The planning*

*The success of a class in mainly based on the planning, because the planning will give the sense of organization to the teacher and to the students. The planning is the sketch elaborated by a teacher about the class he or she will give. Then the planning is the systematized sequence of all the activities that will occur during an hour of class.

The elements of the planning

A planning is composed by the following elements:

Activity	Objective	Interaction and time	Procedure	Material	Notes
Each one of the actions that will work for the students achieve the general objective of the class.	The general purpose of the lesson and the specific purposes of each activity.	-How the students interact between themselves (in pairs, groups,etc).   -How much time takes to do an activity (8 minutes, 20 minutes, etc).	All the steps that should be followed for complete the activity.	Material the students will use, such as: books, markers, sheets of paper, recordings, etc.	After the class the teacher can write notes about what worked in the class and what didn´t, about the problems he/she had and the solutions he/she found.

The Bloom´s Taxonomy

The Bloom´s Taxonomy is the structure of skills that should be achieved by students for reach some kind of knowledge. It is ordered by levels, the first levels represent the skills that are easier to achieve, and the next ones are harder to achieve and require deeper mental structures.

Some notes...*

Second Activity: A methodology framework for teaching a foreign language in basic education*

The Methodology Framework

This teaching framework represents a way of organize a class by using the communicative approach for teach a foreign language. It is compossed by 3 parts:

*The text: The teacher should give a complete and genuine text to the students for introduce them to the topic of the class. At this moment, the purpose is that students know, identify and recognize the main characteristics of the topic of the class.

*Focus on language areas: Once the student had contact with the language, he should reflect about the the correct use of the information given for express himself in a correct way.

*Use of the language: At this moment, students should be able to use the acquired knowledge for express themselves.

My exercise: Use of the methodology framework with the topic "Present Continuos"

I used the methodology framework  for plan a class of Present Continuous. This is my example:



Activity 2*



The teaching of a foreign language (English) in High School in México *

In Mexico the teaching programs of English were designed according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment (CEFR).¹ This framework establishes different levels of domain of a language, the Mexican education has adopted two of them as the basic domain levels should be acquired by students (at the end of basic education) and by teachers (as the tool that certifies their ability for teach the language).

¹http://www.coe.int/T/DG4/Portfolio/?L=E&M=/main_pages/levels.html

*http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/cadre_en.asp

The method: Constructivism

The main idea of this method is that the students construct their own understanding, according to their past experiences and the new situations they get into. In this learning method the teacher works as a guide, without giving the knowledge to the students but creating the necessary conditions for they can construct it by themselves.

“The purpose of learning is for an individual to construct his or her own meaning, not just memorize the “right” answers and regurgitate someone else’s meaning.”  (Eric Cohen)

http://www.funderstanding.com/content/constructivism

The Approach: Communicative approach

The main idea of the communicative approach is that the students be able to use English as a tool for express themselves, so, English became practical because students learn to develop abilities such as listening, speaking, reading and writing in order to communicate their needs, wishes or experiences.

The main point of this approach is the communication, but this doesn´t mean that another aspects of the language such as grammar are not important anymore, grammar still takes place in this approach, but is not the main point of it.

Some principles of the communicative approach, by Daniel Cassany:

*Use of complete (should express complete ideas) and genuine (should be spoken or written by native speakers) texts.

*The teacher should recreate situations from the real life into the classroom, for the students can practice.

*Feedback between teacher and students is very important for reach the expected learning.

*The students work in pairs or groups for  they can exchange information and reach a better understanding.

Some notes...



First activity: What is an activity?*

In this first activity we made the planning of an  activity students of high school; and we found the difference between planning an activity and planning a class.

The planning of an entire class: Greetings
1.      Write a list of five Greetings on the White board in Spanish.

2.      Ask the students to translate and finish the list.

3.      Once finished, classify the greetings in formal and informal ones, looking for their meaning and use.

4.      Finally, the teacher will throw the ball for choose a student, who will tell a greeting that he or she have learned today.

*As we could notice, an activity is just a part of a class, is an action or group of actions than have a specific objective. All the activities work together for reach the general objective of the class. So, a class is the group of activities designed for reach a general purpose during a specific quantity of time.

Sometimes, an activity can be that long, than cannot be finished in the time of one class, but it doesn´t mean that it became a class, is just that sometimes there are very long topics, which general objective can be reached after several classes.



Activity 1*