Step by Step

In connection with the last activity we worked on last week called "The Magic Box", we started Monday's lesson expanding this methodology a little bit. We went deeper into the step when students had already guessed what is inside the box and we have to start working on some activities. In this point it is important that the teacher asks the students what do they know about the topic. Being aware of students' previous knowledge will allow the teacher to prepare more meaningful activities for them because he will ensure that they won't repeat what they already know and they will learn new aspects of the topic.

Moreover, if the teacher thinks it is appropriate for the target class, he can also ask children what do they want to know about the topic. Again, this can help the teacher to keep children's motivation towards the project and make them feel protagonist of their own learning process.

Strongly related to this two questions, it is necessary that the teacher asks himself: Where are we now? How can I "close the gap"? Where are we going? By this questions he has to design the didactic unit taking into account that the activities go from the beginning to the end, including a final task to check if the students have achieved the aims of the project. As you can see, it is a complex task, but I think it's worth it if children learn and have fun with it.

Continuing with what we did on the lesson, we have to talk about an activity to group together students in teams. This exercise also includes some vocabulary skills because, first of all, children have to think about some opposite adjectives such as: long and short, thick and thin, rigid and flexible, big and small, ...etc. and also other aspects that can be used to describe an object, for example: it is made of... (plastic, glass, wood, metal), its shape is... (round, square, rectangular, triangle).

Once they understand all the words they can use to describe something, they have to placed in a circle and put their hands behind their backs. The teacher now will distribute some objects to the students and, without showing and looking to their objects, they will have to use the adjectives mentioned above to prepare the description of the object they are holding. 

Then, one by one, they will start describing the objects out loud and at the end of the round, each student will have to find a person that he thinks that has the same object, check it, and if it's the same, make a group. When all the members of the group are together, they can make a definition of the object and share it with the others so that they can guess which object they have.

We ourselves did the activity to experience how was it and it was very fun at the same time that it worked very well. After doing the activity, with the group that we end up with the same object, we wrote step by step the instructions we would give to our students to do the activity with them. That was, at least for me, the most interesting part of the exercise because I noticed that when doing this kind of active exercises the teacher has to pay attention to many things apart from the basic instructions of the activity. For example, when we tell the students to make a circle, we also have to take into account that they will need enough space in the classroom to do so and that maybe some of the students can put the chairs and tables to the side to make room before everybody start moving. This kind of prevision can prevent the activity to become a mess. Another example can be not to forget to tell students key steps that they need to do at some point so that they will be able to do further steps. In the case of our activity, when they start describing the object in the circle one by one, everyone has to try to remember every students' description so that later, they can find the ones that are like their own. The effort to think carefully and specifically every instruction you'll tell the students to do is very important in order to be aware of the key points of its performance.

Finally, I would like to mention the video we reflected upon on Friday's lesson. It is called "I Just sued the school system" and it's act by the famous American artist "Prince Ea". The video is a very hard critique of the school system and it highlights the weak points of the current education.

On the one hand, I agree with some of the ideas that Prince exposes. For example, he starts quoting Albert Einstein with the sentence "Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, he will live its whole life believing that it is stupid". This idea can be related to the one that he says later "1 teachers standing in front of 20 kids each one having different straights, needs, gifts, dreams, ... and you teach the same thing the same way". I strongly agree that teachers have to be always aware of the fact that every student we have at class is unique and because of that, we have to promote "differentiation". This term, according to "The Glossary of Education Reform", refers to a wide variety of teaching techniques and lesson adaptations that educators use to instruct a diverse group of students, with diverse learning needs, in the same classroom or learning environment. The basic idea is that the primary educational objectives (making sure all students master essential knowledge, concepts, and skills) remain the same for every student, but teachers may use different instructional methods to help students meet those expectations. I personally find this idea one of the basis to ensure effective and meaningful learning for our students.

Moreover, I also agree with the evidence that Prince highlights when he says that "teachers have one of the most important jobs on the planet and they are under paid". Although in my opinion the money you earn in a job it's not the most important aspect of it, I also think that it is sometimes related with the value this job has and, in this way, I feel that the educational field is not being as valued as it should be and as a consequence some teachers may not be aware of the importance of their job. In my opinion, being better paid will also increase the commitment that teachers have with their job.

The last idea I agree with that I would like to point out is the one that says "students are 20% of our population, but the 100% of our future". This argument is key to defend that we should invest more in the current education because what today is only a part of our society, tomorrow will be the whole of it and that means that what we are doing today has direct consequences on our tomorrow.

On the other hand, I also disagree with other ideas that appear in the video. For example, Prince starts showing some pictures of things that have evolved a lot, such as a modern phone versus its old version, or a car from today versus an old carriage... and he ends up with a picture of an old classroom and a classroom of today and they are exactly equal! I totally disagree with this example and moreover when he says that nothing in education has changed. Not only in my opinion, but also because of my experience of the practical training where I have been to very innovative schools, I can say that there are many educational centres (at least in Catalonia) that are really evolving the concept of education and they are fighting to improve and change what it's not longer working on the educational system. As one of my partners in the class exposed, I agree with her in the fact that Prince generalizes a lot some of the problems he exposes in the video and not everything he says it's true everywhere. As I have said before, here in Catalonia we have many schools that are actually innovating in many aspects of education. They are designing new projects or implementing new methodologies that have just the opposite characteristics that Prince exposes in the video. They are taking into account children's individualities, they promote a more experimental learning, they transmit the value of collaboration and respect among children. I think that we don't have to forget this increasing projects that we are so lucky to have because it is so sad and useless to just focused on what is going wrong and criticise it instead of promoting the good innovations we are doing and valuing the amazing effort that some educators are doing every day in our schools so that children have a better quality education and a happier life.