CEFR lesson!

Today is the 21st of October of 2020, another grey and rainy day. But this would not steal our enthusiasm for today's class. 

We began sharing our yesterday's analysis of the CLT lesson (you can find my analysis in the last post). And in the discussion of the different points of view, I wrote down this reflection...

This worksheet is not extremely bad, it can be useful at some stages of the learning process. It is nice to teach a grammar lesson itself to give students tools to create their framework of resources to manage the language, because they are going to need it even in class, for example in speaking activities. So, if the grammar is a base they need, it would be a perfect pre-activity that you would practice and develop in the meanwhile and post activities. 

Students need a guide, we are the ones who provide the information (grammar in this case) to work on. To be more effective, we also need to engage them (classroom management). 

Accordingly, with these ideas, we can say that there is not a unique way to present and work the contents in class. It would depend on our student's needs and interests. Our aim has to be to motivate them, give them the language resources they need, and focus on the aim or prompt of the activity. Progressively, you would change the method to adapt to the needs and objectives, for example asking them to produce a speech (speaking activity). The main aim is to reinforce the learning process.

We do need grammar! We can not fall into the idea this old methodology is not useful or needed, it is essential to work the base of the language. But we have to change the perspective. The class can not only focus on grammar common activities, but it is also present in all the lessons all the time, but we have to work it in other ways. Grammar is not a monster, is our friend to develop good language acquisition. 

Later on, we dive into CEFR documents that would be like our teaching Bible on this course and in our career as teachers. I have to admit that it makes me feel interested in reading them, as well as scared me. It is too much information!

While I was listening to Dolores's explanation on the overview of the CEFR Scales document, I felt interested. I have had an eye on it, and even though, I have to read it slowly, it had given me a lot of information on how can I schedule and structure my private classes I am imparting to an 8-year-old beginner learner. I have written down some key ideas I have to check on to adapt better the lessons to his needs and create a better learning process for him. 

Also, it caught my attention to the portfolio document. It is great to follow the student's development in their learning process, as well as it is a marvelous idea for them to autocheck themselves on how do they feel in class, how are they learning, what do they need to improve or what do they already know. It is like an auto-evaluation that enrich the learning process and make them more conscious of it, as well as give teachers a lot of information to adapt or readjust the lessons. 

I do not know if I would be able to put on practice right now with my student, because we only have one lesson per week, but definitely, I would keep this idea in mind as one more resource to use. 

And that is all for today. It has been a enriching class indeed. 

See you tomorrow!