INGLÉS MAESTROS

CUESTIONES DE DEFENSA DE LA UNIDAD DIDÁCTICA Y PROGRAMACIÓN

1) How do you organise the timing of evaluation?

At least there are three moments of evaluation throughout the course: initial evaluation, processal
evaluation and final evaluation. The second one will be carried out on a daily basis through
observation and through a series of instruments and techniques such as note-taking, revision of
assignments, projects, role-plays, social activities, etc.

2) How do you ensure the follow-up of your 25 students on a daily basis?

I’m not in power to pay equal attention to all students every day. The nature of the activities
serve the purpose. What I intend to do is to organise a weekly plan to ensure that everyone has
enough opportunities to score individually and I plan the activities according to the skills of the
students after a previous study of the group. For example, in one single session I may chose to
focus on weak students and see how they operate with fast learners. In other session, I might try
to check the fast finishers organisation skills through giving them more protagonism in the class.
My notes will be revised daily and weekly.

3) Suppose you detect some cognitive, psycho-motor or socio-affective irregularities in a

particular student. What would be the protocol to follow?
Should I detect any special oddity in one of the students, the protocol to be followed would be to
communicate with the specialist of the school and the tutor. Afterwards, I would expect
instructions and I would be inclined to coordination.

4) What specific measures of educational support would you apply on an Ecuadorian student
of the 1st year of Primary that does not read or write?
None. The fact that a student comes from Equator does not mean that he needs specific
educational support measures. Plus, in the first year of primary all students are evaluated starting
from zero, so he would simply have to catch up with all the rest, who probably haven’t developed
reading and writing skills either.

5) What is the difference between an assessment criterion and an achievement indicator?

An achievement indicator is an instrument to evaluate whether the basic competences in the
didactic unit or syllabus design have been acquired by the student or not. It is a personal
document that can be elaborated by any teacher. Its formulation is done with the third person
singular and a verb indicating a capacity.

E.g.: The student can answer the basic questions formulated by the teacher. In this case the
competence to be evaluated is number 1 or linguistic

An evaluation or assessment criterion evaluates concepts, competences and attitudes and it is

mandatory by law, as it appears in any Decree establishing the curriculum in the autonomous
regions around the country. It enables a grade for the student (IN;SUF;B;NT or SB), whereas the
 achievement indicator is useful for the final evaluation, in which the board of teachers will
consider if the student has acquired the basic competences as a support for a non passed subject.
Assessment criteria are formulated with an infinitive indicating ability, such as to be able to, to
be capable of + a verb indicating a skill.

E.g.: to be able to summarize a test

As observed if the assessment criterion is well formulated ,it will also include a competence;
with the verb to summarize, the teacher is evaluating the competence of learn to learn (number
7), as well as the skills of reading and writing, belonging to block of content 2 in the English
area.

Assessment criteria are therefore mandatory in any syllabus design, whereas achievement
indicators aren't.

6) You mentioned the use of digital resources in your didactic unit. Is there any website in
which you can see resources from other teachers in your autonomous region?
The virtual classroom or aula virtual in Educa Madrid shows the work done in most primary
schools in the region of Madrid. Every teacher has a username and a password to access the
website. Once the teachers are in the virtual classroom they can have access to different schools
and take a look at the courses elaborated by the staff in that school. Such materials are done with
the moodle programme and cannot be modified, just used by all the teachers that have been
invited to observe the creation of the course.

The website, through the moodle programme, is also interactive. There is an application in the
moodle platform that lets teachers send homework to their students and check the work they have
done and give them a grade that will be part of a system. It also allows the creation of on-line
tests.

7) What are the grading criteria in your unit if there isn't a test?
We can apply the principle of continuous evaluation and make use of all the instruments the
teacher has, mainly the diaries in which the daily work has been reflected. Systematic
observation will let us see the performance of the student in terms of skills: speaking, listening,
reading, writing and attitudes towards the language, the teacher and the other students. Teachers
should also have assessment rubrics of the most representative activities in the unit.

Once these elements have been gathered we are ready to give a grade in terms of numbers, for
example: speaking 20%, listening 20%, reading 20% , writing 20%, attitudes 20%

The total of the unit will be worth 1/5, as there are five units in the term, of all the sections of
classwork production and homework of the units.

8) How do you connect your syllabus with the cross-curricular element of Education in
Values?
  It is essential to promote the fact that students should respect each other in the classroom and
a good way to learn it is to make them work in different groups in and out of school.
Interactive groups is an example of team work: Students work in groups of five and they
work with a skill for ten minutes, afterwards they'll move to practise other skill. In this way
they need to finish a task in a short time and support each other for the completion of the
task.
 Celebrating different days such as World Peace Day (January 21), International Day of the
Disabled (December 3), Human Rights day (December 10), the Europe Day ( May 9)....with
different activities will help them develop an awareness of different global issues and to raise
them a conscience of good citizens.
 Stories are also a great resource for showing them values. It is very easy to connect a simple
story such as the Pied Piper of Hamelin with a topic: “likes and dislikes” and with good and
bad human values.

9) Why did you dedicate three days in your unit for a test and other three days for cultural
activities connected to ... Holidays when you could have done everything at the same time?
(real question asked by the board of examiners)
As it is a very long term students feel tired at the end and a good way to make sure that they
remember the acquired concepts, skills and attitudes is to make them focus for two or three days
on a revision with a subsequent test and then give them a reward in terms of activities that will let
them develop their socio-cultural competence, always telling them that these cultural activities
will be part of the final grade in the term. If I chose to mix the revision and extension activities
for the test with the socio cultural ones, students would not focus on the contents studied during
the term.

10) Can you give me an example of a connection between an objective, a content, a basic
competence and an assessment criterion in your unit?
For the objective of “to read for specific information”, the content of “block 2. Reading and
Writing: reading a passage in the story of…”, the assessment criterion of “to be able to match
pictures with sentences when reading a passage in a story” and the basic competences number 1
(linguistic), number 6 (cultural and artistic), number 7 (learning how to learn) would be all
connected

11) Why didn't you apply a meaningful curricular adaptation to the student with ADHD in
your classroom?
The Curricular Competence of the student with Attention Deficit with Hyper activity Disorder,
according to the initial evaluation is only one year behind the other students, as the syllabus
design is for the fourth year of primary education, the student's level is at the third year. The
student's curricular level is then within the same cycle. The adaptation done is in terms of the
basic contents in the decree, therefore no objectives or assessment criteria need to be adapted. We
are facing then a non-meaningful curricular adaptation.

12) Can you give us one example of any of the intercultural activities you have prepared?
13) Could you explain to us how do you work with the cross-curricular elements in Unit X?

14) What is the relationship between the key competences and the other curricular elements in
your programming?

15) How do you promote the fostering reading programme through the foreign language
teaching?

16) How are you going to face the adaptation to the curriculum to "certain" pupil with "X"
characteristics…

17) Have you planned any didactic unit that reviews the previous contents at the end of the
term?

18) Which instruments of evaluation do you use for asses students?

19) How often do you use the ICTs in your English classes?
 INGLÉS MAESTROS
CUESTIONES DE PREPARACIÓN DE LA PARTE B3

1) What are the protocols if you detect any irregularities in one of your fellow-teachers?
Normally, I would try to make sure that such irregularity exists. Then I would speak to the head
of the department mainly for two reasons. First, I am not entitled to risk an argument with a
colleague. Secondly, I might be wrong.

2) Do you think playing games in the classroom is a positive way of improving students
acquisition of the second language?
Absolutely yes. Playing games and entertainment activities provide tremendous opportunities for
students to find a real application to the language items they learn in the classroom. Playing
games does not mean the class is going to be a complete relaxation. Challenging games are even
more difficult than regular exercises (especially for those students that find participation more
difficult) but they seem to feel more motivated and engage more when a game is proposed. Apart
from that, some comparatively weak areas of the language (such as pronunciation) may be sorted
out by playing cooperative, competition and drama games.

3) Would you say that drama games and role plays are necessarily productive?
In the same way as playing games, drama activities have a great advantage. The learners are
exposed to real language in English. If this is not enough, they have real motivations to use such
language. Apart from that, they may concentrate on how to be understood properly, that is, they
may make more efforts to be communicatively efficient. In short, drama activities are always
recommendable, although they need guidance for it.

4) If you were asked to teach “Conocimiento del medio” in English, what would be the main
aspects of the evaluation?
Whenever we are engaged in bilingual subjects what we do is teaching other contents of the
curriculum in English. In this respect, the evaluation must be oriented to the contents of the
subject, not accuracy in the language. Of course, sometimes we do the same thing in the subject
foreign language but in this case the degree of specialization in contents is somewhat higher.

5) What is your opinion about the influence of videogames in children's development?

6) What do you think about the role of the family in the educational process?

7) Do you think it is important to use the ICTs in the teaching of foreign languages in primary
education?