Getting inspiration from Learning the ropes

Blog Learning the ropes

This is my last entry of this course which I have enjoyed so much, even in these special circumstances we are all going through. It is true that it has been a little stressful because we had so many things to do, regarding the online teaching, but it is also true that it has helped us develop our digital competence and undergo a guided process, so I want to thank you our teacher, for his great work and comprehension and my mates because they have done wonderful activities. Last, but not least, I want to thank María J  for her wonderful inspiration:

One of the great activities I have seen is this one called "About Arthur Miller: A Life on Stage". I like it because it has given me an idea of introducing Literature in the class, which is one of the issues I always try to do in my classes. My idea is to divide the big group in small groups of 3, maximum four students, and give them different literary ages or periods so that they have to investigate the most important authors and write a timeline with their most important works and the most important historic landmarks.

I hope you like this activity and I want to know if you enjoyed this part of my blog in English too.

Activity with a timeline

This is the activity I had thought about doing with my class. It has been a long time that I have not studied specific methodology for reading or any other skill, I have been Head of Studies of my high school and I did not have much time, but now that my familiar situation has changed and I have more time, I was very happy to take this course. I had no idea about intensive and extensive reading; it has been eye-opening for me. 

My students usually have to read a compulsory book, all of them the same. Now, I think this is a mistake. Since this year we still have this one you can see in the timeline, which has been created with Canva, a great tool, called Tales of the Macabre. I have worked a lot with Picktochart some time ago and I tried TimeToast, but for me is too oldish, not too intuitive and more difficult for me than Canva or Genially.

I have decided to create this timeline with the steps of the activity they have to do so that they are also provided with an example. I will show them the three tools that I have managed at a point or another so that they can decide which one they prefer and we will have a variety of students using different tools, which will build up their confidence and their digital competence. Also, it promotes their improvement in the comprehension of the texts they read because they have to work in their brains with the information they are getting.

INNOVATIVE TEACHING PRACTICES SUPPORTED BY THE FOCUSED USE OF ICT TOOLS IN THE LANGUAGE CLASSROOM

I created this blog a few years ago to use it as a virtual notebook online for all of my courses. I usually write in Spanish in it, because I have been doing other online courses in which the language was Spanish, but I was sooo looking forward for a course in English.

I am doing this new one in English at the CEP de Castilleja, the "school for teachers" that our employees have given us teachers and which I am so proud of. This is a very necessary place for teachers to develop their skills and not to feel alone, if we work together, we will get further and that benefits our students. Therefore, we will have some posts in it in English.

I have added this list of links they asked us for, I have also added some more blogs and a picture here in the post. Since they asked for two pictures and I don't like entries with two pictures so much, I have changed the background of the blog with the picture I have for my real blog Close your books, which helped me work with my students for several years and also cowork with other teachers who didn't work at my high school (I don't know if you will be able to see it for, as long as I know, it was stolen from me a couple of years ago, so I had to migrate the contents to Close your books2). I have also created the list of links and the cloud of tags I was asked for, so I am willing to jump into step/module 2 when my tutor allows me to.

We are going to have a great course!!!