Discussion in class

Today we had to observe the class of other teachers in CES School. My mission today is to observe Gerry's class.
It was an advanced group, with high interests and habilities for debate and discussion, Gerry has made it possible with authentic material from a webpage: idebate.org.
idebate is done by the International Debate Education Association (IDEA). As they say in their own webpage, the association gives young people a voice through education, debate and by raising their awareness about worldwide issues. The webpage is a compliation of different blogs, sorted by debate subjects. 
Gerry has taken some texts from the web page, about the military institution. The students had to sort them depending on the agreement or disagreement with the military coups (skim reading). Then, in a most precise reading, they had to find some informations in the texts.
The next step is the debate in small groups, by presenting some questions, as a preparation for the debate in the large group.
The language focus at the end is dedicated to the idioms, with an exercice on wich students have to gess the meaning from the context.

Understanding information, understanding Ireland

On the first day we were in Dublin, the Yellow Shirts of the CES School offered a tour trough the main visit places in Dublin. One of them was the statue of O'Connell, in the O'Connell street.

He has been a very important person in the history of Ireland. And I took a very bad photo of him.

I would like to know more about him. Today, I have discovered some things about him  with my collegues in the class.

Reconstructing history

Samantha, the teacher, has projected some images from the history of Ireland, in order to warm up our knowledges (in my case, very few) about the history of Ireland. Then, she hanged different parts of the history of Ireland all around the class, divided in small texts. He has told us to work in groups of three, and has given us the first part of one of the chapters of the history of Ireland. Each group has had to search the following paragraphs, to decide the order of the entire text, and to take notes about it, in order to be able to retell the story.

Then, he has numbered each person of the group (1, 2, 3), and all the 1's, the 2's and the 3's has formed three different groups, in which each person knows a different part of the story of Ireland, and tells it to de rest of the members of the group.

This exercise combines two types of reading: skimm-reading and scann-reading. To put the paragraphs together, a skin reading is enough, but to be able to take notes and retell the story with the owns, you have to scann the text, to pay attention to the details, the names, the dates, etc.

The running dictation

With Stuart, we have practiced a tipe of exercise named Dictogloss. Instead of the teacher, there is one student in each group who has to read sentences from a text and retell them to a second member of the group, who retells them further to a third, and this to the fourth, who writes the sentences. It's funny to compare the result with the original text.

This activity combines perfectly the different learner types: linguistic, logical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal.

Understanding Ireland

In the afternoon, we visited the prison of Kilmainham in Dublin, where unfortunately happened some parts of the history of this nice people, the irish people. Many Irish revolutionaries, including the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising, were imprisoned and executed in the prison by the British, and in 1923 by the Irish Free State, during the Irish Civil War.

It was constructed in the form of a panopticum, as the philosopher Jeremy Bentham conceived. He thought that human beings don't know what is good or bad, but they do know what is pleasant and what is painful. So both are the instruments to educate and control the humans.

 About the prisons in general, we could ask some more questions that would make us think, speak, and maybe understand some things about human beings...