Children’s learning theories.

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d.Critical theory

i.Friere

He said that learning should be as an educational system full of knowledge, where the students can take all the information they need. The knowledge is not something that the teacher passed to the student. Students must construct knowledge from the one they already have. Teachers must learn how the students understand the world so that the teacher understands how the students can learn.

ii.McLaren

Individuals should be able to investigate their reality and social circumstances that determine their daily lives. It promotes self-critical reflection.

Considers that the inequalities that exist within schools regarding the acquisition and distribution of knowledge is a continuation of the prevailing conditions in society as a whole, ie in the social structures the explanation of oppressive forms adopt classroom practices.

e.Postmodern perspectives

Here we are supposed to identify every and each kind of students we have, that there are a diversity of students and groups to take in consideration. It is to respond to students with different learning styles.

III. Personal experience.

1. Write a brief essay (2-3 pages) where you reflect on the theories studied regarding your own teaching practice. Do any of the theories apply to your teaching practice? Why? Do you think any of them would work in your teaching practice? Can you effectively apply these theories in the REAL practice? Why or Why not?...

We as teachers have to be prepared for every kind of student and always be able to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of each student in order to help them improved and our case our goal of teaching a second language.

Applying these methods will depend in different things to take in consideration. For example some schools actually like to work with a specific theory. Some others prefer a combination of some of them, and in others occasions it is just up to the teacher to decide which theory applies.

Working with the Multiple Intelligence theory leaves us the opportunity to open our minds to others kind of teaching methods to apply for our classes and that sometimes we are not aware of them. And as I said during this semester, I would you this theory combined with others theories in order to make it stronger and better for teaching English. With this theory we learn that we have to be able to recognize the student´s intelligences, that each of them is different. And we must be prepared as good teachers for them. With that we can our students develop across their intelligences.

Of course to be effective with the Piaget theory we should be working with children. We should encourage the kids to be active during the class. To make them feel important for the class. You should let them make mistakes and to learn from these mistakes, they might be frustrating but you should be patient with them in order produce the learning.

Now using the Vygotsky method we know that he argues that humans essentially learned through social interaction and to achieve learning is necessary to promote the zone of proximal development to reach the zone of potential development. The teacher's role as Vygotsky, is to use situations that are interactive which play the role of guide, where it says "scaffolding" (teacher assistance for activities) for which the student will build their knowledge, that is to promote the zone of proximal development. As a student gains skills, the teacher will allow greater independence and will removing "scaffolding" so the student gets to reach the zone of potential development, where he can work by himself.

I think that using the Dewey should be really effective in specific topics. The children enjoy having “real life” experience as grow ups. They can learn a lot by doing a specific action, like cooking where they can learn a lot of vocabulary with the ingredients, parts of the kitchen and many other things. They are going to have fun and also learn just by the experience.

Using the Critical theories is something a little be more complex I thing, and it is going to be more effective to work with adults, since they already a lot of knowledge in many areas and they can contrast their knowledge and the one they are waiting to get. They have their own ideas about the world, about the society, and with that we as teacher can get the more meaning form for them to learn.

At the end I think the best theory to use is the one that you need according to your target goal at the moment of teaching, it will depend of what you want to teach and the way of doing it. I think we as teachers should be ready to use each of these theories in our classes, so whenever it is necessary we provide the best of us to get our students obtain their goal that is a second language acquisition.