Teaching Tip: Extra-Curricular Learning Projects - 1

Name:

Rubén Cárez

Economy:

Chile

School:

Colchagua English Teachers Network

Subject:

English as a Foreign Language

Tip:

Our net “Colchagua English Network” is formed by thirteen teachers of English who work in the semi-private and municipal high-schools in the cities of Santa Cruz, Peralillo, Chépica, Nancagua, Lolol. We meet once a month to discuss and share pedagogical information to improve the teaching and learning process in our schools. Since we got together we have made several projects to develop the four skills of the language.

One of the most successful for us, was a project whose main aim was to increase the students’ vocabulary in secondary school using graded readers for listening and reading with the implementation of literary circles and the help of vocabulary strategies. This project also had the idea of forming a small library of graded readers of different levels (level 0 to 6), so that we could have books to share among the students of the different high-schools of our net. At the beginning of the project we started with books from level 0 and 1 with 20 copies of each title. We had four titles. Little by little we continue increasing the quantity of books and level and now we have about 60 tittles. Since the development of this project we have had meetings for planning activities, sharing materials and ideas and unifying criteria in the implementation of the methodology: the literary circles and teaching techniques for the acquisition of vocabulary, reading, listening and speaking.

Besides, this project has been a real challenge for many reasons:

1. It was the first time the students and us, used graded readers for reading and listening in our classes.
2. It has helped to increase the student’s vocabulary, and we believed that guessing from context has also helped to improve their skills in the language.
3. Through literature the students have developed a sense of peer learning and better understanding of human behavior and attitude to face life.

Another important fact has been the opportunity of having a small English library with the funds got through the project granted by MINEDUC. It consists of graded readers, audio readers, which can be borrowed from and lent to the colleagues and taken to schools when necessary because in our schools and in the bookshops and local libraries there are no books in English available and they are expensive to afford for our students.

To achieve our goal in this project:

1. We have focused our attention on different Reading Comprehension strategies.
2. We have motivated the students to increase new vocabulary by deducing from context using different inference strategies, such as pronoun reference and others.

For reading we have been using as main methodology the literary circles strategy, based on cooperative learning and group work because it was the first time the students were faced to reading books, they needed the help of their partners. And in the literary circles each student has a specific role (a summarizer, a character captain, a vocabulary enriched, a setting responsible, a responsible of detecting important ideas or facts, a drawer, a student in charge of asking questions). When reading the students develop a kind of portfolio where they register all the tasks assigned and it serves them as a guided summary of activities related to the book where every student has played a role. In this project students have also developed speaking skills because they do drama presentations, debates and power point presentations of the books read.

A second successful teaching experience has been a project whose aim was to develop the four skills of the language. It was based on the use of pop songs where the students do listening activities, reading activities about singers and oral presentations in power point about their favorite artists. Also, we did a song festival where students from different schools participated singing dancing and playing musical instruments. We also did a poster competition to advertise the song festival.

And the third project was based on tourism of our region. The aim of this project was to develop reading and listening comprehension and the communicative skills of speaking and writing in students of secondary school (1º to 4º medio). The results of this project were very successful because the students investigated about the tourism in the Colchagua Valley in internet and some of them created a tourist blog, brochures, posters, booklets of recipes, and oral presentation and dialogues which were presented in a tourist fair where lots of people from the city, authorities and teachers and students from other schools could realize of the work we do as network and the level of English our students have.

Main achievements with the development of these projects:

1.  Motivate the learning of the English language.
2.  Integrate the four skills of the language.
3.  Do interdisciplinary work with other teachers (Music, Arts, History, Language)
4.  Show our work and the student’s work to the school and local community.
5.  Develop team work within the members of our net and other nets of the region.
6.  Peer learning among students and teachers.
7.  Developing new ways to evaluate the students work considering the contents, the procedures and the student’s attitude in the learning process.
8.  These projects have become part of the school curriculum in our subject.
9.  The students read at least 3 readers every year. 

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAEQJG63Ldo