Alicia's diary (first week)

Monday 21st July 2008
This is the first day of the Professional Development Course that will be taking place in the University of Sussex, in Brighton, from the 21st of July until the 2nd of August. We have been introduced to Tom Ottway and Melanie Suppel. Tom asked about what we expect of the course, which is supposed to deal with CLIL and personal language improvement. He also explained to us the project we need to do, and assessed our speaking.
In my opinion, this course is a great opportunity for us, I will try make the most of it. I hope to learn lots of new ideas to put into practise in my class. In this diary I will write new teaching techniques, useful ideas I can use for my classes, as well as cultural observations and how I can use I.C.T. in the Primary Classroom.

Alicia

Tuesday 22nd July 2008
Today Jeremy Page gave to us a talk on Bilingualism. It was interesting, but perhaps not so useful for us because we have read about it (and studied for the “Oposicion”!).
We also did computer work in pairs: We search on the Internet for new sites we could find interesting. We found several sites, for instance:

www.sci-spy.ie
www.eslprintables.com
www.angles365.com
www.focusonphonics.co.uk
www.bbc.co.uk
www.britishcouncil.org/kids

Tom taught us a nice game for our classes, the Telegram Game: It consists of inventing a sentence whose words begin with some letters given. Points are given for funny answers, and removed for mistakes. I’m sure kids will love it!

Alicia


Wednesday 23rd July 2008
We were given a lecture on the History of Brighton by Alexander Loske. I loved it, you could see quite clearly she knew a lot about Brighton and its history. She recommend us nice places to visit as well. I really liked the idea of being given a lecture on the history of Brighton in the morning and visiting the city (we had the city tour with Nicky) in the afternoon, because we remembered things she had told us previously.
We have been dealing with Phonics. I am interested in the teaching method “Jolly Phonics”. I know there are many ways of teaching Phonics, but this is the one I have heard about most. So in the afternoon I went to Brighton and bought the book with the songs and the lyrics.

Alicia

Thursday 24th July 2008
Today we have continued with Phonics, this time by working with a song called “The Grand Old Duke of York”. It is amazing how many activities you can do with the same song. We learnt by doing, this is to say, we first do the activity to know how it goes.
I have also learnt an activity I had never heard of before: The dictogloss. I really liked it, it is quite useful especially with the third cycle of Primary Education.
Finally, we worked with new media. We saw a video and a web site, quite interesting by the way. It deals with British Icons, which lets you know what’s on in British culture nowadays.

Alicia

Friday 25th July 2008
Today we have been working with the Interactive Board. We have been practising the basic things you can do, and it’s great. I would like to use it in my classroom, it’s got lots of possibilities and I’m sure children will love it. I think it is important to keep on practising, otherwise you forget or become “scared” of it.

Unfortunately, in Spain we haven’t got an Interactive Blackboard in each classroom. Most schools haven’t got any. In my school we only have one, and I can only use it once a week. I hope we can have one per classroom soon, it would be great.

Alicia

Saturday 26th July 2008
Visit to Brighton, we visited several churches, the Royal Pavilion, the Brighton Museum and Hove. I liked it, especially the Royal Museum… I was fascinated, it is so different comparing it with the world outside!!!
Alicia

Sunday 27th July 2008
Visit to Canterbury and Rye. Both places were beautiful, but Canterbury has much more things to see, so we didn’t have time to visit everything and we were in a hurry!!! I think it is better to spend all day in Canterbury, to be more relaxed.
Alicia