Week 3: More and more!!

This week’s resources have been like a basket full of rich food which helped me feed myself and my students as well.

First, I started reading the 2 articles entitled “Teaching English to Adult English Language Learners” by Kirsten Schaetzel, and “Using Original Video and Sound Effects to Teach English” by Shahla Yassaei. They are very useful. In fact, everything in this course is so useful. Honestly, as I already said in the Nicenet discussion, I’ve never really devoted much time to teach pronunciation in class because I thought it was not the real focus. So I just spent little time dealing with it in reading and vocabulary development activities. Nevertheless, thanks to the reading, I can now be aware of the importance of pronunciation in language comprehension and intelligibility. The article provided me with a lot of great ideas on how to improve and work on students’ pronunciation. I really loved the idea of establishing a pronunciation checklist which my students and I can refer to when correcting pronunciation. I’ll definitely develop such checklist based on the performance of the students in speaking and will make a copy for each student so that both my students and I would be able to evaluate their progress and their needs together at the end of each course session.

The article about the use of video in class also helped me find more ideas to raise students’ attention, activate the class and make activities more interesting. I have already used some of the advice given in it like the “Picture or Speech”, “Subtitled films” and “Picture-less listening” and they have made the students be more productive. However, a lot more are still to be experimented and exploited. I think of using the “Freeze framing” in my class for a tense review: simple past, present continuous, future with “will” or “be going to”; and the “Silent viewing” for storytelling.

During this week, I was also introduced to the bookmarking tool: Delicious. I’ve never used any bookmarking tool before but I just saved the links I needed in my phone or in my notebook, but this course has opened my eyes on a great and practical way to save website links. I’m really thankful for that. You can always access it on your computer wherever you are. For sure, I’ll continue using it to secure all the useful links I’ve got and I will still get all along this course and I will also share Delicious.com with my students so that they’ll also be able to share links with each other.

Finally, the sample project I've read has given me an overall view and a general idea of the final project I have to create. It’s a bit challenging but I’m sure help will be provided all along it as it has always been since the beginning of the course; and I hope I’ll be able to clearly and successfully set up mine and bring a change in my class through it.

Good luck everyone!

Week2, post2: What’s more…. The helpful ABCD method!

This ABCD objective is the only thing that was not really new to me so far in this course because I already attended a workshop about it at my workplace and I’ve used it in my class preparation. Nevertheless, it’s always better to have knowledge reinforced since we may forget easily sometimes. It is simple and easier to understand for students. It has helped me to analyze and evaluate my lesson plan at the end of each class because I can see clearly what is mastered, what needs to be reinforced (in the behavior), and if my expectation was too high or a bit low (in the degree). The ABCD objective I described in the Nicenet post was for my class last Friday and I was really satisfied because the objective was more than reached. My expectation in the degree had been a bit low since my students could give and produce more than I thought. Hence, in my next lesson plan, I can think of increasing a bit the degree when it comes to describing and comparing.

Hope this method has made a difference in your lesson plan!

Ravaka

Madagascar

Week 2: Web searching

This week, I’m learning new and interesting things again.

I never thought there would be a lot of great web search engines apart from Google. It’s amazing there are more than a hundred possibilities regarding that. I would never be aware of that if I weren’t part of this Web skills course and I wouldn’t stop expressing my heartfelt gratitude to all the team and staff who made this opportunity happen. The materials, guidelines and help it provides really motivate and encourage me to grow more in my teaching skills. 

Five days ago, through the different readings in the course website (URL:https://sites.google.com/site/webskillsuo/home/assignments/week-2) I learnt that there are a lot of engines I can use to search for different materials for my class and for my own resources. I also got some really useful tips on how to search for what you want more effectively and specifically. We were asked to choose some of the engines we hadn’t used yet to explore and try; and I chose a few of them but these are my favorites: SweetSearch (URL:http://www.sweetsearch.com/) for teenager class and Google scholar (URL:http://scholar.google.com/schhp?hl=fr&as_sdt=0,5&lookup=0) and iSeek (URL:http://education.iseek.com/iseek/home.page) for any other academic search. I could find materials for all skills such as listening, grammar lessons, readings … in them. I’ve started to apply the web search tips in my searches as well and they really made a difference. The results are more relevant. 

As a teacher, I have to be creative and always need to find new ideas to improve my teaching and make the class more interesting; and what I’ve acquired so far will help me to do so. Therefore, I’ll continue to use them for my class and in the preparation of my teaching (to search for lesson and practice worksheets, audio files for listening, texts, videos…). It’s also a great idea to share all these new things with my students as they will help them to become independent learners, and that is an objective to reach.

I’m sure that everything we have learnt this week also brought good things to all the other teachers participating in this course. Good luck everyone!

Ravaka from Madagascar.

Week 1: New discovery, new experience...

Blog, blog, blog!!!

I’ve always heard about this word “blog” but I couldn’t have a clear idea about it until I created mine myself! I learnt about the different benefits of using it while I was reading the article about “Using blogs in the classroom”, by Gayle Morris. Before, I thought it was just like other social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, etc. but it’s more than that! It’s a great tool to be used in class in order to promote communication among students, teachers or teacher – students in a more comfortable way. It’s like a virtual platform where the students and the teacher can share their thoughts, findings and present ideas. It also gives them the opportunity to be open to others, develop and reinforce relations, cohesion and knowledge; and especially improve writing skills. I’ve never thought it would be that useful!

I’m sure it will be a helpful tool to back up the teaching and the class in many ways: it will encourage students to be more involved in any activities and discussions, reduce barriers in communication, enhance cooperation among students and broaden students’ and teachers’ skills. It will be a practical tool to convey information as well. I believe my students are going to like using it and enjoy the class more since they are already accustomed to using technology in their everyday life. In addition, they are into it.

I can't wait to experience and discover more about it!