Hello again! I’m Clara and this week I have
been the journalist of KC & KO. First of all, I would like to point out
that, at the beginning, I thought that I wouldn’t like this role because it is
boring and heavy, but then I realized that this role is very important since
you register what every member of the group has done and you notice the rate
that follows the group and if it progress with the work or not.
As always, we had to get together in two days
inasmuch our schedules are not compatible and, furthermore, we make the most of
the time if we work in separated days.
On Monday 16th, we listened to the
teacher’s explanation about the new activity called “Changes in The Spanish
Educational System Overview: The game”, where we have to compare some topics of
the Lomce and the Loe, more specifically, we have to do two conceptual maps of “An
Overview of Educational System” and “Organisational Variations and Alternative
Structures in Primary Education”. Later, we decided how we would gather together
in order to do this taskdue to the fact that, as always, we are not able to
meet all together in the same day. After that, we talked about what program we
should utilize to do the conceptual maps. As we were indecisive in this issue
and we are clueless about these types of programs, we asked to another group to
know what program they would employ and we decided to utilize the same program
(“Cmaptools”) as, at first sight, it doesn’t seem very complicated.
On Tuesday 17th, Marina, Marta and
Paula gathered together at the university in the afternoon and they started the
task. They three were in charge of doing the conceptual map of the topic number
one, “An Overview of Educational System”. Once they have read the web pages
that they had to read so as to do the task correctly, they commenced to draw a
schema of what they had understood in order to help them to do the conceptual map.
Later, they started to explore the program that we used to create the conceptual
map. As I have mentioned before, we don’t manage very well these types of
programs, so the fact of learning to use the program took them more time than they
had expected. But, once they knew how to utilize it, they began to do the conceptual
map, which wasn’t a quickly task. As we wanted that the conceptual map was in
the best possible way, they spent the whole afternoon in this task, but, even
so, they couldn’t finish the conceptual map and Marta ended it at her home.
On Wednesday 18th, Marina, Ángela,
Elena, Holly, Noelia and me met so as to do the other part of the task, that
is, the topic number four, “Organisational Variations and Alternative Structures
in Primary Education”. Nevertheless, before we started with the task, we talked
about one problem that we had the previous week with one member. We came to
terms and all was solved. As far as I am concerned, it is very important that
the groups talk between them if they have any type of problem and share the
different points of view so that they come to terms, since if not, this will create bad vibes between us and the
task won’t be carried out in a proper way. Furthermore, we are classmates and
we are going to spend four years of our lives together so, as the adults that
we are, we have to try to solve our problems and try to keep a good
environment. Thus, once all was spoken, we began to work. We sat in pairs and
each pair read one piece of information, as our facilitator told us to do. Once
we finished reading it, we moved on to do schemas of what we have understood.
Next, we started doing the conceptual map and it took us less than the other
group, as we were more people. Moreover, as Marina was in the previous meeting,
she showed us how to use the program and how we had to do the task; however, we
didn’t finish it either and Marina made herself available to finish the
conceptual map at her home.
Part of the group working on Wednesday 18th
Finally, on Monday 23th, we had to mix with the
group of “Busy bees” and “Power Teachers”. We divided our groups into two
parts. On the one hand, one part of our group (visitors) went with the group of
“Power Teachers” (the natives) and the star of the group of “Busy bees” (alien).
On the other hand, the other part of our group (visitors) went with the group
of “Busy Bees” (natives) and the star of the “Power Teachers” (alien). The first mentioned group had to work on the
topic number four and, on the contrary, the second group had to work on the
topic number one.
In the first part of the lesson, firstly, we
all had to come to terms according to the criteria that we were going to use in
order to judge the conceptual maps. This didn’t take us too much time, as the
three groups agreed quickly with the criteria that we had to follow. Later, we
moved on to appraise the conceptual maps.
Our conceptual map of the first topic
On the one hand, in the first group, the “Power
teachers” had to evaluate our conceptual map (with the help of the star Ana
Lopez). In addition, once they finished the evaluation, they had to fill in a
survey in order to observe if the conceptual map follow some criteria, like if
it is legible, their sizes and their contents, among others. Meanwhile, our
group had to judge the conceptual maps of “Power teachers” (with the help of
the star Ana Lopez) and “Busy Bees” in that topic and then fill in the same
survey.
On the other hand, “Busy bees” had to evaluate
our conceptual map about the topic one (with the help of the star Rebeca) and
also the conceptual map of the “Power teachers” and then they filled in the
surveys. Meanwhile, we had to appraise the conceptual map of “Busy bees” group (with
the help of the star Rebeca) and, after that, we had to fill in the survey too.
Our group evaluating Busy Bees's conceptual map
"Busy Bees" judging Power teacher's conceptual map
When we finished with this, the three groups talked
about our mistakes in the conceptual maps and the mark that we had put down.
In the second part of the lesson, we had to
choose one of the three conceptual maps of each topic (the one that we thought
that was the best one) and add some aspects in order to be in the most complete
possible way. The first group chose the conceptual map of “Busy bees” and they
compared with the others two in order to complete it, as well as the group two
did, but this group chose the conceptual map of “Power Teachers”.
The second group comparing their conceptual maps
The first group contrasting their conceptual maps
Now, it’s
time to do a trip through two blogs:
Firstly, I think that it is a good idea that
you visit the Platypus blog. I really like this blog because every week the
journalist uploads a video that includes photos and little pieces of videos
where we can see how they work and it is a very dynamic summary. Besides, I
think that this group every week make an effort so as to try to improve and
make the things better.
Lastly, I would like to recommend you to visit
this blog called “Teaching English in Primary School”, which is composed by
several teacher’s associations. I really like this blog owing to the fact that it
gives you many resources such as dictionaries or games that you can use in your
class so that the children learn in a funny way and they would improve their English
faster than if they learn with other methods, so, if I were an English teacher,
I would definitely include some of the many options that you find in this blog.
In a
nutshell, the role of the journalist is vital inasmuch it is like a mirror of
all the work of the group during an entire week and, as it gives the chance of
doing an analysis of what we have made and the decisions that we have taken, it
promotes the improvement of the group, because you can observe in what you have
failed and change it.
No comments:
Post a Comment