, it is about mixing strong and weak students in teams, strong students can help, guide and support weaker students. We should prepare MULTILEVEL TASKS for different levels, those are tasks which are the same for everyone but with different difficulty depending on their level, including a range of questions types, easier and harder. When some students on a team finish earlier than the other ones we should have another activity for them, a more challenging one.

• So what can we say about the 21st century classroom and learning? It is a totally new paradigm, the old paradigm which was the traditional setting only provided instruction and it’s most common teaching method use was lecture. There are some teachers who still use it, it is teacher-centered and students have a passive role.

• In the new paradigm students produce their learning, it is student-centered and uses active learning techniques to get students involved in the learning process. The new paradigm focuses on the needs of the students, their abilities and learning styles. It requires students to be active, responsible participants in the learning process.

My reflection about this class: This class provided us a lot of information that helped us to get to know better how is the 21st century learning, in my opinion it is the best way of teaching and learning. Students should be able to be active in the class. We, as teachers should make their learning more meaningful giving them relevant topics that relate to their lives, needs and interests. We should encourage them to be involved in leader thinking, analysis, problem-solving, synthesis and evaluation. Because if we make the class meaningful to them they will remember it for the rest of their lives.

• On Tuesday, October 10th we did a reading in teams of 4 and 5, the teacher facilitated us a different text to each team, my team and I started reading out loud but we thought it was more effective if we read the text by ourselves and then discuss about it when we finish, the teacher asked us to make a mind map with the information we read. Our text was about teacher and student centered. And we all helped to make the mind map. Then we were going to explain our team’s mind map the next class.

• My reflection on this activity: Team work is part of the 21st century classroom and I like a lot being part of it. It’s one of the things that I would want to apply with my students.

• On Friday, October 23rd each team explained their mind map and we took notes about them. I had to explain the general differences from teacher and student centered on my mind map and I learned a lot about it. After that activity we only had 10 minutes left but the teacher managed to make teams of 4 again and we had to discuss in which activities we have applied the 21st century learning characteristics then we shared it with the whole class. We as a class made the conclusion that we have applied it when we write journals, when we use technology to do some research at class, when we use the smartboard and when we made the send a problem/message activity some classes ago.

• My reflection on this activity: Getting to realize that we have applied the 21st century learning in some activities is so good for us because maybe we didn’t realize it at first but we have done it.

“Teaching is more than imparting knowledge, it is inspiring change.” – William Arthur Ward

• On Tuesday, October 27th, our teacher made different assessments for us, we discussed about learning styles and their characteristics. Also, we wrote our opinion about student-centered classrooms, I learned that professors become designers of learning experiences and facilitators. In the 21st century the students are called learners, they are active and responsible of their own learning. We also discussed why “lecture” has limited efectiveness, it doesn’t help ss retain information, it doesn’t develop ability to tranfer knowledge and doesn’t develop skills in thinking or problem solving.

• There are 4 components: Knowledge of the subject, Teacher-student interaction, design of instruction and management of the course.

• What makes an effective teacher? An effective teacher expects success from students, manages their classroom well and designs lessons for student mastery.

• What’s the bottom line? The bottom line is students learn or their achievement.

• How can we increase students’ learning? Increasing the amount of time the students are working and increase their learning. Because the person who does the work is the only one who learns.

• Bloom’s taxonomy: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, Evaluation.

My reflection about this class: This class showed me how we can make assessments with students, our teacher didn’t allow us to look to our notebooks while we were doing our work and it was good because we noticed that we learned during the classes. I also learned what is fluency in students, it is the stage where students can use what has learned and apply it outside the classroom, that’s what we called a fluent student. I liked what the teacher asked us to do this class because it helped us review for Friday’s exam some topics we had already seen.

• On Friday, October 30th, we had our 2nd partial exam and also we had to upload 2 activities, the journal and the 21st century activity, the teacher showed us different activities that we could do to show the 21st century classroom and asked us to choose one. The different activities were about our different learning styles, so I chose the visual activity.

My reflection on these activities: It’s so exciting to apply the 21st century learning in our activities for example the journal, it’s part of it. Also, when our teacher asked us to choose from different activities we were applying it because in the 21st century classroom, you have to pay attention to how every student learns and give them different activities where you can let them choose how do they want to learn so they can develop their own learning