Saturday, July 30, 2011

Week 6 -July 30- Begin the change

We have been doing this course for 6 weeks so far. The more we learn and discover, the more plans I have to introduce into my classroom. This course inspires me for innovations and gives a flow to my imagination. I want to try everything and get as much from it as possible but for my final project I still have to narrow my choice.
As I've already mentioned, I want to build my project around Listening and Speaking. These skills are the most problematic for my students. I want to introduce listening to authentic materials and to teach my students to listen for details. As to speaking, my goal is to encourage my students to speak and to break the language barrier.
Before I start to implement my project I want to conduct an online survey which I created with the help of Google
link to my survey.

This survey will help understand my students better and see what they like and interested in.
Then I want to introduce the Webquests. The one that I created for the week 5 task corresponds to one of the Unit topics in our syllabus. This webquest includes many Listening materials, as wel as reading and writing tasks. All the materials are up-to-date and cover the latest news and events. Some of the materials are written and presented by teenagers which I think will be very interesting and informative for my students to learn what their peers think about the global issues in different corners of the world. This Webquest contains written tasks, such as “leave comment”, “take part in the discussions”, etc. It also has individual work- to do the research and make a presentation in the classroom which will help develop speaking and public speaking skills as well. For my listening materials I used
youtube, news, forum , teens' artcles, articles for reading, and some other resources. I want also include Speaking online technologies. It can be www.voxopop.com. So some resources will be updated or added. For more details you can visit my Webquest.
Another thing I want to start with my class is using class blog or website.  I am planning to create a class blog (or website) where my students will find many links to sites with authentic materials as for listening, so as for reading, writing, speaking. I want to include there some learning online resources (puzzles, quizes,games), different music, photos which can promote discussions. So the website or blog will be used for exchange of information and ideas and also for posting some homework atsks. First it will be aimed at our class usage only but later I want to broaden the borders and to involve some outsiders to take part (native speakers or people from different parts of the world would be perfect). At the first stage I want to engage my students into expressing their thought and ideas whithout fear of being laughed at or criticized. There are many different ways described in the article of Jarek Krajka, for example, writing letters to e-pals. The author suggests visiting the site www.eun.org for collaboration with TESLCA, online newspapers notices and ads, which can be also discussed, etc
So the primary thing to do is to get my students familiar with the Webquest.The class website is the subsequent tool which is going to be created simultaneously.
One more thing to do is the assessment. Some of the tasks, for example, oral presentation and discussion will be assessed with the help of the Rubrics (it is uploaded in the webquest. As to the other tasks, I am still thinking what will be the best ways to do the assessment.

3 comments:

  1. Hi Iuliia,
    I always feel inspired reading your posts. I even envy your students to have such clever, active and dynamic teacher.
    I am very interested in that part of your project where you are going to improve the speaking skills of your learners. This is a key objective of my project too.
    Robert suggested using VOXOPOP for my students. And I will, as you too.
    But the thing I am reflecting on now is that I might/will not have time to prepare all my students to VOXOPOP. As a matter of fact, my Business English course lasts for 7 months, and that means only those with good basic speaking skills will turn to VOXOPOP. The rest of the class could be exposed to some well organized mixture of technologies.
    It seems a great challenge is awaiting me and all of us!
    Best wishes,
    Mykola

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  2. Hi Iuliia,
    I have checked your webquest now, it is so professional, so inspiring and so informative. I like the videos a lot. You have chosen one of my favourite songs..I bet your Ss are going to love it. I also appreciate your linking the webquest to your class forum where Ss can post comments and share ideas, but I am not sure this could work with my Ss, as they might consider this too much technology which they lack time for, most of them are professionals and really busy at work!
    I am looking at doing on line survey to see if I can adapt anything in my project. I tried to check yours but I need the owner permission. I requested it any way.

    Great work
    Hala

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  3. Hi Hala,
    Thank you so much for your feedback! I am really happy to hear that you liked my webquest. It was so important for me to hear positive comments because I was worried a bit that I had done it in a wrong way!
    Robert helped me to make my survey shared and I think you can see it now. Try and let me know, please, if it works!
    PS as to the webquest, you can adapt some of the activities to your students. I think you can reduce the number of tasks and they'll be able to copy with them!

    See you online))

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