2nd Week

The single most important contribution education can make to a child's development is to help him toward a field where his talents best suit him, where he will be satisfied and competent. D. Goleman

I guess we can say the same about the teacher's education, because there is always something new we can learn and that can suit us better and thus make us more satisfied and more competent. At least, that's how I felt when I 'found out' the search engines that Deborah suggested! I must confess the pedagogical work I have been doing with my students has not contemplated in a systematic and sustained way the use of the Internet, because I'm not really sure of how to use it either in the classroom or even at home as a source of information. Most of the times I google for texts or additional information on some topic, but I always find it difficult to get what I really wanted. Now, I just hat to take a look at http://www.archive.org and I immediately found many interesting and suitable movies for my lessons. It's a fact they are not as recent as I'd like them to be, but they can be useful for comparing and teaching a bit about culture and the past. There are lots of commercials I can use when I talk about consumerism and advertising, for instance. My students can compare how commercials used to be and how they are nowadays...
I've always considered that videos are one of the best tools for the English lesson: students like them and they are authentic. So, I was thrilled to find the Yahoo video search. I had been trying to find Rin Tin Tin episodes for ages and now, all of a sudden, there they are!
Now, when I clicked on 'social issues' and I found out most of the topics are part of the English syllabus in Portugal, I really got excited!It can be so USEFUL!
Now, concerning the ABCD style of defining learning objectives, I do find it accurate and helpful, but isn't it time consuming?
I had 7 classes last year, three different levels of English. I was member of the newspaper team of my school and I coordinated a Comenius project. I must confess I didn't have much time... It usually takes me a long time preparing a lesson and I don't usually write down objectives like these, I do it in a simpler way... I wonder how long it will take me if I always use Bloom's taxonomy...
Well, all in all, I'm just sorry I couldn't work on the tasks earlier this week, because, once again, I really enjoyed it!
Wish you all a pleasant week!