Roseli Coffee Desk : October 2013

October 2013 has been a really busy and exciting month. Apart from all the work a teacher like me and you have to do, I presented in two conferences : One ftf and one online. Two different experiences, completely different approaches but for both audiences I had teachers sharing and caring about waht we do best: TEACH! (By the way, I still have another conference on 25th . YES!)
As for the first one, The Future of Education - The 2013 Reform Symposium it is a world online conference and the other one the ACINNE conference which has to do with CULTURA INGLESA , the institute I work as a teacher. Considering both conferences were one day after another, I delivered the same presentation and decided to write a post in order to share them with you. Before building up this presentation, I decided to make a survey with teachers asking them What memorable lessons mean to them. See their responses:

After the listening to them it came to my mind some teachers who manage to make the difference both in real life ( my life ) as well as those whose stories ( fictional or not) became films that have inspired teachers, educator, people in general all over the world. I've chosen two of my favourite cinema characters who played the role of two amazing teachers: Mr Holland and Sister Act 2 . Two different situations, two different teachers with completely different approaches who've changed their SS' lives forever!

Having been inspired by hundreds of colleagues and my SS, I decided to experience what I call " The good:, the old and the new " with my SS.

The aim of these activities are:

To generate speaking opportunities
To work on Project Based Learning and Project Oriented learning
To have my SS learning effectively and have fun
To make my SS produce language and have real sense of achievement

They not only involve web tools and apps but also lots of different activities we used to do a lot in class and which provide learning and good fun to our SS.

Some example of the "Old tools"

Board games
Speaking -Card games
The "Freedonia Project" - A very old activity I myself took part as a student

Target language: Can/ Can't. Must / Mustn't. have to/ Don't have to, allowed to/ not allowed to, should/ shouldn't etc.
Level: Any
Advantage : Adaptble

Results: SS engaged, a lot of noise and fun, very good for revising language, a lot of speaking opportunities, skills worked interrogatively, reached all learning styles , revealed talents - SS' creativity and use of imagination , a room for the SS to revise some rules and create their own.

Steps:

Have SS in groups
Tell them they should create a country that ends with - onia Ex: Appleonia Bookonia ...

SS are told to:

Draw a map for the country,
Write rules for the country (based on the TL)
Choose from 3 to 5 local places in this country and create rules for them

Web-tools:

According to Nik Peach:

" It’s important that language learners have the opportunity to use language creatively to express something of their own personality or identity. Apps which support this kind of creativity can be potentially very useful.They, in some way, develop a digital skill that can be transferred outside of the learning context and used in some authentic way either in the workplace or as part of SS' lifestyle...... If they are motivating for native speakers to use for genuine purposes, they should also be motivating for language learners for that same purpose as they involve some sort of linguistic input or output that are ideally suited to language teaching purposes."

To work with apps and web tools I made use of two strategies:

BYOD - Bring your own device - As you see in the picture above , my SS bring to school their smartphones, tablets and laptops for us to use in classroom.
Using the school computer lab - The MLC ( Multimedia Learning Centre) as in the picture below

First of all I have all my groups of SS on Edmodo. This platform is used for educational purposes only and :

I assign homework and projects
Give feedback to my SS
Grade my SS
Create events and alerts
Communicate with my groups in a safe platform
Parents can access

I also created a wikispaces where I Store all my SS electronic portfolios. It's a good way to have them kept , SS and parents can see and feel proud and for me , as a teacher, I can change, improve , create and manage it the way I want.

Some web tools I showed on this presentation:

Glogster and Smore : I posted the task on the Edmodo where the SS were supposed to create a book project based on a book they've chosen to read. The guidelines were:

Describe a character from the book
Describe a place from the book
Describe a period when the story takes place
Describe the atmosphere of the story
What kind of music do you associate with the story?
Describe a relationship between some characters
Describe how a character develops/ changes during the story
Describe a special moment of the story
Describe your own feelings when reading the book ( explain them)
Think of questions you would like to ask the writer and explain why these questions