On February 14th and 15th, 37 secondary English teachers from the State of Mexico participated in a workshop at the Escuela Normal Superior de Mexico on integrating authentic tasks and materials into their lessons. The workshop, enthusiastically organized by Diana Castañón of the Escuela Normal, included techniques in how to integrate authentic materials from a variety of sources such as: radio broadcasts, documentaries and print texts from the internet, popular music, feature films and local magazines.
On the first day, participants practiced classroom techniques by performing role plays with authentic menus and writing love letters according to the instructions of a traditional scribe from Santo Domingo quoted in the Inside Mexico English language magazine.
Day two was technology day, where participants learned about "jigsaw viewing" of a film clip and some even created their own blogs.These can be viewed at http://englishsector1.blogdiario.com/. Great job everyone! According to the workshop evaluation the participants' favorite activities were using songs and video.
Interestingly,some participants favorite part and others' least favorite part of the workshop was speaking English.
Almost everyone said they wanted to learn more and get more practice with "technology", "blogs" and video.
Well, Sector 1, you're in luck because you're going to have a follow up workshop with Senior English Language Fellow Russell Barczyk on March 28th.
Best of luck! It was so much fun working with you and getting to know you afterwards at the cafe. Ojala, I'll see you soon!
