I got the first email from Sean about the beginning of the course on Monday evening. When it is 8 a.m. in Oregon, it is 6 p.m. in Israel. It suits me perfectly because I usually finish teaching and all the preparation for the next day at about 5 or 6 o'clock. So I have some hours to read the sites and to take some notes. On the other hand I'll have to complete my works on Saturday evening because in Israel the working week begins on Sunday - not on Monday like in most of the countries in the world. I am not religious, so working on computer on Saturday does not make me any troubles.
Now I'd like to tell you about my first experience in teaching English Literature on computer. I have already taught grammar and vocabulary online and it worked well, much better than in the classroom, but I have never taught any poems online. I teach teenagers with learning disabilities. Most of them speak English quite well because they watch a lot of TV programs and films in English, but they have difficulties in reading, writing, spelling and understanding the texts. As a result, they sometimes misbehave, tease each other and answer back to teachers. But when they are really interested in the material, they are concentrated in class and highly motivated. I am sure studying online will help them a lot.
Now my pupils in the 11th grade are studying the poem "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost. Today I invited them to the computer room and showed them this film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCkjisxk9Z4 Since they listened to the poem, read the text and saw the picture, they understood the idea of the poem very well and afterwards they did all the after-reading activities without any mistakes. Usually they don't like reading poems and stories but this time they enjoyed and asked me to teach literature only online.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Hi Julia,
ReplyDeleteI can see you have already an idea about online teaching. This what I'm missing and longing to adding to my teaching career. I teach engineering students ESP, and in a private English center, I rather teach EFL to different levels. In both institutions we include oral presentations where the learners work on a particular topic and make an oral presentation in the class. This has been introduced recently and we have found it very motivating as I noticed the student- centered approach attracts more their attentions and motivate them to attend and enjoy English learning better.