My visual metaphor¡

Hello everyone¡

Again I´m writing this post to show you new things that I´ve learned in my ICT´s subject and which I´m carrying out to improve my Open Educational Project¡ That is a visual metaphor where I can show you how my project is going to turn into a collaborative one. As you saw in my last post Prototype of my Open Educational Project, the topic that I´ve chosen for my project is called "What´s the weather like?" and It´s aimed to students of first grade of Primary Education in the area of English. 


Nowadays, we have to take into account the collaborative learning. The learning process is much more than a simple mark. As an actual teacher, we have to improve the techniques learned in the past and turn it into new techniques to carry out with our students, such as collaborative learning.

Next, I´m going to explain what cooperative learning is. Cooperative learning is a successful teaching strategy in which small teams, each with students of different ability levels, use a variety of learning activities to improve their understanding of a subject. Each member of a team is responsible, not only for learning what is taught, but also for helping his or her teammates learn - thus creating an atmosphere of achievement. It is equally succesful for any subject, topic or level.

The ultimate success of cooperative learning is based on a single and very important principle: students must be taught how to participate in a group situation. Teachers cannot assume that students know how to behave in a group setting. We can say that a collaborative work can foster socialization among students.

Now, we are going to see something that is really important, What is it? I mean the BENEFITS¡ here you have some benefits of collaborative work:

• Student achievement. The effects on student achievement are positive and long-lasting, regardless of grade level or subject matter.

• Student retention. Students are more apt to stay in school and not drop out because their contributions are solicited, respected, and celebrated.

• Improved relations. One of the most positive benefits is that students who cooperate with each other also tend to understand and like each other more. This is particularly true for members of different ethnic groups. Relationships between students with learning disabilities and other students in the class improve dramatically as well.

• Improved critical thinking skills. More opportunities for critical thinking skills are provided, and students show a significant improvement in those thinking skills.

• Oral communication improvement. Students improve in their oral communication skills with members of their peer group.

• Promoted social skills. Students' social skills are enhanced.

As we have already known what a Collaborative learning is and the benefits, I´m going to explain how I will turn my Open Educational Project into a Collaborative one. (I have to say that my project could change some things little by little in order to improve it).

As you can remember, in my last post Prototype of my Open Educational Project we could see my final activity in which the students can work in a collaborative way. The final activity is really easy as they are from first grade of Primary Education. What they have to create is a story or comic among all the class. For that, we have to follow some steps:

1. The teacher has to divide the class in four groups.

2. Each group is a different season. That is, the first group is winter, the second is spring, the third is summer and the fourth is autumn.

3. Each group has to draw one character doing any action during its corresponding season.  Also, they have to use the concepts learned during the unit, such as the clothes (they have to wear different clothes regarding to the weather), or the landscapes (if there are flowers, snow and things like that).

5. After the students have drawn their pictures, they will write short dialogues to form a comic.

6. Finally, we will form a comic among all groups. First is spring, later is summer, winter and finally autumn. When the comic will be ready, the students will update the post with the comic in their blogs.

In each group will be one speaker, one coordinator, one writer and one who draw the pictures. The speaker will be in charge of telling the story. In this way, everyone can participate in one way or another. 

When the students finish the activity, the speakers go to the blackboard and they start to tell the story. It could be a really fun story because children at this age have a lot of imagination.

The students will work the listening, reading, writing and speaking skills, apart from other cognitive skills such as thinking skills.

I would like to point out that my project will be collaboration within the classroom through cooperative learning and collaboration out the classroom because they will post it on the blog. 

Taking into account my final activity, I´ve decided to collaborate with The ESL Times if it was possible. I think that this project is very complete and I could collaborate with them.

After that, I will show you my visual metaphor that I have created in order to illustrate my Collaborative project. For that, I have used a digital tool called Canva.  I think that this tool is quite useful and very interesting. I´m sure that every day I´m learning a lot of new things to use in my future as a teacher, because you can design a lot of posters related to the topic that you like, such as work, studies and so on. This tool in concrete, allow you to create a lot of resources that you can use in your classes. If you ask me 3 days before, I didn´t have idea about this, I didn´t know how to create a poster or a comic, but now, with this tool and other like that such as  Pixton, I can create a lot of resources for my classes. The creating process is really easy to follow, so if you are teacher, try it¡ 

THE WEATHER AND THE SEASONS by Maria Jose Hidalgo

To conclude, I would like to say that among all the new teachers, we can improve the way to teach and make better our students. This is the reason of my blog, I want to inform you about new techniques of teaching that I´m learned at the same time. I hope this post is useful for you¡