Cuban Education

August 19th, 2008

This class Katherinne, Pedro and Fabian presented their topic and debate about Cuban Education.

Some important facts:

- Cuba maintains the highest rate of literacy in Latin America.
- If they graduate from the preparatory college school, they can attend college for free if they choose.
- The record of Cuban education is outstanding: universal school enrollment and attendance; nearly universal adult literacy.

And they have:

- Great attention to teachers (extensive pre- and in-service training, high status and morale, incentives, transparent system of accountability, strategies for developing a culture of professionalism, rewards for innovation)
- Low-cost instructional materials of high quality

After the presentation with valuable information, they presented the question for the debate which was:

Is it possible to apply this kind of educational system in our country, considering the differences between both cuban and chilean society?

The class was separated into 'for' group and 'against' group. We discussed the possibilities of having a cuban educational system in Chile but the main conclusions were that we are not ready for it because of money and resources for education that our government gives (very low) and the lack of importance in teachers and educational employees in general regarding wages mostly.

They made a great job i think. The topic was very interesting and we all had something to say.

British Educational System. 'Public Schools'

August 12th, 2008

This class Evelyn, María Teresa and Rodrigo presented their debate about Public schools in Britain. They started explaining the vocabulary that we were going to see and then they started their presentation.

A public school in Britain is usually a prestigious and historic school, which charges fees (amount of money), doesn't not arbitrarily restrict admissions, and is financed by bodies (groups of people) other than the state, commonly as a private charitable trust. (organization or group that has control over money used to help)

It is traditionally a single-sex boarding school for children between 11 or 13 and 18.

Schools where instruction is provided free of charge are called 'state schools'.

The debate question was whether we preferred public schools or state schools in Chile. Our arguments were very valid 'against' and 'for' and this group made a good job controlling the debate, besides giving valuable information about this topic.

Learning to learn

That same class that we talked about issues on education we also were assigned to do a little research about "Learning to learn".

Learning is a very personal matter. There isn't one study/learning skill or strategy that works for every person in every situation. Therefore, learning to learn strategies are about learning what you know, learning what you don't know, and learning what to do about it.

Your path for most effective learning:

1- Know Yourself
2- Manage Your Time and Life
3- Improve Your Concentration
4- Know What Study Means & How To Do It
5- Develop A Thinker's Vocabulary
6- Become An Active Reader
7- Become An Active Writer
8- Build Listening & Note taking Skills
9- Know How To Study For & Take Exams
10- Master Every Course

The idea is to develop better learning strategies that work for you. You decide how to study and when to study. These are just recommendations for a better learning.

Issues on Education

August 5th, 2008

This class, Mr Litman talked us about some important issues related to the education of Chile these days. One of them was the jar of water thrown to the minister of education by a student; María Música is her name. Related to this, we talked about the values that parents should give to their children from their childhood. It is important to be polite and have some respect for the older people and the ones in authority. Obviously, Maria Música didn't respect any of this. The Parental responsability is very important in case like this.

We also talked about the school violence these days and the problems that are relating teachers. One of these problems is the one related with violence against teachers. Is not a new situation but it appears in newspapers' headlines once in a while.

Mr Litman also talked us about the Internalizer and the Externalizer. The Internalizer is the one that is affected by his/her inside factors and the Externalizer the one that is affected by the outside factors.

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.