THE BEST PLACE TO PRACTISE MINDFULNESS

Hello everyone. The aim of this work is to talk about my experience in one of the most isolated places I have never been. The place I am talking about is Valcuende, my grandparents village, which is located in the mountains of the province of León but next to Palencia.

Every summer, I spend at least fifteen days in the village  and I can say that being there is one of my favourite parts of the summer.

The reason why I appreciate Valcuende so much is because nowadays nobody is living there and anybody can bother you, so we could define the village as a "Ghost Village". Furthermore, the place is so beautiful that being without internet conexion and TV is not a problem because near the place there are lots of activities to do such as climbing mountains, going fishing or riding a bike through magnificient landscapes. The place is ideal if you love being in contact with the environment and breathing clean air

In addition to this, Valcuende  reminds me of my childhood and every time I visit the place I feel it is the first time I do it.

In conclusion, I think that if you love being relaxed properly and you love nature, you should visit this place and enjoy the experience although I have to admit that the village is not easy to find at all.
I am sure that you won´t find a better place if you love practising mindfulness like our teacher!

The year that changed my life

Hello everyone!
Today I am going to tell you about my experience studying in the United States of America.

When I was 16 I left for another country to live and study there for a year. I was really scared because I was leaving by myself and leaving everything behind. Little did I knew how much it would make me grow up.

When I first got there, it was really hard to understand what people were telling me, not only because of the English but because there were so many new things happening all at the same time.

High School in the USA is really different from what we experience in Spain. To begin with, you have more liberty to choose your path to your future. Also, there are some classes that we can’t take in Spain, like Drama class. They give a lot of importance to music too, I had Band as a class. At the begging I was scared of not being able to understand the class or keep up the work, but teachers were really nice and helpful.

What I’m most proud about is my improvement, we had a journal for English class and when the classes had finished I started to look back, while I was doing it, I realized how much better I had got at writing in English, not only my speaking had improved. Seen how many corrections I had at the beginning and how in my final projects I had none made me really proud. That is why I think immersion is the best way of learning a language.

The changes didn’t only happen on the educational field, looking back at it, I was only 16 when I left, however, I came back as a more mature person. It helped me become a more independent person and I learned a lot of things and not just a language (which is also important of course).

I had a lot of fun too! As I was in Maine I saw a lot of snow, I played soccer at the school team, I was in pep band (is the band that plays at basketball games), I went to prom, I went to the Arcadia National Park and many other things.

I think these kinds of experiences are the best thing that can happen to you, if somebody around you, or even yourself, is doubting about whether to do it or not my advice is :

DO IT!

Flag of the state of Maine

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I hope you liked the post. Feel free to leave any comments!

Multiple intelligences and education

Some years ago, I heard about a theory written by Howard Gardner, called "Frames of Mind: The theory of multiples intelligences". Until that moment, I've always thought that intelligence was something that every human being had to used to solve everyday problems, or to make complex information processes. But in my mind only existed a type of intelligence, measured by a test named the "intelligent quotient" or IQ, which children do at schools to prove their logical-mathematical skills.

According to Howard Gardner's theory, there are eight different type of intelligence, and they all are as much important as the previous one (logical-mathematical). I let you a video where you can see which are these intelligences:

Current researches on the brain, learning and human intelligences from a variety of disciplines has confirmed that multiple intelligences have several implications for education. So we have a big challenge as future teachers to make our children improve their education and become confident children, and I think this is a theory that can explain something that traditional education couldn't.

Students and teachers can become more skilled in these eight intelligences. This is possible, providing a planned cycle of experiences and opportunities that encourage every intelligence. We must create opportunities available to all children in the classroom. By expanding our vision of intelligence, and developing skills other than mathematics and reading, we open other limits by using other strengths of children, thus complementing their less developed areas.

What do you think about it? Let me know your opinion if you want in the comments. I hope you liked it!

MY EXPERIENCE WITH ENGLISH

Good morning everyone!🙋

In this post, I am going to talk about my relationship with the English language throughout my life. First of all, I have to say I was 14 years old (more or less) when I began to keen on learning English.

In Primary School, English was the subject I hated the most. I don’t know if that was because I wasn’t able learn a new language or because the teachers didn’t know the way to motivate their students to learn or be keen on studying this subject. Their methodology  wasn´t good to the extent that I only have two good memories from this period of my life (related to the English classes):

One the one hand, the first good memory about this period is a song which I listened when I was in preschool. This song is about the alphabet and it was sung by a bear who was called Teddy. With this song I learnt all the alphabet in English and I still remember the music of this song.

I am going to put here a similar song.⇩

On the other hand, it was a teacher who was called Paulino. I remember him with great affection because he spent a lot of his free-time giving us some extra lessons due to the bad level of students (like me). In these extra lessons, he helped us to improve our English in order not to fail our English exams.

In High School, I started to study the grammatical structures of English and work the listening skill. At the same time, I started to see how some people I know went abroad to study English in something like Summers Camps, so I decided to do some research in case there were some grants so I could go there too. However, we were feeling the effects of the crisis so the Government removed all the grants of this type. Another option was to go abroad without any scholarship, but these classes were and are very expensive. For this reason, I chose to talk with my parents and ask them to sign me up for classes in an English academy in order to improve my speaking skill (this skill is never taught in by the Schools and I considered and consider that it is a basic skill to have a good English language level).

When I finished High School, I managed to improve my spoken English, but I knew that I needed to go abroad to find out if I was able to communicate in a real situation.

Later, I started University and, by chance, I saw a poster announcing a grant from the Xunta of Galicia in order to improve some languages in their country, but the requirement was to have completed 60 credits of the some degree.

The next year, I completed all the application forms and in summer I went to Chichester (a village in the South of England) for three weeks.

There, I didn’t really learn all that I had to learn because there were a lot of Spanish people (in my class there were 15 students and 13 were Spanish) but it was a good experience and I improved my listening skill and the pronunciation (a bit).  Despite not having learned a lot, I think that it was good because it was a motivation to keep improving my English.

In short, I consider the methods of teaching of English language at schools have not been the appropriate ones until today. Because of this, I think it is necessary to be very up-to-date in this field in order to teach lessons and I am sure that if you motivate students with the suitable materials, everyone can learn a new language unawares.

Hereunder, I am going to put some links with some grants which can be useful for you:

• Grant to learn English in Madrid      
• Grant to learn other language in their country
• Grant to practice English as a teacher

Being a summer camp monitor

At the age of 7 I went to my first summer camp during 7 days, it was my first time away from home and it was completely horrible.

The next year my parents send me to another camp again, but it wasn't as horrible as I remember it, so I began to liked it. It liked me that much that I was waiting the whole year to go to a summer camp, this days were the best of my life.

Then when I grew up my parents decided that it was better for me to go abroad to learn English during summer, so during four years that was what I did. 

Despite I really liked it, it wasn't the same at being on a summer camp, so I decided that when I get older I was going to be a summer camp monitor.

And that's what I did, I found a course that allowed you to be a freetime monitor, I did it and after doing my practices I began to work on something that I really like, and where I don't care spending my summer without hollidays.

This helped me also to realise how much I liked children, how many patience I had and also it helped me to be a more opening person, and mostly it helped me to do teamwork something very important for our future as teachers.

Being monitor it's difficult, because you have to be always active despite you have only sleept for fou or five hours a day during 12 days, you have to be focus on everything and mostly focus on children. It's hard but it worths it.

I know it's difficult to understand how amazing camps are, but trust me, if you have the oportunity to go to one and work as a monitor, don't hesitate it and go.

It's amazing to feel that children love you, that for them during 12 days you are like a big brother/sister or like a hero, it's really comforting feeling part of a big group of people that began a family in a short period of time.

I know that this feeling depends on the person, but believe me, once you try it, it's difficult not to get addictited.

I hope you could understand what I wanted to transmit.

The importance of motivation in learning.

How do you think motivation is important for students to learn? Maybe you
have never stopped thinking about this topic, but the influence in learning and
teaching is bigger than you ever though.

The way of teaching is beginning to change, nowadays there are less teachers
who exercise their profession by speaking the whole time, they try to do the classes
more interactive, more participative. Students are the most important part of this
method of teaching-learning, so they have to be motivated in order to learn what
we want them to learn. It is not easy, but all of us can afford it if we try.

One of the methods used is Pygmalion effect, watch this video:

Rosenthal defines 4 key factors which drive this Pygmalion effect:

1) Climate factor: teachers who expect more of certain students tend to create
a warmer climate for those children, both verbally and non verbally (for example,
they will smile more often at them).

2) Input factor: teachers will tend to teach more material to children they
think they are smarter.

3) Response opportunity factor: children who are expected to bloom
academically will get more chances to respond.

4) Feedback factor: if the expectations of a child increase, they will get more
motivated when they are right, but they will get more differentiated feedback
when they make a mistake. Children who are not expected to perform get less
feedback when they are wrong because teachers would seem to think that
the children in question would not understand the correction and so the teachers
spend less time trying to correct them.

Maybe unconsciously you were used this method, or not, but it works, I swear you
because I tried. I am sure that not all the cases are the same, but in a high percent
they are.

I would like you will give me your opinion about it, or tell me about your
experiences with this method.

Choose your own way

 

Hi guys! Today I wanted to share with you one of the most recurrent thoughts that I´ve had lately. It is related with English but also with life in general. Let´s start with a flashback.

            I was in the school when I failed my first exam. It was an English exam. I started believing that it was my fault, maybe I wasn´t good with languages. Adults told me that I didn´t have to worry if English wasn´t my strong point, I will find one someday. I started High School wondering which would be my favourite subject, and English didn´t seemed an option for me. A few years later I started going to an English academy and little by little I improved and I realised that I loved it. It´s quite crazy that I ended up my High School going to England on a scholarship, one of the best experiences of my life.

            Right now I look back and realise that I never had anything to worry about. Children don´t know their own potential. Teachers have to show them that with effort they can be wherever they want. It doesn´t matter if you fail once, twice or twenty times, if you like it you have to try again.

            Currently I´m studying to be an English teacher, I´m really motivated but I know I still have to learn a lot of things, everyone has. Hopefully one day children will go to school and learn because they want, and not because they are obligated. Experimenting new things is the best way to know if you like them or not, but succeed isn´t going to happen in a blink, it´s made of hard work.

            This was my experience with English, if you want to leave in the comments something similar that happened to you, I´ll be really happy to read it. See you soon!