EDPE-3018: Theory and Methodology of the Teaching English in Elementary School

For the class of Theory and Methodology of the Teaching English in Elementary School we were assigned to research, present, and apply a learning theory and approach. Together with my classmate Fabiola Monic Nieves López we were assigned the language theory know as Community Language Theory (C.L.L.) This learning theory is a method that was developed by Charles A. Curran and his associates, that perceives the world as the person sees it and communicates something of empathetic understanding. It draws on the counseling metaphor to redefine the roles of the teacher (the counselor) and learners (the clients) in the language classroom. In counseling one person is giving advice, assistance, and support to another who has a problem or is in a way in need. The content of language class stems from topics that learners want to talk and the teacher translating their request into appropriate syllabus. We acquired all the information and definitions for the theory in the textbook assigned in class by our professor. We divided the workload evenly and did our parts, by constantly keeping tags on each other, we ensured that the materials that we were researching on our own was aligned to our end vison of the project. By using modern resources and simple words we created a presentation for class, and a handout that offered enough information for our classmates about the learning theory and a mini lesson, all aligned to the theory (C.L.L.) assigned by the activity. For the mini lesson activity, we decided to keep it simple, entraining, educational, and aligned to the C.L.L. Theory, in the activity the students will gather in a circle and the teacher will hand them an index card where the students will write down a vocabulary word that they are struggling with and put them in the bucket. Once all the words are gathered the teacher will shuffle them and hand the bucket to a student who will pick one card and read the word out loud. This same student will pick another student to spell out the word. Once the student that has been picked to spell out the word is done spelling that student will choose another student to make a sentence using the word.  The student that has been picked to make the sentence will use the erasable board to make the sentence and read the sentence out loud, once their task is done, they will choose another student to pick a new word and repeat the process until all the words are gone.  It is safe to say that our classmates enjoyed the activity and had a better understanding of how the learning theory works. As a soon to be teacher the making and researching of this presentation really helped me see the different theories available for us teachers. It also encouraged teamwork, before this presentation I was an acquaintance with Fabiola now we have become closer and good friends. We were also able to work together to produce ab excellent presentation that will be useful and handy for our future as teachers. C.L.L. is a theory that I indeed plan to incorporate into my future classroom, since it encourages the students to work together to acquire knowledge and become a community that encourages learning as teammates and not as competitors.   

C.L.L. Mini Lesson.docx

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