Which training courses would you like to have access to as a teacher? Why? Which is, in your opinion, the best way to share good practice amongst teaching professionals? Why?

Teacher training must be undoubtedly good, continuous and complete so that the students' learning process be successful. On the one hand, teacher's continuous and individual training is important in different areas and, on the other hand it is also very important to share practices and opinions with other teachers to improve the teaching practice.

Nowadays, we have CEFIRE organization for individual and collective training. From my point of view, CEFIRE function is very good, although some aspects could be improved.

On the one hand, CEFIRE offers courses in different areas and at different types (face to face, semi-face and online) for the availability and needs of teachers. But, on the other hand, the number of places to sign up for the courses is insufficient and it is often almost impossible to make any course of our interest. The solution would be to subsidize more courses for all teachers to perform them according to their needs. From my point of view, as a computer science teacher at a Secondary School, this training is very important. But it is not only important training at an individual level, but also sharing teaching practices with other teaching professionals is very enriching for training as a teacher. In computer science, seminars and meetings are arranged to exchange ideas related to the LliureX project. Meetings are very interesting because attendees bring ideas, needs and developments.

Finally, I think that to complete a teacher training it is very important to share experiences, ideas and even study different ways of working in different countries. To do this, we have the ERASMUS + FOR TEACHERS program with three modalities: KA1, KA2 and KA3 that complete the training of teachers, students, Cefires and associations across different innovation projects and exchange ideas in all areas: teachers, students, Cefires and associations.

To sum up, teacher training is very important because it depends on the training of students, so it must be individual, collective, continuous and diverse. And above all, training based on the exchange of ideas and practices between teachers at different levels (local, national, international). We have the CEFIRE, the ERASMUS + TEACHERS program, different conferences and seminars organized locally.

If you were not limited by the demands of the national/regional curriculum, what would you say is the most important thing you would teach your students about your subject (in a CLIL context)? How would you assess their learning?

I am a computer science teacher at a secondary school and I can teach at ESO, Baccalaureate and vocational training, however nowadays I am only teaching ESO and Baccalaureate. So I'm going to focus this essay on my current teaching practice that is different from the reality of being a vocational training teacher.

In my case, the demands of the national / regional curriculum are not too strict,so they allow me to suit the students' needs and work those aspects that I consider the most relevant for students . Computer Science subject is an optional subject, so I always try to increase students' motivation, using new teaching methodologies that will be gradually implemented.

After performing this training course, I have reflected and have concluded that it is important to change some ways of working my subject and especially of evaluating it. Before performing this course, I've started using some new methodologies but my students' assessment process has not changed for many years at all.

First of all, I would like to talk about the way of working my subject. On the one hand, I would like to work with collaborative learning and working projects, because it is essential that students learn how to work in groups. Today, it seems that most students follow a competitive learning and they don't know that the result of working in groups and sharing experiences can be much more rewarding. I also would like to perform a socio-cultural project in order to establish relationships between the different areas taught at a secondary school and to facilitate students to organize their knowledge more generally. On the other hand, I want to continue increasing students' motivation using games and strategies that enable them to acquire knowledge in a funny way. For example, organizing a gymkhana of QR codes, running contests, using Kahoot to review concepts ...

Secondly, regarding the assessment process I have to change many things, because except in some particular cases, the evaluation process that I use depends on me. I would like to introduce self-assessment and peer-assessment methods in order to make students aware of their own learning process. This is easily accomplished through rubrics for both the student and for the teacher. An important point is to minimize the number of the exams and use other techniques such as developing group work and presenting it. In this way, they can work other learning skills and they can reach Hot Thinking through reasoning.

Besides all this, I think it's important to use different tools based on scaffolding, giving positive feedback, and thus try to foster a positive attitude in class to increase students' motivation. The goal is that students go back home with more curiousity about what they have learned than fatigue or boredom.

My next goal is to teach computer science in English, so I think that using this approach will be easier to apply CLIL principles, with the aim to use language Appropriately Whilst using language to learn effectively.

Advantages and disadvantages of using ELP with my groups

Taking into account my personal teaching context, what would be the advantages and disadvantages of using the ELP with my groups?

 

The ELP is a formal and personal document that contributes to the assessment of language skills in different educational levels, from pre-school to university, thus fostering processes valuing language learning throughout life.

From my point of view, the ELP is very useful in vocational training and in university studies because we must prepare these students for the working world. In this case, the ELP shows more information about the student than a list of supporting documents. However, this document is not easy to develop, so it is important that students learn its development gradually throughout their learning process. And it is here where we can see the usefulness of students begining to develop their own ELP at early stages of education (nursery, primary and secondary school).

As a secondary school teacher, I strongly believe that teaching my students to develop this document has a lot of advantages. On the one hand, it can help them to get involved in the planning, reflection and evaluation of learning process, it can encourage them to register what they can do in each of the languages and include information on linguistic and cultural experiences obtained inside and outside the formal education context. This can also help them to understand the plurilingual European Context.

On the other hand, the preparation of this document requires considerable time and effort by the students and teachers who have to cover a very extensive curriculum. And furthermore, it is very important to train both teachers and students to work it properly.

To sum up, I find it very interesting to incorporate the development of the ELP in the teaching process in my groups, not only because it may be useful for them in the future, but also because we can work different attitudinal aspects of the curriculum. However, I think this process has to start from previous levels and continue at secondary school, so that when students reach levels of vocational training and / or university, we do not require much time to prepare the ELP properly because the curriculum at these levels is very extensive.