Feel free to comment and ask questions!

Fran & Gaby

Feel free to comment, ask questions, and share your thoughts about this issue that has been gaining momentum over the past few years, but is still far from being completely accepted.

Finally, we would like to seize this opportunity to invite you all to the LGBT+ march that will take place this Saturday, September 2^nd, in Valparaíso (Plaza Sotomayor) at 5pm. This march commemorates the death of near twenty LGBT+ people in a fire that destroyed Divine – a gay disco located in Valparaíso – on September 4^th, 1993. We hope to see you there, and we’ll attach the link of the Facebook event: https://tinyurl.com/lgbtvalpo

Fran & Gaby

Fran: As expected, even though most of us had chosen the same platform, every portfolio was unique. Some of my classmates’ presentations made me realize that I hadn’t fully explored Padlet’s features. For example, I had no idea about the arrows. Also, this showcase inspired me to do more than just the challenges. I was surprised to see that many classmates had really creative ideas like including photos of themselves to make their portfolio seem more welcoming or posting a list of do’s and don’ts as a summary of the framework they read for the video. All these great ideas made me feel like my partner and I weren’t doing enough to make our portfolio as good as it could be, but, most importantly, they inspired me to keep exploring the platform and to think of ways we could make our portfolio more engaging. 

Regarding ELT materials development, I believe that one of the challenges that had greater impact on most of us was making the videos because we had to process an entire chapter and make it understandable for others. This was a hands-on process in which we had to develop a material that was clear, engaging, and critical. A process that is similar to what we are expected to do as future teachers. Seeing how my classmates dealt with this challenge in multiple and creative ways also gave me new insights as to how I can face this type of challenges in the future.

Gaby: Last week we got to see our classmates portfolio's showcases in which they chose different platforms to inform people about ELT materials and to also express their opinion on similar topics. It was interesting to see how each couple expressed ideas in different ways and it was also interesting to see our classmates' videos. It's always good to nurture our knowledge with different perspectives. 

When it comes to the ELT materials class itself, it's been a good experience to analyse textbooks and materials with a critical mindset. Many times we take things for granted and we never question how things are and how we receive information. That's why this class has helped me getting insights into what involves to criticise ELT materials, and how invisibilisation takes places without us even noticing. We may consider ourselves as critical thinkers but as the name says it, invisibilisation doesn't show diversity, and maybe it's even harder to criticise something that is not portrayed on a textbook or different materials than to criticise something that is easy to see.

All in all, there're still miles to go. I have some new insights now, but there are plenty of insights yet to discorver.

First, the content was made more meaningful by removing the original images and asking students to show their own pictures. Second, we applied a few UDL principles by making changes in how vocabulary was presented (means of representation), how students had to give their answers (means of expression), and in how students were motivated to participate (means of engagement).

I think that following these strategies makes the process of adapting activities easier. By making sure that the materials are relevant to the context in which they will be used, and applying the three UDL principles, we come closer to ensuring the effectiveness of our activities.

Finally, this reminded me of a comment I made at the beginning of this course. In the forum I said that I thought that for material development, teachers should not try to reinvent the wheel because most of the materials we need have already been designed, therefore it is important to have tools to adapt them to our students’ needs. 

Gaby: Adapting this material with my classmates made me think of all the times I have heard negative comments about textbooks, and the solution lies on us: we can adapt any material we want, according to our context. It can take some time, but it's doable. It's good to know we can include diversity and multiculturalism in our lessons by making modifications to the material assigned to each level. Many textbook producers don't want to be too controversial but I think making invisibility be visible (the absence of certain people, classes, races, etc. in textbooks) we can bring these issues to the table and discuss them with our students in ways that help them acknowledge how this big world was built up on diversity.   

Link to original activity: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5mh8wQmrwILWk5BT3pCZHZodHM/view?usp=sharing
 

I think that one of the most important strategies for adapting materials is scaffolding because every single group of students is mixed-ability to different extents. Furthermore, providing adequate support in learning materials is helpful for students as well as teachers since the class will have a steadier pace. Nevertheless, I think that all strategies are significant and that we should find ways to include them in teaching materials to varying degrees.

Gaby: I believe it's essential to provide our students with different opportunities for learning. Traditional classroom settings, or traditional perspectives on education haven't fully considered different learning styles. Sometimes, I think about children I know, and I see a lot of potential in them, some of them love sports, others love to paint, to dance, to act, etc. As I see it, we are missing those talents when we don't incorporate them in our lessons, incorporating them would mean having happier students who feel more comfortable because they are being taken into account. It can be more fun and more inclusive at the same time. 

However, we have to bear in mind that it all depends on the students we are teaching. Maybe, our students aren't too arty, or not into nature, maybe they like structures better, and maybe we don't, but to make it more inclusive we have to appeal to their likes and needs, instead of ours.     

While-reading: Jigsaw. There will be two texts that talk about Spirit Day. Students will form groups of 3. There will be 2 texts. They will read the texts and then the experts will share their parts of the text and one or two students will have to present a summary of their text. What's important is that they identify the main idea of the text. 

Post-reading: Students will look up for other anti-bullying campaings around the world or from Chile. If the internet isn’t working, Ss have to remind campaigns that they have heard of. Then Ss have to write a short paragraph describing what their chosen campaign is about. Ss have to be prepared to share their paragraph with the class. 

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1MFXBvJrKdiNf1fKgcJ9UfvMam10TGP6u6YZqoR5UBuA/edit#slide=id.p

Group reflection:  The main goal of this activity was that students identified main ideas of a text, working collaboratively, to do so we implemented a Jigsaw activity in which they could complement each other's ideas about the text.  We believe it's important to implement activities like this so students have the opportunity to communicate in the classroom, even when this activity is a reading activity. The main goal of an English lesson, as we see it, is that students use the language in ways that are meaningful. Apart from sharing ideas about the text, students will have to integrate another skill that is writing. In our opinion, integrating skills in a lesson is very significant since in real life we use all the skills that relate to language, we don't only speak, we listen, then we read, and we write. 
Apart from integrating skills in a lesson, we also think it's important to relate the activities to the students' context or to their previous knowledge, in this case other anti-bullying campaigns in Chile or different countries. 
We also included a LGBT topic, since LGBT communities are often invisible in the EFL context, so we decided to create an activity that is about the LGBT community. 
Finally, as a conclusion, it's essential to integrate different skills and different topics in an activity for it to be more meaningful and relatable to the students' lives.
 

We worked with the following 4 Medio objective: To speak in familiar communicative situations related to the topics of their level, using set phrases, idiomatic expressions, and connected sentences, and with intelligible pronunciation.

We chose this task because it was easy to adapt to different groups of students in terms of age, language proficiency, likes/dislikes, etc. For preparing this activity we considered the speaking objective from bases curriculares and we chose a variety of topics that could appeal to Chilean teenagers; however, if carried out in a real-life scenario, we would have chosen topics based on our students’ preferences.