sábado, 27 de marzo de 2010

lunes, 11 de enero de 2010

Just to take a deep breath and...relax

Sailors

Being a successful human being is not about controlling your environment but instead, by responding to it with extreme flexibility. A captain of a ship cannot control the wind or the sea, and those who think they can, will eventually hit an iceberg and die.

They do not seek to control the wind or the water, but instead, they respond to that in such a way that the wind and water become allies to move them forward towards their goal, to the ports on the other side of the vastest oceans.

It is in seeking a co-operation with the environment that we reach our goals, and when we have learned how to do that, then we are free.

Free from fear and strong in the knowledge that no matter which way the wind blows, we will know what to do to get where we want to go.

With love,

Euge

WebQuests: a Means to Discover and Learn in the EFL class at Primary School

Introduction

Going down the corridors the school, some time ago, I worked at, I could hear that the oldest students at primary were working with legend from our country. Once, I could listen to an extra from La Leyenda de los Onas; another time, I could grasp something from El Camino del Dorado. I thought they were dealing with Historia Argentina, but thanks to my curiosity, the teacher refuted my idea and commented to me, full of pride, that in fact, they were all involved in a project work that joined not only that subject, but also Ciencias Sociales as a whole and Prácticas del Lenguaje.

Such was the enthusiasm felt by those students and teacher, that it was her who made up her mind and moved on, all together, towards the computer room. There, the main idea that emerged was that of creating a newspaper or a blog with the whole kit and caboodle of information gathered. Great! So they did, and so, each student sat with another one, and those two formed a group with others, to finally, work in teams and surf the net.

Now, it is time for us to reflect on the above situation from an objective perspective and to think about the following:

1) Was the instruction for creating the blog clear enough?
2) How about aspects of classroom management and group work?
3) Were students’ interests considered?
4) Was the final blog something to be considered as an adequate final product for the oldest students at primary school, these days, in this XXI century?
5) What is your opinion about the way the teacher dealt with the handling of the Internet?
6) Would you organize this work the same way described? Or would you re-organize it? How?
7) Can we considerer that the teacher of the story narrated created a WebQuest or was she in the path to do it? Why?


WebQuests


They are pieces of work to make an oriented use of the Internet as the main source in this sort of project work, so as to foster learning on behalf of the students –why not, on the educator, too? a WebQuest is that form of materpiece that encompasses a constructivist theory of learning, a project work-based approach to teaching and learning, and the meaningful surfing of the Internet.



Briefly Matching the EFL class and a WebQuest

It is Luzón (2001) who proposes the use of WebQuests in the field of teaching English as a Second Language. Though these studies are based on university students, they are worth value for the purposes of this paper. The author considers that the three main features to put into practice a WebQuest in the context mentioned are the following: it fosters the acquisition of knowledge of a certain topic; develops information-surfing skills and improves reading and comprehension abilities in the target language, thus, enhancing interpretation, one of our main objectives. This last aspect is catered by dealing with authentic material, oriented-reading tasks, increasing the knowledge of general and specific vocabulary, adjusting previous knowledge to the new one, and above all, paving the way for inferring from the context of a piece of discourse totally connected to the students’ interests and fields of studies



A WebQuest Structure

1) To begin with, it is necessary to create an introduction. In this very first step, the topic of the WebQuest is detailed-presented.

2) After this, the task to be fulfilled must be explored in depth. This job must be meaningful, interesting, challenging, appealing, authentic, etc., among other many crucial characteristics. And this is because the task is the most important part in any WebQuest, with many ways to be assigned.

3) The third step is made up of the complete description of the whole process to be developed. This process should be formed by growing-complexity instructions that do not allow the mere copy and paste action from the Internet.

4) Then, it is suggested to put forward a thought-provoking question to integrate all the tasks and contents dealt with.

5) Last but not least, students should be able to see, from the very beginning, both the criteria chart their educator is going to make use of to evaluate them, and the schedule with the time allotted to finish the WebQuest.



Putting Words into Practice


In the following pages, you will find an example of what a WebQuest for the last years at primary school may imply. You will see that as it integrates two languages different to the mother tongue, it has been entirely produced in Spanish, though curiously and appealingly, working with both, English and French.




Sample WebQuest


WebQuest: Arte abstracto e impresionismo en el Louvre y Tate Gallery

Trabajo interdisciplinario: Educación Artística y Lenguas Extranjeras (inglés y francés)

Actores educativos involucrados: estudiantes del último año de una escuela primaria (…), cuya modalidad es CAD (comunicación, arte y diseño); estudiantes del año inmediato-inferior del mismo establecimiento y modalidad, docentes de Arte, docentes de Lenguas Extranjeras.

Tiempo estimado: entre cuatro y seis clases.



Introducción


¡Llegó el último año de la escuela primaria! ¡Cuántos recuerdos! ¡Y toda la experiencia ganada! Y lo curioso es que los estudiantes del curso anterior necesitan de sus conocimientos sobre los Museos de Louvre y Tate Gallery para hacer un mágico recorrido por el mundo del arte.


(To see the complete article on this topic, please, access to http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/webquests-a-means-to-discover-and-learn-in-the-efl-class-at-primary-school/8196478)