Margarita
Martínez Rangel
Methodology
“If
you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and
don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless
immensity of the sea” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Pedagogy is a
set of approaches that teachers put into practice when they teach and it is
based on objectives, goals and planning. Also, we can say that culture is a
collection of teachers’ beliefs to enhance students’ learning through
motivation, exposition, direction of activities and feedback. Moreover, pedagogy
is about education so, the main actors for success on the teaching – learning
process are teachers. Teachers should make a self - reflection in order to
monitor their weaknesses and strengths and as a result, achieve better outcomes
from their practice; furthermore, teachers are responsible for management and
monitoring students’ learning.
This week, we have used instructional strategies that
have helped me in many important aspects, such as re assess my pedagogical
beliefs and my theories, approaches and techniques I have applied during my
teaching practice in my context. For instance, I would reflect I have worked
with Bloom’s Taxonomy before but, the particular style we reviewed this week aided
me to be more specific when setting the objectives and to adapt goals into my
students’ needs and background in order to they can construct language
throughout prior knowledge plus the guide and tools I give them to build this
language and to produce it.
Revised version of Bloom’s
Taxonomy
Similarly, we
analyzed in class Vygotsky and Piagets’ theories making comparisons and sharing
points of view among peers. This deep analysis made me ponder some aspects
about my own teaching strategies when planning and designing classes for my
students. For example, we as teachers can implement both theories to our
planning on the condition that we adapt these theories to our students’
background and need; just in this way we can reach our goals. Some of my groups
may being on the side of Piaget’s theory, which claims that learners depend on
their current stage of cognitive development. So they cannot deal with
operations or knowledge they have not already mastered; Piaget´s idea is mainly
about that learning cannot be accelerated. Reflecting on this assumption, I
have found that few of my students fit into it since they want to go at their
own pace and they do not want to be rush in order to learn something; these
students take more time to digest information.
Then, about Vygotsky’s
theory I have performed an intense insight exploration where according to the
hypothesis that children learn best in a social context through scaffolding; therefore,
teachers need to reduce their control over the learning when the child is being
successful or increase control when the errors are made; peer tutoring can
occur, where advanced students help and teach less advanced learners. Also,
collaboration happens between them which may probably result in a successful
outcome. Through this reflection I have made, I can identify exactly which
groups of students belong to Vygotsky’s theory and this will help me to select
appropriately activities for students to develop during class time, also it
will make easier that learners assist each other amongst the learning process.
Here we can see an accurate
summary of main differences of these theories.
Retrieved
on July 31st from
On the other
hand, we explored the Prism Model which is about the development of the second
language around four major components: academic, socio cultural, linguistic and
cognitive. Each of these aspects create solid foundations on the learners’
learning process, which lead them to metacognition and into a successful
production of the language. This model combined with Mexican’s model about competencies
will help me to link the dimensions of the Prism Model and the competencies to
guide my students to a real development on the four skills: reading, writing,
listening and speaking. According to http://www.thomasandcollier.com/assets/predicting-l2-academic-success.pdf
all these dimensions of the Prism Model are interdependent, so we need to work
every dimension to make it a successful model into the classroom. It is another
similarity with the Mexican Educational System, in which every competence needs
to be linked in order to function correctly and achieve a meaningful
understanding to learners.
In conclusion, often teachers are
pushed, into ‘schooling’ – trying to produce learning into people according to
some plan often set down by others. Paulo Freire (1972) famously called this
‘banking’ – making deposits of knowledge. It can quickly originate into
treating learners like objects. In contrast, to call ourselves ‘educators’ we
need to look to acting with people rather on them. So, educators
should combine and make a good, productive balance of theories which they can
apply into their teaching practice. My pedagogy has been always humanistic, and
with these past two weeks I have reassured my philosophy and see the human
before the learner. As much as I can get to know about my students, the more we
will succeed into a meaningful teaching – learning process.
Thomas and Collier (1997), proposed the Prism
Model of Language Acquisition for School. This model includes first and second
language cognitive development, academic development, language development as
well as social and cultural processes.
The challenge that I will
face is the lack of time to make my lesson plans according to this new point of
view of the theories we have covered during classes. Also, I will need time to
apply the different techniques during my practice. Moreover, the lack of
motivation in my learners, due to the low social level and background of my
learners which is that they think studying a second language is not necessary. All
of the challenges I see them as dares and I feel able to face them and overcome
through them successfully.
References.
CIMA notes
