Assessment

June, 22nd 2015

Which training courses would you like to have access to as a teacher? Why?

Which is, in your opinion, the best way to share good practice amongst teaching professionals? Why?

I think the clue to be a great professional is to be always learning new issues to improve in your area, no matter the occupation you are involve in. Teachers should be in continuous professional development. Times are changing and our students have to learn for tomorrows day, it means we can´t teach as we were taught because students have different needs.

For this reason some of the training courses I would like to have access to as a teacher are: new technologies, English teaching, special needs, new methodologies, etc. There are a lot of new tools to teach and we need to update ourselves to offer our students our best.

Beside this, we can also share our knowledge amongst teaching professional, from my point of view; this is the best option to share good practice. Sometimes there are good teachers who don´t want to show their methods and that´s a pity because it could be useful for other teachers. A good practice is like a treasure and when you have a treasure you want to show it to everybody, so that´s what we have to do, share our knowledge for our students benefit.

 
June, 13th 2015

Taking into account my personal teaching context, what would be the advantages and disadvantages of using the ELP with my groups?

I'm going to start introducing myself, I'm a 1rst-grade of Primary teacher and I teach so many different subjects, such as Spanish language, Valencian language, maths, science, arts and crafts, religion, etc. As I have never had the chance of implementing the ELP jet in my classroom I decided to make a research about the advantages and disadvantages of this resource.

Some of the advantages of using ELP in a classroom that I have found are:

• ELP makes the language learning process more transparent to learners and to foster the development of learner autonomy: that is why it assigns a central role to reflection and self-assesment.
• ELP is engaging learners to share responsibility for the learning process, to think critically when the plan, monitor and evaluate their learning and to develop appropriate target language use.
• ELP provides practical evidence of second/foreign language communicative proficiency and intercultural experience. This helps reporting language learning achievement in an internationally transparent manner.
• Keep track of their language learning as it happens-set learning targets, monitor their progress, and regularly asses the results of their learning.
• ELP records their language learning achievement and their experience os using other languages and encountering other cultures.
• ELP helps to develop language learning and intercultural skills.
• ELPS facilitates educational and vocational mobility.
• ELP encourages lifelong learning of languages.
• ELPS contributes to the promotion of democratic citizenship in Europe.

On the other hand, ELP seems to have some disadvantages as well.

For example, despite the fact the linguistic requirements for each level appear widely described, when students have to fill in the different charts regarding they language knowledge, they don’t have the tools required to establish their real knowledge of language.

Moreover, ELP may not be entirely realistic as the way we have to analyze the different aspects of a language, in order to fit them in the European framework may be quite artificial. The best way to carry out such analysis would be observing how our students manage with the language in different real contexts.

Finally, teacher may find a little to make the ELP with students at class, because it demands a lot of time. Teachers have a lot of things to do during the course and if they find ELP as a hard task they will be unmotivated. It would be really useful to have a wide range of handbooks, textbooks, etc. because It's also important motivate teachers to implement ELP in their groups and giving them all the facilities to do it.

I’m desiring my school implements the European Language Portfolio soon because It will motivate a lot our students encouraging them to learn different languages. 

June, 14th 2015

If you were not limited by the demands of the national/regional curriculum, what would you say is the most important thing you would teach your students about your subject (in a CLIL context)? How would you assess their learning?

My first thought about this question is related to what is the most important I have to teach to my students.

Independently the content of the national or regional curriculum, in my opinion the students should be able to understand the importance of knowing what they are reading, listening or saying.

What I mean is that moreover all the knowledge on my subject I think that the most important thing to achieve with my pupils is make them by themselves alone, to bring them the tools for making their knowledge building it up by their own ways.

This is a difficult goal, but maybe it is difficult because of the accommodation of the teachers and the same educational system. In order to change this I would try to push the students for a higher  lever of motivation, trying to show them the importance of the things that they are learning by the moment, and showing them the utility of each one, interconnecting the past knowledge, terms and other subjects to make an all, not a separated subjects.

Talking about CLIL context is necessary to consider there are two important skills our students have to learn, the foreign language and the content of the subject. But from my point of view we can´t separate both of them in terms of answering what's the most important thing to teach because in CLIL the success is the integration of this two parts, content and language.

For reaching this aim, the kind of assessment would be different. For example, instead of a typical exam, maybe I would put my students to work in pairs o groups to develop a unit by they own ways, but always the have to do talking, reading o writing in English. At the end of evaluation they would present their unit developed to the rest of classmates and make a poster.

Another assessment tool very useful are the rubrics fixed on the walls of the classroom. With this method the students could show what are the aims of the subject and it would motivate them to reach the next step. Beside this, the rubrics will benefit all of those involved, not only students, teachers as well because it clarifies the teaching-learning process.

To sum up I would like to add that sometimes it seems the really important thing is take into account the content and the language of CLIL lesson and it scares teachers because is a new methodology of teaching, but as always happens the most difficult is doing the first step, and it is just start.