REFLECTION 3 - 2nd of October

This week we have worked on many aspects. First of all we analyzed some Mind Map tools.  I saw it quite interesting because you can know more programs so as to create mind Maps.  I had to say, until now, I only knew Cmap tools.

I and my group had to compare with spiderscribe which, from my point of view, is more complete due to the tools which offer to the users. I think I’ll probably use it again.

Secondly, we read some texts and I would like to stand out one about the different types of evaluation are there, which is called “recetas para acabar con el 50% del fracaso escolar”

We were used to memorize all for exams, and be corrected by only this method. According to the text, rote learning is useful for some topics but is not the only way to check if our pupils have learnt.

For example in maths, there could be students who know the formula of something but they don’t know how to apply it, and there could be students who don’t know the formula but they know how to apply it. So we can make different types of exam: one exam with support and another one without it. I mean, you can provide students the formula of something to solve a problem, but if you want to know if they have learnt the formula, you won’t provide it.

Another type of assessment of the student’s works is the rubrics. In my opinion they are important in teaching, mainly because if students have to evaluate their classmates, they know what the items are and how they are going to be evaluated. Moreover, they can evaluate the members of their work group.

As we are going to do the internship soon, I will observe and explore the way of evaluation that teachers apply. I think I will use it in my future as a teacher.

And finally, we have learnt a little bit more about whiteboards. I didn’t know a lot about this, at first it looks difficult to use but they have lots of advantages and it can result very useful in English teaching, since you can create lots of practical vocabulary activities or real tasks.

For instance, you can move all you write around, make it bigger, smaller, it allows you to do lots of vocabulary games guessing the words.

Moreover you can create fill activities, put pictures from the internet or from your own gallery, in order to match pictures with words...etc. and at the end it is possible to save the work and go back in the following class or when you want, which is very valuable. I would like to know more about whiteboard, so I will explore more about this.