Blog de Rebeca

Today I would like to share with you a video we have watched several times in our master's degree which according to my view perfectly summarises how education needs to change.   Before entering school students have different dreams, goals and ideas but when they finish they are exactly the same, all of them think in the same way as education has turned them into robots killing their creativity and individuality. As it can be seen, there are many thing to do because in literally more than a century nothing has changed in education. The world has progessed and as a consequence of that the school system needs to adapt to modern times. We need creative, independent and critic people... and in order to have those kind of people education has to enhance that. In the video it is also mentioned that students have different needs, strenghts, dreams and gifts. Therefore teachers should adapt to those specific characteristics that each student have but reality is different. ...

On the 11th December my group and I did a presentation on how to write effective classroom materials. The first thing we did was to explain to our partners how an expert on that matter (Rachael Roberts) conveived a successful lesson.  According to Rachael Roberts, a lesson should be more than a pile of disconnected things. A successful piece of material is something that is more than just a collection of worksheets or activities. In the lessons in which those activities will be carried out each stage should be a natural progression of the last stage. Those materials she mentions should be interesting, engaging and relevant and when selecting them we must take into account what the students need to know in order to understand them. So, we must think about what background and cultural knowledge will they need in order to engage with the material. Rachael also mentions that in a class there should also be a balance between heads up and heads down (moments in the lesson when stude...

Students involvement in school learning is essential and concentration, pleasure and interest are key concepts when talking about this. If the level of these three factors is high students involvement will be stronger. However, anxiety is a feeling which students can also experiment during the learning process. This feeling hinders learning and it happens when the student cannot cope with the challenge proposed because it is too difficult. In those situations, we must remember Vygotsky's zone of proximal development which is defined as "the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers" (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 86). Therefore, thanks to the teacher's guidance, students will be able to overcome these difficult challenges even though they do not have the required abilities and autonomy...