Affective Teaching

I realise that we are beyond Week 3, but as this is somewhat/tangentially Week 3-related and it just made me LOL...  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktvTqknDobU ...  (not for the faint-of-heart!) ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktvTqknDobU

Task #1 I teach toddlers so I don't have to do activities like this but let's try. We could divide the class into two groups and each group would write words about what we saw in the semeste. Then each group has to choose a student to go and see the word. This student needs to explain to the group what the word is, what the word talks about and they have to discover what it is. Everybody will read, describe, listen and try to discover the word. They will play with the vocabulary. The group that finishes all the words first will be the winner.

First of all, I am so sad that I missed the last class but I didn't have an option since I had a test. We could combine another picture then I can join you :) Our course it was amazing, I want more weeks together with you guys. Thanks, everybody. Task #2Finding the right audience and making writing meaningful are two of the major challenges teachers face when designing writing activities. What affective strategies have you used that achieved these goals? It's very important that students feel comfortable to show us what they need to improve, their questions and fears. When I worked with Junior (5 years old) I saw that some students weren't feeling comfortable and weren't enjoying. I did a lot of activities in pairs, to encourage them and I did individual activities with me, so that I could explain to that student the best way to him. I think when they start writing and reading they need to be more welcomed, it's my way to be sure that they are learning and enjoying ...

Discussion task #2: Finding the right audience and making writing meaningful are two of the major challenges teachers face when designing writing activities. What affective strategies have you used that achieved these goals?                                     I have two groups of 11-year-old children who really enjoy communicative activities in class. They are always looking for new challenges and opportunities to put into practice what they learn. To cater for their needs, I created a project named “My dear friend” in which stds were supposed to write notes to each other to get personal information and then, write a text. At first sight, they were reluctant to take part in the activity, firstly because it was novelty, and secondly because they are used to practicing language with their classmates. So, to encourage them, I showed them my writing portfolio which has all the pieces of writing I have made since I have started studying English.( From when I was 10 to CPE). To my surprise,...

Discussion task #1: Design a writing activity in which young learners can experience both grammar and writing in a creative way using concrete props.                    My 8-year-old students are learning colors, food, numbers and basic structures, such as “What is your name?” How old are you? “I like/ I don’t like…./ Do you like… To start working on writing, they had to create a ‘this-is-me poster, where they glued a picture of themselves on a poster and wrote information about them using the structures they are learning. They had never done such activity, so it was a little bit challenging to get them to write the correct structures, or remember the right word order.   To make the word order more attainable, I cut the structures into small pieces and glued them to lego bricks. Before writing, they had to put each word, or parts of speech. Together to form the right structure. As a result, not only were they able to  remember the structure, but some of them even remembered the order j...

Task 2 I have never taught writing to children and in the level I am teaching right now the kids are too young to read or write; thus, I cannot do writing activities. However, I love writing! I believe there is a strong connection between the writer and the reader. Even if you lack a reader, there is a connection from the writer to the text. Therefore, I wanted to talk about writing and the strategies I would apply if my kids knew how to read and write. I believe that I already have an advantage being such an advocate for writing. I believe in writing and the benefits it brings when you are able to clearly express your ideas through text. Thus, I have the possibility of giving my students the "writing bug". When designing an activity, I generally would think about the topics they like to talk about and what they have been really excited to share. With kids in particular, I believe that one of the most important things is to make it appealing for them. If you can make it appea...

Week 3 Task #3 Box Puppets I did this activity during Purim, to decorate the school all the classes did a box puppets. Since k2, the grade that I am teaching this year, was working with Spot's book, we got a Spot's friend from the book "Where's Spot?". We did the Lion. They could play copying the book and the sounds that the lion says. We worked the language of the book and all the animals in the book. They had a lot of fun.

Task #2 How has your relationship with English changed since you were a student? What has influenced these changes? I started studying English when I was 15 years old to learn the basic structures because I would study the last year of high school in the USA so I was excited and happy but, unfortunately, I didn't go (I didn't want to stay a long time without my family). Só after this I was fine studying English but not so excited as before and I wasn't doing my best. After a time when I was in the end of the course I started working in a Bilingual School than I changed everything, but life is not easy and with college and everything I couldn't study so hard. Now I am doing my second graduation, Modern Languages Portuguese/English so I have been studying pretty hard the English language and really excited to be perfect.

Week Three: Discussion Task #1 Getting Ready For Storytelling Stories are the oldest tool of teaching, and still the most potent. For most of human existence, we have used stories to share information and educate our offspring about the world. It is no wonder our brains have evolved to process stories more effectively than other formats of information. In fact, stories do more than allowing information transfer only.   In other words, storytelling as a particular method to teach language is powerful. Storytelling is a great way in teaching language because language learning happens unconsciously. It happens naturally when students to a certain degree understand the language. The best way of establishing strong connections with the language is listening to stories or listening to audios with natural, real language that learners understand. And when they understand, they do not need to be focusing on the parts, they do not need to focus on grammar or think about it. They will naturally g...

Task 3 1. How long does it take to see the result of affective language learning in students? 2. What are the 5 most important activities to implement in a classroom to show affective language learning? 3. How can affective language learning be applied to stop bullying? 4. What to do to stop name-calling? 5. Does affective language learning have any possible relation with positive reinforcement? 6. Is there any research regarding affective language learning? 7. How to go about showing affection without being able to speak their mother tongue? 8. What can you do when students get frustrated because they can't perform in the language? 9. How can we turn evaluation into an affective stage of the lesson too? I know that we cannot skip testing, so how do we make it affective too? 10. How is affective learning perceived by parents?

Discussion 3 1) Where do reward systems such as Classdojo sit in an affective classroom? 2) How do you help teachers feel comfortable teaching affectively, in particular using puppets in the classroom? 3) Is Dogme: Teaching Unplugged written by Thornbury and Meddins a adult version of teaching affectively? 4) Education systems around the world are shifting towards more tests is this at odds with affective teaching? 5) Is technology an appropriate tool to use in the affective classroom? 6) Is affective teaching embraced in many countries at a national level and integrated into the curriculum of all schools? 7) Has there been much research in to the effectiveness of affectiveness in the classroom? 8) Most course books are still organised around a grammar type syllabus if you produced an affective coursebook series for ESL how would you organise it? 9) How do you counter the argument from the parent who says this is just lovey-dovey crap you need to be teaching my child grammar and how to...

Discussion task #2: Introducing puppets and engaging learners A bit of puppetry; I think I need to work on not moving the puppets mouth when I'm speaking and sound a bit more lively! How can Norton get home?

Task 3 This is part of our summer school course where students make a toilet roll puppet. We use instructional language in English and show them how to make a puppet. They then get to design their own puppet. Finally in the video they introduce their puppet.  https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Ftectrat%2Fvideos%2F1266142120064348%2F&show_text=0&width=560

I would love to see our online classroom picture!

I just saw this video and I think you would like it very much. GREAT TO MEET YOU ALL! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMeEKBaiPbg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMeEKBaiPbg

Task 1 What aspects are important in your opinion to take in consideration when planning a storytelling activity?  Yesterday was the first time I have had an  storytelling activity in class. So I waited to do it to know what could be useful feedback to keep in my for next time. Now I know that 1 students need a little bit more build up to enter the story time world. Also, ss need to be more part of the experience than just listeners; so, it would be useful to think ahead of some role they can participate on. Lastly, I would say that planning wisely on the time aspect would be beneficial. This is all very new for me but I am very willing to learn and try out new things. How do they affect the moment in which we are with our students?  -I believe every moment where we are showing our students how much we care and how much we want to do things with them shows. I can asure my students appreciate all the efforst in making them a big part of the learning process and knowing how to do these ...

What aspects are important in your opinion to take in consideration when planning a storytelling activity?   I was teaching storytelling to maternal (3 year old kids) it was so difficult because they are spanish speakers learning in a bilingual context. the first I did  was to choose the correct story for their age. I choose The hungry giant.  i choose flashcards for the story and after i did pictures of vocabulary. I started the class introducing vocabulary showing the flashcard and i intruduced the chracter. After that I started with the story. At first was difficult for them to understand, but at the end they mimic what the giant was doing in the pictures.  thing to consider in my opinion: age, level, context.   How do they affect the moment in which we are with our students?  I believe that storytelling specially for young learners is very important. As a teacher i like to give my students this moment of fun where i can see that they not only enjoy the pictures but also to make the...

Third week assignment. So here are the snakes Sasha and Sushi:-D because they go Shhhhhh. Sasha is the naive one and Sushi is kind of cheeky. I inspired myself on a famous tv show in Spain called El Hormiguero with two similar puppets that are ants and which has even been exported to Argentina and other countries. On the second photo Sacha and Sushi are posing with the whole family: Venus and Blanquito (whitey). I am going to give them to my two private students who are sisters. I hope they will like them!

Discussion task #1: Getting ready for storytelling   In my opinion, first of all, the teacher has to choose a story according to the students' age, level of English and interests. Because of children's short span of attention, the activity should not only include auditory, visual but also kinesthetic elements. Teachers should engage them in the process,  they should feel that they belong to the story , by asking questions, participating... That is what will trigger their imagination. Fostering curiosity in students also make them eager to know what the story is about and what will happen next. They  don't get bored. I have a special place in my classroom where the storytelling takes place where students can sit down on the floor and feel more comfortable to listen to the story. I wish I could have cushions there :)

Week 3 Task #1 We need to consider: - The topic: sometimes it's better to get a book about what you are working. For example, with my students, during the adaptation time, we worked with Spot's books. The first one Spot goes to school, so you can motivate children and show another way to learn or to prove that what they are learning is funny and nice. - Their language level: of course that for my toddlers I can't get a book with hard language but you can retell the story using only the images or I can pretend a story based on the images. They just need to enjoy the story, it doesn't matter if the book is telling this or not. - the age: we know that depending on the age they don't have a big time of concentration so we need to adapt the book for each age and group. - Puppets or flashcards: It is so nice when we have something with us, to make a surprise and tell the story, a puppet or a flashcard, according to the book we use something to call the studends attention...

Discussion task #3: Building puppets with students for a specific purpose. The idea of becoming a puppeteacher enchantes me. When I saw Bilingual Birds video and everytime I see Juan dealing with Buddy I feel like I have to join this world of teaching and learning through magic. By using puppets you get access to children's world and once you do that, everything is possible.  I still haven't created my own puppet but I will! I will share here two activities I did with my students  last year in which they had to create their puppets. 1) Sock Puppet Students were learning to talk about personal information, such as name, age, favorite color or food... I noticed that when it came to answering  the questions they were doing fine, but they had difficulties to ,make the questions. Therefore, we decided to make puppets and the puppets should interview each other. Age: 6/7 Material: socks, strings, assorted buttons, googly eyes, pices of cloths, wood ... Procedures: First class: Studen...

Here is the picture of my students' puppets. They reviewed before the quiz asking each other questions. However, I still feel I need more information in this area to be able to do it more comfortably next time.

Task 3: making puppets to be used for certain activities in the class. Well, Ive never used them in class before but I liked the idea of the stick puppets so much. I was browsing the Internet and I came through a number of pictures . I thought of a couple of activities for the attached pictures. For the first picture I think they can be made after a lesson involving animals. Students can make the characters of the story and simply hold their stick puppets during acting out the story or reading it out. As for the second picture I believe it can be used in a more fun and creative way. Students can be asked to draw themselves on the sticks in a fun way. They can draw themselves with superpowers like their favorite cartoon characters or simply by having the qualities they dream of (for example being too tall or having long pink colour , etc). This puppet will stay with them for the rest of the term and it can be used during circle time. Students will create a background and life for th...

Does anyone have any guidelines for washing school supplies/keeping them clean: Especially when used by/for young learners e.g. puppets. Any useful links anyone knows of? Would be grateful if anyone could share.

Hey! I was wondering if somebody could help me with the difference between storytelling and reading a story.

Discussion Task 3: I guess I would go for the sock puppets given the practicalities. My first thought is that I would ask ,y 6-8 year old kids all to bring in a clean old sock the week before and then also bring in some extras myself in case any forget.  I have we could then spend half of one class decorating them - perhaps watch a video on how to do one - I could show one already made up and perhaps tell a story with one. And then have them stick on eyes and noes and spots and stripes and glitter and noes and mouths and stuff and then lay them out to dry for the next week. And then the next week use them for the vocaublary or grammar. We could name each of them = have a box for them to live in - and then when we have e.g. the daily activities which we have just finished doing we could have one of them get up, have a shower, have breakfast, go to school, have lunch, go home, etc. and then they could have dialogues with friends - do you, do you like etc...it would perhaps get over the b...

Discussion task #3: Building puppets with students for a specific purpose...Please watch the Funtastic world of puppets video .......... My goodness! 32 different types of puppet (and Elton John and Paul Young to boot!) Some of those I would never have thought of as puppets - like the stones and or push puppets. And some I had just thought of as models - like the potatoand balloon ones. The black light theatre ones remind me of vague memories of my pre-school TV programmes, the marionettes bring back one of my favourite childhood films The Sound of Music   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za7dAJtYXwo  and then the other rather less lovely puppet-related memory was also from a random film that I saw as a child on TV when I was on Kuwait as a child with these rather terrifying puppets  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za7dAJtYXwo   I do actually really like a good ventriloquist and Jeff Dunham is really skilled  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYAqQGEHg7I

Task 1: important aspects when planning a storytelling activity. For me the Yls I teach range from 8 to 13 years old. So, the planning is a bit different. First comes the choice of the story itself so that it's age appropriate and they won't think it's childish (most of them at that age act as if they are grown ups). I read it carefully and prepare some pre-teach vocabulary activities in order to be sure that they will understand the story completely. Through my experience in realized they all prefer to listen to the story from the teacher instead of having copies themselves. I prepare some pictures to put them up on the IWB if the class is big and might not be able to see the story in my hand. After the story and some discussion we usually do a project. It can be drawing or coloring or acting. So I need to make sure I have the needed material for the project. While telling the story is need to make sure that they are all comfortable. Dim light and background slow musi...

Task # 3 The puppet I created was thought to be used with my students in 6th grade for our cooking class. However I used it with a completely different purpose. I had to observe a class so I used “Pinky” to introduce myself and as it was students’ lunch-break-in-class, I took the advantage to go around and ask what they were eating and socialize with them. At first, students laughed because they thought I was crazy but then they started asking questions to “Pinky”, they even invited her for lunch! As you might have read in my previous post, we used paper-bag puppets to talk about animals and students invited their parents to listen to them speaking in English. This activity had two purposes: students talking and parents observing what we did in class.

Task # 2 For this activity, I created a puppet with an old kitchen glove. I have some already-made puppets but I wanted to do something by myself with something from the house. The problem was that “Pinky” (my puppet) didn't know how to cook so she needed students to tell her what ingredients were used to cook some sweets (“bombones de avena”). However, as you will read in #task 3, I used "Pinky" for a completely different task! We did the sweets but I didn't use the puppets!! I think (and I’m sure it must be this way) that puppets will change their “problem” according to the situation they are inserted into. Note: my puppet doesn't have a nose... can you tell me a good resource to use as a nose? Thanks :)

She is amazing! I would like to share it with you:-D https://youtu.be/hotg2kclmHM

Task #1 Storytelling I totally agree that storytelling is a memorable moment because students feel they are trespassing language barriers and they are using their imaginations. When I do storytelling I consider my students’ mood at the time. I believe that their mood is the 1st thing to take into account because it is what will lead into a successful or disastrous story session. I also consider the elements I will use to retell a story. If it needs lots of extra material, then, I simplify it just by using less characters or objects. Different it is when we read a story, as we just read and show the pics inside the book. This week, as part of this assignment, I read the book "The Crazy Sandwich Bar". I read the book as part of our "food" unit. Later, one of my 6th grade course prepared a "crazy sandwich" class!!! We didn't do a crazy sandwich itself but... had a lot of fun preparing a ham & cheese sandwich!

Discussion task #1: Getting ready for storytelling   Storytelling is a memorable moment in which learners establish strong connections with the language. What aspects are important in your opinion to take in consideration when planning a storytelling activity? How do they affect the moment in which we are with our students?  I think creating anticipation is absolutely vital.  Your voice, your tone, facial expressions, your level of interest, body language and the quietness and comfort of the classroom...and giving them a reason to listen.  Having enough time, not rushing it. Experience this week... My 11-14 year olds (they are supposed to be 11-12... but our age categorisation is wonky and they age out by the end of the school year anyway) and I are talking about crime (pickpockets and such) and associated vocabulary at the moment - so we did that vocabulary last week and they all wrote stories for hw.  Then we played 'remember, remember' where we all stood up and they had to m...

Glad the working week is over. Spent the last two days with YLs - twas fun :) Didn't get a chance to do puppets - but chose to tell a story with two sets of 11-14 year olds which worked quite well :)

Discussion Task #2 - Introducing puppets and engaging learners To introduce my puppet, Ruby, I created anticipation about who was inside the trash can! I said that a friend was in the trash can and showed the trash can to the students.Then I peeked under the lid of the trash can, and I whispered to Ruby the Raccoon to tell her to wait.   Next, I told some clues about her, using gestures as much as possible:   “We have a new friend who will be with us during our storytime! She can’t wait to meet all of you! She has a bushy striped tail (gesture for tail) and a mask upon her face (gesture for mask). She’s a good climber (pretend to climb) and an excellent swimmer (pretend to swim). She’s usually awake at night. (point a picture of ‘night’) Who is she? Do you know who she is?”   Actions 1. Gesture to show a tail by pretending to pull your hand along your ‘tail’ behind you. 2. Gesture to show a mask by holding fingers in two circles around your eyes. Then moving my hands apart back towards...

Discussion Task #1: Getting Ready for Story-telling I think it’s important to create an atmosphere in which the students are comfortable and eager to listen. I also believe that it is important to help the children engage with the story by having them gesture and make sounds to go with the story. After a story, it’s best to follow-up with songs and rhymes and other activities done in a circle that relate to the story   For a toddler story-time, I believe it is best for them to sit on the floor in a semi-circle in front of the story-teller. (with their moms, as needed).   Begin each story-time with fun finger plays and rhymes that the children know:  (Where is Thumbkin?; Itsy, Bitsy Spider; If You’re Happy and You Know it;  etc.). Using the same rhymes each week helps them become more familiar with the story-time routine, and they also become comfortable with the rhymes and language patterns.   To get young students to settle, use ‘Open, Shut Them’. This rhyme helps them learn to place ...

A nice example of storytelling in the classroom with preschoolers.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd8A2f6rBmU

DISCUSSION TASK 3 The school I work at has a fixed planning that teachers have to follow strictly. So, unfortunately,I couldn't create the puppet from the video. On the other hand, I managed to create another puppet, which is way simpler, and students had tons of fun. They had a fixed model I drew on the board. They had to draw it on the paper, and decorate as they wished. The outcome was great. They are learning the basics of the verb to be, greetings, numbers and colors. They have already learnt some food vocab. So, to make learning more meaningful, they had to create a stick puppet and perform a dialogue. To rehearse the dialogue, I used the fishbowl technique. I invited one student to perform the dialogue with me, then with one friend and then return to their pairs and perform it among themselves. They absolutely loved making new names, giving their puppets the final touch and performing in group. We did the choral repetition in a big circle. Dialogue PROCEDURE: teacher elicits...

DISCUSSION TASK 1 Storytelling is a memorable moment in which learners establish strong connections with the language. What aspects are important in your opinion to take in consideration when planning a storytelling activity? How do they affect the moment in which we are with our students? PREPARATION IS THE KEY: I firmly believe that to tell a FUNtastic story, the teacher has to be prepared in advance, It is important that the teacher reads the story beforehand, creates any puppets that are necessary, dim the lights, play a special song. When the teachers is prepared and ready for the action, learners will be more engaged. VOICES: This is another aspect the teacher has to take into consideration. While telling the story, it is vital to create different voices according to the puppet and be consistent. If you are using a hoarse voice with that puppet that resembles a 80-year old grandpa, stick to it. It also helps learners identifies who is who in the story. Believe me, they can spot ...

I though I had posted the answer to this task. However, upon taking a look at all the completed tasks, I realized I hadn`t posted the answer. So here it is. DISCUSSION TASK 3 When I started learning English, I was a very insecure student. I was afraid of asking questions, taking risks because I thought exposure would harm somehow. I don`t know how it would affect me, but I had always felt I would be the nagging student in the class. However, everything changed. When I was 16, my very first English teache showed me that it is okay to take risks. It is okay to ask questions, and yet not be nagging. So, I am pretty sure this teacher of mine had planted the seed of knowledge that one fine day would grow. It grew. It`s been very fruitful. Thanks to her advice, I was able to change my mindset and became secure. I truly believe one of the keys to succeed as a language learner, it is to have someone who believes in your. Someone who sees your true colors and invest time in you, knowing that th...

Week Two: Discussion Task #3 To me the below photo (taken less than a month ago) perfectly illustrates the idea of affective language learning, which involves using different senses and intelligences. A young learner on this picture will retain information for a long time if not forever because of the “hands-on” approach that involved discovering a recipe, learning from mistakes, curiosity to act like an adult, and above all doing real things.

Week Two:  Discussion Task #1 When teaching students how to read time from analog clocks I successfully adopted a plastic spoon as the hour hand and a fork as the minute hand. I also allowed numbers on domino blocks to be used at the beginning. All that helped me to achieve spectacular results among visual and kinesthetic learners in a short time span. Much, much faster than if I used instructions given in the book.

Discussion task 3 The picture I share with you is how I feel the affective learning. My daughter is on this photo and it assossiates me about affective learning. Why? Because : It means joy - Happy to learn the language ; Enjoyment - They are motivated and enjoy the class ; Freedom- Not being afraid to make mistakes ; Power - I can do it! Inspiration - Willing to participate the class activities; Rainbow - Many suitable activities that catch their attention; Support .... Care .... Love .... Respect.....

Task #1 Yesterday, in the kindergarten we were making animals with the crayons. This is Bade. She made a rainbow fish. ♡ I would like to share this picture with you! :-)

Week 2 assign. Task #1 During my teaching career I have been using many everyday objects. They are so fun, and kids enjoy using them. Why? Because learning becomes playing- and that is what kids like most! Last week, while we were recycling food vocabulary, I brought some food at school and some paper cups. I showed sts the food items and hid them under the cups. One by one they were coming,secretly looking under the cup, while other kids had to guess what food item is hidden under it. It was a lot fun. They didn't want to stop guessing. At the end of the class, I put some chocholate balls under one of the cups, and gave them as a reward. They were so happy - that is what we want- happy and motivated learners, who enjoy our classes!

Task #3: Building puppets with students for a specific purpose. As I mentioned before, we have been talking about animals and nature in class. Therefore, I have selected animal stick puppets. Besides talking about nature, last class we covered the use of where. So, ss can create their puppets and then walk around asking each other "Where is the bird?" "It's in the tree." Since my classes are only on Saturday afternoon, I will try to upload a picture on Sunday.

Task #1 ****What aspects are important in your opinion to take in consideration when planning a storytelling activity? I will consider aspects in the planning and also during the storytime, I had some ideas, and I learned most of them with Juan. 1. Pick a story according with level of english. First of all, we have to pick a story that the target language does not exceed the level of english of the student, or pick known stories that they might have learnt in their mother tongue. We don't want frustrated kids. With my beginner kids I use books like, good bye moon, the very hungry caterpillar, three little pigs and more with simple vocabulary. 2. Stimulate all learning senses. In every class we have to take into account all the ways of learning in order to stimulate the majority of them if we can. In a story we can work listening by of course telling it. For visual kids, by showing pictures of every important episode of the story. for kinesthetic kids we can try to perform the s...

Task #3 I chose a paper bag puppet. We were learning about life cycles of different animals and this day we built a frog puppet because we were learning about the life cycle of frogs. I explained to them the life cycle of frogs with the puppet and then, they explained to me. They worked as a group talking about the topic between them and with the teacher too. I love that they make funny voices, sometimes is difficult to understand because of that.

Week One: Discussion Task #3   It is commonly accepted that the Circle Time is a special time when children are engaged in an open discussion, reading a story, participate in games or relaxation activities with the aim of learning new skills, practice verbal communication, developing emphatic listening skills…etc. These activities and games are also designed to promote respect and better understanding. Benefits of the Circle Time are obvious and self-evident to me but there are risks attached, as well.   Let me take all that a bit personally for a moment and say you have a kid who has been studying English at a school. That is great but maybe the kid feels a little lonely, maybe his motivations are dropping a bit, so you like to find a private language institute in your hometown. That is fine but one should be very careful when shopping around to choose a class for a loved one. Do not just go to the first class you find. If you are looking for a private academy and classes with tutors,...

Hi all. Sorry I had to leave before the end of the session today. Juan, I just wanted to follow up on that question I asked about the practical needs of a curriculum/course book to teach to vs. an an affective learning approach. My question was:   One thing that really strikes me about your teaching style, Juan is that it is not rushed. You take your time. I always find myself myself thinking I have to get through this stuff in the curriculum today...how do you balance course book/curriculum dictates/requirements/ confines versus affective learning? Looking forward to hearing from you, Juan and from anyone else who has any other ideas :) Yasmin

My very first attempt at puppeteering:-D

Hi to you all!! Back in 2013, when I "discovered" Juan, I wrote a blog post about puppets. There, I wrote about why I used (and still use) puppets and the activities my students did with them. If you have time, stop by my blog and read the post about puppets! Thanking smiles, Maria :)

Hi, everyone. I can't seem to find the exact video we have to watch. Can someone post a link, please? I have seen some other great ones, though;-)

I mentioned about my puppet, Ruby, the Raccoon with her garbage can in our Week 3 session. Here she is in two photos! (Sorry I don't have a close-up photo of her.)  In the first, she's talking to the children and in the second, she's pulling the letter of the week from her garbage can (with a little help from me :). This class was an International Story-time for Toddlers who speak many different languages. They loved to come up to interact with Ruby! :-)

What a great session we had today. I was smiling all the way! These are Max and Venus. Guess who's who!