Oral entry unit 2 language 8

This is the link of the oral entry, so sorry I had problems with my youtube account during all the weekend. I had to ask a friend for his help. Here it goes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR3B8GlL0BA&feature=youtu.be

Journal entry unit 2 Language 8

During the unit I have learned several aspects regarding to films. However the most important practice I learned for my future as a teacher, is how to teach through films.

At school I watched many films for subjects like language, and mainly history. Nevertheless, I was never required to make a specific analysis of the film, nor did I recognize the main objective of watching a film in classes.

Having reflected upon the dossier and the unit in general, I could realize it is not easy to teach through films since not all films can help the teacher to achieve his/her teaching objective, as well as one film can be useful to achieve a number of objectives. Indeed, there exist more than one strategy to teach through films according to the objective: Film as a visual textbook, Film as a depicter of atmosphere, Film as an analogy, Film as a historiography, and Film as a springboard.

Finally (concerning to teaching through films), I could realize during the unit most of the strategies mentioned above were used in classes, not only by the teacher but also by the students as well. For example, in one class the teacher gave an "analogy" question to students about a specific film, and after discussing and answering the question, my classmates and me started to discuss about the film in "springboard" or  "atmosphere" terms despite we were not asked for the teacher to do it. This unit facilitated my learning in terms of vocabulary since in the discussions we had to speak using the specific vocabulary related to the topic.

In conclusion, we can take quite much advantage from films to do many things such as teach, learn, analyse, depict, and so on. It depends on what the teacher wants students to learn, and/or depends on us, what do we want to learn.

Link of the oral entry: I had some problems with the internet to upload it to youtube. On monday I will do it!

remake! youtube link!!

I share the link of our remake
 My group is composed by:
Natalia Moya; Massiel Moraga, Pia Montecinos and Sergio Loyola

http://www.youtube.com/v/8H6DybtB3-Q?autohide=1&version=3&autoplay=1

"The Schindler's List" Review

"The Schindler's List" review

Many people define the film "Schindler's list" as a film about the holocaust, some others mention the film is about World War II. However,  both events of the World History were portrayed by its director. Steven Spielbierg wanted to portray the reality of the world from his point of view. Notwithstanding, in "the Schlinder's List" Spielbierg tried to emphasize the importance Oskar Schlinder had during the Holocaust Germany during the Second World War.

Steven Spielbierg had a period of his life when he decided to emphasize the real history and portray it in the big screen. In 1993, the Schlinder's List was created and launched. This movie was produced by Steven Spielberg, Gerald R. Molen and Branko Lustig. Even though, The Schlinder's list was based on a real fact, it was based on a book as well. The name of the book has the same name of the movie but it was written by Thomas Keneally.

The main actors are Liam Neeson (Oskar Schlinder), Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes and Caroline Goodall. 

The Schlinder's list was distributed by "Universal pictures" in Washington on November 30th in  1993, and it has a length of 197 minutes.

It was said that the budget at the beginning of the movie was about US$22 million, while the earnings reached US$321.2 million.

The movie starts with the presentation of Oskar Schlinder as a powerful, fine, rich an elegant person, member of the Nazi party. He loved spending money in expensive drinks and opulent parties.

He decides to travel to Cracow in order to build up his adquisitive power by investing money in a factory. As he is looking for cheap manufacture, he starts to acquire Jewish people since their work is cheaper than others.

Then, Jewish people is taken away from their homes and jobs, and sent to the different camps in Germany. As a consequence, Oskar decides to purchase the staff he has. The movie continues portraying the reality of the different life conditions (imposed by Nazis) Jews had to deal with.

In a moment, Oskar realizes of the cruel practices Nazi soldiers carry out toward Jewish so he decided to create a list of people he needed for his factory. He starts to invest the whole fortune he desired at the beginning in order to save Jews lives.

Having reflected upon the film, we would like to point out that what really called our attention was how real were the scenes in terms of the emotion and feelings actors could convey. You can really feel the pain, the anguish and the desperation when you are watching the film. Moreover, we can highlight how can a person change his point of view and life objective since Oskar became in a solidary and well-heart person during his adventure as an entrepreneur and ambitious man. Finally, the film is so well made that you do not feel the length.

We thoroughly recommend this film since "The Schindler's list" contributes to the development of our cultural memory from a different point of view. More than Jewish reality in those years, the film aims to make auditors understand

By Pía Montecinos, Sergio Loyola.

Perfection

When I watched the video, I reflected upon the difference between success and happiness. The girl of the video successes in everything she did. However, she did not necessarily do what she really wanted. Therefore, she wasn’t happy.

Moreover, I was encouraged by the video to doubt about what perfection is since even though the girl was perfect at playing violin and studying, she didn’t enjoy it. Is that perfection? Is perfection similar to happiness, or success?

When reflecting, I could also take the video to my real life since I felt identified with the case the video portrays, not because I am perfect in what I do, but my parents wanted to impose my future.

I was always good at math when I was at school because my father taught me (He is a math teacher), I had good marks and I got my best PSU’s score in math. Therefore, my parents chose me a career to study at the university (Civil engineering) based on acquisitive power and math. Nevertheless, what my parents did not know was that I do not like mathematics, so I just studied one year in that university since I did not like the career, even though I could earn lots of money with that profession.

Finally I was allowed to choose my own future and decide what I really want to do. I don’t know how successful I am, but I’m sure I’m happy. 

Journal Entry Unit 1: Sustainability and Accountability.

Unfortunately, due to I was two weeks absent, I cannot share many learning experiences since it was quite difficult for me to catch up on the contents of the unit, specially the readings. However, I can share some reflections related to the discussions in classes among classmates and teachers.

Even though Sustainability and Accountability are unknown and abstract concepts among society, they are used every single day in plenty of aspects such as economy, environment, and education. In terms of education, accountability takes to sustainability. For example in a school there are determined systems of assessments to students and teachers. That kind of assessment and what is being assessed is an accountable system since it supports the working of the school, and is carried out by stakeholders who are responsible and are part of the working on teaching-assessment process. As a consequence there should be sustainability if the objective of this assessment system as well as the results remain in time, although the assessment system can suffer some changes depending on the results.

On the other hand, the abuse of data management and the desire to increasing it in order to be accountable can affect students motivation since qualitative variables are forgotten. There are schools where in determined grades (7th for example) there must be only a 5% of the class with special needs, while in 6th grade the 10% of the class have special needs. How are you going the half of special needs students to make them pass to 7th? What would happen to those students who would not be selected?

Even though in education we must be accountable, we must be inclusive as well. Teachers and stakeholders in general, have to be positively sustainable and accountable (at least in educational terms). Do not forget the focus which is students' learning rather than numbers.

Link video-journal: http://youtu.be/D9BAKsC3t28.

Journal 2: Human Rights

Honestly, I have never read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights before beginning this unit. However, it was very useful for me as a future teacher to know something about human rights. I realized that people in general are not aware of what human rights are and how the fulfillment of those rights affects the social development through making a peaceful and respectful society.

Some people reflect on human rights and realized they are violated every day. Besides, there is not justice for victims of those violations. Afterwards the people who reflects ask: What would happen if I violate human rights? What are Human Rights for? When I reflected upon human rights I wondered the same questions. However, I reflected deeper and I wondered: What would happen if we really fulfill Human Rights? How can achieve this fulfillment?

It is not enough to know the history and the articles of the U.D.H.R. It is also very important to put into practice the fulfillment of human rights in order to construct a peaceful society. How can we do that? Through education. Human rights must be part of students' education, not only school students, but also among military training institutions because every single human being must put human rights into practice in order to achieve a social development.

Now that I have a basic knowledge about human rights, I believe this is the beginning of my training in order to be a complete teacher. A teacher that not only teach english, but also educate and inculcate human rights to students. If all teachers were able to inculcate human rights to every single student, then could exist a society without impunity, injustice, resentments, feels of vengeance, etc.

Journal Unit 1 Language 7

Journal Unit 1

There are lots of factors which can affect teachers performance into a classroom, such as professionalism, educational policies, and metacognition. Many of the factors mentioned are ignored by some teachers, bringing negative consequences to their performance during the classes.

It is necessary for teachers to know how students can achieve a better (or the ideal) learning progress. It means, what teaching strategies should teachers apply into the class in order to get a successful students' learning process. Therefore, it is important for a teacher to manage some knowledge on metacognition.

Additionally students need also to know how do they learn better, they need to realize whether they are pragmatic, visual or audiovisual (etc.) learners so they can know how to study at home. Besides, in order to acquire metacognitive knowledge, students need to be honest with themselves because they must be able to recognize when they are studying in a way which do not make students learn as much as they want.

There are a lot of people who believe (not only teachers) that Chilean educational policies do not allow us to have the quality of education we all want. Much to the contrary, educational policies avoid the progress and improvement of our education.

Market expansion has been so high, and impressive around the world that it reached education just in order to undermine it, rather than improving education itself. There are many countries where education is not undermined by market expansion because it is forbidden. However, here in Chile things are done differently. Even though it is illegal by law to undermine education (or profit), the law is not being applied as we expect. People profit with schools as if they were companies and nobody do anything to avoid it.

If we want to enhance education, it would be completely necessary to delete the profit. It is impossible to have quality and profit at the same time, because when you profit with some product, you are only concerned of earning money rather than the quality of the product you sell.

If we need to change Chilean education. We must fulfill the law, take into account metacognition and finally to be good professionals. Teachers' professionalism is very important in education. It is not enough with having a teacher degree to be a good professional. There are some attitudes teachers need to have, attitudes that teachers do not necessarily learn at the university. How to inculcate values, vocation, how to promote metacognition in classes, how to deal correctly with specific situations at school, and event the contents we have seen in this unit are at least some attitudes that teachers must have (and know), which are not taught at the universities (at least in Chile).

As a final conclusion of this reflection, I believe around this semester we have seen crucial topics that a student like me should take into account if I want to be a successful teacher in the future. These are concepts that every student of pedagogy should learn at the university, and put into practice in our future jobs as teachers.

Sharing my activity

Here I share the link of my TED activity which can be useful for students who are in primary grades in our ELAB schools.






http://ed.ted.com/on/yvy9glHL

About Last Year...

I believe that my last year was not good in terms of language. I think I am in a stage of fossilization because I feel that I haven't developed any of the four language skills between the beginning of last year and today, and I really worried about it. But, in spite of that complication, I learned an interesting knowledge - that I will write below - which will be quiet helpful for my job as a teacher.

It is not simple to deal with an asperger student in class because they are different to us. Their IQ is more advanced than usual, and their behavior is quiet special, and they pay attention differently than us. For example, If I see an object, I will wonder what is that object for, while an Asperger will pay attention on the shape or the color of the object, and even if you explain to an Asperger what is the object for, he/she will still be thinking about other aspects rather than paying attention to the explanation. Therefore, It is very necessary to have the knowledge about the characteristics of an Asperger student in order to know how to deal with them and therefore how to teach them. I can conclude about this learning that Special Needs was the most fruitful unit I have ever had in language class, because it really enriches myself as a teacher. That unit was very helpful to increase my capacity of classroom management.

Another fact which helped me to work on my pronunciation and fluency was to make video-journals. It was so shocking to watch myself speaking english for the first time, but at the same time it was useful to realize where are my mistakes and also that I have to work on my articulation a lot. For me it is a good idea to make video-journals on this semester because I can take advantage from them by comparing my videos and see whether I am improving or not.

  

Finally, rather than a learning, I had an experience on my ELAB that encouraged me to be creative. I attended to a school where english classes were always monotonous and boring. The 90% of the classes I watched were very structured, always explaining english rule by rule. It is difficult to invent innovative ways to give classes or make activities. It is difficult for me, to escape from the typical school routine where you were immersed for many years (I say it because when I was at school, the way of teaching that I received was similar than my ELAB school give). Starting from this experience is that I wondered How to be creative? That experience was a sort of challenge for me to develop my capacity to be creative, to increase my capacity to plan interesting classes with engaging and fruitful activities in order to get my students comfortable in my classes. That is my main concern, to reach the skills and the capacity to be an innovative teacher with the purpose of making my students say they like english.