Week 4 - Skill-building Websites for Reading/Writing Skills and Technology-enhanced Lesson Plans

Moving forward is never easy...

So moving on. Week 4 came and there were many things have I learnt along the way. New links and websites to see and browse through. Then one problem keeps popping up, my students do not like to read English material. I guess they lack the luster to read English materials. I would give them a short text, they just can not understand the text. So we go over the text, one word or phrase at a time, which could take up 20 to 30 minutes (refer to dictionary or thesaurus). At times it can be frustrating. Then I found out that the main problem is that they may not understand 95% of the words in the passage. Laufer (1989) and Liu and Nation (1985) said that students need to understand at least 95% of words on a page. So I have to be selective with the reading materials that I have prepared for the students. In addition I try to find materials that includes pictures or add them to make the reading materials more interesting. 

So then, I tried looking for topics that students love to read. Being at their teenage years, of course they would love reading about love, romance, action, mysteries so why not I get them to read with a purpose on a topic that they like. One website that I have found useful was http://www.eslyes.com/extra/extra/extras139.htm. Of course they really love anything to do with sports mainly football or soccer. Be it the girls or boys, they have a preference to this sports. Better not get them started on which football club is the best! 'Dangerous' subject if you get the drift. 

Since my students were low-intermediate level, the passage needed to be short by contain related vocabulary. Not every material found on the internet can be used directly, I still need to edit it to suite the students level. I could change the layout of the passage to make it more interesting by adding pictures like adding a picture of a famous football player to attract their attention. I can then go through the word list from the passage, include vocabulary exercises or a short quiz to check if they have understood what the passage was about. It is great to find websites that have materials that are free and downloadable for me to modify to suite the levels of the students. Who does not love free stuff that you can download off the internet right. What I love about this particular website is that the passage also comes with audio so students can learn pronunciation too. 

 Using Technology Enhanced Lesson Plan was different from my usual lesson plan as it was quite simple and straight-forward. Like any lesson plan, I had to decide the objective of the lesson. This lesson was to get students to identify 3 effects and 3 causes of flash floods. So I used a video from Youtube as one of my material in my lesson plan (We were doing a topic on Environmental Disasters: Flash Floods).  Students got to see the destruction that happened during a flash flood. They would then discuss the effects of the flash flood to people, the environment and economy. Later they then discuss what causes flash floods in the first place. 

 

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80td_9QGkyM)

Another website that I really like is http://busyteacher.org/. Its a great place where we can get free printable worksheets that we can use for our class. They have sorted it out according to topics so its easy to search around for worksheets. Such websites are great when we run out of ideas on materials. It is wonderful that I could use multiple websites as resources and helps me to get ideas to help my students learn better. Having different learners can sometimes be difficult because we need to meet the needs of each individual learner. There is no one 'mold' lesson plan that everybody fits. So as teachers we need to find one that can match to most learner. Everyday is a lesson to be learnt. If there is an obstacle blocking our way for improvement, we can climb over it, go around it or go through it. Or we can adapt and adjust to solve the problem with an answer.

Wishing everybody a wonderful week ahead! :) Enjoy exploring these websites.