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?

Hi, ladies! :)

On the 1st of September some of you (us :)) already started new school year, so ... I wish you ALL a great and challengefull year :))

Kisses, Vanja

Things that have happened since our course together

Hi Everybody,
The ten days we spent together in Rutherford Extension 11 seems a long time ago. I know it isn't but after your course I got drafted from evening programme work into taking over the group of a colleague who did not have the right things to give her group.
I felt like a cuckoo having to do this.......and I felt some resentment at a group who had unseated their trainer. ( We have all had difficult classes...or at least classes that seemed to us difficult)
I took me about three days to fully shed this feeling of resentment towards the participants, though at the same time understanding and sympathising with their deep discontent.

Then came the 35 Anniversary Conf........My job was to give the final plenary somehow drawing of the previous four plenaries. Stimulating but risky work.
The Conference was really extrordinarily harmonious and the level of animation was very high.
I went to a brilliant workshop on primary story-telling , given by Eleanor Watts. Wow!

Then a week's semi-holiday: ;local tourism in the early morning and work through the rest of the day.

On Friday I am off to Wales for a five day cottage holiday....and then a conf in Czech Republic.

Some of you must be on the cusp of the new academic year in all the various places where you teach. The geographical spread from Trinidad to Slovenia and from Azerbaijan to Poland. I look forward to hearing how this real beginning of the course happens. I guess your thoughts on this may be interesting to all the blog readers.

I wonder how many people have been in touch with Hanna K about writing something for HLT?
Don't forget.......

Good night,

Mario

Do schools kill creativity?

If you haven't seen this video, whenever you can spare 20 minutes, you can't miss it!

It's hilarious, very interesting, and you may like to listen to this case of a highly kinesthetic girl at school Gillian Lynne, a well-known multimilionare coreographer (Cats, Phantom of the Opera), who was diagnosed a learning disorder at school.

sonnet Shakespeare in logical mathematical form

Dear all,

This is a very funny translation of a Shakespeare sonnet into logical mathematical graphics. My son found it somewhere on the internet. In case you can't read it in my message, use this link:
http://i26.tinypic.com/6edipz.jpg

I was in France for a week with one of my sons, and feel well-relaxed; and still 3 more weeks of holydays!! Happy to be a teacher... On the other hand, I am thinking about the many of us who still have to wait and see whether they will have a job and if so, which and where! I sincerely hope Vanja, Paula, Helena (?) will be offered interesting posts!
All the best to you all, enjoy your holydays!
ELsbeth

Escola da Ponte

Dear all,

Here's some information about "Escola da Ponte", a portuguese state school with an innovative project. This information was taken from their website.

"The students aren't distributed by school years, or by classes. The students that enter the first cycle in "Escola da Ponte" start by sharing a space that is called "Initialisation". In this space the kids learn the bases of reading and writing on a natural method approach.

Here they also learn to work autonomously in diverse areas of the curriculum, working in group and being people... In the "Initialisation" the children elaborate, together with a teacher, a fortnightly plan that is "negotiated " amongst them all.

When they are able to read and write with some corrections, solve some elementary calculations, help and be helped by the others, they move on the " transaction " space, which is characterised by group work and research. The children help to elaborate their individual plan.

When they are able to work in group, elaborate research work, do auto-planning and auto-evaluations, as well as dominate a determined number of goals in the different curriculum areas, they are able to autonomously manage their learning time and space in what is called " working in freedom and in great level", in total autonomy.

In the beginning of each fortnight they elaborate their own working plan, negotiate amongst themselves and the teachers. They elaborate individual plans everyday, not forgetting the school, the groups and their own interests. At the end of every fortnight they proceed in auto-evaluating their plan according to the development of the project."

For more information about this school, click here to visit their website or email me and I'll send you more info.

Love,

Lena.

P.S.- Did everybody get the letters we wrote each other? I got mine... thanks, Lisa!

A bit of visual intelligence

Hi!
Hope you are all safe and sound after your journeys back home!
For those already feeling a bit nostalgic about our summer course like myself, I leave you a Portuguese song by the author Rodrigo Leão just perfect for that mood. It's called "Voltar" (Coming Back). Hope you enjoy it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6artkfX54s

Paula Serra

Good news for all of us from the EC

The European Commission

The European Commission has announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU, rather than German, which was the other contender. Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had room for improvement and has therefore accepted a five-year phasing in of "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make sivil servants jump for joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of the "k", Which should klear up some konfusion and allow one key less on keyboards.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f", making words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e" is disgrasful.

By the fourth yer, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters. After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and everivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer. ZE DREM VIL FINALI COM TRU!

Herr Schmidt

Welcome, ladies!

Welcome to Super Mario's Girls, the blog where Mario's chatty girls can keep on chatting about everything, keeping the Pilgrims spirit alive.

I hope Annette and Elsbeth keep on telling us about their long walks.

Ingrid, when your dog starts destroying your house, please let us know.

Valerie, send us some tropical sunshine to brighten our winter rainy days, ok?

Giulia, be careful with those Italian pandas of yours.

Heidi, do you need a paper cup for the way?

Sonia, could you do something about those chirimiris? Maybe Imma could help you with that and then Paula wouldn't have to worry about her hair...

Irada, I hope you have a safe journey back to your şæ...şæ... şæhær... hær... hær...

Belén, the one who lives at high altitude, when you go back to your city don't forget these lowlanders.

Lisa, I hope we get another chance to have a chicken something, because it sure looked good! Maybe this time Angie and Joanna won't get lost on the way...

By the way, Vanja, you managed not to get lost in translation... kudos to you!

Mario, thank you for sharing your knowledge and wisdom with us and for making our group the most inter-personal on campus!

P.S. Laura, please try not to break any computer parts with all your kinaesthetic motion, ok?