Schools Kills Creativity

Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we're educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.

Turning Trash into Toys for Learning

At the INK Conference, Arvind Gupta shares simple yet stunning plans for turning trash into seriously entertaining, well-designed toys that kids can build themselves -- while learning basic principles of science and design.

Kids can teach themselves

Speaking at LIFT 2007, Sugata Mitra talks about his Hole in the Wall project. Young kids in this project figured out how to use a PC on their own -- and then taught other kids. He asks, what else can children teach themselves?

Language Immersion through Reading in Pre-School

Copei VI International Congress Foreign Language Teaching Poster Session 2013 Language Immersion through Reading in Pre-School Our pre-school has a 100% English Program for two to four year old children. We implemented Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Program “Splash into Pre-K”. Children are immersed in an English environment. Spanish is learned at home and English is learned at school. By First Basic the goal is to be bilingual. Children easily learn English by reading stories and participating in related meaningful activities. Comprehension is clear when they can connect the stories to their real life experiences. This poster session shares an experience with story learning in pre-school. One story introduces English, Social Studies, Science, Math. We use Whole Language, a method of teaching that emphasizes literature, where language is treated as a complete meaning-making system. Reading Process Pre-Reading Five Huge Dinosaurs Educator introduces front and back covers. Shows pictures while children watch, react, ask questions, share prior knowledge. Immersion, Whole Language and Constructivism Reading Modelling The educator uses corporal gestures. Responding Children retell the story through ludic activities. They can respond to questions asked by the educator or a peer. Comprehension Children are able to produce chunks of language, building upon prior knowledge the new words, structures, phrases, verbs, adjectives. Science Children learned about the different types of dinosaurs. Watched a video about dinosaurs and saw a powerpoint presentation. Sang “Diggin up Dinosaur Bones”. Social Studies Children learned about huge animals and habitats, oceans, mountains, volcano. Sang the song “I love e mountain”. Math Children will compare small, medium and large. Sang “Math Attributes”. Rhyme Five Huge Dinosaurs. Art & Drama Children played pat-a-cake and made a different landscapes.

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.

Chapter 11 Methodology

Basic principles of language learning, learning centered methodology.
1. Developmental process: comprehends and exploits what learners already know
2. Active process: having and using the knowledge .
a. psychomotor activity movement of speech organs or limbs
b. language processing organization of information into a meaningful network of knowledge. Internal and unobservable activity.
How much learners have to think-use cognitive capacities and knowledge of the world to make sense of the flow of new information.
3. Decision-making process: taking risks. The process of developing and using a network of knowledge which relies upon a train of learner decision.
4. Not just a matter of linguistic knowledge: mismatch between learner’s conceptual/cognitive capacities and the learner’s linguistic level.
5. Not learner’s first experience with language: learners know what communication is and how to use it. This show be exploited, predicting before reading.
6. Emotional experience: develop positive emotions, social relationships, using pair and group work, time to think, more emphasis on process than product, valuing attitude, aptitude and ability, making materials interesting, fun, variety primary consideration in materials and methodology.
7. It’s incidental: learn while you think or when problem-solving. Use of a f ix language into a matrix of knowledge in their minds.
8. Not systematic: we systemize knowledge but the process itself is not systematic.


Simple Techniques
1. Gaps: information gaps, media gaps, reasoning gaps, memory gaps, jigsaw gaps, opinion gaps, certainty gaps.
2. Prediction: potential knowledge, teacher discovers, activates learner’s mind, student ego investment.
3. Variety: of medium, classroom organization, learner roles, exercises, skills, topic, focus
4. Enjoyment: if it bores the learner, it’s a bad lesson. Engaging learner’s mind with relevant materials and information. An enjoyable experience.
5. Integrated methodology: recycling and reinforcing, maintaining learner’s interest.
6. Coherence: where the lesson is going, previous stages should lead to following ones.
7. Preparation: prepares teacher to teach and also prepare learners to learn.
8. Involvement: cognitively and emotionally, use guiding questions. Appropriate questioning and wait time for answering.
9. Creativity: Language is dynamic, allow different possible answers, different levels of response.
10. Atmosphere: intangible factors. T-S relationship. Cultivation of a cooperative social climate within the classroom.


Reading this chapter has made me conscious on what I should be looking for when I receive plans and when I do classroom observations. What surprises me is that my feedback to teachers today in our ED Meeting was exactly about the simple techniques. I can use fancy educational words and facts from Tom Hutchinson and Alan Waters to support my feedback. It is amazing how important it is to get students involved, some teachers plan and prepare classes to teach yet not to help learners learn. In some cases there is no coherence with pre, during and after activities, and what matters the most to me is student involvement and production plus the atmosphere we create in the classroom.
I have a couple of teachers that create a negative atmosphere that it then is impossible to give a class, teach nor help learners learn. The simplest things like students coming in late, students who laugh, make noise, joke around, etc… These insignificant situations are sometimes the motives for teachers to lose control and kick students out of class. I wonder what are they going to do when a student insults them or a classmate? Or when a fist fight/negative discussions arises among students?
I have noticed that I have become a teacher in a way, and my English teachers are my students. I find that I am applying all this knowledge that takes me a term in our mini 30’ training sessions. I give them too much information and have high expectations, then I must slow down and only focus on the few teachers that have difficulties in this roller coaster ride of education.

I have decided to become independant language teacher. For the last 25 years I have been teaching and I have disccovered that it´s time for me to start at home. Teaching is about learning how manage your own life. I have dedicated so much time to learners that I feel that I shoud be dedicating it to my family. I have 4 children, one is married and she´s 23, a single 22 year old, a 13 year old and a 6 year old. I have realized that life is an ongoing change, what could have worked with my older daughters is obsolete with my younger ones. I find that as I have evolved in the educational field updating myself with new methodologies, learning by doing, life has taught me that needs change. So, teaching at home will help me learn about family matters.
Let this new encounter teach me how to become a better wife and mom. Juggling roles and taking the rollercoaster ride of becoming involved in household duties.

Montessori Math

Learning for Life

Math Materials

Nurturing the Love of Learning

Montessori Madness