Dealing with EFL Terminology

Assess

To gather data in order to make informed decisions (from “assidere”, meaning “to sit beside”).

Formative assessment

Frequent and ongoing assessment, completed en route to mastery; ongoing assessment could be considered as “checkpoints” on students’ progress and the foundation for feedback given- the most useful assessment teacher can provide for students and for their own teaching decisions.

Summative assessment

Completed after the learning experiences; usually requires students to demonstrate mastery of all the essential understandings, though they can be explored over several different tasks; gravable.

Affective Factors


Motivation

Teacher is devoted to helping student learn

Student cares about learning and wants to improve

Trust
Teacher is encouraging, constructive, sensitive to student's feelings

Class/peer relationships and attitudes support student's learning

Student feels safe to admit difficulties and uncertainties


Task Factors


Knowledge
Teacher understands the key aspects and difficulties of the task

Criteria

Teacher identifies and explains well the qualities sought

Student understands clearly what is needed

Goals

The broad, general purposes behind a program, course or curriculum.

Standards
Teacher sets standards appropriate to student

Through descriptions and examples, the standards are explained

Student understands the standards and accepts them as appropriate

Structural Factors

Connections

Final version of task can benefit from the formative assessment

Work on subsequent tasks can benefit from the formative assessment


Purposes

Formative use of task is not undermined by parallel summative use



Process Factors

Balance

Feedback gives attention to strengths as well as weaknesses

Checklist:

A list of behaviors, attributes, or tasks with which teachers tally students' evidence for mastery.


Feedback

Telling students what they did, no evaluative component, and helping them compare what they did with what they were supposed to do.

Self-assessment
Teacher helps student to develop self-assessment skills.

Student takes increasing responsibility for his/her own learning.

Peer involvement
Teacher encourages collaboration among students to improve work.

Peers learn to be constructive and generous in offering feedback.

Monitoring

Teacher monitors student's work to track both process and progress

Insight
Teacher detects misunderstandings or other obstacles to success

Teacher detects exciting possibilities in student's work


Timing

Feedback is given at times when student is most receptive to it

Selectivity

Feedback addresses mainly the aspects likely to have biggest benefit

Rubric

A smaller-scale continuum of scores in which each score correlates to clear descriptor of performance.

Uptake

This term is sometimes used generally to refer to what a learner notices and/or retains in second language input or instruction. Lyster and Ranta’s (1997) definition refers to a learner’s observable inmediate response to corrective feedback on his/her utterances.

Wisdom

Feedback is convincing, appreciated, and useful to student

Speaking Activity

                                               ONE WORD DIALOGUE

As teachers we have to be aware of the importance of listening from the very first moment but ... what about speaking (and conversation)? The so called 'silent period' gives us an opportunity to relax and to postpone our pupils' oral production. Nevertheless, there are many possibilities to foster our pupils' oral production from the very first moment (as in Artigal's storytelling method). This is an example of the possibilities that roleplays offer to us in order to achieve this aim: One Word Dialogue


We write the dialogue below on the board

1. Ask the students to act it out in pairs. 
2. Then tell them to create their own, one-word dialogues. 
3. You will need to help the students with their intonation. 

Student A:Hello!
Student B:hi!

Student A: Worried?
Student B: No

Student A: Then?
Student B: Tired

Level: 1^st level of primary education.

We have chosen this activity for the 1^st level of primary because it promotes oral production and helps pupils overcome the silent period when learning a foreign language. This activity mostly develops two skills: speaking (productive) and listening (receptive).

Context: This activity is going to be developed in a Public Bilingual School situated in a wealthy neighborhood. Therefore, we assume that pupils should have acquired by then a certain grounding of the English Language.

Competences to be approach:  

·    Communicative and linguist competence. With this activity, learners will have to use the language with a communicative purpose. 

Contents:

Notions: vocabulary related to greetings (hello…) and moods (worried, tired…).

Functions: Presentation and expressing different moods.

Aims:

• Learners will acquire and use vocabulary related to greetings and moods.  
•  Learners will be able to comprehend and repeat the dialogue. 
• Learners will be able to understand and use non verbal language: facial expressions, mime, body movements.

Activities:

• Pre-activity: Introduce the new vocabulary using picture/word cards. The teacher will say out loud the different words that appear in the dialogue and pupils will have to listen and repeat. This first activity is controlled by the teacher and it will help pupils get familiar with the new vocabulary and also increase their confidence.
• While activity: Pupils will have to read and try to memorize the dialogue. The dialogue will be cut into pieces. Then, pupils will have to put it in order the dialogue. With this activity they will develop memory skills.
• Post-activity: Mime Role play in pairs. The teacher will give the pupils a role to act out and will tell to one of them they have lost their voice. The pupils without voice will have to use mime in order to be understood. It is a way of working The Total Physical Response.

Cater for diversity: 

Good classroom management is essential to cater for diversity since the organizing and running of our classroom efficiently and effectively will maximize opportunities for all students to learn.

On the other hand, as teachers we should take into account the theory of multiple intelligences proposed by Howard Gardner. We must be aware of the fact that our pupils learn in different ways. With the pre-activity we can cater for visual spatial and linguistic learners. The while- activity could take into account the logical-mathematical learners, because the dialogue is like a sequence that needs to have a logical order and the intrapersonal learners as the activity is done individually. Finally, with the post-activity we can cater for bodily-kinesthetic and the interpersonal learners.

Classroom Management:

The teacher’s role in the classroom:

Organizer, informer, controller, prompter, guide, corrector and assessor/evaluator.

On the other hand, the teacher should create a supportive learning environment. Students learn best when they feel accepted, enjoy positive relationships with their fellow students and teachers and they are active, visible members of the community.

Distribution of space and time:

• Pre-activity: the whole class will participate in this activity therefore a horseshoe arrangement will be used. Such an arrangement provides for each student equivalent visual access to most other students and the teacher. There is also more participation in classes arranged in this way.
• While-activity: This activity will be done individually using the same arrangement as before.
• Post-activity: This activity will be done using something similar to modular arrangement but in pairs.

All these activities will be done in a session (55’) 

Finally, a learner centered approach will be put into practice. This will require pupils to be active and responsible participants in their own learning.

Assessment for learning:

Different assessment tools will be used during the session. For example, pupils will be provided with some feedback after finishing each activity (pre, while and post).

The session will end using another assessment tool called: “thumbs up”. Pupils show thumbs up, sideways or down to indicate their current level of understanding:

·         Thumbs up: confident they have achieved what was expected.

·         Thumbs sideway: some way there, but some uncertainty.

·         Thumbs down: not achieved, confusion.

The Finland Phenomenon: Inside the World’s Most Surprising School System.

There is a country where students start school at a later age, take fewer classes.

There is a country where students enjoy a 3-months summer break spend less time in school per day.

There is a country where students have barely any homework, are rarely tested.

There is a country where teachers are respected professionals, quickly receive tenure.

There is a country where teachers are rarely evaluated.

There is a country where teachers earn average salaries, have a strong union.

There is a country where schools receive modest funding, develop their own curriculum.

There is a country where schools research & adopt new technologies.

There is a country where schools have no achievement gap and leave no child behind.

This country ranks at the top of the world by almost every measure.

Welcome to Finland, the country with the most amazing school system in the world.

Thus, begins this essential film in which Dr. Tony Wagner, a member of the Programme of Educational Innovation at Harvard, guides us for 60 minutes for the keys to Finnish education system, discovering what their characteristics, peculiarities and secrets of their success.

Using Graphic organizers

 www.edhelper.com/teachers/graphic_organizers.htm


www.worldhistoryteacher.org/student_forum/learning_tools.htm

http://pact.natomascharter.org/pact_files/user198/Graphic%20Organizers%20Presentation-%20Laur%20Bariel.pdf 

Graphic organizers can be used in the FL classroom in many different ways: to brainstorm, review a topic (if done in class, it allows children to be involved and to participate), plan a project (a working paper where pupils will add all they know about the topic), make a concept map, infer solutions to problems, …

Graphic organizers meet the need of the brain to find patterns and complete things. According to Tony Buzan (one of the leading psychologists worldwide on human brain function), it is important to use the information in a relevant and interesting way, linking the action of our senses with the power of association. Neurolinguistic Programming states that each person processes and stores information differently, we each have a primary representational system, the one which we use more often. Learning will be more effective if it involves the entire brain (through both hemispheres). Graphic organizers help pupils retain concepts. They cater for diversity, because it takes into account different learning styles.

Graphic Organizers can be used to promote Bloom’s Taxonomy. 

 

Bloom's Level	Purpose	Type of Graphic Organizer
Understanding and Remembering	Interpreting Exemplifying Summarising Inferring Paraphrasing Classifying Comparing Explaining Recognising Listing Describing Identifying Retrieving Naming Locating/Finding	Spider Maps: to describe item. Linear String: to describe a sequence of events, continuum, storyboard, cycle. Simple Flowchart: This is a simple concept linking to next concept. Simple Concept map: to describe item. Hierarchy Diagram: to classify items. Desktop Folder System: to organize collection and distribution of information.
Applying and Analysing	Comparing Organising Deconstructing Attributing Outlining Structuring Integrating Implementing Carrying out Using Executing Doing	Venn Diagram: to compare/contrast 2 or more concepts. Comparison Matrix: to compare/contrast 2 or more items. 6 Focusing questions: a simple map that is designed to ask 6 key questions: What, When, Where, Who, Why and How. The topic or concept is crucial.
Evaluating and Creating	Checking Hypothesising Critiquing Experimenting Judging Testing Detecting Monitoring Designing Constructing Planning Producing Inventing Devising Making Building	Thinking grids: to make decisions Fishbone Map: to analyse and evaluate cause and effect. Simple cause and effect Table Programming Flowchart IPO or Input-Processing-Output Diagram: to look at input into a system, the processing that occurs on that input and what the outputs from this processing are.

Graphic organizers are available and useful for all ages and all purposes (from very complex to very simple things). I think graphic organizers represent a powerful visual and spatial communication. We all know the power of symbols: the user can quickly interpret them. The graphic organizers assist pupils in arranging the “big picture” information, in order to increase their achievements. You can save a lot of information in one graphic organizer. It designs allows the addition of things at different moments and by many people, which fosters a cooperative learning.

It can be a tool for children who have difficulty with the traditional way of learning. e.g. Using concept maps can brainstorm new ideas and concepts and develop them in a fast and fun way.

Teachers and students can use graphic organizers to enhance the learning process in all subject areas, not just learning English as a FL. They can even use them in their daily life, being a tool that allows learning how to learn.

Another good aspect of graphic organizers is that they support Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences: visual pupils, pupils with spatial intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence, linguistic intelligence.

Some examples:

Comparison Matrix

Fishbone Map/Diagram

Spider Map

Venn Diagram