To asses or not to assess? The Power of Continuous Assessment

Here's the presentation I used for my talk at Mextesol - Capitulo Nuevo Leon on Saturday, October 9th.

Here's also my suggested rubrics for the homework I gave people, now they can compare what they're produced with what I am suggesting as answers.

Click here to view the presentation

                                      Click here view the Suggested Rubrics

The life of a teacher of English!

 Good afternoon mates,

I know it's been a long time since I last posted something here but these past 2 years have been crazy, Covid-19 came to stay and it has literally changed the way we live and work.

This time I want to talk to you about the life of teachers of English. Not about any teacher, I want to talk to you about the life of those teachers who travel the world for work. Teachers like me, for example. As you know I am Peruvian, I did my CELTA in Argentina and ended up working in Mexico, I am one of those many teachers who leave their home and travel trying to find a place to live and work. These are the teachers I want to talk to you about.

I have been a teacher for more than 22 years and in all this time I have worked with people from all over the world. Teachers from all the countries in the world who have come and gone, teachers who were hired for a year and then left after their contracts were finished. People who became teachers because that gave them a chance to travel the world and get to know people from different cultures.

For the last 5 years that I have been living and working in Monterrey, I was hired and brought to Mexico by International House Monterrey. I have met teachers who were also hired and brought to Mexico by the school, and then after a year contract most of these teachers just moved to a different country to go on with their lives. This is something that this just gives you, the possibility to travel all over the place and work in different cities. I don't think these is  another job that also gives you that option and that's the beauty of this, being able to travel the world and having the option of finding work whenever you go.

In this photograph you can see Ingrid (from Phillipines) who's now in England. You can also see Warren (from South Africa) and he's now in Korea. Gaby on the right who's from Monterrey and she's still here.

Some of the people in this photo are no longer living in Monterrey anymore. Joseph (from England) went to Canada, Alex (from Italy) and Thomas (from England) went to England. Anna (from Poland) is still living in Monterrey but no longer works for Intenational House.

TJ (from the USA) is still in Monterrey, Penny (from USA) is also here. Salvador and Paola are both from Mexico and they are also here.

In this photograph, all the teachers left Monterrey. Joel (from USA) is living in Turney right now and David and Stephen (both from England) went back to their country.

In this photo you can see TJ (from USA), Jonathan (from Jamaica) and Joel (from USA). This was the farewell dinner we had for Joel before he took off to Turkey. Jonathan is still living in Monterrey but he does not work for IH anymore.

These are just a few examples of the people I have met and are longer here in Monterrey. They finished their contract and left to live and work somewhere else. There are a lot more teachers I have worked with and are now in a different country. This is a characteristic of our type of job, one day you're here and the next you're somewhere else.

I do hope our paths meet again sometime in our lives and we can enjoy a couple of beers and talk about our adventures. Until then, take good care of yourselves and enjoy the trip.

Speaking activities for online lessons!

 Hello everybody,

Since all of our lessons were moved to the online platform, we have been struggling about moving our activities to the online environment too. Making our students speak was already a difficult task on our face-to-face classes and they have become even more difficult now that we don't have that contact with students to used to have.

I was thinking about what we could do to make our students speak and promote speaking activities in class, and I came up with the idea od sharing my favourite activities with everybody in the teaching community. I have been lucky enough to have met people in my life that were kind enough to teach me lots of things and I'd like to return the favour by teaching others what I have learned in these 21 years of my teaching life.

I created this document with some of my all-time favourite speaking activities we could use in class, they have been adapted and tested to work with online lessons. And I decided to share this with you because that's what members of a community do, help others become better.

Every piece of feedback is appreciated, if you try any of these activities I'd like to know how they work out and if you have any problem or maybe any suggestion to improve the activity.

 

You can download the material here!

I hope you enjoy the material and put the activities in use.

Greetings!

I´m back

 Hello everybody,

I know this is a very young blog and I did not have many followers, but I had some and those people we asking me where I was and when I would return to keep on writing. I have been away a long time already (I think more than a year) and on top of that, 2020 was not very gentle to us, it actually was a very tough year... maybe the toughest one we have ever experienced in our short lives.

It is time to come back to writing and blogging, I was expecting this to be a place where I would share experiences and exchange ideas and techniques with other people, or at least to share my knowdledge and everything I learn with you, this time I will work towards that goal.

Thank you for always asking me to come back, thank you for always asking me to write again. I hope don't disappoint you this time and I stick around for a long time.

Thank you and see you in my next post.

Erick Maguiño Matusaki

The importance of getting a teaching certification!

Are you a teacher? How can you prove that? Just because you can speak English, do you think that makes you a teacher? Do you think that is enough to start teaching English?

You've studied to be a teacher? You went to university and that's how you became a teacher? That's great... is your degree worth outside your country? Can you teach English legally outside your country?

Maybe the answer to all these questions is YES, maybe some are YES and some others are NO. Even worse, maybe the answer to all these questions is NO.

How do we become a teacher these days? What does it take to call ourselves teachers of English? Perhaps, schools in our countries do not require much to hire teachers or maybe we just need to "know somebody" and that's how we get hired.

The truth is that there are many places nowadays that offer TEFL courses and that's how there are many teachers everyday. You can even take those courses online and get your certification sent to you by a PDF document. The question is, who is certifying those certificates? What kind of back-up do these schools have? What kind of support are students getting on their way to become teachers?

There are many questions in need for many answers and sometimes we cannot get all the answers we need because these schools just don't have these answers. That's when you wonder if you should really spend your money on certain places (schools) and time on certain courses (TEFL) and if they are really worth all the trouble we are getting ourselves into.

If you want to travel the world and teach Englisg, there are certain things you need to get before thinking about leaving your country. For example, what kind of certifications are recorgnized worldwide and how you can get them.

There are two basic certifications you need to get if you want to start travelling and teaching English. The first on is called CELTA (Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) offered by the University of Canbridge. This is the most widely recognized certification for English teachers and the one that can really open the doors to travelling the world. 

Why? 

Quite simple, most of the schools overseas ask for it and not just because it's a Cambridge certification but also because it offers 120 hours and you have to complete 8 teaching practices and write 4 assignments which make the course quite complete. The same way, you will interact with real students so even if you do not have teaching experience you will be thrown do the deep-end and work with learners on your preparation to your own classrooms.

The second certification you can get in Trinity CertTESOL. Offered by the University of Trinity,

the Trinity Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (CertTESOL) is a certificate designed for those with little or no experience of teaching English, and for those with experience who require an internationally recognised initial teacher education qualification. It equips candidates with the basic skills and knowledge needed to take up their first post as an ESOL teacher. It gives an introduction to the theory and practice of English teaching and an insight into the challenges facing the learner and the role of the teacher. The CertTESOL is rated at Level 5 on Ofqual’s Regulated Qualifications Framework, a comparable level to the second year of an undergraduate degree, and comprises a minimum of 130 hours, with an expected minimum of 70 hours further study required (Total Qualification Time: 200 hours).

These 2 are the most important initial teaching qualifications you can get and that are recognised worldwide.

You can also take the TKT (Teacher Knowledge Test). TKT is a series of modular teaching qualifications which test your knowledge in specific areas of English language teaching. It will help you to build your confidence, and is a cost-effective way to get an internationally recognised qualification. Whether you are a new teacher or have years of experience, TKT is ideal for people who need to prove their teaching knowledge with a globally recognised certificate. You can take as many modules as you want, over any time period. You receive a Cambridge English certificate for each module you complete.

And if you are an experienced teacher and want to develop further into teaching and possibly teacher training, then DELTA is something you should look ate carefully.

DELTA is an advanced blend of theory and practice that provides professional development for teachers with at least one year’s experience. It gives you skills and techniques that will help you throughout your career.

Who is DELTA for?

• English language teachers who have been teaching for at least one year
• English language teachers who want to progress into more senior roles such as head of English and teacher training
• Experienced teachers who want to extend their expertise in a specialist area
• First-language English speakers and non-first language speakers who have a CEFR Level of high C1 or above.

DELTA is suitable for teaching any age group, from young learners to adults.

Closure Activity for Assessment - Demonstration

Here's an example of a Closure Activity for Assesment I had a couple of years ago. The activity is called Triangle - Square - Circle and it's used for gathering information at the end of a course (in this case I had it at the end of a three-day course on TKT - Module 2)

The aim of the activity is to assess the learners' learning and see three main areas (as you will see in the video) and I will also show the information I gathered at the end.

After the activity I gathered the following information:

  

As you can see, the information gathered showed me what the learners knew and confirmed as a result of class, what they learned and what is still confusing them after the three-day course. If I were to teach them again, I would have enough information to cover the last chart and make the lessons more effective.

Triangle - Square - Circle is a good activity if you want to check how effective your class was and what areas you need to spend more time on the following lesson.

I hope this helps you and you use it some time in class.

Thank you for stopping by and reading this.

Happy teaching!



Erick Maguiño Matusaki

Closure Activities!

Do you want your students to attach personal meaning and relevance to what they glean from your daily lessons? An effective "Closure" activity at the end of each class period can help with that objective, creating what psychologists call the Recency Effect, otherwise known as a last impression.

Ideally, closure activities create powerful learning effects at the tail-end of the class, something that will reverberate for hours after the lesson is over, something a little sticky.

The defining element of the closure activity is that which your students will soon come to realize: class isn’t over until it has taken place. The bonus added-value factor, of course, is this: as they come to realize that the closure activity is an essential part of the overall lesson, your students are more likely to think twice before leaving early!

Closure activities also help define both your teaching agenda and the intended learning progression, weaving today's lesson with yesterday's while providing a look ahead at what tomorrow's will bring. As a deliberate part of your planning process, these activities summarize the current lesson, provide it context, and build anticipation for the next. Properly implemented, they will help you establish and maintain course momentum.

Reinforcing what students have learned, closure activities also serve as an assessment tool with which to evaluate your students retention level—Did they get it?—as well as your own effectiveness.

Including a closure activity with a SET Activity in every lesson is an effective classroom management strategy. It establishes a clear classroom framework for your students, with a clearly delineated and articulated BEGINNING and END, a format they will come to expect and on which they can depend. 

Powerful Closure Activities

These activities have been designed to get the best out of the last minutes of your class and your students as well. I decided to group the activities, so you know which one to use depending on what you want to focus your closure on.

Take a look at them, apply them and enjoy your future teaching experiences.

Activities for Summarizing what the lesson has tried to achieve:

-          One-minute sentence: This activity can be used to check summarize what the lesson was about. The teacher asks Ss to write a sentence on a piece of paper describing what today’s lesson was about, they exchange that ´piece of information with their partner and discuss about it (Ss might have different idea of what the lesson was about) and at the end the teacher takes the pieces of sentences home and checks them to see what the Ss thought of the class

-          Snowstorm: Ss write down what they learned on a piece of scratch paper and wad it up. Given a signal, they throw their paper snowballs in the air. Then each learner picks up a nearby response and reads it aloud.

-          The Important Thing: Ss write three important ideas/things from the lesson today.

The important things today are ___, ___, and ___, but the most important thing I learned today is ___.

-          Word Splash: Ss are given a “splash” of the key words from the lesson. They must write a few meaningful sentences (summarize the learning) using these words

-          5-3-1 (alone, pair, group): Write a question/topic, Ss brainstorm 5 answers. Then they work in a pair to come up with the 3 best. Then the pair joins with another pair to come up with the 1 most important.

Activities for Checking understanding:

-          Beat the Clock: Ask a question (vocabulary, grammar, functions, etc). Give students ten seconds to confer with peers before you call on a random student to answer. Repeat.

-          Review it: Direct Ss to raise their hands if they can answer your questions. Classmates agree (thumbs up) or disagree (thumbs down) with the response.

-          Name the word: Divide the class into groups of five Ss. Have one student from each group comes to the front of the room and show them a word. Then these Ss return to the group and use a nonsense word (beep) in place of the chosen one in a short dialogue. For example, if the word is book, the person might say, I bring my "beep" to school every day. I like to read mystery "beep" at home. I go to the library to find "beep." The first team to guess the meaning of "beep" wins the point.

-          Tell your partner: Ss work in pairs (one facing the other), one will talk and the other one will listen. The T asks a question and Ss work on the answers in pairs:

            Example:

            ·  What is the opposite of boring? (vocabulary)

·  What is the past tense of ride? (grammar)

·  How do you spell library? (spelling)

·  When is Remembrance Day in Canada? (culture)

·  What another way to say good-bye? (conversational discourse)

-          Odd one out: Divide the Ss up into small groups. Tell the Ss that you will read a list of four words. The should find the word that does not belong and say why. One example would be a list of words composed of the following: doctor, architect, office, and lawyer. The word office is not an occupation, so students should choose this word. T has to use words Ss  have learned during the lesson.

Activities for Assessing student’ learning:

-          Exit ticket: This is an activity for assessing the students’ overall learning during the class. The teacher asks Ss to get a piece of paper and write their names on them. Then the teacher asks a couple of questions for the Ss to answer or T / F sentences, the Ss answer the questions of mark T / F and hand in the paper as they leave the class. This serves as a way to assess the day’s learning.

-          Check list: The T prepares a check list of the objectives of the class and hands in  a copy to every student, these Ss check what they feel confident about after the lesson and return the check list to the T.

-          My learning: This is similar to the check list but students rank sentences the T has previously prepared as goals for the class. Ss rank from 1 to 5 the sentences.

Example:

A. I totally understand everything in this class.

B. Reading the textbook really helps me understand.

C. Listening in class is easy for me and helps me.

D. I put a lot of effort into this class.

E. Being able to talk about the ideas with others helps me.

F. Acting things out helps me learn things.

I really hope this helps and if you have any question, do not hesitate to drop me a line and I will try my best to answer.

Thank you for stopping by and reading this.

Happy teaching!


Erick Maguiño Matusaki

Teaching Writing - Process Approach

I believe one of the most overlooked skills in class must be writing. I think this is because students do not like to spend time doing this activity and teachers do not want to ask students to do something he knows they hate doing. Writing is, quite possibly, one of the weakest skills for Latin American students and the one that takes the longest to skilfully achieve.

The reason I chose to work on process writing is because I have already done product approach and I found it particularly helpful. I just want to see the benefits of this new approach for me, since I have never really worked on it before, and see how it compares and differs from its counterpart.

But, let’s start from the beginning. What’s writing? According to Teaching Writing Skills (Byrne 1998), “On one level, writing can be said to be the act of forming these symbols: making marks on a flat surface of some kind. But writing is clearly much more than the production of graphic symbols, just as speech is more than the production of sounds.”

What is the process writing approach?

Process writing may be a more effective method of teaching writing as it helps students to focus on the process of creating text through the various stages of generating ideas, drafting, revising and editing, a number of activities which can be represented as in Figure 1.

White and Arndt (1991:3) describe writing as a form of problem-solving which involves such processes as generating ideas, discovering a ‘voice’ with which to write, planning, goal-setting, monitoring and evaluating what is going to be written as well as what has been written and searching for language with which to express exact meaning.

In a simplified manner, Figure 2, tries to demonstrate the complex and recursive nature of writing and the interaction between the different operations which may occur simultaneously (White and Arndt,1991:4; Hedge, 2005:50). Our cognitive process or thinking is not linear. However, writing is linear and a writer must know how to organise his/her thoughts and message in an appropriate manner. Many writers often do not know what they want to write beforehand and many ideas are only revealed once the writer has started. They then move backwards to revise and change words or structures before they move forwards and they continue doing this until they are satisfied with the end result. Thus, writing is a ‘process through which meaning is created’ (Zamel, 1982,195).

  How does the process writing approach work?

It is possible that teachers assume students know how to organise their ideas and write as they have ‘picked it up’ in their reading or they have transferred the skill from L1. This may pose a problem as not all languages (and cultures) follow the same patterns of written discourse. Much contrastive rhetoric research has focused on these differences to aid writing teachers (Brown, 2001:338). Since writing involves a process of ‘generating, formulating and refining one’s ideas’ (Zamel, 1982:195), writing practice in class should reflect the same process where attention and adequate time is provided for revision and re-drafting while the teacher intervenes throughout the whole process.

What are the steps of the process writing approach?

I recognize three basic and main steps:

Generating ideas: The first part of the lesson may almost be considered the

pre-writing stage to develop ideas. An example might be a descriptive essay which follows a lesson or section on adjectives. An opinion essay could follow a class discussion about a specific topic. Another good pre-writing activity is the use of 7 brainstorming, especially if we consider the complexity of writing and how generating ideas is an essential stage in the writing process (White and Arndt, 1991:17). The objective of brainstorming is to stimulate the imagination to produce ideas on a topic or problem. This is particularly useful for those less imaginative students who do not exercise their creative abilities frequently and thus find it difficult to generate or recall encyclopaedic/world knowledge and link ideas together. Is it not possible to assert that like many other skills, creativity and imagination must be developed through practice?

There are many ways in which students can brainstorm ideas, this is one I like the most and I mostly use with my students. It lets students generate all the ideas they can and group them at the same time, you’re basically doing 2 jobs ate the same time (listing and grouping)

Focusing, structuring and writing the first draft: After the initial stage of brainstorming, student gather their ideas and subsequently select and outline them to write the first draft. As a follow-up of brainstorming White and Arndt (1991) and Hedge (2005) suggest the technique of fast-writing (free-writing) and loop writing. The purpose of free-writing is to write without any inhibition concentrating more on content rather than on form. With loop writing the student writes about one idea, then summarises that stretch of text in one sentence. This sentence then leads to another loop. This technique could help students avoid vague statements, the repetition of ideas and help to produce natural flowing text. An example for text 4 might be:

Concentration must be paid to the global organisation of the text depending on the purpose, as information must unfold in a structured form in order to achieve coherence. Students must be made aware of this. A good idea to help those who have problems organising their thoughts might be to make a visual plan for the text.

The text is usually divided into introduction, body paragraph(s) and conclusion. In addition to being aware of the possible text structures, students should be aware that effective paragraphs contain good topic sentences which introduce what the topic is about as well as the purpose of the paragraph, and these should be written in such a way as to attract the reader’s attention.

 

Introduction Paragraph 1 Childhood memories last forever; they will never go away no matter how small they are. Memories like going on vacation and playing outside with friends are the most remembered and treasured by children all over the world.

Main body Paragraph 2 Travelling with the family is always a good chance to spend time with your loved ones.

Main body Paragraph 3 Playing outside gives you that unique experience of interacting with children your same age.

Conclusion Final Paragraph In conclusion, I believe that there is nothing more important for a child than all those memories they accumulate during their childhood.

Revising and Redrafting/Editing: Revising is part of the writing process which entails assessing what has already been written and is an important source of learning (Hedge, 2005). Sommers (1982:154 in Zamel, 1985:96) states We need to sabotage our students' conviction that the drafts they have written are completed and coherent. Our comments need to offer students revision tasks ... by forcing students back into chaos, back to the point where they are shaping and restructuring their meaning. This is one of the most crucial and beneficial stages in the writing process, when the most meaningful learning will take place that will aid students in future writing as they will have the opportunity to receive feedback while the experience is still ‘fresh in the 12mind’ (Hedge, 2005: 121). In general, students receive feedback from teachers’ days after the writing task has been completed, mistakes are highlighted and corrected, suggestions for improvement are provided. In certain occasions students may be ‘spoon-fed’ and this may account for why there is no real improvement in subsequent drafts or writing tasks. The teacher has done all the work; consequently learners do not mentally correct their mistakes as meaningful learning may not have taken place.

Once again there is an opportunity to transform this task into a student-centred activity thus promoting real communication amongst students. Students may work in pairs or groups and correct, provide feedback on each other’s text. This collaborative work generates discussion and activities which may increase students’ awareness of problems they may have in their own writing when they have to clarify ideas or expressions used in the text (Hedge, 2005:122). By providing students with the opportunity to correct and provide feedback on their classmates’ texts, they are learning by doing and as Hedge points out (2005:18), ‘accuracy work which is comparatively spontaneous’ is ‘certainly more meaningful and motivating’.s.

I hope you find this interesting and apply it in your classes.

Happy teaching,



Erick Maguiño Matusaki