Call for Participation in Poster Session for MEXTESOL 40th International Convention

Hello TKTer’s Past and Present!

Several TKT graduates who are now working in public schools are interested in presenting together in a poster session in the next MEXTESOL National Convention to present a series of posters about how they work without technology in their teaching situation. We are looking specifically for teachers who are planning to go to the 40th International MEXTESOL Convention, are members and are interested in presenting in a combined group effort iina poster session.

 

Please respond to this post if you are interested.

Why use technology?

Ah yes here is one of the thought provoking posts that I like to send out to you every so often. Through my twitter network of supporters, teachers and learners, I found this great commentary and review on an article which was published in the NY Times not too long ago. Check it out.

Collision Detection

It explains in clear language how technology enhances learning, and demonstrates different ways of applying wordles in academic situations, even in a second language classroom!

Onions and Learning Situations

In the past I have made the analogy between onions and learning situations. Not just any onions: the big, round sweet Spanish onions that saute up so sweet. When you eat them before they are ripe, they are strong and have a sharp, unpleasant taste, but left to grow layer upon layer of sweet goodness, they grow into a delicious taste treat.

After having class on the Moodle platform, I wanted to share the onion analogy with you. Having the opportunity to work in a variety of contexts provides different levels of engagement with students just like the layers in an onion.
- Those that run away from technology have the opportunity of working with the pages in the Anthology dedicated to the Learning Theorists.
- Those that missed class could use the Moodle platform to access the class and not miss important information, although they missed important face to face discussion. Discussion could be facilitated through other contexts, such as through the blogs, and discussion forums in a classroom that are set up for a mufti-layered delivery.
- Those that like to work online worked at their own pace.
- Those that like to work in groups and do not like technology are able to work supported in small groups to access the information and draw conclusions by filling in their matrix.
- Those that want to look at the information again can do so anytime, as long as they are enrolled in the Moodle course online.

This experience provided a differentiation that is seldom available in our regular four walled classrooms. The contexts in which we worked during class on April 27 were multiple and provided a variety of opportunities for all types of learners. We figuratively knocked down the classroom walls and opened up the classroom to expand our possibilities of learning.

I’d like to share this article from an online e-zine in which educators share their views on flattening the classroom walls, or as they say in this article, flipping the classroom:
Favorite Strategies for engaging students in class discussions

Then to wrap up the topic of motivation, I’d like to share a post from one of the teachers on my international PLN (personal and professional learning network) who posted a reflective entry after her visit to IATEFL last year.
Please check out Eva’s blog..
Eva, thank you. I couldn’t have summed it up better.

Don’t Motivate your Students

You are probably wondering what I am saying…and I mean it, don’t motivate your students. If you motivate your students, you are still doing the work for them of getting them interested. Instead, engage your students. Involve your students. Let them have control of their learning. How?

Let them make decisions about their knowledge. Let them set their own goals. Stop trying to control them, let them control their learning processes.

I recently took a good hard look at the typical school classroom in most schools in the town where  I live. In every classroom, the seats are lined up to face the front facing the teacher, the center of attention.

Students sit and listen while professors drone on, and once in a while students get to speak during pair work. Students in Mexican universities are required to study English in order to graduate, so they come in thousands (five thousand students registered this past semester in our Language Department and at times, hundreds are turned away!). There are no discipline problems, this is university level studies and they take it seriously.

So, what does engaging your students mean? This is what I think:

• Asking them to reflect,
• to evaluate,
• to stand back and observe what they are doing,
• to learn not only from their product but also from their process. If we say that life is the journey you travel to get to your destination, and the fun is in how you get there, then why do we place so much emphasis on the product?

ASCD author and Annual Conference presenter Bob Sullo says that educators could be more successful with their teaching if they invited their students to be collaborators in their own learning in this video.

Point in case: I asked my advanced level students to bring in their portfolio of written work they had done in the past year after doing an analysis of sentence structure (complex, compound and simple sentences). They were able to observe their progress and note where they needed to make improvements. Most of them had never had the opportunity to sit and reflect where they have been to see where they could go. The AHA moment was tangible as everyone learned and set new personal goals for their writing during the semester. Now that was engagement.

• How would you place more emphasis on the process of learning?
• Would you let your students design their own rubrics? Share expectations?
• Give them a choice and so create ownership?
• Go beyond the classroom walls?

What ideas do you have?

Original Toondo cartoon by author.

Literature Circles

Reading is a complex activity and we know that many of our learners are not accustomed to reading in their first language, let alone reading in the target language. When we create a collaborative communicative context for students to work on subskills in the target language, we begin to promote not only reading subskills, but we also promote collaboration, speaking skills, writing skills and listening skills.

It is difficult to separately work with any language skill, out of context with the other language skills. Literacy circles provides students with authentic reasons to communicate, a supportive learning environment and breaks down the tasks that students must do in order to practice and become proficient at reading skills.

Look at the Literature_Circles written by past students of the TKT course.
What is your opinion of Literature Circles? Can they help promote reading in L1 or L2 in your learning/teaching situation? For foreign language learners are they especially helpful? Why? Think about these questions as you investigate more about Literature Circles.
How would you use them in your classes? Investigate the links included in the PPT for more information.

The post of the week: A great example of how to transform teaching into learning

I would like to have a showcase for the best blogging efforts during the week. This week our winner is definitely, hands down, Liz on her blog with her post, “Online tools applied to our content.” Not only did Liz recommend various sites, she created various games using the sites to add to her teaching toolbox. In order to keep a catalogued record of her work she created a page named Glossary term activities/games.

Congratulations Liz for a job superbly done. You are transforming the learning process into the way our students think. Your students are going to love what you do!

Great Tool: Movie Segments for Grammar Goals

Ever get caught in the “explanation” game, where the teacher-centered explanation, the worksheets you supply, and the extra practice you give on drill exercises don’t seem to help all your students get the grammar point?

Sometimes you just have to use material outside the coursebook.
Teachers around the world who blog share ideas about waking up your classes. Eva in Turkey’s suggests maintaining and adding information on a excel page that she started: songs to teach grammar. Check it out; it contains more than Beatles songs and you can get many ideas for using songs int he classroom.

If you like movies and would like to use those in your home collection, Claudio in Brazil has collected a mountain of information and linked movie scenes from present and past films to grammar points with great lesson ideas to help your teaching become student-centered.

Try it…it is more interesting than teacher explanations of grammar! Movie Segments to Assess Grammar.

Providing a model for speaking in the EFL classroom

I came across an interesting article and wanted to share it. In TKT preparation classes, we usually end up at several points discussing the pro’s and con’s of using L1 in the language learning class. Before we begin to discuss this in our present classes, I would like to share this article with my readers to give some background information and food for thought.

What do you think?

Four Skills Great Ideas Post

I’d love to use this post as a forum for the great ideas you all have. From your experiences in the ESL/EFL (or French or Italian) teaching/learning world, recommend another blog, site or page where English teachers can go for extra support in the four skills. I’m sure that everyone has something to contribute.
I would like to recommend a visit to songs-to-teach-grammarthis blog about songs to teach grammar where you can find lots of suggestions and other sites for finding and using songs to teach grammar.
Busy Prepositions from Schoolhouse Rock is one of my favorite videos to teach a difficult concept, prepositional phrases, from Schoolhouse Rock, 2007, found on Youtube. I find it useful to help students distinguish between phrases and clauses.

Here is a great link to a blog, all about making writing lessons meaningful for ESL/EFL students to give you some ideas to use in your classrooms.

To work on stress and intonation in speaking, here is Carolyn Graham’s Jazz Chants.<a href=”Teaching Jazz Chants“>Teaching Jazz Chants

Here are some techniques for teaching speaking in big classes BBC Teaching Speaking

Specific sites such as these provide specific aids for busy teachers who can inject fun and creativity into their classrooms while helping their students learn.