Reflection of my 2015

It has been a year of positive changes as regards my work. I have worked four consecutive years with Patsy and this 2015 I had two different co-workers! So I believe my strenghts of the year have been the posibility to adapt to these changes and continue with the hard work.
I strongly believe that making "good plans" doesn't mean starting over every year from scratch or eliminating everything. Although we always updated and modified plans/activities/projects with Patsy I feel this year we changed and included many new things for example lots of videos for Project ,all the Final Tasks of the projects were new (kids made digital productions) and the project on National Parks that popped up thanks to the hangout connection.
As regards my weaknesses, I think that I could mention the fact that we didn´t finish the last two books for the Home Reading Programme so my goal for next year concerning this issue is to be more consistent until the end.

Other goals:

• Include more videos to the different projects and to the Phonology Routine (I hope we all have a projector in our classrooms in 2016)
• Create a new project on The Olympics to work on Geography (Brazil), Vocabulary on Sports, History (Ancient Olympics)
• Add more Listening  and Grammar practice in the Booklet 
• Create more instances of self-assessment and reflections in the class.

¡Empezando mi 1er MOOC!

Soy Ana Lucía, de Bs As, Argentina. Empecé este curso motivada por un par de compañeras de trabajo y porque me interesó la temática que propone. Espero poder aprender muchas herramientas en este MOOC de Narración Digital para poder aplicarlas en mi tarea como docente de Inglés ya que en la institución donde trabajo nuestro método para planificar esta basado principalmente en literatura y creo que esta propuesta puede enriquecer mucho mi modo de enseñar.

Seeing old things with fresh eyes

Well, the time came to start working with a new "sister-teacher". I have been teaching the same age group and working with the same person  for four lovely years. I had always wondered what it would be like to change coworker or to be"the expert" of the level. We had worked so well with Patsy, always on the same wavelength, always so comforted by her experience, advice and care that I had mixed feelings when finishing the year.
The truth is that we are working perfectly with Sabri, she has found very interesting videos, material and webpages to complement and update the "Lands"of  the "Voyage" that is 4th form.  She has also done a lot to create all the Drive folders and I feel really comfortable with presenting our work like this (until last year we had always presented the plans in the copybook), it is very tidy, organized and clear.
In conclusion, my impression is that it is great to see the things we´ve been doing up to now in this level with fresh eyes. I also think that changing the frame of the unit planner supported by the 21st Century Skills theory has been important too since it gives a lot of professionalism and background to our work as educators.

21st century skills - 4th forms

In 4th we´ve had many project (The 5 "lands") + some mini projects and I believe that we´ve enhanced some of the skills necessary for this century in different ways.



- Summarizing skills? We tought 2 techniques to summarize: highlighting key words and phrases or crossing out irrelevant info. When we have texts from project they must summarize it for studying. When we finish a class before leavingg kids make a summary of the most important things we did/learned, when they retell a story.

- Logical & Creative thinking? We ask them to find solutions to character´s problems in many assemblies. Creation of stories (creative writing) also involves Creative thinking

- Communicative skills? In every assembly, in every final task-presentation they have to send a clear message. We made some peer-assessment activities specially during the training for the Verse competition and in retelling stories (kids had an assessments chart in which they had to evaluate their mates performance). In the preparation of the spring Concerts revisited / hangout / Brazil´s Final Task / Christmas Assembly we made a lot of emphasis on presentation skills, posture, tone of voice, turn taking etc.

- Reflective thinking (reflective moments)?Throughout the year in many occasions, during assemblies if they are giving opinion about a character´s attitude, if a problem/situation came up. A project in particular: Melody Around The World

- Bringing the world into the classroom? 1) Hangout with Missoury, USA. Our sts prepared beautiful presentations about our country involving food, tourism-places to visit, culture, etc (We had a gaucho, a paisana, some chefs talking about empanadas, asado and mate). we listened to the american sts´presentation. We received and gave them feedback. 2) Brazil´s Football worldcup: We learned and activated prior knowledge about Brazil´s culture. We read a Brazilian legend, we worked on geography of South America and analized/commented info about teams and general organization of this event. 3) Stories from Around The World: in this mini-project we read a story from each continent so we work on cartography (continents, oceans) and in card-work kids completed beautiful illustrated cards about the culture of the country of each story.

- Collaborating with other teachers? (bilingual projects / cross cultural content / global themes) All the time, specially Belgrano´s project, Brazil´s Football worldcup, seating arrangement, articulation with library projects and workshops.
 

First impressions...

     In order to "honour" Book Day, I chose this title which was the first one Jane Austen had thought for Pride & Prejudice. I would like to talk about judging in advance, to start getting worried about something/someone.
     I believe that Reports on the Group + Articulation with the ex-teacher of the group + all year long chats about concerning cases (this is the 3rd year Dai has my groups and we talk about them all the time in the train) is essential but all the same we shouldn´t be determined by these information we receive.
It has happened to me many times that I heard "This mother is terrible!", "This kid is so lazy!", "He has a bad relationship with mates.", "She is a trouble-maker, beware!" and so on. I am not saying that the perceptions/ideas are not valuable, but I think that they shouldn´t influence us a 100% or make us judge the learner/mother in advance. Every person can change, can became a better human being, can mature and it is important to consider that there are years that are more difficult than other because of family or health problems and it is reflected in the way they behave and learn.

Assigning Roles

Learners work more efficiently when they clearly know what they have to do and what are we waiting from them. This is why we daily write the OBJECTIVES in the blackboard together with the specific VALUES of the class and we make success criteria explicit before kids write their 1st draft of a story/text. However, when it comes to group work I always become frustrated because many times they don´t work appropriately, they tend to discuss too much (specially girls!!!) or there´s always one member that doesn´t do anything. In February we were planning with Patsy and we found a set of cards with roles for group work in the blog of a teacher from the USA. I´ve presented them to the kids, I know it will take time but I´m hopeful kids will little by little become aware of what group-work really involves.
NOTE: There are four main roles:  Speaker, Materials Manager, Recorder and Time Keeper. Two secondary roles will be used when there is a group of more than four: Trouble Shooter and Facilitator. We have several sets if you want to try them out!!

video #4

We know that Context is crucial and essential to make ALL CONTENTS meaningful. Even during the Activation Knowledge stage, kids can be asked to say whatever they know about the topic, which is WITHIN the context. Even if it´s a wrong concept, we´ll take into account. In a specific part of the lesson, this mistake will be clarified, even by mates.
We strongly believe that it is very important to choose appropriate material and strategies according to age CULTURAL CONTEXT and interests.

The world into the classroom & Tools (video 2 & 3)

This year we´ll have an extraordinary opportunity to bring the world into the classroom: Brazil´s World Cup 2014. With this world event we´ll be able to investigate about: different cultures, religion, music, geography and VALUES related to sports and acceptance among ethnicities. The lady refers to real people in a real world so we´ll all be involved not only in the results of the matches but also all the other news surrounding this big event. We strongly believe that this topic would fit perfectly well in the bilingual project. Together with Pope Francis and other possible new/events, the World Cupm will definitely be a "Global Theme". Apart from this new project, after winter holidays we usually develop Stories From Around The World that involves traditional stories from different countries.
As regards Video 3, we understand that we have to keep updated with technology, not only for teaching, but for our daily life. But we don´t think that electronic devices are the only way of sharing a common ground with children and teens. Sometimes, we plan lessons in which computers are needed but we don´t have the necessary ammount of netbooks for that day, or there is not internet connection or just 4 computers out of 14 could connect.
This situation can lead to develop Values and Skills such as : being flexible, patient, generosity, and finding other resources to achieve the same objective as the already planned in the lesson. (offline)

                                                                                           Miss Patsy & Miss Anne

21st Century Skills

After watching the teacher from the video, we really felt identified with her proposal and the way we work in the classroom. Technology is an excellent tool to teach, learn and communicate, but information is overwhelming, even to us! So, we strongly believe that, summarizing is a necessary strategy to get the relevant information. While communication is happening, kids will develop critical thinking, connections to their own experiences and  consequently they will make all the information found their own.
Although our students are definitely DIGITAL NATIVES (they have the "digital finger", they enjoy using technology and they are terrible attracted to computers) they really need guidance to use internet and technology in general FRUITFULLY and EFFECTIVELY. We mean: select the relevant data, visit safe and reliable sources.

Do report cards really show children`s performance?

By Miss Patsy and Miss Anne

Every time we have to complete report cards we have the feeling that they are messy and too long, which may lead to confusion.

At the same time they are too time consuming and we are not sure if they really reflect children`s performance. Besides, comparing the Spanish legal report cards to ours they are very direct as regards subjects and values too: “convivencia” has a mark but this aspect is not unfolded into other categories.

Our idea is to create a prototype of a new, balanced, useful clear and tidier report card. Being aware that we are T B L followers, we thought of designing a report card that represents this approach. It would be for 2^nd cycle, but in case this model or a similar one is implemented at school, teachers that are specialized in 1^st cycle can adapt it since they have other routines, other success criteria for the learners and they are experts at this age group.

We are aware that there have been several attemps to modify the current report card but we decided to invest some time to design a more practical document. Another aspect that we would like to change is the translation into Spanish. Just to make sure that parents get the right meaning of each issue of the following course of action:

A) Upload a Spanish version of the report card in the school´s web page

B) Having a big prototype in the classroom the day we deliver the report cards (1^st lap) so parents are informed about the changes and can follow their kids performance guided by the teacher. By doing this we feel that we also involve parents in a deeper way.

ACADEMIC ASPECTS

Assembly Time	The student is able to:	A	S	N
	Have clear pieces of opinion
	Make an effort to convey meaning
	Connect with ≠ situations, stories, anecdotes, etc.
	Make good use of: Collocations
	Functions
	tenses
	Apply ≠ strategies to solve tasks
	Participate actively during Reporting Time
Written Work	Make a clear handwriting
	Avoid spelling mistakes
	Profit from dictionaries and panels
	Produce coherent pieces of writing
	Include new vocabulary and collocations
	Use punctuation and capitalization appropriately

MORAL & ETHICS

A: ALWAYS

S: SOMETIMES

N: NEVER

Little time, big profit

Little time, big profit

Teaching strategies to employ in the first minutes of a lesson that enhance learning

 

_______________________________________________________________________

By Patricia Muiños & Ana Castells Ruiz

W

e want to share how we take profit from the first minutes of the lesson. As teachers we are aware that learners are more attentive to participate and to get involved at the beginning of a lesson. So, we strongly believe that this stage of the day enhances learning.

Having applied Phonology Routine and Language Function Routine as part of our institutional plans, little by little we have been introducing new segments. We believe they cover children´s needs and interests that are above the syllabus.

A)   Reflecting moment:

Short activities can enhance genuine learning

When kids come inside the classroom, there is a question written on the board related to something that happened the day before in relation to attitudes and values. We expect this interrogative leads to comments that mention possible solutions that will be applied if the problem persists. For example: instructions have to be repeated once and again, and still, some students don´t follow them. The question is: “How many times do we have to repeat clear instructions in order to be followed?

B)    Have your say on… :

This segment was born after Japan´s earthquake. Spontaneously, kids started to bring pieces of news from different sources. We also noticed that boys focused more on sports, and girls more in singers, actors and actresses and models.

Actually we prefer to make a more guided activity presenting the piece of news so that they trigger reflection and brilliant comments.

For example: “We have an Argentinian Pope!”, Máxima Zorreguieta has been crowned Queen Consort from Netherlands.”

C)   Collocation Corner:

Having noticed that children made recurrent or classic mistakes, we created this instance to make them aware that words cannot be combined at random. We also noticed that when they produced, they used basic, simple vocabulary.

In order to improve this aspect, we created panels following these steps:

1)     Children select “key” words from each story.

2)     They search for the correct collocations using a net-book or a traditional Collocation Dictionary.

3)     When making the panel, we use different colours to classify different types of words.

4)     Students to take profit from this strategy whenever the speak or write.

D)  Vocabulary segment:

In order to help students preserve advanced, complex, relevant, rich vocabulary, we designed this segment.

The objective is to avoid kids using only restricted vocabulary, encouraging them to include these words by means of recycling. The steps we follow for this segment are:

1)     “What can you say about…?”

2)     They are allowed to *consult dictionaries,

                                   *give their own definition

                                    *mention synonyms or opposites

                                    *say type of word

                                    *tell an anecdote or experience

                                     *make connections with stories or movies

                                    *build a sentence containing that word

Conclusions:

To us, the benefits of these segments rely on the fact that not only we are covering Grammar and Vocabulary but also Ethics and current issues. What´s more, we believe that this segment helps children improve their fluency and it creates a warm up moment before the formal lesson which may make introverted or weak students feel more confident.

      

PROYECTO: “Tiempo de Valores” (Calendario)

PROYECTO: “Tiempo de Valores” (Calendario)

Docentes: Miss Patsy   Miss Ann

Antecedentes y propósito:

Este proyecto surge como una manera formal de dar orden temporal a estrategias,  experiencias  y anécdotas que he ido acumulando durante muchos años. Algunas de ellas las he aprendido, adaptado y otras las fui creando sobre la marcha.

También lo impulsó creer con total convicción, que los Valores aportan en las aulas una dimensión diferente, ligada directamente a la moral y la ética.

La decisión de presentarlo junto con mi co-worker, Ana, se basa en el hecho de compartir absolutamente estos ideales, y de recibir excelentes aportes por parte de ella. Esto ha conducido a ponerlos en práctica diariamente y nos hace sentir que crecemos como docentes, reafirmando que, el trabajo colaborativo es el mejor camino para acercarnos a los logros.

Fundamentación:

1)      Como mencionamos anteriormente, es indispensable, como docentes, sentir que los Valores conducen y guían las actitudes de las personas.

2)      Ver que los chicos los necesitan, los piden y son capaces de mostrarlos y respetarlos.

3)      Involucrar a las familias. Cuando apoyan, el impacto es inmediato.

4)      Transmitir que el respeto a los Valores se puede sostener en el tiempo y que depende de nosotros poder hacerlo.

Organización:

Primera Reunión de padres:

A)     Presentación de alguna frase o idea de algún pacificador que represente nuestro estilo como docentes, lo que queremos lograr en las aulas.

Ejemplo: “Nuestra recompensa se encuentra en el esfuerzo y no en el resultado. Un esfuerzo total es una victoria completa.”Mahatma Gandhi,

Período diagnóstico:

A) Elaboración grupal de “Reglas para el aula” y para diferentes ámbitos. ( ejemplo sala de informática, biblioteca, patio ).

B) Presentación de diferentes situaciones que reflejen o requieran Valores, selección de los mismos.

C) Elaboración de un poster con símbolos que representen los Valores elegidos. Puesta en común.

D) Si no surgieron, incluir “Felicidad y Armonía”, entendiendo que significan  superación, trabajo y esfuerzo en el Colegio.

Dos o tres veces al año:

A)     Talleres que tomen problemáticas actuales, que funcionen como mini-proyectos y que tengan un producto final. Es importante incluir videos, canciones, material atractivo, ( ejemplo “Cyberbullying” ).

B)      Jornadas de convivencia en diferentes ámbitos y con posibilidad de compartir las conclusiones que de allí surjan, ( se desarrollan el Turno Castellano, a veces compartidas con Inglés ).

C)      Aprovechar efemérides para destacar los Valores demostrados por nuestros próceres, ( se hace en Turno Castellano junto con algún mini-proyecto bilingüe ).

D)     Aprovechar Eventos importantes y noticias como premios Nacionales o Internacionales a escritores, deportistas, pintores, cantantes, etc.

E)      Aprovechar Eventos Deportivos como el Mundial de fútbol 2014 o los próximos Juegos Olímpicos para destacar Valores como Diversidad, Tolerancia, Competencia sana, etc.

Durante todo el año:

A)     Seguir para evaluar, destacar y premiar el respeto a las Reglas. Tener una mirada flexible para poder realizar ajustes.

B)      Tener en cuenta las situaciones diarias, inesperadas donde se manifiesten buenas actitudes, destacarlas y/o premiarlas. Pueden plasmarse en un “Appreciation copy-book” que los chicos llevan a sus casas y la familia participa escribiendo algún comentario en Inglés, Castellano, haciendo un dibujo, escribiendo una frase, poema, o de la forma que lo crean conveniente.

C)      Delegar actividades a diferentes chicos que pueden mostrar habilidades individuales que favorecen la convivencia. ( organización en la fila, diseño de emblemas para el aula, aportes de todo tipo).

D)     Apoyar todos Proyectos Solidarios que se generen en el Colegio.

E)      Comenzar el día con un “Reflecting segment” con una pregunta basada en situaciones incorrectas que hayan sucedido y que los lleve a pensar posibles soluciones. Nos gusta siempre formularlas en plural, para involucrarnos todos, tanto en el problema como en la solución. Recomendamos la puesta en práctica de la estrategia y mencionar siempre “el autor” se la misma.

Ejemplo: “How many times do we have to repeat an instruction? Do we have to say the same thing five or six times until we follow it?

Fin de año:

A)     Premiación formal de alumnos que fueron “abanderados” de los Valores.

 

Conclusiones:

Seguramente muchas de las ideas aquí escritas no son nuevas, ni de nuestra creación y de hecho se ponen en práctica.

A nosotros, en nuestro rol docente, nos ayuda verlas organizadas de esta manera.

Es un simple aporte más  para contribuir a que nuestro trabajo diario sea más valioso, llevadero y que impacte favorablemente en el desarrollo personal de nuestros hijos y alumnos.

Positive feedback and self-steem

Last year when we started preparing the planning of the first weeks Patsy and I went to the library to look for Teaching Kids to Care & Cooperate by Scholastic to look for some activities related to values and Patsy found a beautiful idea: having a book called "Appreciation Copybook" to assess good attitudes and values. She immediately prepared a copybook to circulate among the homes. The results were very fruitful: both parents and kids loved reading all the positive feedback. I always forgot to do it and then I thought I should have done it since the beginning and the year went by without the "Appreciation Copybook". Now when I see the positive impact it’s having this year with my new group I regret not having done it last year because I could have changed many attitudes and behavior of some particular cases.

With Patsy we believe that this activity it’s even more effective for children that are not so good in the academic aspect since you’re highlighting issues not related to the subject and it will help him/her to feel more confident and improve.

Evidence in education

During this Diagnosis Period we have been working on the concept of EVIDENCE. Of course that during the brainstorming they linked the concept of evidence with crimes and robberies and the definition they could construct together was "Evidence is information to solve a mistery or find a robber". After sharing different opinions and anecdotes we came to the conclusion that evidence is a useful tool for understanding and analyzing texts, for predicting and giving opinions.
Now comes my contribution: before starting with the classes I´ve been reflecting upon evaluation and assessment and I decided to be more consistent and tidy about this issue. I´ve talked about this with Dai and she gave me some ideas (as usual!). She reccomended me to keep a record of the daily oral performance in the assemblies and she explained that in 5th they use codes (0,1,2,3). The rubrics for assessing this are:

0: no participation
1: Participated in few occassions, didn´t use the correct function ("How do you say?") or said many words in Spanish
2: Made an effort to participate and transmit the message, good attitude, asked for help in the correct way ("What is the word in English for..?")
3: Spoke fluently, used appropriate vocabulary and functions, achieved the goals of the assembly

I feel kids are participating more and many are concerned about reaching 3. I took a copybook and there I put several charts to organize: marks of the exams, dictations, practical tasks, homework, response activities and the charts for
oral performance. I think that it will be useful for assessing children and in case I have meetings with parents there I have all the EVIDENCE together!!

A teacher's survival kit

I'm feeling optimistic about this new year! I would like to share with you something I received when I finished the Prof. Have a nice beginning and let's reflect a lot!!

A teacher's survival kit

TOOTHPICK
Reminds us to look for good qualities in our students. You may be the only teacher who says something positive to them that day.

RUBBER BAND
Reminds us that we have to be flexible. Things don’t always go the way we plan. But flexibility will help to work it out.

PENCIL
Reminds us to be thankful and to list our blessings daily. We should also encourage our students to list their blessings and be proud of their accomplishments.

ERASER
Reminds us to allow students to know that we are human and that we make mistakes just like they do, and that it’s okay. We must all be able to learn from our mistakes.

CHEWING GUM
Reminds us to stick with it and encourage our students to do likewise. Even the impossible task or assignment can be accomplished by sticking with it.

MINT
Reminds us and our students that we are worth a mint. (We may not be a paid a mint, but we are worth one!)

CANDY KISS
Reminds us that everyone needs a hug, kiss or warm fuzzy everyday. All teachers, students and even a

TEA BAG
Reminds us that we need time to relax and take time for others. Family, husbands, wives, friends, children need quality time together

Author Unknown

Catering in the classroom

The last computing lesson before winter holidays was very interesting and enriching and I realized the importance of catering for students interests and needs. Andy was delivering a lesson on hacking which aim was not to make them feel afraid or worried, but to inform and prevent. He created a game with a padlock to show the kids how difficult it is to hack an account so that they realized that in order not to have problems with social networks or e-mail accounts was to always log out correctly and never using personal information in passwords. The amazing thing for me was that he brought an example of "hacking" or forgetting to log out for the girls and for the boys: a friend of him who relized that her ex-girlfriend was in love with him because she still used the same password in her e-mail account (their names) and another friend who cheated a boy in an online game about football. All the kids were amazed, they had fun but at the same time they learned about these important tips for preventing problems on line.

Teamwork

Let's build meaning together!

   I've always liked teamwork at school, at the prof, nowadays co-working with Patsy and of course, in life. I really enjoy sharing opinions, giving/receiving pieces of advice, creating texts, plannings, material, whatever with someone else. I strongly believe that this is the only way to grow proffessionally and personally.
   Last Friday Patsy and I shared the last assembly of our mini-project called "June 20: Flag day". Although monitoring the work of 40 students at the beginning was difficult because they were quite noisy, when the class finished we felt so proud and happy for the kids since they could solve the tasks as a team with all the resourses available (netbooks, dictionaries and the materials for making the posters and flags). Another good decision was to mix up the two classes so they could interact with other mates.
     After this result we decided to make these type of assemblies more often. Next time we´re going to share a workshop on BULLYING and CYBERBULLYING in which we´re going to reflect together about this social issue and we´ll try to find solutions to it and of course we want mixed groups again! If you´re interested in the text that triggers all the analysis and the reflections you can have a look at it in the net, it is a piece of "digital literature". Maybe you like it and you can show it to your learners.

    Love,
              Annie 

Bully for You: Mother's Profile, by C. Joseph

Homogeneous classrooms and weak students

Reminder: students are not native speakers

We really forget too often that our CLIL students are learning in a second language. Fluency is something we almost take for granted with our students who have a good/very good/excellent ability to speak the target language. Many times you're almost "charmed" by their accents and slight errors, so much so, that you forget that it is our job to  help them as much as possible with the language. When you grade the writing, however, you are sometimes overwhelmed by the errors you see. Deciphering their text can be an arduous task. You always have to consider the objective of your assigment when grading these pieces of work and you must force yourself to reconsider the cultural context in which you find yourself as an educator (...)

Andrew Frzludeen, teacher and CLIL programme manager, Qatar

Scaffolding is essential!

I've highlighted this quotation when I was attending the Licenciatura some Saturdays ago because I felt very identified with these ideas (I have a lot of learners that are excellent speakers but then when I read their pieces of writing I feel overwhelmed by all the mistakes) and I've decided to include it in my May's reflection because in my copybook we talked about that all students are not outstanding and we have to evaluate weak students in a more appropriate way. I have a very homogeneous group as regards level and abilities so I believe that the biggest challenge for me this year is not feel tempted to rush with the stronger students and don't use them as a parameter for evaluating the others: each learner has his/her own pace and may have differents needs, skills and interests. As regards writing I strongly agree with Andrew F in that we have to be very objective with corrections: if in the success criteria we stated that we'll concentrate on punctuation, capital letter and for example include a nunber of new vocabulary we have to stick to that: if we correct too many things at a time kids may feel threatened or insecure. Working with creative writing is excellent for providing students with scaffolding since you can correct mistakes or improve their writings gradually.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mehisto P., Frigols M. Marsh D.(2008), Uncovering CLIL, Macmillan

Solidarity and self-esteem

"Learning is enhanced when it is more like a team effort than a solo race. Good learning, like good work, is collaborative and social, not competitive and isolated. Working with others often increases involvement in learning. Sharing one's ideas and responding to others improves thinking and deepens understanding." 

                                                                                                                      Chickering & Gamson (1997)                                                                             

I've always knew that helping is important in the classroom, but since I've made cooperation "explicit" through the implementation of a tutors' system I can see results and I'm very proud of my learners. It's great to see how stronger students support and guide weaker students. In this process both the tutor and the helped student grow and learn from each other. 
I strongly believe that self-esteem is raised in both sides since the tutor feels helpful and the weak learner feels supported and cared for. What's more, sometimes students may feel more comfortable or will learn best if a peer helps him/her since they have the same age, interests and needs. 
I'm glad because in general I've received a positive response from parents, tutors and the helped students. I feel so happy when some tutors praise their mates for making an interesting comment or having a bright idea or when they let me know that kids are doing fine. Although the system is working well I´ll plan a brief meeting with the tutors to talk about their responsibilities, to give them some feedback, to make them do a guided self-assessment of their role and to listen to their opinions. I think that controlling these things from time to time is crucial for the system's effectiveness.

References:

Chickering, A. W, and Gamson, Z. F (eds.), Applying the Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, no.47. San Francisco: JosseyBass, 1991.