UK again!

Dear everybody,

I'll be on a teacher's training in Cambridge from the 31st of July to the 13th of August. In case you are also in the UK at that time I'd be happy to meet up with you. I've also changed my e-mail address to heidi.eiwegger@gmx.at - had a few problems with an invisible force sending e-mails from my account....anyway: please e-mail me in case you are around - would be great to catch up again!

x x
Heidi

Three Kings

Tonight is a very special night, all the boys and girls are going to be visited by the three holy/magic kings. One has white hair and bear and his name is "Melcior" the other red hair and beard whose name is "Gaspar" and the last one is black - my favourite one- named Balthasar. The leave presents to those one one have been good if you are not lucky or your behavior has not been quite fair you will be left a piece of coal. The grown up may wish whatever they like and I wish for all my friends three things: health without it we are nothing, love with it we can jump over all the barrier and a bit of money to spend with good friends!!

wishes :)

I wish all MERRY CHRISTMAS and a wonderfull with lots of positive thoughts and actions year 2010 ... and a lot of ... LOVE :)

Hugs,
Vanja

Six things about multiple intelligences that you might not know

I'm linking here a post I've just read in Lindsay Clandfiel's blog "Six Things", which you may probably like to read to see what is being said at the moment about MI theory: Six things about multiple intelligences that you might not know.

There are hundreds of comments to this post, and besides all the talk about how scientific the MI theory might be, I totally agree with what the comment I copy-paste here says about Mario Rinvolucri:

On October 16, 2009 at 11:50 am Seth Dickens Said:

I’ll agree that MI is a bit cranky, I all agree that cisethenkythingagamajig or whatever it is sounds ominous, but I wholeheartedly disagree that (Mario) Rinvolucri should be walked away from.

As a techie teacher many might (falsely) say that I ignore humanistic teaching, Dogme dogma etc, but I personally use, have used and will continue to use some of the excellent lesson ideas, games, warmers, fillers and speaking activities I have learnt from Mario’s books and seminars.

Based in science they may not be, but based on sound teaching experience.. and more importantly a guaranteed way to get a lesson off to a flying start, pass on to a fying second task etc they certainly are!

I’ll type to the death of my fingertips to save the honour of our bearded brother.

Seth

Take care all of you, my dearest colleagues!! Many hugs and kisses from Barcelona!

Steve Jobs

My dearest Canterbury colleagues! How are you all doing?

This week I saw in class with my 16-17 year-olds Steve Jobs' well-known speech at Stanford University. Have you ever used it in class with your students? I recommend you to do so. It is always so inspiring!
Here is the link to the post in our class blog: 1st of Batxillerat class blog.

Do you know any other cool videos to use in class?

keep cool :) and happy teaching!

MI Update

Dear Canterburians,

How're you doing? Hope everything's ok with you. The blog has been slow on posts, so my guess is that you're probably just as busy as I am: life gets in the way of our blogging, right? Anyway, I'm writing today because, honestly, I needed a break from work. And what better way to do it than to chat with you for a while?

So, here's my MI update: I've been trying some of the new things Mario taught us, and it's been

great! Students seem to really enjoy it and I feel very good about it. Obviously, I chose activities

which suit my personality and the groups I'm working with...

#1

One MI activity I've tried was the one on page 67 of Mario's wonderful book. Before working a text from the coursebook, I chose some sentences and asked the students to put them into categories created by them. Most categories were based on vocabulary (these sentences have the word "John"; these start with the word "She", and so on), but one student surprised me and created the category "these sentences rhyme". They were not used to this kind of exercise, so it was exciting to try to find a pattern in the chaos.

#2

Remember when we had to hand words to eachother? My 9th graders (about 15 years old) were having a hard time saying the words "through" and "choir". Out of the blue, I had a flashback and remembered this activity, so I just told them to stand in

a circle. Because they were not used to their previous English teachers asking them such a thing (and also because it happened very suddenly), they just kept staring at me with that "is-she-serious?" look on their faces... Then I asked them to imagine the word was an object and to hand it round the circle, making it go back when they didn't say it right. I'm now proud to announce that ALL of my students can correctly say those words! Then I asked them to each choose a word they thought was difficult to pronounce and did the same with the words they selected.

(by the way, their drama teacher loved this and started using the same exercise in his classes...)

#3

In order to ellicit vocabulary from a text, I adapted the "Interactive Loops for Groups" (page 94). On the cards I wrote selected "difficult" words and their definitions. This way, each student had a card with one word and one definition. For instance, when a student called out the word "Feed", they all had to check their cards for its definition ("to give food to"). Because they didn't know some of the words, they sometimes called out wrong meanings, so I didn't let them continue until they got it right. Then, they could take notes on the meaning of the word. This way, reading the text became much easier...

(I think I'll try this with the beginner group, only with the definitions in L1)

#4

With an upper-intermediate adult group I tried, on the first lesson, what I now call the "question-

bombing activity". We did it in Canterbury, when we had some time to ask as many questions as

we could think of, and then the other person had the same ammount of time to answer them all. It was really funny, because they asked the most unlikely questions! When we finished the exercise, I asked them their opinion about the activity and guess what they said...? They loved it! They told me it had given them the opportunity to get to know eachother, and one lady told me she appreciated the fact that she only answered the questions later because this way she "conveniently forgot" some questions the other student had asked and she didn't want to answer!

#5

I also asked that group to write letters to their own selves by the end of the course. I assured them I

wouldn't read them, and the envelopes were sealed, but I don't think they believed it. They were very worried about making any mistakes and kept asking me to check their letters to see if it was ok... I wasn't expecting this and for a while didn't know if I should check it and read parts of their letters or if I should tell them to just keep on writing. Because they were having a hard time writing without any feedback and seemed to be stuck with their texts, I ended up reading parts of their letters, correcting some of their mistakes. What would you do in this situation?

#6

Back to my 9th graders: we were studying the Simple Past vs Past Continuous, so I decided to write them a letter about something that had happened to me earlier that week (I met an old friend of mine. I'll post the letter in the "comments" section). This was really a surprise for them and for me, because I wasn't expecting their enthusiasm over a simple letter. First they didn't believe that the situation I was talking about was really true (they're not used to their teachers sharing personal information with them...). They got the chance to ask me questions about it and I asked for their advice. They felt so important because I was asking for their opinion that they were really talking and discussing ideas in english, telling me about similar situations they had gone through. Then, when they were in the right mood, we gradually moved on to the grammar.

Have you also been trying the MI activities we learnt? Which ones? Tell us all about it...

Inspiration

Here is some inspiration for the beginning of the school year. These are some of my favourite quotes on education:

"If the child is not learning the way you're teaching, then you must teach the way the child learns."

Rita Dunn

"We cannot teach another person directly. We can only facilitate his/her learning."

Carl Rogers

"I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think."

Socrates

"The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn."

Marcus Tullius Cicero

"He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who doesn't ask a question remains a fool forever."

Chinese proverb

"The basic idea behind teaching is to teach people what they need to know."

Carl Rogers

"Students don't care how much you know until they know how much you care."

Unknown

"Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand."

Chinese proverb

"A teacher is someone who makes himself progressively unnecessary."

Thomas Carruthers

These are some things I try to keep in mind. Do you agree with these sentences? Which is your favourite? Do you have any quotes to inspire you?