TiNkERiNg ScHooL

What Gever Tulley said about “tinkering school" in his lecture is something that in our Chilean reality is very difficult to find. According to my work experience, teachers don’t apply these classes in our schools. They only teach contents according to Chilean curriculum. Indeed, they follow strategies, plans and activities made by the curriculum.

If we want to apply this concept of "tinkering school" in Chile, teachers’ minds should change in order to create in them a different way of thinking about education. Education is not only teaching things by heart and control students. Education means that teachers have to develop new strategies and believe in students’ abilities. Therefore, the first thing in order to apply the concept is that teachers should trust in their children. The idea is that students create their learning through their imagination and creativity. Then, teachers should give students different tools and motivation without following a curriculum.

Another important thing is that students feel very well in classroom. The main aim is that teachers change the environment of class (without control, repression and discipline) in order to develop in students a natural interest in learning. With this interest, students could work with their creativity and imagination in order to create their own tasks. It doesn’t matter whether students go wrong with their tasks because they will be feeling good and could learn of their mistakes.

In summary, teachers need to create the perfect environment in classroom in order to apply this concept of school and then students need to feel comfortable and use their creativity and imagination in what they do. To emphasize, we need classrooms without rules and norms of teaching in order to work with students’ creativity. In my opinion, it is the way of applying the concept of “tinkering school” in our Chilean public classrooms.

UsiNg SoUnD in ThE CLaSSroOM...

First of all, I would like to say that I found really interesting the web site because it shows us a different way of teaching in class through the sounds. In the classroom, teachers can find many sounds that could help their job. Lamentably, they don't use these strategies that could improve students' attention and interest in their learning.

The sounds that occur in the environment could help teachers in the listening skills of students. These skills could help the children's learning process. For instance, in the web page we could find lesson plans in where students have to use their listening and visual skills (activities contain pictures, photographs and audio recording) in order to develop their learning. In the activities, they begin with a basic knowledge of the topic and with the audio recording and images, they begin to create their knowledge. The more sounds and photographs in the activities, the more information they relate and learn.

In my opinion, these kind of lessons are very different to the classes that we are used to see in our working experience. For this reason, I think these lessons could catch students' interest because they have different activities compared to others classes. Therefore, children could feel motivated because they are doing something unusual and interesting.

As futures teachers, we should use sounds, songs, audio recordings etc. in our classes because with theses kind of activities children could develop their senses, their way of think, their imagination and creativity.

VoCaBuLaRy...

Tune : A series of musical notes, especially one which is pleasant and easy to remember (a melody)

Tune out : to ignore someone or not give your attention to something that is happening around you .

Hoarse : having a rough voice.

Pitch: Level or degree of a sound, melody, etc.

Beats : They are periodic variations in the loudness of a sound.

Screech : To make an unpleasant loud high noise.

Sizzle : to make a sound like food cooking in hot fat

Clatter : to make continuous loud noises by hitting hard objects against each other.

Shatter : to (cause something to) break suddenly into very small pieces.

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/

QuEsTiOnS...

Barbara and Francisca's presentation

1 - Why some teachers use their hierarchy and authority in order to oppress students?

2- Are the rules and norms that school impose the main root of the lack of interest and rebelliousness of students?

3- Do you believe that school's job is focused on the control of the student's behavior instead of teaching?

SuMMaRy...

Hi everyone,

It is the summary about the presentation of Vanesa, Marta and Anita. It was about movies v/s trailers.

Essentially, they said that a movie trailer was an extract of a movie, in other words, movie advertisements. The idea of a trailer is to catch the interest of people or, in this case, the audience. Also they, told us that trailers contained the most important scenes of the movie. They added that the main aim of a trailer is that people could watch the central topic of the movie.

After, they exposed a critical thinking about the topic. My classmates said that first they saw trailer and created expectations about it. After of watching the trailer, they saw the movie and then they realized that movie was not what they expected. My classmates realized that their expectations were wrong. For this reason, occasionally people don't understand nor comprehend the movie because trailer shows different ideas about the main topic. In conclusion, people could get deeply disappointed with the film if they created false expectations with the trailer.

Well, that's all folks
bye bye...

SuNSeT...

I was riding slowly my bike at the street
Seeing above the horizon
Waiting for the sunset
The wind sounded like whispers in my ear
I felt a comfortable sensation in my body
and then a beautiful sunset was appearing at the end of the way.

At ScHooL...

The children run and play around the playground
Watching the blue sky
Sharing their magic toys
Their voices sound like the sea
Suddenly, the bell ring several times
then, they begin to run in order to go home.

SuCCeSS is A ConTiNuOus JoUrNeY

Why do many people reach success and then fail? I think that it is a good question that Richard St. John presents in his lecture about success. It is an excellent question that can help us in our classroom and in our lives.

According to my work experience, I think that when children are studying, they ought to be persistent in order to improve their learning. Nevertheless, I have seen that students are comformist or simply they don't want to work in class. In other words, children think that they don't need to improve any more their learning, knowledge and marks. For these reasons, as Richard St. John said "success is a continuos journey". In my opinion, students cannot sit back and relax if they made something well. The main idea, is that they keep working hard in order to feel a sense of achievement. Richard St. John said that "if you achieve success then you can't relax, you have to sustain it". Students need to continue working and studying in order to obtain and maintain their success. As future teachers, we have to help them in this aspect.

PeRsOnAL SuCCeS

Hello people,

I think that one of the most important successes in my life was when I finished my high school. Maybe, that moment in life doesn't mean anything important for some people, however, in my case it meant a lot. In that moment, I felt an enormous sense of achievement because I had got one of the goals that my family and I wanted. My Father and Mother were really proud because of my success in high school. Also, it was a time in which I felt very well. In my opinion, it was important because I was the first member of my family that had finished high school, and in the meantime, I felt successful because it was an essential aim and an important step for my future.

To be honest, if you want to be a successful person in life, you need to have a hyper-competitive spirit and passion for hard challenges. In my case, I'm really persistent with my aims. The perseverance is something very important when you want to be successful in life.

Nowadays, I study at the university, for this reason I think that my next challenge and goal will be related to my studies. I believe that my following personal success will be when I have finished my career.

See you.....