Reflecton of Week 7

Learner's autonomy... This is something very important in our school that specializes in learning disabilities. There are 8 pupils in each class and all of them have different LDs: dyslexia, dysgraphia, lack of concentration, hyperactivity and so on. As a result, they all need individual approach and much more attention than their peers in regular schools.

As a rule, the classes are heterogeneous. Some kids are native speakers and have an excelent command in spoken English, but their spelling, grammar and reading comprehension can be rather poor. Some are quite good learners but they get distracted very often and sometimes it is difficult to catch them again and make them participate in class. And the third group of kids are non-readers who can understand spoken English but they read and write with a lot of mistakes which causes misunderstanding and frustration. Therefore each of them needs autonomy to study.

As I have written in the Nicenet, it can be gained in some ways.

a) Traditional method

The teacher works with each sub-group in the classroom according to their level, gives a set of tasks and the kids work. Afterwards she checks what they have done while other sub-groups are still working. At the same time the teacher is helping each of them.

Thus, I usually start with the students of the highest level. I explain them what to do (mainly a text for reading comprehension or some grammar exercises in order to practice the material they have already studied and this time they do some more exercises. While they are working, I can work with the kids of a secondary level. The weakest students can still practice alone - mainly in writing letters and/or reading rules. After a while I change the activities and work with the group of the lowest level while two other sub-groups are still working. Each kid needs autonomy, of course, in order to check his own ability and to make sure he or she has been making progress. I certainly give them success-oriented materials.

b) Only one computer in the classroom

Sometimes I practice this method. I connect a laptop to the projector and show the kids something specific. It might be a film or something connected to the Everyday English, so that the students of all levels will watch it and discuss. I can divide the class into two groups, strong and weak students can work together, and the first ones can help the second ones. In this way they learn to collaborate.

Then I give them activities for individual practice, connected to the video they have just watch, and they do the exercises in acordance with their level. While they are learning autonomously. I am helping and checking what they are doing. At the end of the lesson I check their works frontally or sometimes they check each other's ones.

c) Studying in the computer room

This is a brilliant opportunity for the autonomy. While doing speific activities online, everyone works alone and checks his/her own results just pressing a specific button "check the answers". Kids can also pick up unknown words in the online dictionary or using the "Google Translate". Besides, they can do some extra activities if they do it quickly. Some students are too slow, some are to quickly, so studying in the computer room gives them a chance to do tasks in accordance with their own abilities and level of knowledge.

Nevertheless, the teacher's presence in the computer room is compulsory. I mean, he or she must give the instructions and make sure that the students really study and don't do any side activities, such as using facebook or other sites of social communication. Moreover, the teacher can organize a competition in the end of the lesson, e.g. "Which mistakes did you make?" "Who did without any mistakes?" The last on is a winner. I think these activities motivate students to make more amd more progress.

P.S. I have shared an article about the learner autonomy in Israel
http://padlet.com/wall/WebskillsF2013/wish/17284622

and a video recording http://padlet.com/wall/WebskillsF2013/wish/17284572

Week 6. Teaching Large Classes

Teaching large classes is considered a challenge in Israel mainly for two reasons:

a) Due to the local mentality and cultural background, Israeli people are rather talkative and get distracted in class too easily. Therefore it is sometimes very difficult for a teacher not to lose 35-40 pupils during the lesson.

b) Lecture method makes students passive learners. Besides, they often get bored during the lectures.
Anyway this method is used mainly at universities, not at schools.

In order to get students interested and engaged during the lesson, the teacher must be really well prepared and make the lessons exciting, success-orienting and highly motivating. And the moders technology really works for us. I am sure that combining traditional teaching and web-technology will enhance the way of teaching and learning perfectly well.

I have explored this article http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/earlycareer/teaching/LargeClasses.html
Using classroom communication system (and not only) sounds great because it can keep the students busy all the time. Many of them like doing quizes online, to they will be concentrated on such activities. Besides, such systems help sick students not to miss the lessons. They can enter the class site and participate in all the activities and do the homework.


Another god way is working in pairs and small groups. The groups can be of the same level or heterogenuous, depending on the task. Thus, for learning English Grammar, kids should work in the same-level groups, but while learning literature or practicing spoken English tasks, they can collaborate, and strong students can help weak ones. Usually group work is good for active learning, while for passive learning each student should work individually.

The second article I have explored is "Using Online Assessment in Face-to-Face courses. http://tep.uoregon.edu/technology/blackboard/docs/Online_Assessment_Blackboard.pdf
 I aggree with the author that it is time-saving, it is more challenging and exciting and it develops personal skills in using modern technology. But it also has some problems, and among them there are technology problems, lack of technology skills and cheating. That is one of the reason why I think that it is not a good idea to use mobiles and iPods in class: kids might send each other the answers and do something not connected to the program of the lesson. In my opinion, while studying in large classes, kids must use only the class computers, connected only to the certain sites and nothing more and controlled only by the teacher or a computer technician.

Week 5. PBL, WebQuest, Alternative Assessment and Rubrics.

This week I have found out the benefits of Project Based Learning. It helps us motivate our students and integrate their language skills in a more natural way. It promotes group work and studying individually as well. Besides, when they collaborate, teach each other, that also enforces their general knowledge and language abilities.

I have started the projet work with my students. They are suposed to choose one of the stories or poems from the list and start working. It can be the biography of the author, his/her outlook, bridging text and context and many other activities, even imagine the same characters ten years later. The projects are supposed to content 750 words for 4-pointers and 1000 words for 5-pointers. The more sourses ids explore, the better they do the project. Since they will have to take an oral exam a month before the written one, I have created such rubrics. http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=ShowRubric&rubric_id=2377993

The idea of WebQuest was something new for me and it is one of the best ways to write projects. It is built to do the work step by step which guides very well both teachers and kids and provides a lot of rubrics and checklists. At the beginning it was a bit difficult but I understood it finally. I have created a lesson plan both on the WIKI https://sites.google.com/site/juliaslessons/julia-s-lessons  and on the Questgarden http://questgarden.com/164/23/8/131108113141/.

The alternative assessment is a great thing because it focuses on students' strengths and weaknesses. Therefore they can realize what they are good at and which skills need to be improved. Creating rubrics with the help of http://rubistar.4teachers.org/ saves teacher's time and efforts and creates rubrics for him. And I used to spend too much energy to do them myself!

Using technology in class or having a "back up plan"

I have composed a lesson https://docs.google.com/document/d/13IccjtoVd0u39cwPk6x6S03vpA56bnkHUBvv0Nfv6Sc/edit?hl=en&forcehl=1

A year ago I took a seminar in the local college for teacher's education and we were given quite a lot of ideas of teaching English online, literature in particular. Those who are interested in Israeli national program for 4 and 5 points of Matriculation, can visit this page http://tlc.cet.ac.il/
The idea of teaching literature online is brilliant, but sometimes it is a bit difficult to make it real since our school still lacks video projectors and we have only one computer room. I have taught only one piece of literature with the help of my own laptop and the school projector - it was "The Road Not Taken", see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCkjisxk9Z4. I told about this experience about 2 weeks ago.

We have almost finished "The Road" and I am planning to teach "Thank You, M'am" by Langston Hughes. I really hope to use the projector but I am afraid it might be unavailable because all the teachers use it. So I might have to have a "back up plan" and read the text myself, due to poor reading abilities of my students and lack of concentration.

Tastes differ. So do accents.

The third week of our course is going to be over. We have been exploring aural/oral methods and reading different articles about training pronunciation and teaching our kids that there are a lot of dialects and accents in English. Sometimes British and Americans misunderstand each other not to mention non-native speakers of English.

Thus I sometimes make my pupils listen to different tapescripts recorded by Australians, Scottish, Canadians, etc, and they complain that the accents of the speakers "are not very good". Besides, in Israel American English is much more popular although this land used to be a part of the British Empire. The State of Israel was established in 1948 and the British English has been forgotten for 65 years - that is incredible! Most Israelis try to speak Englih with the American pronunciation and use such words as "elevator" instead of "lift", "railroad" instead of "railway", etc. And they often pronounce "r" in such words as "car", "far", "Denver", etc.

All the students know that I am not a native speaker. Moreover, I immigrated from the former Soviet Union many years ago and my native language is Russian. Unlike Japanese kids described in one of the article by Jonathan Snell, some young Israelis lack political correctness and say they wish I was American. Moreover, some hyperactive and hot-tempered kids say: "No Russian accents! Only American". Mainly new students say so, but step-by-step they get used to my accent and way of teaching and become very interested in my lessons.

In contrast to Japanese students, their Israeli peers are very talkative and almost never  afraid of making mistakes. Moreover, sometimes they talk too much and it is difficult to catch their attention. Of course, they make a lot of grammar mistakes and mispronounce words which cause some misunderstanding, but they like group activities. In this perspective I think that training pronunciation via the range of sites will work well, so that they will be provided "the right accent" and "the necessary English" since they consider all other "Englishes" non-correct except North American.

Week 3

Time flies. We have been studying for the third week and it seems to be more and more complicated. But don't give up! I address it not only to my students but to my colleagues and mainly to myself also.

This week I had to surf the Internet a lot and look for some new oral\aural materials. I have registrated in the "Delicious" and published some links there. Although I have already planned what I will teach my kids during the week, I think I should change the weekly plan a little and give them a lesson using one of those sites. I decided to give them listening comprehension from this site http://www.talkenglish.com/Listening/LessonListen.aspx?ALID=300 because some of them are planning to study in the USA or Canada after finishing school and military services. I am sure such materials will motivate them study better. Moreover, using authentic materials in the class has many advantages. Listening to real-life things will be helpful in real life. But I should give them all the necessary vocabulary because the language in this dialogue is a bit difficult for them. I have also found some useful materials in this site: www.real-english.com

Yesterday I read an articly by Jonathan Snell who taught English in Japan and had a problem of interaction between students and teacher. Sometimes such things reflect the culture of the students. Since Japanese are very quiet and shy, never ask any questions to the teacher, it was very difficult for him to make them speak English, even answer his questions. Nevertheless, step-by-step he broke an ice and made them speak, at least short phrases.

In my opinion, this problem could be solved with the help of web technology and online games. Since the Japanese are perfectionists and are eager to get excellent grades, the teacher could make them repeat sounds and words after the recordings and a bit later - to listen to the radio and answer the questions. First give the short answers and then more and more detailed ones. Such success-oriented activities help people speak a foreign language and motivete them get good grades. The Japanese probably would get excellent grades, of course.

Progress in Week 2

I have been working so hard! It takes a lot of time to search the sites that were offered by my colleagues and look for the materials that are neessary for my project. I have finally chosen the topic of my future paper which will deal with the overcoming dyslexia at the high school and using web technology to tackle this problem.

The most difficult aspect was making ABCD objectives. I didn't have any problems with the points A and B, but I had to correct C and D. So the point A (audience) is the 11-A class, which is relatively strong in spoken English. As for B (behavior), the class is highly motivated to complete 4 and 5 points. Despite their hyperactivity and sometimes low concentration on the lessons, they try to work hard and help each other. They enjoy jigsaw activities, such as pair work and team work when I divide the class into two groups. Since there are 8 pupils in the class, there are usually 4 kids in each group. So I have to keep them busy all the time and give them success-oriented materials in order to prevent discipline problems.

As for the point C, I realized that I should use the web technology in order to involve them in doing homework and projects online. I am sure that it will help them make a better progress in Matriculation exams. The main problems of my students are spelling, grammar, vocalulary and writing. So my main goal is to help them overcome these obstacles that disturb them get better grades. I think lack of grammar and writing tehniques fail them. Thus they can get 90-100 in the oral test and 65-70 for the writing passage.

And finally the point D. I expect them to accomplish 90% of all the necessary skills: reading, writing, speaking and especially writing. Probably I am a perfectionist, but I am sure that I am motivating them in this way.

Today I told them about my plans. On the one hand they were excited because they are eager to use their laptops and ipods. On the other hand, they are a bit shocked since they will have to work much harder than they do. Let's hope for the best.