Communicating in English???????

TIPS FOR EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION IN ENGLISH

Clarify ideas before communicating: Systematically think through the message and consider who will be receiving it and/or affected by it.

Examine the true purpose of communication: One must ask himself/herself this question – what am I really aiming to accomplish with this message? The use of language can then be suitably adjusted.

Take the entire environment, physical and human, into consideration: Questions such as, what is being said, to whom and when are very important. Your skill lies in how you say it and, of course, your timing. Adapt your language to the environment.

Be careful of the overtones and the basic content of the message: The listener will be affected by they way you put across your message. Your tone and facial expressions are also to be considered.

Use crisp language and be clear: It is very important that the words are well chosen and that you stay as crisp and concise as possible. In other words use minimum words to send across the message and convey useful information.

Follow-up on communication: One must solicit feedback in ensuring that the receiver has understood the message. If the person has not understood, tone down the language.

Be a good listener: By concentrating on the receiver’s response you can ensure his extent of interest in you and also if he is concentrating.

In this video you will see none of these tips is applied. An example of how far we can reach when communication is not the end goal of our conversation.......Absolutely worth watching!!

Teaching the whole child - ASCD Conference

This is where you come in ......Get involved and protect the whole chid!!!!

RAD TEACHING

When a Neurologist becomes a classroom teacher, Brain Learning Reseach promotes teaching strategies. Dr. Judy Willis, a board-certified neurologist and middle school teacher in Santa Barbara, California, has combined her 15 years as a practicing adult and child neurologist with her teacher education training and years of classroom experience. She is an authority in the field of learning-centered brain research and classroom strategies.
Dr. Willis concludes that there are three main brain systems she refers to as RAD which are the keys to building better brains.

RAD is short for:

R: Reticular Activating System (RAS)
A: Amygdala
D: Dopamine

Reticular Activating System

The RAS is the attention activation switching system located at the brainstem. You can
control where students’ focus goes in the classroom, and what information gets through the RAS by incorporating novelty, multi-sensory learning, goal-motivated attention, and creativity with learning activities.

Amygdala

The amygdala is the center of the brain’s emotion relays in the limbic system and it also strengthens the long-term memory potential of information that enters accompanied by positive emotion. With low-risk, low-stress, positive learning activities, the RAS and amygdala can help
the brain focus on the sensory information of the learning activity.

Dopamine

Dopamine is one of the brain’s most important neurotransmitters, proteins that carry information across spaces between nerve endings. When you can incorporate pleasurable learning experiences and activities into lessons, the dopamine released is then available to increase pleasure, attention, and memory.

Judy Willis Will be delivering seminars in Argentina "Learning and the Brain Conference" Sept 4-5, 2009.

Ken Robinson ... Do schools kill creativity?

A hilarious lecture and a critical overview of the schooling system around the world, Are we aware of our responsibility and our influences on the future generations?
Creativity is the imagination put into practice, are we afraid of letting our students creativity flow? or we´ve just stopped being creative ouselves ?
In this presentation the writer of " The Element" makes it clear that nowadays creativity is as important in education as literacy....... Enjoy!!!!

Susan Boyle - A star is born!!!!

Is beauty in the eye of the beholder or we simply judge the book by the cover?

In this video you will see a typical example of labelling.
Will we ever be able to change our preconcieved ideas and our mind frame ? Will we ever accept others and even ourselves the way we really are?
"Be honest and true to yourself, always dream big and give everybody a chance to be who they are, Angels come in all kinds of shapes"

Thank you Caro for telling me about this video and thank you silvi for sending it to me!!!

Class observation

Helpful or dreadful? That´s the question.....

Have you ever been in a situation like the one in the video? I hope not, when the observer is helpful and relaxed everybody enjoys and everybody profits from the observation. Even the teacher who is being watched...the problem is: Are we open to suggestions? Is the observer open to new ideas? Do we always accept other´s points of view?
It is always hard work to accept criticism even if it is constructive.



Specially for Miss Marie who´s always hated ( like me) being observed, and who´s proven to be a devoted English teacher and an irreplaceable partner.

All my love and gratitude to you......

9 BRAIN COMPATIBLE ELEMENTS

AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST......



ADEQUATE TIME


In terms of the pattern seeking and program building nature of the brain, adequate time is not a luxury, it is a prerequisite. It takes time to extract meaningful patterns (make meaning) and it takes time to know how to use what we learn in meaningful ways (acquire useful programs). Adequate time is needed to get the job of learning done well, to accomplish mastery (the ability to use the concept/skill in real life settings), to fully understand the connections among prior learnings and learnings yet to come. Using fragments of time--20 minutes for this, 40 minutes for that--is the ideal way to guarantee a low degree of meaningfulness and high failure rates. Using uninterrupted time to allow students full concentration is the ultimate gift, e.g., a two-hour block, all morning or even an entire day devoted to a major concept and its application to real life. Learning should be more than covering the material and building mental programs for use.The implications for the classroom of the 21st century are obvious--we need to do less and do it better and more in-depth, giving students time to use the information again and again in varying settings until the information is recallable in a usable form, i.e., as a behavior, a mental program



For those who´ve read and enjoyed " To everything".

Special thanks to Caro who told me the story was actually a song.

This video is specially dedicated to Sabri Catagno who really charishes the book as much as I do.