Project for Class 10-B at the Secondary School Specializing in English

Transcription

1 Victoria Illarionova Specialized Secondary School #3, Dzerzhinsk, Ukraine Volume 1, Number 4, Summer 2010, E-Teacher Projects Gallery Course: Building Teaching Skills Through the Interactive Web, University of Oregon Author: Victoria Illarionova, Specialized Secondary School #3, Dzerzhinsk, Ukraine I. Background Who are the learners? Project for Class 10-B at the Secondary School Specializing in English The class I am going to implement a technology related change is 10-B from my Secondary School Specializing in English. Our students start learning English from the first year of study having three hours of it a week during primary school, five hours of English from the fifth till the ninth years of study in basic secondary school and seven hours of the language in the high school (tenth and eleventh years of study) which include special courses, such as Business Course, Technical Translation and Country study. So I have been teaching students of 10-B for nine years already. My school with students' parents supplies us with a variety of modern textbooks from British publishers, which provide us with both authentic and interesting material for listening, reading, writing and speaking. It increases their desire and becomes a challenge to study English well. So far I had a group of 12 motivated and interested in English students more or less equal in knowledge of intermediate (closer to upper-intermediate) level. There will be a change this year as three of my students left entering colleges and four other students have come from other regular (not specialized) schools. So Iʼll have to work with mixed-ability students. I understand that I have a diversity of personalities in the classroom different both in characters and ways of perception material. Some students are visual learners, others learn best through listening. Some learn best when they combine actions with speaking and others learn best through reading and writing. They are up-to-date active teenagers of 16, much interested in computer technologies. All of them have some computer skills and have computers with Internet connections at home. I believe my students are open to everything new. What is the setting? As for technical equipment I have a computer, a laptop, a TV and a DVD, a tape-recorder and a disc-player at my disposal and we also have a projector and one multimedia Smart-board in our school. Though at school our computer lab is very old and it doesn't worth the Internet connection, but we are lucky to have several classrooms with one computer per room connected to the Internet not long ago, so next year we'll be happy to make active use of it. And the most important that we have is our mutual desire to modernize the educational process. Unfortunately we don't have enough software for our Smartboard. Our desks are traditionally in 3 rows with two students at a desk. But we are free to change the location of desks and we like to do it with my students whenever we wish to work collaboratively and achieve certain tasks. I also try to equip my study room with placards, tables, flashcards, pictures, posters and table games. What are the course goals? The primary goal of our EFL course is to enhance vocabulary acquisition, listening and reading comprehension, speaking and writing skills, to acquire Upper intermediate level of mastering English. I also need to prepare students for the school-leaving exam and state independent testing. For that I try to allow my students to learn through the ways which suit them best, vary the tasks. I do my best to include technology into the learning process and make my lessons more interactive to keep students interest in the subject. My students are accustomed to pair work, group work, elements of research, games and making projects. The E-Teacher Scholarship Program is a cooperative grant agreement between the U.S. Department of State ECA/A/L; the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; and the University of Oregon.

2 What are the student needs? To my mind the students of this class need more motivation, increase of interest to the subject and additional assessment and monitoring of their progress. With the enlarging of English hours per week they need more modern approach to learning and verification of teaching methods. They should become autonomous learners. I also should support the development of gifted and talented students. Describe anything else that is significant or relevant about the course that may potentially relate to your project I should add here that sometimes my students are not responsive as I would like them to be. They donʼt fully understand the importance of knowing English and donʼt have enough materials or environment to develop oral speech. It also happens that a small minority dominates the discussion while shy students stay silent. I hope this project will help me to make a shift from a traditional to a studentcentered learning. I strongly believe that English can be fun for students if supplemented with alternative methods and techniques. I hope my 10-B will best benefit from making a technology-inspired change. II. Issue or problem to be addressed that technology can help with No one doubts that implementing of the Internet in the educational process has a lot of positive sides so the issues that technology can help us: Teacher-oriented: 1. I had not enough access to professional and authentic materials in three stages for lesson planning, assessed at the lesson (as the Internet-lesson) and for usage in extracurricular activities; 2. The educational process in the classroom is not always intensified and effective, students are not involved into designing their own educational route at school and after; 3. A traditional lesson has a feedback between a student and a teacher; students donʼt have other sources of assessment and partners for communication; 4. The role of the teacher is still too traditional as the only source of information and who relies on teaching more as a lecturer; 5. There is no automated process control of students' knowledge and monitoring the quality of learning. I need tracking students' progress and tight communication with their parents badly; 6. I also need to organize something like an electronic repository for systematization, storage, and processing of information, creating new educational resources or adapting already existing in the school collection, which I have now in different places discs, cassettes, books, etc.; 7. Iʼd like to improve my computer literacy (e.g. to be able to create much recommended by our headmaster multipurpose teacher's site or blog for sharing information and communicating with parents, students and teachers); 8. Nowadays a teacher needs more respect, praise and appreciation by students as a modern, intelligent and understanding their interests person. Illarionova, Page 2

3 Student oriented: 1. Lack of internal motivation to study English; 2. Conscious accesses to boundless field of information both for studying English and all the other subjects; 3. The role of the student is more of a passive consumer of factual information. Without technologies student has no opportunity to analyze available resources, to process information in large volumes in a relatively short time interval, to transmit information and share resources with other subjects of learning; 4. Lack of all aspects of a foreign language acquisition: pronunciation and tempo of speech, vocabulary, writing, reading and speaking. While doing this course I realized I should add here that my students are experiencing language barrier especially talking to native speakers. From all the aspects of English learning they donʼt like writing compositions and formal letters most of all; 5. Lack of computer skills (e.g. they donʼt know the secrets of searching and new meta-search engines, donʼt use social services like Delicious, need active usage of Blogs, s, video chats...); 6. Itʼs necessary to contribute to development of person-oriented students and such qualities as creativity, the ability to self-setting goals, perseverance in their achieving, self-confidence, awareness of themselves as individuals and members of the team responsible for the overall work, ability to self-analysis; 7. The learner autonomy is not developed well enough and my students can crib their homework from each other or pip in during written tests. III. Possible solution to try What will you do? To make a technology-related change in my teaching I am going to implement and use the following tools: 1. Access to a variety of professional and authentic materials (both teacher and student-oriented) - Delicious.com as well as Noodletools.com will provide me and my students with lots of useful sites to chose authentic materials from. 2. To change the role of the student in the learning process, facilitate collaboration and to increase motivation (student oriented) - Web Quests to invite collaboration, promote and exercise 'higher-level thinking process and practice skills inherent to any language learning project and research, international exchange and Video-conferencing in class and international projects, to twin with my colleagues Camelia, Arjana and others. 3. Enhancement of computer skills (student oriented) - using a class site - to share their ideas and/or the results of their research and class work with the world through a variety of different possibilities and formats, tools to create, edit and/or host images, audio files, podcasts and videos (e.g. Power Point Presentation, Movie Maker, Animoto) Illarionova, Page 3

4 4. Improvement of all aspects of a foreign language acquisition (student oriented): - pronunciation and tempo of speech Podcasts, specific ESL sites like "Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab" or "Real English" - vocabulary multiple Internet quizzes, crosswords, bingos, E-dictionaries, e-books with hyperlinks and even Wordle. - reading - e-books, majority of websites containing authentic material in the sense that it is written to convey real information to an English-speaking audience, ESL sites with reading materials. - speaking - Communication tools - voice/video messaging, chat rooms, discussion forums. - writing ESL sites developing writing skills like "TV411 Writing" or "The Easy Essay", s and the most important part of my project is Blogs, online discussion board on Nicenet and a class Wiki. i. I will use Nicenet for film and book reviews, discussing extra-curricular tasks throughout the year. ii. I will ask my students to create and work with their Blogs in the form of their Portfolio, reflecting their progress - real world tool to practice written English (as well as practice a wide range of other language skills). iii. I will use my class site (Wiki) to help me to create interactive on-line course content for my students to stay connected beyond classroom and harness the power of an extended classroom, to maintain on-line schedules and calendars for students to track project / assignment deadlines, to encourage parent's participation in classroom activities and keep them updated on their children's performance. When will you do it? I am going to do it from the first lessons in September and during my studentsʼ two last years in school seven hours per week. But to monitor first results I am planning this project for ten weeks at first. The technological change will touch every lesson of this classʼs profound learning of English whether for a lesson preparation, using skill-building sites at the lessons, weekly using of class site and Nicenet discussions and monthly evaluating of ing and Blog reflections. Where will you do it? I will do it in the classroom of these students as it is equipped with multimedia Smart board and connected to the Internet. Students will be also proposed home tasks to work at home individually or in groups. Illarionova, Page 4

5 IV. Expected student response How do you think students will respond? The response from the students to this project will be positive overall. For this generation technology is a very effective tool that helps facilitate and enhance their learning. My students like the idea of using modern technological devices in education, their learning and motivation intensifies even with a CD player, saying nothing of the computers. I am sure authentic materials and sites they will use now and communication with real native speakers will make their eyes sparkle from pleasure and selfconfidence. My students will feel and see an urgent need to learn the language properly. Not only they will enjoy creating the class site, they will also find it gratifying to know that their work in international collaboration can be interesting to other people around the world in their own academic pursuits. Web quests, interactive Power Point Presentations, reflective blogs, helpful Wiki will transform our classroom into an interactive and engaging learning environment. Nicenet will create open discussions that will be fueled by students, rather than forced by me and together with blogs will make them love creative writing. Through this interactive web project my studentsʼ fluency and pronunciation will benefit greatly as well as listening and reading comprehension. I believe there will be great enthusiasm on the part of some weaker students who will do exercises more regularly and all this experience will increase participation - even from quiet, shy students. Why do you think so? This project will provide them with challenging, high-level course work, disseminated through technologies. I know it almost for sure because they enjoy everything connected with computer technologies. Iʼd like to mention how rewarding it is to see my students concentrated on their computer task, working hard even after the bell rings. This happens very often when I try to use technology. Besides my students like group work and creating something themselves. I hope my students will be really excited about the project. Illarionova, Page 5

6 V. Resources Articles that helped you come up with this plan, or that support your ideas Blogging for ELT Weblogs for Use with ESL Classes - an introduction to blogs and what you can do with them Creating Online Content - Larry Ferlazzo's blog: Using Delicious: Delicious is a way to save web links Using the Internet in ESL Writing Instruction Three Extensive Reading Activities for ESL/EFL Students Using E-books ExtensiveReading.html ing to Improve EFL Learners' Reading and Writing Abilities ing.html A project-based learning activity about project-based learning Best Practices in Presenting with PowerPoint YouTube video showing how to create interactive PowerPoint: Making a Jeopardy game 101 Activities for the One-Computer Classroom - lots of links to look through Microsoft Word and PowerPoint in the Classroom Resources I plan to use in my class Randall's Cyber Listening Lab: Listening RealEnglish video Breaking News English Illarionova, Page 6

7 VI. Timeline I am planning my timeline of change for ten weeks to write a report, though I am going to practice computer technologies during the whole school year. Week 1: Week 2: Week 3: Week 4: Week 5: Week 6: Week 7-9: Week 10: Give students some background information, the goals and objectives of the project I am proposing in the form of Power Point Presentation. Give students an initial survey, using Survey Monkey. Initial change introduce a class site for students, demonstrate ways of using and developing it, play video Blogs in simple English from YouTube, present some successful blogs to get them acquainted with Blogger.com, provide an instruction how to create their own blogs. Observe what happened in class and write down comments in my journal Encourage students to use class site at least once a week or when necessary, to complete the proposed activities and tasks and do optional assignments; Motivate students for active experimentation with and reflection on their personal blogs once per thematic unit or more often, demonstrate new resources in class skill-building websites and Delicious.com Social Bookmarking, actively use them from now on during the lessons and at home. Observe what happened in class and write down comments in my journal. Start on-line discussion on Nicenet weekly tasks related to home reading material and film reviews. Practice with search tools introduce new search engines for the students. Observe what happened in class and write down comments in my journal. Organize international ing, introduce twin classes. Introduce Web quests and project-based learning. Survey students about their opinions related to the change I've implemented. Note the results in my journal. Continue to implement the change add work on international projects with twin classes, organize Skype chat or a Video-conference. Observe what happened in class and write down comments in my journal Consistently use all the resources and tools. Observe what happened in class and write down comments in my journal. Give students a final survey, as appropriate Survey students about their opinions related to the change Note the results in my journal Write a report about what happened Illarionova, Page 7

8 Days Periods (7 per week) and Textbooks Technology related change Monday 1) English ( Solutions -intermediate); 2) Country Study Skill-building sites almost every lesson Tuesday English ( Solutions -intermediate) Class site weekly usage (or more often) mainly at home Wednesday 1) English-10 (A. Nesvit) ing report monthly; Thursday 1) English-10 (A. Nesvit); 2) Country Study Blog reflections approximately twice a month Friday Home Reading lesson ( The Magician and other stories ) Weekly Nicenet discussions Illarionova, Page 8