Cristòfor Mestre School
MACHINES
Sergi Muñoz & GenÃs Sà bat
Where we are?
School context
Our school’s name is Cristòfor Mestre and is located in Vilafranca del Penedès. There are 515 pupils distributed in 25-27 per class.
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Vilafranca del Penedès has a population of 40.000 people and it is divided in several neighborhoods. Our school is located in Poble Nou district, that is 23% of Vilafranca population. It is a modern neighborhood, with a middle mid-high socioeconomic level. The streets are wide and there are not many cars, so most children come alone to the school every day.
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If we talk about the mother language: 47% of pupils speak catalan, 16% spanish, 18.5% both and 18.5% other languages (arabic, chinese, polish, russian, english...). Most of the families have a middle socioeconomic level, but every year there are more families with some difficulties in economic and social terms due to the 2008 crisis.
There are 33 teachers at school and every year there are more professionals who are able to communicate in English, so it is a great opportunity to improve some working language projects and start new ones. The point is to achieve to look at English language like almost as normal as our official languages in our daily lives.
What's the point?
With teaching sessions partly implemented (and confinement time experience)
About the teacher's action
Applying these resources and strategies in a class have provided our students more flexibility than an ordinary class.
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We may become passive actors in the students' learning process. We must provide scaffoldings to let them risk by themselves. We have seen how some students cope their lack of knowledge following the scaffolding provided and try to walk forward at their own pace.
How about students' action?
This encourage students' motivation and provoque to forget the teacher's assessment or the lack of language they have.We have seen students with low-level knowledge in the language trying its best to overcome to some proposed dynamics. We have seen some students helping each other in a more efficient way and (what is more important) using target language, although it happens after a while.
Confinement time
During these weeks (months it seems) we had the opportunity to increase the amout of English input on our students in a way we never expected.
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The fact that they have to use a computer and Internet in order to communicate with their classmates and teachers, allow the chance to provide some English tasks that could be quite difficult to do in class (even in the always-occupied ICT room).
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The students has to deal with some English tasks bout they have the immidiate feedback of the teacher and the Internet resources that let the student to find its way to success.
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We have been sending different levels of listenings, readings and activities which are all available and it was student's choice to do one, two or all of them with no pressure of the classmates or teachers.
This enclosure provide students truly learn on their pace.
"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and I'll move the world"