First Debate

On July 08th Eduardo, Rodrigo, Dreny and Nicole presented their debate. Their topic was the LOCE (Ley Constitucional de enseñanza) which was published on march 10th, 1990. This law gave the chance to many people of getting involve in the education system in Chile. This law, even though it wasn't good, allowed education to be for everyone in this country.

Dreny and Nicole presented the topic and then Eduardo and Rodrigo created the debate. Our class was separated into to groups. The ones in favor of the LOCE were in one side and the ones against the LOCE were in the other side. I was with the ones in favor and it was very difficult to recognize the positive things of this law. We said that without LOCE we wouldn't have been able to reach the education system that we have now and that the ideal of this law was a long term proposal.

The debate worked very well. My classmates controlled the situation at all times and we gave our opinions respectfully.

Debating in a EFL Classroom.

On June 24th, Mr Litman showed us how a debate should work. He gave us the necessary information to start working in our debates. He showed us a presentation about teaching debate in the EFL classroom. (English foreign language).

The first point was about the benefits of teaching debate in a EFL classroom.

The arguments were the following: To increase our speaking skills, share opinions, develop critical thinking skills, criticize, introduce global issues and develop research skills.

The objectives were:

- Sts should understand and be able to share their opinions, they should become more aware of global and cross-cultural issues, they should gain experience in research and they should increase their knowledge and comprehension of English.

Then there were the steps to follow:

1- Opinions. What is it? How do you express it?
2- Expressing your opinions. Giving reasons. Strong reasons, types of reasons and brainstorming.
3- Supporting your opinion. Opinion-Reason-Support. Types of support and intro to research.
4- Organizing your opinions. Signposts. Organizing an speech. Debate introductions and conclusions.
5- Refutation. Refuting Opinions, types of refutations, stating a refutation, relevance of the refutation.
6- Challenging supports. Testing support (questionable), stating refutation of a source.
7- Organizing your refutation. Organizing the negative case, listen, attack, rebuild. Negative introduction. Refutation format.
8- Debating your opinion. Debate formats, responding to attacks, Taking notes, debate delivery.

To incorporate debate into a classroom you can try brainstorming in your classes, asking for ideas and opinions. This way you can increase the participation in the class and see how well your students are at giving opinions and thinking.

At the end of the class Mr Litman gave us a list with the topics that we are going to use in our debates.

June 17th

On June 17th Mr. Litman talked us about our blogs and our development in the class. Analyzing our participation in the class we realized that we haven’t used communicative strategies very much. We participate giving our opinions sometimes but that is not enough. At the end of the class Mr Litman told us that from now on we were going to do a debate. Micro teaching weren’t participative enough. Now we will be able to make our classmates participate giving their own personal opinions and arguments about an specific topic.

About Blogs...

Last Tuesday we went to the English Laboratory to update our blogs (the ones that forgot about it) and to look for possible mistakes.

I shared some information with some of my classmates and helped them with some problems they had. We had a really peaceful class and Mr Litman gave us some advice about our blogs and talked with my classmates that had doubts about it.

Stay tunned... I will be updating this in a while.

About Students...

This Tuesday Mr. Litman gave us a paper with some information about what’s going on with the secondary students from state schools. They are doing some strikes and riots to be heard. Their aim is to pay more attention to the LGE (General Education Law) and that this one shouldn’t be passed by the parliament. We talked about these issues, which are very important for us as future teachers, and discussed the ideology of this whole situation. The majority of us said that it would be impossible to change the quality of education now. Students fight for justice and equality but inequality is going to be always around the corner.

Anyway, it was a very interesting topic to be discussed with the class. We shared our opinions in group work and then with the whole class.

The second part of the class was in the laboratory, where we looked up for some interesting new in the Monday’s newspaper. La tercera.cl offers a multimedia version that can be seen online. The entire newspaper is there for you to read it.

We read an interesting article about new strategies for parents to keep track of their children at the schools. Parents are able now to look up for grades, behaviour and even if their children are missing a class. They can know immediately if their children are lying. They can search for that information on the web and find out if their children are telling the truth about their grades or not. Some web pages have more users but there are a lot of these. In Chile this has been a resource that parents are using more and more. For some parents it is easier through this way to be aware of how their children are doing at school but for others it is a matter of trust that is being lost. I mean, what happened with the trust in their children? They are cheating when they want to know the results from an exam, per example. They don’t wait for their children to tell them the news. They just look up for it in the web page.

There are some “rebellions” against these web pages. Another web page; facebook, has shown some groups that are against these programs and web pages that their parents are using. Boys and girls show their emotions and share their opinions about this on facebook, where everyday more adepts join these groups.

Troubled adolescents at school

This Tuesday was the presentation of Paula, Marlen and Ma Teresa. Their topic was “Troubled adolescents at school”.

They presented the topic very clearly. They talked about what a troubled adolescent is; some behaviour problems in children, changes caused by poverty, the influence of society and attraction to bad behaviour, among other things.

They presented some risk factors like violence, alcohol and suicide, introduced the acronym of ADHO (Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) which means and special issue of troubled teens, and talked about some special schools that help troubled teenagers such as military schools, boarding schools, and disciplinary camps.

Their presentation was very good. A little bit fast but good. Their activity was very nice. We had to share our opinions in two different cases as a teacher. They didn’t move around that much, though, only when we were discussing the cases. The handout where the cases were had some grammatical and syntax problems, just a few of them. Anyway, they did a good job.

After that presentation we went to the laboratory to know what the page www.educarchile.cl was about.

Bullying again

This Monday was the presentation of Katherine and Nadia. They presented the topic of bullying in schools and they made it differently. 2 groups already presented the topic but these girls gave us new information. They started the micro lesson with a glossary hand out. The vocabulary turned out to be a little bit difficult and unfamiliar but at the end they explained very clear everything about the topic. They made us read some paragraphs from the power point and answer some questions such as “What do you think this is about?” after reading a paragraph or a headline.

The activity was quite good too. They made us share some opinions and talk to the class about our points of view.

They didn’t move around, though. Body language was an important issue that they forgot. I think they need to improve that. Everything else was very good.

That same class Mr. Litman showed us the “life” video again. This time we needed to pay attention to the details. We talked to our classmates and discussed the philosophy, the ideas and the background music. The leader of every group shared the different opinions and everybody listened.

Last monday and tuesday class.

Last Monday Daniela and Evelyn talked about Classroom management. Even though I arrived late (I’m so sorry) I was able to get involved in the presentation. They looked confident in what they said but I think that Daniela looked a little bit nervous. I know that they were worried about the time and that is something that always keeps our minds busy when we are in the middle of a presentation. About the activity part I don’t know what happened. I think it was the same thing; time. I also think they did a good job but they showed a lack of movement and body language. This has been a topic that everybody in the class needs to develop in a higher level. All the previous presentation have presented the same problem, (besides the last part of activities that presents the same problem: weakness) until this Tuesday.

This Tuesday Rodrigo, Felipe and Fernanda presented the topic of Leadership and it was one hell of a presentation! It was a real micro lesson. That was how it was supposed to be since the beginning of the presentations. I’m not saying this because they are my friends; I’m saying it because I feel that way.

They presented the topic and made has involve during the presentation by reading paragraphs, answering questions and giving opinions. They used the whiteboard (a tool that we should use more) and they moved around the classroom. They were very clear. The activity part was fun. They made us talk a lot, and besides the activity they had a little discussion that was also fun. At the end of the micro lesson they gave us a handout very useful to identify a leader from an administrator. Good for them. Nice job.

That same day, before the micro lesson, Mr. Litman and we (the class) talked about opinions and about the class in general. It’s true that we don’t take advantage of the talking time that Mr. Litman gives us. We should be talking more and present our points of view more often. He said that he doesn’t want to be talking all the time and that we should go ahead and talk, without paying attention to our fears. Maybe because we are shy or insecure we don’t speak enough. I believe that we are learning from our mistakes and that we should make more to improve our English. Otherwise, how can we learn if we don’t make mistakes? At the end one suggestion was made: add a debate at the end of every micro lesson, make the classmates share their opinions and talk more. I think this is a great idea as long as it works in the way it’s supposed to.