TEACHER: RODRIGO M. SÁNCHEZ FERNÁNDEZ
VENUE: ÁLVARO OBREGÓN II
OCTOBER 13TH, 2016.

EXPERIENCES FROM THE SCHOLARSHIP OF INTERNATIONAL MOBILITY FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHERS FROM HIGH SCHOOLS COMEXUS 2016

THE BIOGRAPHY DRIVEN INSTRUCTION METHOD

Some people look for any opportunity to improve their academic and personal growing, so this was my case and I decided to participate in The Cultural Exchange Scholarship promoted by Comexus and Conalep. After some exams and other requirements, I finally could be part of this great experience. I was accepted in a six weeks training course, it was carried out during the past months of July and August of this year in The United States of America, they were six weeks of intense learning and hardworking that made me grow as a person and, of course, as a teacher.

All the activities of this scholarship were taken in the New Mexico State University (NMSU), this enrollment allowed me to learn about a new methodology and strategies which build an interesting way of teaching English without transgressing the learner’s identity. Besides this teaching training course, it was also interesting the amount of cultures that live together in the campus being this matter our object of study, the Biography-Driven Instruction (BDI).

The BDI is a methodology of teaching that was created for English Language Learners. The theory was developed by professors from Kansas State University by Dr. Socorro Herrera. In it, Dr. Herrera describes BDI as being a key example of culturally responsive pedagogy.

In Biography-Driven Instruction, the instructor will create biography cards for each student. The cards will describe students’ preferred grouping for classroom, the way each student learn best, their L1 and L2 proficiencies, their interests, their home life, etc. This is a great tool for us as teachers to plan topics based on our students’ backgrounds and language needs.

Taking in account these elements and the activities that teachers and organizers gave us in the sessions to be applied with our students, I started to incorporate gradually some strategies learned at NMSU. Firstly, I used the Heart Activity which allowed me to know better my students, from a socio-cultural, linguistic, cognitive, and academic point of view through different topics or situations.

Something that seemed important to me in terms of communication and information was the activity called DOTS CHART, which gave me a broad overview about the before, during, and after of my students’ learning process. In the DOTS activity, students can contrast their previous knowledge about a topic or element of learning before the develop of the lesson against the new knowledge they have gotten. This chart allows students to reflect not only about the language learning but also the lesson dynamics and the initial ideas become modified gradually during the classes.

Other positive element I found using this strategy was the chance of evaluate their communicative skills at the moment students exchange information of their ideas after writing words related to the topics. They feel more comfortable because the material allows using both languages, L1 and L2 at the moment of interacting.

Other pleasant strategy that we (my students and I) experienced was the use of MIND MAPS, because it gives me a bigger picture of my students’ previous knowledge about the topic we will see in the lesson. In teams, we use cardboards with a key word in the center, then have students to fill with words related allowing connections among them creating a big scene of their ideas of the topic or grammar point. Then, we paste the cardboards on the walls of the classroom mainly to give my students the chance of adding new words, ideas or even erase wrong concepts. Now I try to begin my classes in this way, while is true that MIND MAPS is something students know, it was not used frequently by them.

There is no doubt that this scholarship was a great experience for me, not only for having learned a new method or efficient strategies with nice materials but also the chance of having shared experiences with my peers of different subsystems from different states of my country. This is something that have helped me to enrich my teaching work thanks their advice and teaching guidelines. Also, to know other cultures improves to look from other perspective our country, not only from the educational field.