The last post

So, the semester is ending, holidays are around the corner, and it is that time of the year to evaluate what we did and to set new goals.

This has been one of the most stressful semesters I have had since I entered the program, and having this course sincerely helped me to keep stress at bay. In those moments when I was running and rushing to finish reports and prepare presentations, there was always the teachers' or one of my classmates' activities to remind me to breathe and slow down.

image from this website

In that sense, I'd say that having a moment like that once a week is a good idea and should be implemented in schools, because having that support from your colleagues can be really comforting. Knowing that everyone had many things to do but that at the same time we were all doing our best to contribute to one another's experience in the course was priceless. Maybe if we started being less competitive and more supporting among us (teachers), we could start teaching our students about genuine collaborative work. Then, even though there are many activities I want to implement in the classroom, I think one of my main objectives when I start actually working as a teacher, will be to promote support among teachers, because I believe that through better teams we can create better learning instances for our students.

Nevertheless, I wish I had devoted even more time and thought to the course in a consistent way--because there were weeks in which I just forgot my homework or similar things--but that is definitely because I'm still working on my time-management skills.

As for the near future, I think I need to work on my own practices regarding meditation and breathing techniques, because it is only when we have consolidated our practices that we can start teaching about them effectively.

I would like to go hiking once a week or every other week in order to become stronger and to improve both my lung strength and my connection with nature. Also, I would like to start meditating regularly and doing something like the Qigong technique that I mentioned in a previous post in order to be able to use it in my final practicum next year.

All in all, this has been a great experience in so many ways. I think that I learned a lot from my classmates through their peer teachings and through the discussions we had in class; also I learned from the topics and activities the teacher introduced (especially the concept of stirrers and settlers, we need some classroom management instruction in the program); and finally, I learned a from myself through the writing of this blog and through the way I interacted with the class. 

Thanks to everyone who participated in this course (though I don't think they'll be reading this), and I wish you all the best in the future you choose to pursue.

A reflection on forest kindergartens

So this post will be a little bit different, I don't think I'll be addressing an activity in particular but I will be writing a sort of reflection. The thing is the other day I binge watched videos on youtube about forest kindergartens and about taking your students outdoors, and our mini trip to Quinta Vergara made me think about it even more.

This is the video I liked the most in case you want to watch it.

Basically, the video shows the concept of forest kindergartens, that is to say, children who instead of going to a regular classroom kindergarten, go to the forest. According to what they say in the video, the world's first forest kindergartens were from Scandinavia, and now they popular in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
Usually, one of the main concerns when we discuss taking our classes outdoors is safety. We worry that there might be some sort of accident but in fact, accidents could also happen inside the classroom. I think that what prevents those accidents from happening in the classroom is that children are familiar with everything that is around them, but then, why not teaching them about the outdoors?, maybe if they are familiar with what they could find outside, that risk of accidents would diminish dramatically. In the video we can see these children using knives and the adult in charge explains that it is not dangerous because they have been taught how to use them, and also because they don't see them as weapons, they see knives as tools.
I think that if we don't trust our children, that is because of our own inefficiency to teach them about the world, and also our inefficiency to allow them to discover things themselves. Another interesting video that I watched (though not related to forest kindergartens) is about children in Japan and how they are allowed--encouraged, actually--to go to school alone. They take the train, walk, or bike, and they learn that if they take the wrong train they will have to find a way to get to school anyway. Children there are allowed to discover, to make mistakes, to solve their problems. In that sense, I think we underestimate our children, and I also think that those children who are not allowed to discover and make mistakes end up being adults who lack confidence in themselves, who don't take risks, who are not capable of becoming leaders.
Now, going back to the subject of outdoor learning, during our lessons we also talked about the initiative No Child Left Inside in the United States. Basically, the idea is that children nowadays suffer from 'nature deficit disorder,' because the new technologies have pushed them away from the natural world. But they don't only refer to the benefits that outdoor learning offers for the children, also, in the long run, for the environment. I think this concept is very clever, because children who know and appreciate the natural world, have the potential of later becoming adults that take care of the environment.
All in all, I think we need to start taking our students outside, and we need to start trusting them more, that way, they will become the confident and caring adults who will lead the world in the future.

Quinta Vergara

We finally had our mini field trip to Quinta Vergara! Most of us prepared activities for us to do there but for obvious reasons I will not be referring to all of them.

image from this website

The first activity was the one my group and I prepared. Basically it is a combination of a scavenger hunt with grounding techniques.

The idea was for everyone to pay more attention to our surroundings because, even though we perceive many things with our eyes, we kind of neglect the other senses we've got, and they can give us an interesting experience, especially when we are outdoors.

So we handed out a slip of paper with the image on the right for everybody to know what they had to find:
5 things you can see (like insects)
4 things you can touch (like bark)
3 things you can hear (like leaves rustling)
2 things you can smell (like flowers)
1 thing you can taste (like eucalyptus leaves)



The second activity I'd like to refer to was one organised by another group. They told us to find a partner and gave us scarfs and bandanas to blindfold one person per couple. The idea was that the person who was not blindfolded would have to give directions to the other (without touching him/her) to make them walk without tripping or bumping into something. Then, we would have to switch roles with our partners.
Our classmates said it was an activity to promote trust and I really enjoyed it as such. At first I was pretty sure that I would fall but little but little my partner started making me feel more at ease; I could notice how she was trying to pay attention to everything, to the ground, the trees, the people, so that she could give directions and so that nothing bad would happen. It also made us pay attention to things we hadn't noticed, for instance, I saw one of my classmates making her partner touch things (like leaves and bark) to make him guess what they were, and I think that can be a valuable experience.

image from this website 

Now, from the pedagogical point of view, I think the activity offers a great opportunity for students to practice giving directions (turn to the left, walk straight, slow down, etc) in a meaningful way, as opposed to the typical drillings that they would do in a traditional classroom.
Finally, the benefits of being outdoors are amazing. I believe that the mere fact of being outside, getting some sunshine and better oxygenation can improve our mood, but maybe even improve our pre-disposition to learn. Maybe being comfortable and happy outside could have a positive impact on language learning so it would be a good idea to take our students in mini-field trips like this one. Of course we cannot assume that it will work with any class but I think it is worth trying.

Mindfulness part 2

I know that I already wrote about mindfulness in a previous post, but I stumbled upon an interesting article about it and I couldn't help sharing it here.
The title of the article is This school replaced detention with meditation. The results are stunning. and you can read it here. As you can tell from the title, it is about an elementary school that replaced the traditional punishment for disruptive students, for mindful meditation.

According to the author of the article, the room that the school uses for mindful meditation is almost the opposite of the typical detention room, it is nicely decorated and comfortable.
The children in this school who would be sent to the principal's office or to detention, are ''encouraged to sit in the room and go through practices like breathing or meditation, helping them calm down and re-center'' which is probably much more effective than the traditional kind of ''punishment.'' The results have been--though probably mindfulness is not the only factor--a dramatic reduction in suspension rates (zero in the last year), and an important increase in attendance.
This reaffirms my belief that mindfulness could be beneficial for the Chilean classrooms if we start taking it seriously; and not only for the classrooms, in fact, I believe it could be beneficial for the students in their life outside the school, and for the whole community if these practices start spreading.
As a way of introducing the concept in a class, maybe this video could be used:

The video could easily be used for to trigger conversations in a speaking activity, or during listening comprehension activities. For instance, you could use EDpuzzle (a brilliant virtual platform that allows you to crop videos, insert questions, insert audio comments, and assign homework to your students) to ask questions, here I used an extract from the video to demonstrate this.

So, to conclude, I'm not saying that mindfulness will work anywhere at anytime, what I'm saying is that it is worth giving it a try and seeing if it works for our particular group of students because if it does, the benefits can be amazing.

November 29th

Today we had a simple, yet interesting, peer teaching. One of our classmates asked us to sit in a circle and just talk. The idea was to share with the class the little things that  make us happy so that we didn't forget about them in these stressful times. Basically we are all in the last weeks of this semester and, as usual, it is a ridiculously stressful and exhausting period for everyone. I learned interesting things about my classmates (which is always valuable when you're not very good meeting new people), for instance, many of us enjoy being barefooted, some enjoy laying on the grass, others being with their pets, watching sunsets, looking at the clouds, and so many other things. Something that I personally enjoy a lot is starting seeds because I love the contact with the soil, the water and the sunlight.

image from this awesome article about conversation circles

 The activity was brilliant because we don't really have many instances to share this kind of things on a regular basis, besides, it was quite relaxing for everyone according to what I noticed.

Now, some of the potential uses of this activity in the EFL classroom could be:

- Teaching likes and dislikes. In fact, it could be done in smaller groups so that everyone gets their chance to participate, and so that the activity doesn't last for too long.

- For younger students (or older students who like drawing), we could ask them to draw what makes them happy and then explain it either in front of the class or to a partner (depends on time constrains and on group dynamics)

- If we ask them to draw or write a description first, then we could do the typical activity find someone who..., in which they would have to find someone who likes something similar to what they like, someone who wrote/drew something they don't like at all, someone who wrote/drew something completely different from the rest, etc.

I think it is a nice activity that can be done at the beginning of a course, so that students get to meet one another, or at the end of a course, when everyone is stressed, in order to help them calm down a little like in our case. 

Mindfulness in the EFL classroom

As you may have already noticed from the title, the topic for this post is Mindfulness.
But what is mindfulness? I'm sure that many people nowadays are familiar with the concept or at least have heard about it. I'm very grateful that I had a course here in college in which we read several articles about it, and also another course in which we practised mindfulness and meditation frequently.  In those courses I learned that meditation is basically focusing on the present moment, turning off our auto-pilot, and perceiving the world less judgmentally.
The benefits of it are many but the most evident is that through mindfulness we can become less stressed. For that reason I thought it would be nice to find activities that promote mindfulness but that at the same time are useful in the EFL classroom in relation to language use.
So first of all, I found an amazing website called Mindful Teachers that has several resources we can use. Even though it is not specifically directed towards EFL teachers, we can certainly adapt some of the activities to suit our classrooms.
One of the activities that I really liked is called Human Camera, a non-competitive game that consists in one student guiding another (whose eyes are closed) and telling him/her to open his eyes at a specific moment and take a mental picture, this is done three times and then the students switch roles.
When I first read the instructions, the activity didn't strike me as particularly useful in terms of language use, but then I remembered the typical activity we do with beginners: describe this picture.
Sometimes in pairs, sometimes individually, sometimes orally, sometimes written, the activity is used a lot to practice vocabulary and simple grammatical structures (i.e. there is a pencil; I see a house; etc), but maybe it could be more meaningful if we combined the Human Camera game to have students describe the mental pictures they took.
What I like the most of this idea is that it is quite flexible; it can be used inside the classroom, in a playground, in a park, or potentially anywhere. Also, it is an activity that can have interesting follow-ups, for instance you can ask students to write stories based on one of their mental pictures, to draw each other's mental pictures while one of them describes it, to guess who draw which picture, etc.
I know it is a short activity,definitely not for a whole lesson, but I'd like to use it when I get to teach beginners because I would have them moving around (which they tend to need), doing an activity that is very game-like, doing something collaboratively instead of competitively, and paying attention to the world around them.
 

November 8th

Today's lesson was especially interesting and fun because we had more peer teachings than usual. However, I think I'd better focus on one or two things only, otherwise this post will grow too much.
To begin with, we had a singing activity that was--I'm not gonna lie--pretty awkward at first, because most of us aren't used to singing in the classroom.

And this is the song!

I know it is for little children but I also know that a class of 20-odd year olds enjoyed singing row row row your boat together. 

So basically, we were explained that singing helps you relax and fight stress. Besides, I'd say that since you're forced to be more aware of your breathing while you're singing, it should help with oxygenation. In that sense, it is super useful for us as (pre-service) teachers because we make our lungs work and become stronger while at the same time we practice voice projection.

Another thing that someone mentioned in the lesson (or maybe I read it somewhere, I don't quite remember) is that singing in groups helps with the group dynamics, so perhaps it would be nice to do something like this with my future students in order to build a stronger sense of community.

Now, the second activity that I'd like to mention was a peer teaching. One of our classmates guided these Qigong movements and told us that he had successfully done it with his high-school students during intermediate practicum.

This is something that I was already considering when we had this lesson; I was looking for something like this to use at the beginning of some of my lessons during final practicum because I know that students sometimes need to move a little, to breathe better, and to have routines. For those reasons I'd like to implement something like this every other lesson when I'm teaching. 

And my classmate kindly shared the video with me afterwards so if you're reading this, thank you Juan Pablo!!

What I like about both activities is that they provide useful instances for both teachers and students to become healthier, so it is a win win situation, isn't it? And sure, maybe the students are going to look at me like I'm nuts when I start with the Qigong but maybe they will like it and find it useful in the end, and that's what really matters.

(Oct 11): Stirrers and Settlers

Today's lesson was a bit shorter than usual but we still had time to discuss the article  by Sue Clarke about Stirrers and Settlers that we had to read as homework.
The article is oriented towards education in Primary Classrooms, but I think that since we're dealing with English as a Foreign Language (EFL), our students (and ourselves as teachers) can benefit a lot from these techniques regardless of their age.
In the first place, according to the author of the article, Stirrers and Settlers are a way of channelling this (the students') energy. This means that teachers can find different ways to get their students moving and talking or working silently by themselves as needed. 

The whole objective of including Stirrers and Settlers is achieving a balanced lesson. After all, as language teachers we do want our students to communicate and participate actively in our lessons but we surely don't want our classrooms to be places of perpetual chaos.

One of the most concrete reasons to include them presented in the article is that children have a short concentration span, but in fact most teenagers (and sure, adults as well) have a short concentration span too. Knowing this, including long and tedious activities in our lessons would only make our students' learning processes harder, so I enthusiastically support the integration of Stirrers and Settlers in our EFL lessons.

In this other article, the author suggests songs, roleplays, ball games, class games and mingles as Stirrers, and drawing, silent reading or story-telling, word games and arts and crafts as Settlers.

The type of settler activity I like the most among the ones suggested by Sue Clark, is Categorising and Brainstorming. I think it is a very versatile technique that can be adapted to different topics, levels of proficiency and students' interests, so it is easy to integrate and modify according to the group we're teaching. Besides, brainstorming and categorising can be very helpful to activate and build prior knowledge at the beginning of a lesson.
Regarding stirrers, I'm very fond of Surveys, as suggested by Clark, because they give students a chance to move around the classroom and to use some features of the language repeatedly. For instance, if teaching students how to ask for and tell the time, one could make everyone draw a clock with a different time and then have students ask their classmates 'what time is it?' to give them a chance to practice. 

Fourth lesson (Oct 4th)

Today we worked on a dictation race about vocal health. The activity consists in organising students into groups and assigning them a text that will be placed at a certain distance from them. The idea was that someone from each group would have to stand up and memorise a section of the text that they would later dictate to the rest of the group. We were supposed to keep on doing this until we'd written the entire text. I believe it is a good activity because it promotes team work and everybody feels like they're an important component of their groups. Besides, it is easily adapted to different levels and topics. 

I found this video of a dictation race in a Korean EFL classroom that is more oriented towards beginners. I think the teacher shows them the sentences written down because, since Korean has a different writing system, it is quite challenging for the students, but I think it'd be better for our context (EFL for Spanish speakers) to read the sentences out loud only so that students get to practice listening. Overall, I'm very convinced that the 'game factor' would be super engaging so I'll definitely do this in my final practicum next semester (with the necessary adaptations to the group I'll be teaching of course).

Healthy voice

Today my voice was sounding a little strange, and since I ran out of honey (no ginger and honey lemonade for me), I figured it was a good moment to do some research on vocal health. 
The amount of information is a tad overwhelming so I chose only a couple of exercises from this really cool website. I chose them mostly because I think they can be helpful for teachers and for students so for instance they could be used at the beginning of a lesson.
According to the website, we should devote 10-15 minutes before a presentation (could be a lesson) to warm up our voice. The idea is to combine different warm up exercises that target three different areas: body, breath and voice. 

Body: ‘Rag dolls’
Stand with your feet a shoulder width apart, breathe in through the nose and bending from the waist allow yourself to flop like a rag doll while breathing out through your mouth. Shake any tension out of your arms, neck, shoulders and allow yourself to literally hang loose. And then breathing in through your nose very gently and slowly bring yourself upright and breathe out through your mouth.  

It was a little difficult for me to understand the steps but I think this picture fits the description

Breath: Diaphragm breathing
>> Legs shoulder-width apart and knees unlocked (maybe a little bent)
>> Relax shoulders and core muscles
>> Place your hands on your stomach
>> Inhale to the count of five (maybe start with three if students are not used to it). Feel the diaphragm rising.
>> Exhale to the count of five. Feel the diaphragm expanding
>> Do a couple of repetitions making sure shoulders, legs and stomach are relaxed.
I found some information about diaphragmatic breathing in this article. The author presents a comparison (with the pictures below) of chest and diaphragmatic breathing that can be really useful for people who learn better visually.

Voice: ‘Sounding vowels’
‘Use the out breath to sound each of the vowels in turn. Let each go without force, flowing smoothly from your relaxed throat.’ 

Voice: ‘Articulation’
This is an exercise I really liked because, since it looks like a game, it can help students relax and have fun while also warming up their voice. 
These are the tongue twisters suggested in the webpage:

Theophilus Thistler, the thistle sifter, in sifting a sieve of unsifted thistles,
thrust three thousand thistles through the thick of his thumb.

You know New York,
You need New York,
You know you need unique New York.

And these are some others I found here: 
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers
Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

We surely shall see the sun shine soon

Bonus: According to a pinterest.com user,  peppermint tea is great for singers (I’m guessing it does the same for teachers, though) because

>> it helps cure a stuffy nose and improves breathing 
>> it helps to reduce a dry throat 
>> reduces phlegm production
>> it helps reduce the risk of common colds
>> it keeps your breath fresh 

Considering that I have a bunch of peppermint growing in my garden, I will at least give it a try.

Third lesson (Sep 27th)

In today's class, we talked about the creation of a rubric to assess our own participation on the course. Wouldn't it be interesting to do this with high school students? I think that getting students engaged in the creation of the rubric you will use makes them feel the assessment is 'fair' so I'd like to give it a try. 

The author of this article refers to rubrics as motivational tools, and suggests that students who participate in the creation of rubrics feel more empowered,  more intrinsically motivated, and understand better how to reach the expectations set upon them for the task.

Similarly, Liz Prather on her article The Power of Student Built Rubrics points out that after years of being assessed with tools designed by someone else (by teachers), students lose their intrinsic sense of quality, which eventually affects their autonomy as learners.
After starting a project for her students to create rubrics, Liz asked them to reflect on the process, and these are some of the things they said:

• Some rubrics may be set up to give certain pieces better grades even if they really aren’t.  A piece could get a higher grade, even if it’s not a better piece.

I absolutely agree with this student, I think that is one of the most challenging aspects of rubric construction. In the first place, teachers (and students if they are getting involved) need to pay close attention to the coherence between what they want to assess and what their rubrics are actually assessing. Secondly, rubrics must be assessed to make sure that the grade they provide actually reflects what's on the labels and descriptors because, as the student pointed out, a piece of writing could get a high grade without being particularly good if the criteria in the rubric is poorly written.

• I liked it because I’m setting goals for myself. I can only go as low as I’ll let myself go and as high as I let myself go. Plus, since I made the rubric, I’ll care about it more. It made me be very thorough about what I wanted to achieve.

 This is something I've been thinking about. As mentioned above, rubrics can be a great motivational tool and I think that what the student pointed out--about setting personal goals--is essential in language learning because it motivates you in the long term; in that sense, the objective of a certain task is reaching a particular goal you established instead of going for the immediate reward that could, for instance, be represented as a grade.

My only concern with student-created rubrics, is that (according to what we're experiencing in the course) it is very hard to get everyone involved. In the end, very few do participate in the creation of the rubric so the benefits aforementioned are only enjoyed for a few.

Second lesson (Sep 20th)

In today’s class we talked about classroom management, in particular about establishing rules when we start working with a new group of students. 
Our first task was brainstorming about classroom management so these are some of the things my classmates and I could come up with:
>> Large classes
>> Behaviour
>> Motivation throughout the lesson
>> Engaging students
>> Seating arrangement
>> Voice projection

One of the suggestions was not to establish the rules necessarily during the first lesson because that opportunity should be devoted to getting to know one another but definitely it should be done soon afterwards.

More information here

I found this image online in which the teacher did not create Rules but rather Expectations. This is designed for middle-schoolers and I think it could be easily adapted to our context (EFL in Chile) because it is pretty straightforward. 
In that sense, I feel it is very student-friendly because the labels and the descriptors are very concise and concrete so students actually know what is expected from them.

More information here

Similarly, another teacher suggests creating a chart like this with our students. I absolutely love this idea, especially for younger students whose thinking is more concrete. Besides, it provides a nice organisation that, in my opinion, is clearer (and prettier?) than a list of rules.

Mountain pose: for confident teachers

During last class, we had the opportunity to practice the Mountain Pose. The idea was to make us feel more grounded, strong and confident so that we could really use our space in the classroom and consequently be more effective (and happy) teachers.

I found this image online that explains the pose really well. Besides, in the original post, the author explains how this pose works as the foundation for many other poses in yoga so it is definitely worth reading.

Now, is this a resource for healthy teachers or for healthy students? I'd say both. On the one hand, it is great for us as pre-service teachers (and any teacher, really) because we tend to feel a tad insecure when facing 35+ students, right? but on the other hand, confidence is not something that schools are addressing right now in Chile. That's why I'm sure that this could also be super helpful for our students to develop more confidence and more awareness of their own body.

More information here

I also found this variation of the pose together with some other yoga poses for children. I don't really know much about yoga so hopefully once I've done some research, I'll write more about yoga for children. 

I think this image would make a nice classroom poster, maybe I'll include something like this in my final practicum.

First lesson (Sep 13th)

This was a lesson mostly devoted to getting to know one another and understanding the nature of the course.
One of the activities we did was ‘Talking while walking’ and we were expected to talk to someone we hadn’t talked to before. Honestly, I feel very anxious in that sort of situation but I’m working hard to get myself out of my comfort zone so the activity was a great opportunity to do that. In the end, I realised that walking actually helps with the anxiety so I started feeling more and more comfortable as we moved around and shared our experiences as pre-service teachers.
I searched online and read on different websites that walking can relieve some anxiety symptoms because it forces us to regulate our breathing. 
I would really like to do something like this with my students because I know that sitting for too long in the classroom can be very unappealing and make the learning process harder.

More information here

Another activity we did was reacting to statements in different posters that were attached to the walls. I think this activity is especially useful when students must interact with someone they don’t know very well because if someone doesn’t know what else to say, they can always return to one of the statements provided and shift the topic.
I found a very interesting post in which this technique is described, it includes explanations on how to do it and some classroom management concerns.




I'd really like to include both activities in my final practicum (provided that there’s enough room for the number of students) because they are a much more interesting and engaging way of doing the typical pair or group discussions and they provide a great opportunity for kinesthetic learners to get engaged in the lesson.

Welcome!

This blog is my virtual portfolio for the course 'Healthy teachers, healthy classrooms.'
In the following posts, I will be presenting different activities and reflections about the ways in which teachers can improve both their health and their students'.
The main idea is that a teacher who is healthy and balanced can not only inspire his/her students to become healthier, but also explicitly conduct activities that aim at improving their students health.
I invite you to read my posts and follow the links to different articles and videos that I provide there.