Task 2: Interaction in Class.

I am an English Primary school teacher and in my lessons i use the communicative approach methodology that helps me provide my students a good communicative competence in English. Using this methodology we work on communicative activities that make students feel free to interact with each other and be motivated during the activities. I provide the instructions to follow and then we carry out the activities.
I also use the TPR methodology because I think that one of the most important aspect to take into account when teaching children is to keep them active while learning because it makes the learning more meaningful. It is a good way to not feel under pressure.
In order to interact with my students I always use the English language and I want them to do the same. I know that for them is not easy but I try to not over correct mistakes, I use positive reinforcement because I consider that errors are part of their learning and are necessary to learn the language.
Talking about the communicative activities that we work in class I can mention for example the A/B game, that consists on working in pairs they have two cards with different missing information on them and they have to ask the partner the necessary questions to get the information that is not provided on the card.
Another game can be Find someone who that is the same game but instead of working in pairs they work the whole class together and they have to go round looking for the person who has the information that they need. Obviously, they have to ask to many students the same questions in order to find the correct one.
So, having seen what I do in my classes to make my students interact I can say that the most important aspects to make them want to interact are:
- Raise their motivation.
- Use meaningful topics for them, related to their previous knowledge or experiences.
- Use stimulating activities that make them feel sure.
- Use cooperative techniques, if they work together they would feel more likely to communicate in English.
- Use role-play and drama techniques, it is a funny way to create interaction in class.
-Communicative games.
- Positive feedback, we should never over correct mistakes, they are part of the learning process.
- The sitting arrangement can also influence on the interactions. We should be ready to change the desks depending on the activity.

The advantages of using that kind of strategies in class are that making the students feel motivated and involving them as much as possible in the teaching-learning process would make them love the English lessons and be ready to get the communicative competence that is my main goal.

There also some disadvantages when working with young children with communicative activities in a language that is not their native language. If they are not enough motivated and they feel that they cannot express themselves in English because the level is difficult for them, they would end up speaking their own language and doing the activities quickly. So, that is why we have to use topics that are familiar for them and use positive reinforcement whenever they try to use the English language in order to communicate.

Task 6: WORD MAP

Task 5: Corpora.

The most important difference between the two Corpora is that in the http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/ you write an expression as, for example, cheer up and it gives you the number of frequency in which it is used. In my case, the number is 101. After that in both corpora you have all the uses that the word has in context.
In my opinion, the second web page is more clear in order to see the collocation of the words as the colour in which the words are written and the aspect of the web page is more pleasant. Although in the other one you have the information of the number of uses.

Task 4: Thesaurus.

When you open Thesaurus and write down a word it shows you the different synonyms and anonyms that the word has.
After that, it provides us other words related to our word. It also appears the category of each word.
But appart form synonyms and antonyms you can find the definition of the word.
In order to choose the best word that is a real synonym of the word you are looking for, you can click on each word and then it gives you other words related to the new word you have clicked on. You can also read the description and see which one is more related to the context in which you are going to use it.

Task 3: comparison of dictionaries.

The dictionary I like most is www.wordreference.com because you can fin the different meaning of each word and its description. You have principal definitions and additional ones. Also, it provides us compound words and their collocations.
I find that in the wordreference dictionary it is easier to find the definition you are looking for because next to the word you have the words that it refers to. For me is the easiest one to find what are you looking for.

Although after having seen the learnersdictiorary.com i have realized that the explanations are more complex and you can find the category of word you want to look for if the same word is used for example as an verb and as a noun.

TASK 1 STUDENTS' NEEDS

The level of Secondary Education I have chosen is 1st ESO.

In this level, in the English subject students are required to:

-Be able to excuse themselves, express their gratitude for something and farewells.

-Use non-verbal expressions to complement their speaking.

-Show respect to other people from different cultures.

-Read, act and sing songs, texts, role-play.

-Ask for information or any object needed. 

-Describe objects, places...

-Narrate past and present events.

-Explain future projects.

-Ask and give personal information, places, timetables, prices, quantities...

-Ask for permission to do something.

-Express knowledge, doubts, security, satisfaction and the contraries.

.Express wills, prohibitions and orders.

-Be able to express their feelings and their mood.

-Reflect about their own learning and the use of language to communicate.

-Be able to talk about their surroundings and where they live, daily routines, family, friends, work, free time, sports, holidays, trips, health, shopping, diet, food, transport, metalanguage, climate, environment, icts, literary language, classroom language, rhythm, stress and intonation of the language.

In order to do that they should learn about:

-Countable, uncountable and compound nouns.

-Personal pronouns.

-Articles.

-Adjectives

-Possessives.

-Possessive genitive

-Existence:There is/ are. There was/were.

-Quality: too, really, a little.

-Quantity: Plurals, cardinal and ordinal numbers, quantity adverbs. A lot, a few.

-Adverbs of manner: easily, hard.

-Affirmative sentences.

-Negative sentences: no, never, no, no problem.

-Interrogative sentences: wh questions.

-Exclamatory: That's fun, great.

-Expression of time: present simple and continuous, past simple, going to, will.

-Expression of aspect, modality: can, perhaps, need, have got, don't, can, could, going to, present continuous, 

-Expression of temporary relationships: five to ten, from, since, before, already, after, 

-Expression of spacial relationships:Place prepositions and adverbs, position, distance, movement, destination, direction.

-Expression of logical relationships: and, too, also, but, because, for, as/not.

Now, I am going to explain the subject I have chosen and what they are required to do in a 1st ESO class that is Biology and Geology.

In this level students would be required to:
-Talk about the origins of the universe. It comes from... It was discovered... years ago.
-Solar system characteristics. It is composed by... The planets are... They are made of... Their color is... Their shape is...
-The Earth, its movements. Does it move around the other planets? How does it function?
-Terrestrial materials. The different elements by which it is composed. Atmosphere,hydrosphere...
-Structure and composition. The first section is made of,...
-Rocks and minerals. Characteristics, It is round, it is made of... Its colour is...
-Pollution, The pollution is produced by,,, How can we help to preserve the atmosphere?
-Water. How much quantity of water do we have in the Earth? What do we need it for?
-Living organisms and the importance of them. How can we eliminate the water pollution? We can establish more bins in the streets or in the beaches...
-Vital functions. Where do we come from? 
-Nutrition. Carnivorous and herbivorous animals. What do they eat? If you are carnivour, do you eat plants? And meat?
-Vertebrates and Invertebrates. Do vertebrate animals have bones?
-Different plants and animals.

Just to finish I would like to underline the differences that we find in the English subject for 1st ESO contents and the contents that they are required to study in Biology and Geology.
Do you think that it would be possible to adapt therir level to the subject?

An illustrative video.

I have chosen this video because it is related to Primary education and the English subject.

It explains a real example of the integration of ICTs in the classroom and that we can work in two ways; from ICTs and with ICTs and how it is related to passive and active students’ behaviour.

It explains the importance of using them well, and how using ICTs we can work on different subjects using the English language, that is what we call CLIL.

What's a blog?

The different blogs I have visited are based on different purposes. One of them is a teachers blog that contains their work and reflections about different topics. The aim of this blog is to show us their contributions, here they can choose anything they want to share.

The other ones are blogs addressed to teachers, in order to help them with the new CLIL methodology and a blog that give us some examples of poems that we can use with our students.

This blogs' aim is to help teachers with specific topics. There is a different blog for each theme, that is a good way of having the information in a sequenced and clear way.

In my opinion, depending on our purposes as teachers we can create a different blog. If we want to share our ideas about any topic or share all the works that we do in class, we can follow the first type of blogs, we can define it as a more informal or personal kind of blog.

But if our objective is to give teachers contrasted information about a topic or giving advice on how to work on an specific contents, the second kind of blogs are a formal way of doing it.

Due to the fact that I work with young students I prefer the first type because I can register all the original works and projects we do in class.

A blog is an internet space where we can upload our thoughts or opinions about any topic we want to, and also share information or works. There are different types of blogs depending on their purposes.

As I am an English Primary school teacher, the blogs that can help me with my class are other teachers' blogs about their projects because I can get ideas or even create my own blog with my elder students. It is a good way of changing the typical homework and motivate students working with internet while learning. The blog provides the teacher with an individual register and all the students entries will be ordered.

If I decide to create a blog with my students there are some tips to take into account, some related to privacy and others about students respect.

To sum up, I would like to say that blogs are a good way of taking advantage of the new technologies while making students work in a more relaxing and motivating way as they are part of a society in which they are surrounded by ICTs. And we, as teachers, can also benefit from this mean getting ideas from other people.

The different pages I have visited about blogs are the following ones:

http://blogbasics.com/what-is-a-blog/

http://weblogs.about.com/od/startingablog/p/WhatIsABlog.htm

http://john.do/blog-blogger-blogging/

ABOUT ME...

Hello everyone! My name is Adriana Botella and I am an English Primary school teacher. I am in my 5th year, working as a teacher because I love English language and its culture. My level of English is B2 although I try to keep in contact with as much English as possible every day, watching English TV programmes, surfing internet, listening the BBC news, watching series, talking with friends, etc...

At home, I use technologies every day because I prepare my classes with the computer and I surf internet with my smartphone or tablet. I like reading ebooks and also buying things on American web pages. Although It is the first time I use internet to do a course, I am sure it would be a great experience!

About technologies in my school I would like to say that due to the lack of funds, we are not provided with the necessary computers we need to work with children in the English classroom but we have a computers room we share with other teachers and this blog would be a good resource to use with students in high grades.