Week 8

I can not believe that the course is nearing it's end. Who knew time flies sooooo fast! Furthermore, I had to escort my students to their three days traditional dance carnival in another division (about 10 hours away from school!). They placed CHAMPIONS! Congratulations to them and their teachers. I am so proud of them! Here is a picture of them. :D

 

Students in their native traditional costumes

The CHAMPIONS!

This week was a rush to complete the draft report. I did not fully completed it as we were busy with examinations and the term coming to its end. I was also traveling to and back from the 3 days competition, lack of sleep for the total of 3 days of competition. So I did not get to test it out in my classroom. I planned to do a classroom blog and get students to post their comments in the blog. Hopefully I get to test it out in the new term.

In addition, I got to make my very own  crossword puzzle. It was fun. Creating a crossword puzzle does take some time and I needed to plan the materials for the lesson earlier (at least a week in advance). Here is the website that I used : http://www.crosswordpuzzlegames.com/. It was so easy and fast. It just took me 30 minutes to complete. I could print it quickly.

Nevertheless, I still needed the internet to connect to the website. How I wish that my school has fast internet network. Creating language games is always fun and of course the students love them. Which child does not love games, right?

Have a great week ahead!

Warmest regards,

Evette

Malaysia

WEEK 7 - One Computer Classroom

This week was a challange when the internet was horrible... Urgh! Nevertheless, strive on and plow ahead regardless of the obstacles laying in front.

Used the Padlet website for the first time. Posted my link on the Padlet website and I was happy that it finally got attached!. It was something interesting to do. Somehow it was like I was writing on some 'Post-it' then pasting it on the 'wall'. One activity I taught of that I could do with this website is, students are divided into groups of 4. Then they are given a topic to discuss on and post the Padlet website. For example; 'Suggest ways to stop bullying in schools.' or 'In your opinion, how can you become an excellent student?'.

Students could link videos, websites or articles on the Padlet. After the groups have posted their findings or post on the Padlet website, students from other groups are allowed to post their comments regarding the topics that were posted on the Padlet. The teacher too would post on the Padlet website and add his/her remarks to the posts.

Another topic that we did this week was on the one computer classroom. This is a senario that I have faced many times. Most of the time I would use my own laptop in the classroom and setup the LCD. The lesson would normally be about a new topic and PowerPoint would be used or videos would be shown. But now when I need to inclue the learners' autonomy into the classroom, students need to be put into focus and less of the teacher. So how would you do this in a one computer classroom when you have a large class? It was a challange but not impossible.

One way that I have found was I could do more groups discussion activities. Students could use the one computer to do their presentation. They would do their research and discussion beforehand. Creating groups would be easier to handle and students get to do their own research. Students are given the autonomy to learn as much as they can on the topic. They could look up articles, read journals or visit websites. They then would gather to discuss and pitch their ideas to their group members and finally present their ideas to the entire class. During their presentation, their peers and teacher would judge them on their presentation based on the rubrics given to them earlier.

Now I hope I can finally get back to school after nearly a week travelling away escorting my students for their state competition. Wish them all the best and pray they come back champions! Fingers cross! Will post pictures of where I went with them and hopefully I can get stronger internet connection.

Have a great week ahead! I know I will have one. :)

Week 6 - The Interactive Class & PowerPoint

Hello everybody!

This week we had to create an interactive PowerPoint.
Yes, using PowerPoint. But one might say, PowerPoint is for presentation; the audience listen and we present our ideas; right? It can be a challenge but we can do anything if we put our minds to it.

One excellent thing about making PowerPoint interactive is that students would not fall asleep during our lesson which can sometimes be too much of a 'lecture'. They need fun and excitement while learning English Language. What better way to learn but by playing language games. Inserting flashy and animated pictures, videos and music helps stimulate and motivate students to learn.

So the challenge is, how can we make PowerPoint interactive? To make it interactive, I have to have a two-way communication between me and my students. Okay, so the easiest way was to create a game using PowerPoint. I have done quizzes a few times, multiple choice questions, mix and match, I needed to find something I have not done before. (Needed to challenge myself too)

So it got me thinking, I had to make a game. Making Jeopardy was so much fun but I needed to do more. Not that Jeopardy was not interesting, but it was more for general knowledge. I need something to help my students in their vocabulary too. So, I asked uncle Google and eureka, I found that I could create the Hangman from PowerPoint. I had so much fun creating the Hangman game using PowerPoint! It was so much fun that I just could not stop making more.

After creating the game, I still needed to test it before I could run it with my students, besides they were having their semester's examination. So a few of my colleagues became my guinea pigs. Alas, they were so hooked to the game I had to pull my laptop away from them! Actually I only did 4 words so it did not take long for them to complete the game. But it proved that the game can capture anybody's attention and get them hook to it.

First run of the game was done, now I had to make it more animated and fun. Have to attract the students attention too. So make a few things fly in, spin around , make the slides colorful
and decorate the slides but keeping in mind not to make it too crowded and suitable for students.

If you want to learn how to create your own Hangman game, here's the link to the website:
http://www.pptalchemy.co.uk/PowerPoint_Hangman_Game.html

Have fun! I know I did. :)

I think I would use this as my technology tool to be used in the class as my school does not have strong internet connection and most of my students have no internet access. So I have to work with what I have. The downside of teaching in a rural school that lacks internet access. :(

But then, when there is a challenge staring at you, brace yourself and climb over it. Its great to challenge oneself to improve for the better.

Have great and fun week ahead!

Happy Teacher's Day!!!!

Week 5 - Assessments, Rubrics, Project Based Learning & more

I can not believe it is already Week 5. How time flies when your having fun and learning something new. This week there were a lot of new things to learn. Even though it seems to be quite a difficult task to learn so many things at one time, we must believe that nothing is impossible when you have sent your mind to the task.

Besides, as teachers we must keep developing ourselves to improve our teaching methods or skills. Its the 21st Century and the students nowadays are very different. They are more technological savvy and information is easily accessed to them. Teaching now have to be visually rich, entertaining and fun to capture their minds.

I did have to crack my brain on the rubrics that I made using the Rubistar. Doing it for the first time is never easy but then how else can one learn but through adversity. Having a specific rubrics lets us to be focused in the assessment and this must also be exposed to the students. Letting them have the rubrics actually would let them have a clearer understanding of the requirements. There is a baseline for them to work with and lets them know what their weaknesses are.

Having clear and transparent rubrics lets students know how their assignments or projects are being scored. This creates self-motivation in my students to get better scores. Using alternative assessments helps us to specifying assessments based on the needs of each students' learning capabilities. Getting students to be more in control of the assessments will let them identify their level and thus adjust to improve themselves to get better scores. It in itself creates inner confidence and self-motivation in my students themselves. Weak students need motivation to strive on and when they are in control of their learning process this works best for them.

Now this is where I found that project-based learning lets students have a voice and choice to manage their own learning process with little intervention from the teacher. What is good is that students are free to carry out their own inquiries to find out their own answers to their questions. We coach students to think for themselves and discover new insights. Students with educational technologies are able to apply knowledge to new real-world situations, analyze information, collaborate, solve problems, and make decisions. Students get the opportunity to practice team-building activities, reflect on thinking and develop problem solving thinking.

At the end of the day, I hope that I am creating students who are more self-aware, have critical thinking-and-doing, creative, innovative and have self-reliance.

Creating the Webquest was fun. It looked like a lesson plan but with the activities attached. Need to further explore this site and use it to the fullest extent. Still needed to work on the process section.

Teaching Literature using Youtube videos

This was an activity that I did with my fellow colleague during one of our English afternoon extra class. I had downloaded some videos had the literature component the students were learning for the year.

The links to the videos are listed below. The kids loved them and were very excited to watch the video as they did not fully understood the novel.

After watching the videos they did a simple activity which required them to rearrange the summary of the chapters. First we had to group them, 4 /5 per group. Then they were given 3 summary chapters and one video was played while they rearrange the summary chapters. Repeated until all videos were played. Teacher check their work after each video. 

This activity took about 1 hour.

The summary chapters to be handed out to students

                            Teacher explaining the activity to the students. (Big group; 50 students)

 

 

  

The group discussions

Students' work. Arranging the summary of chapters according to sequence.

Video links:-

Chapters 1 - 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKCMR-9ENsc

Chapters 4 -6

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqQoLGcqySY

Chapters 7 - 9

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MarLYC64ktk

Chapters 10 - Epilogue

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxCkDr1AfD8

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.

Technology & Learning

This is now in the third week. What I learnt from all the browsing, searching and reading online got me thinking. We are now in the 21th century. Teachers need to adapt to the learning skills of the 21st century. Letting kids explore for themselves and develop, teachers are just guides. Using the right tools to help us present information in an interesting and fun way.

One particular website that I like is http://www.esl-lab.com/. I could modify the materials here to suite the students level. What is great it is already sorted according to the levels. http://www.esl-lab.com/jobhunting/jobhuntingrd1.htm. This is one link that I could use for my future lesson about job hunting (Planning ahead hehe). It would be interesting to see them conduct a job interview with their friends in class as one of their oral presentation. Its great that there are activities for pre-listening, listening and post-listening for the students to do on their own and test themselves. Here students could learn and explore on their own. They could even listen at home when they have internet access. Practice makes perfect.

We need to keep up with them. Having the internet keeps ourselves updated with the latest news, searching for materials, downloading videos and doing research. But still we need to find the appropriate materials suitable for our students.

Here is one video I downloaded from Youtube used in one of my lesson about careers. This one was about the world's most dangerous jobs in the world. Then the students sits in groups and discuss which job would they choose to do. It was quite an heated and interesting discussion as the boys would do the jobs rather then the girls.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OqyQJ-Sj-rY

Videos can use be used as our set induction for the lesson to grab the students' attention. Who would not want to watch something interesting and fun right? Try describing how dangerous a particular job, for example a crab fisherman, to students who never seen one before. Showing pictures may not be enough. Some students need visual stimulus to help them understand.

This week I had to setup a Delicious account. I did not understand the use of such a website. But after crating one, ten I found out how useful it was. Having a Delicious account helps me keep track of websites I can use for my lessons. Letting me write personal comments about each websites helps me to distinguish which sites are suitable for particular materials. It is fun to learn something new everyday.

Now even though technology is easily accessed but sometimes or some places its not available or what is worse is there is no electricity! So I had to make do with what available things are around. There is no internet access in my school, so download videos or materials is the best option. Print out the materials or use LCD projectors in class in another way. Sometimes I revert to the traditional chalk and talk if all else does not work. We have to make use of what is available on hand. Always have an alternative or backup plan handy. What is most important is that students get to learn English in a fun and interesting way. You might be surprise an outdoor excursion can be very very interesting way of learning.