Task 7.2: Translator

Good morning!

I am Sara and today I will be Lovely Teachers group's translator. If you have read the previous posts, you already know what the translator has to do, but for those who are new, the translator's role is kind of simple. It involves choosing the five most important concepts that better define the task. For me, this is a pretty relevant task, because it requires summarizing in five words all the relevant aspects of the task.

The first word I would choose would be connection. As everybody knows, for getting a good learning and teaching at school, first you need to establish a good relation with your students, or, in the case of being the student, with your teachers. Once this positive and responsive relationship is established, an effective learning environment where students feel safe and empowered to collaborate, ask questions and ask for help will be created. The absence of this connection would make learning difficult to happen.

But... connections do not only happen between students and teachers... This is why the second main concept I will choose is peer. Peers have a strong influence on students. In fact, they spend most of their time with friends, even more than with some family members. This seems to be the reason why peers also affect their personal development and learning.  Obviously a good relation with peers implements the benefits of collaborative and cooperative learning.

The context is also a concept we should highlight due to learning is influenced by the cultural context in which it occurs. Students need to be understood and feel they are being well treated in order to learn; if not their learning may be null. As mentioned before, it is necessary to create an effective learning environment.

Fourthly, the facilities beyond the class also matter when talking about education. We should be aware of the world we live in, because learning does not only happen inside a class, but everywhere. This is the main reason why we, as future teachers, should try to bring the outside world inside the classroom. For example, introducing the diverse uses of technologies; from simple Power Points to interactive video conferences... Nowadays, there are lots of technological facilities we can use to promote our students’ learning.

Finally, I have chosen the title of the last part of the task: Connections with learning. This is really relevant, because it explains that this type of connection occurs on three levels: the individual learner, the group and the development of knowledge itself. Apart from that, it also outstands that, according to the constructivist theory, teachers are kind of guides for learning (what is called scaffolding), as well as the importance of connecting prior to new knowledge so that individual learning can be developed.

This is all for today! As you can see, this week we have learnt the importance of many appealing things related to this topic. We are looking forward to learn more and more!! See you next week!!

Lovely teachers.