Bear can dance!
These days I don’t teach or even train on a regular basis so I’m always delighted to be invited into a classroom. And as I generally have Bear with me we get children’s immediate reactions as well as their suggestions.
So let me tell you about a class I’m visiting at the moment – 22 ten to eleven year olds in a regular primary school. Almost two-thirds of the group are speakers of English as a second language – the remaining third are mother tongue speakers. They have a blended curriculum with an extra emphasis on English. Bear is linking with a variety of subjects. Over the next few weeks there are plans to involve him with aspects of maths, art, geography and science.
Up to now Bear has mainly worked with learners of other languages at school so this is a new departure but that’s not why I’m writing about it.
It’s the age group.
Many teachers I’ve worked with over the years have imagined that Bear would not be accepted by children over 8 or 9. Well not so!!
I’ve always found that this upper primary group want to know even more about him than younger learners – their keenness about the experiences they are facing means that they are open to everything.
I generally take my lead from the children… whatever they are interested in is going to work best.
This present group is no different to the others – on our first visit they wanted to know everything about Bear – including the usuals – favourite foods, games, football teams, how many languages can he understand?
Then a voice somewhere to our left said Can you dance Bear ? We can dance….
Bear had never been asked to dance before!
But he knows that you have to show young learners that you’re willing to have a go. I mean if he’s not up to learning something new how can he ask them to try. Bear knows that a bit of example goes a long way…
So …while all these thoughts flashed through his soft furry head he nodded ……Yes … why not!
The music went on … no recording was made of this historic event but we did get photos… the children joined in … TPR set free!
ELTons 2010
“Teaching with Bear” won an ELTon 2010 Innovation Award last Wednesday night!! Such an exciting evening … great buzz about the Delfina Studios when we arrived there and it just got better as the evening went on. Lovely dinner and good company … and maybe a slight nervousness as we waited to hear who was going to win an award! Everyone shortlisted had been invited. It was great to be there and I was as speechless as Bear when we were called out…
http://www.britishcouncil.org/learning-eltons-2010-winners-4.htm
Because of commitments on the following days I am only beginning to reflect on the whole event. It was all so exhilarating – especially for Bear!! Later when he recovered he set about examining the award… and now as you can see he’s got quite attached to it!
Conference APAC 2010
I’ve just come back from the APAC Conference in Barcelona. I love this size of conference because you actually get to meet people – reuniting with old friends and making new ones – as well as attending some great sessions. Unfortunately I didn’t get to as many as I wanted because like most well organized conferences there were concurrent events. Big thank you to everyone in APAC for a super job!
Cataluña has always been exceptionally fortunate and I’m not referring to atmosphere – weather – art – food!!! The teachers are so motivated and interested in professional development – it’s infectious. As someone commented during the conference – it probably has a lot to do with being a bilingual environment. The issue of language learning and teaching is ever present.
Late Friday and early Saturday I got to some sessions on primary language teaching – always a great opportunity to discover what is of prevailing interest in different places and contexts. And after my second session I had the chance to chat with several teachers and all the issues that came up were food ….for thought… so next week I’ll be coming back to some of them.
Recently I’ve also been drawn to anything with supporting web access and at APAC I attended two presentations with links you might like to check out. A presentation on wikis by Susan Dreger who has an online link http://www.slideshare.net/teacherbarcelona/collaborative-learning-the-wiki-way-1065073 and a presentation by Chris Roland aimed at pre-school and lower primary introducing his great downloadable little characters which you can access at www.regandlellow.com
And on Friday while I was talking about what we, as language teachers, can learn from modern learning approaches in primary education what do you think my little assistant was doing? Was he practising for our joint session the next day? No way - out and about – spoon at the ready – enjoying a taste of some traditional Catalonian delights – chocolate y melindros! Next time I think I’ll take time out and let him do a session on his own…