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Book chosen: Backpack 3 by Diana Herrera and Diane Pinkley.

To begin with, this book favours intercultural awareness since, for example, it provides information about breakfast in Europe, America and Asia; and there is also a short story about a boy from the Inuit community.                  It takes on grammar, vocabulary and all four language skills. Throughout the book there is a mix of illustrations, photography, chants, songs, games and projects.  I would like to point out that there is a short story in each unit. What is more, It has instances for self-assessment.

There is also CLIL . For example, Unit 4 deals with animals.

In my opinion, the material offered is enough since I have dealt with it when I was a child at the English Institute. I only attended 1:30 hr- twice a week- , and we finished it all, even all the units from the workbook (which is presented separately).

To conclude, I would highly recommend this book since students will love its dynamic activities.

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This your e-portafolio. You can upload files and images, share videos, web pages, interesting material, convey your feelings, reflect on your practice and observation, compile ideas and quotes, upload your lesson plans and include your classmates' contributions, among other things.

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Complete each part of this e-portfolio.

Share links, videos, quotes, classmates' contributions.

Include your lesson plans and assignments.

Include multimodal texts

Reflect on the learning process.

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To reflect on your personal experience.

To share your lesson plans.

To create a community of practice.

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El portafolio educativo implica ayudar a los alumnos a adquirir las habilidades de la reflexión y la autoevaluación. Es una selección deliberada de trabajos que nos cuenta la historia de sus esfuerzos, su progreso o sus logros y demuestra el aprendizaje de las competencias concebidas como metas. Tobón (2014).

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What qualities should a good teacher have?

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To begin with, the classes observed in the schools were highly different from each other. Each teacher had her own personality in the classroom, style, and strategies to tackle the target language and they all had different ways of approaching the group of students. All of them had a clear outcome on their mind, no hesitation when speaking in front of the students, and in all of them we perceived a positive atmosphere and a good rapport, as well as engagement -from the students- in all of the tasks, despite their difficulties with the language.

Luckily, there were no instances of a grammar-based approach or traditional ways of teaching in any of the schools, since students used their linguistic resources to fulfill the tasks and were the protagonists of their productions. Most of the activities were presented in context, with the help of visual aids to facilitate understanding. Plenty of scaffolding was offered which showed the teacher’s interest for their students to learn, and we also observed that instructions were clear, although in most of them the use of the L1 was required in order to clarify doubts.

As for classroom materials, there were different coursebooks and set of copies in all of the schools, but the visual aids that the teachers used were similar (they all used the blackboard, posters, and most of them tried to include ICT). The topics that were presented followed the curriculum design for each year respectively, and they all allowed for the integration of CLIL and CSE: “Families” (in Hogar Belgrano) was taught in a careful way as the teacher knew that the students had different families with different characteristics and situations. Toys (in Nuestra Señora de Luján) was not used with a specific CSE approach, but the teacher did not use any stereotypes when talking about toys. NGOs (in school nº17) allowed for the students to learn more about the city and their community. And Body parts (in school nº1) was used in a rather dull way, as the teacher did not make emphasis on differences, so in that regard we would have taken the opportunity to include CSE as how it is okay if a monster is different from another, or if a monster has different body parts or different colours.

We noticed that in public schools the target language played a secondary role since the focus was on offering students a more personal learning, rather than a formal language learning. For instance, in school nº17 the teacher stated that she wanted her students to end up as good citizens, instead of just having knowledge of the language.

Whereas in private schools there was much more emphasis on producing the language (as well as using the L1 for pedagogical purposes). The students were always required to perform the activities in a more structured way, as the lesson plans were carried out despite the problems that appeared in the classrooms (for instance, in Nuestra ‘’Señora de Luján, the third class was not stopped even when there was a fight between two students), while in public school there was more flexibility in regards to how the classes were developed.

Cooperative and collaborative work were required for the final outcome in School nº17 and Hogar Belgrano. On the contrary, in school nº1 the final task was performed individually, and in Nuestra Señora de Lujàn we couldn´t observe an outcome since we didn’t have continuity in the classes and we were not given any answer on the interview, but we can assume that, if the teacher had a final outcome prepared, it would probably be an activity to integrate what the students learned throughout the year, since that knowledge will work in the future as the base for their language learning.

All in all, we found the experience truly rewarding. We experienced how it felt to be a teacher since and, fortunately, we were given the opportunity to participate and provide help to students. We even built a wonderful rapport with most of them. We will keep the good things with us to use them in the future, so when the time comes to accompany our students in their school life, we will be better prepared to help them with whatever challenge that may show up.

Things like these are what we would take into account for the future:

The good relationship between Belen Suarez (Hogar Belgrano) and her students (and how she knew all of them, and their backgrounds)

How Romina Sosa (School nº17) focused more on the values and virtues of her students, rather than just wanting them to learn the language.

The determination that Cecilia Sardagna had when she entered the classroom and had to teach beginners (since all of her students were barely starting primary school)

And Alejandra Canalis’ patience to handle so many students at once.

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Answer the following questions to start reflecting on your learning/teching experience:
1)How do you feel you learned better when you were a language student? - On my personal experience, I learned better by doing, moving around and playing games.
2)Can you recall an experience in which you feel you learned something valuable/easily? What did you learn? What did the teacher do? Why do you think such experience is memorable for you? - I remember a class in particular, in which we role- played being at a supermarket. We took turns for being cashiers or buyers. Our teacher even brought us a trolley and real supplies. I think it`s really memorable for me because I had so much fun while learning.

3)Think about a teacher from your past. Why was she/ good/bad? - As I shared with you on our first class, I remember many of my teachers from primary and secondary school but one in particular , Cecilia , is still hanging over my head. My classmates and I were really scared of her since she used to shout at us a lot. I always went back home crying.