Bilingual...again

Just saw an article about a dual immersion school in California (http://lagunaniguel.patch.com/articles/popular-classes-have-students-dreaming-in-new-languages). I feel very hopeful that bilingual education is being favored so strongly in this article. I am really hoping it will be the way education goes in the future

Halfway through

So I have been in the Masters program since September! That means I am already halfway through. I have learned and accomplished a lot (I think)

I have

• figured out I don´t really want to teach preschool ... ever!
• planned my first CLIL unit from start to finish (on Alexander the Great).
• begun planning an entire cirriculumn for creating a yearbook (and it uses Task Based Learning...YAY!).
• planned an entire didactic unit for a preschool level class on the house.
• discovered that all schools are chaos...really...ALL of them!
• had to remember how to teach without technology (oh how I miss Korea somedays).
• learned the importance of differentiating in the classroom.
• reviewed a lot of methodology (and even picked up some new stuff) koosh ball anyone?
• realized I have no problem being the "mean" teacher (and perhaps I should try to be the "nice" teacher someday...or find a balance).
• gotten to delve into linguistics about a Spanish creole language (Papiamento) and present on it in Spanish.
• learned all kinds of fun linguistics terms about Spanish (ceceo, voseo, seseo, leismo, sustrado) wohoo!
• created writing exercises (based on the theme of Spring) for all levels of language (from A1-C2).
• fallen in love with Prezi (and gotten pretty good at it!).
• improved my Spanish (though some of it is random .. like inframundo means underworld)
• finally started uploading things to eslprintables (more to come)

I hope the next half of the program teaches me even more as well as letting me know more about me and grow as a teacher.

Oh...and moved in with the loveliest ladies

Amazing roomies! All American girls also studying for their Masters

Children's Literature

So in Methodology we were discussing different ways to teach using Children's Literature. My friend Danesha and I got together and made up a lesson for Hansel and Gretel. In this case we taught emotions and made a brief version of the story

So this is the lesson plan:


And this is the script for the role play:

CLIL and Teaching Methodolgy

The talented and smart Jennifer Schmidt

My other first class was led by Jennifer Schmidt. She got her Masters in TESOL and Linguistics and works as an English Professor in a business school. Our classes were mainly spent going over the different methodologies used to teach and trying to focus on teaching English through teaching another subject matter (using math for example to teach plural nouns)

For our final project we had to create a CLIL lesson plan using a seventh grade standard (from the LOE again) to teach English. In my case I taught about Alexander the Great to teach reported speech, and how to summarize. Throughout the lesson there would also be a review of past tenses. This is the first lesson (includes activating the schemata and such).



This is the teacher's notes, as Jennifer explained its like a toolbox it doesn't need to be in any order, it is where we put all the information we COULD use and then we use them when creating the daily lesson plans.


Overall it was nice introduction to the world of CLIL

House and Home

One of my courses was Biliteracy and Curricular Design it is designed to "include an analysis of biliteracy as well as its application to curriculum design in bilingual and multicultural schools." Our teacher Amparo-Abengozar is a coordinator of the bilingual project in Madrid as well as an English teacher in the program itself. She is also an English Language Assistant trainer for the Bilingual Project in the Community of Madrid State schools AND the BEDA program (Bilingual English Development & Assessment).

Through the course she focused on having us look over the different types of bilingual programs, the bilingual program in Spain and most importantly how to plan a didactic unit that connects the Ley Orgánica de Educación (LOE) which creates the standards all classes need to follow.

In the end I created a didactic unit on the house and home (focusing on prepositions) for infantil classes.

House and Home on Prezi