Planning-Lessons

Activity 3A: Task planning

Step one: Why ethics and values? Because during the learning process it is important to form a good behaviour in the learners in order to have an appropriate learning environment of respect and order. It is also important in a Foreign Language Learning process to reinforce different values that will help the understanding of a foreign culture as well as the own.

The role of values and ethics in education is to open learners’ mind in order to accept the differences in a society such as religion believes, races, customs, and politics ideologies and so on. Its place is every single subject the learner has, extracurricular activities and at home.

Step two: Where can we look for meaningful topics? We can look for meaningful topics in the Colombian General Education Law. In the Estándares Básicos de Competencias en Lenguas Extranjeras: Ingles del Ministerio de Educación Nacional we can find the following standards about ethics and values.

Participo en situaciones comunicativas cotidianas tales como pedir favores, disculparme y agradecer (MEN document on Standards, p.23).

Expreso de manera sencilla lo que me gusta y disgusta respecto a algo (MEN document on Standards, p.23).

Identifico elementos culturales presentes en textos sencillos (MEN document on Standards, p.24).

Demuestro que reconozco elementos de la cultura extranjera y los relaciono con mi cultura (MEN document on Standards, p.25).
Step three: Brainstorming for meaningful topics: religion, laws, social differences, racism, world wars, world conflicts, and so on.

Step four: Selecting topics and designing tasks

Step five: Actual lesson planning: first class has six steps for being developed in fifty minutes.

Step One: Teacher divides the class in six groups of five students each one (one minute).

Step Two: Teacher gives to each group one envelop with some pieces of paper that form a definition of the word “religion.” Each group has a different definition but they do not know what it is about; they have to organize the sentence (four minutes).

Step Three: Once everybody has the right definition, they have to write it down on the board and after reading all the definitions the whole class must find out the word that belongs to those definitions (five minutes).

Step Four: Teacher asks students if they agree with those definitions and proposes them, working in the same groups, to write their own definition of religion (five minutes).

Step Five: Each group read its definition and the whole class discuss about them (fifteen minutes).

Step Six: Teacher asks what religion students know and does a brainstorming (twenty minutes).

Learning Styles and Multiple Intelligences

A learning strategy is the mental and communicative process that learners use to learn a second language. In others words, the learning strategies are techniques or devices learners may use to acquire knowledge about the target language. In order to maximize their potential and contribute to their autonomy, language learners need training in metacognitive, cognitive, social or affective learning strategies.

The learning strategies depend on the student because each one has different strengths and different learning or cognitive styles. For instance, some students are better visual thanaural learners. That is, they learn better when they are able to real material rather than only listen to it.

Learning Styles and Multiple Intelligences are sistematic learning plans oriented toward a sucessful student's academic work. There are many kinds of students and each student has a different learning capacity. According to Dr. H. Gardner, intelligence is the capacity to do something useful in the society in which we live. Intelligence is the ability to respond succesfully to new situations and the capacity to learn from one's past experiences.

We have eight kinds of intelligences, they are: Linguistic, spatial, logic/math, kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal and naturalistic.