WE DID IT!

This week was very exciting for my kids and me because we have prepared our news for publication in the Internet but there was no access to it during the whole week. 

At the end of the school week the Internet appeared and we managed to publish our texts without pictures, because the Internet was very slow. So I had to copy pictures and download them at home.

Still I am happy because my objectives were about teaching writing not about launching images. Besides, in class I could observe my students trying to launch them and I can say that they do it even better than me. Here is the URL:

http://rels65news.blogspot.com/

Of course there will be some improvements. Also we are going to learn how to write comments. Still the main job has been done.

It should be noted that this week brought me lots of useful readings and experiences in using different tools. 

I think it should be mentioned about the Regional ITE Conference which I participated in this week and shared my experiences of doing the Oregon University online course. My presentation was about 21^st century teachers of English and it was awarded with a diploma.


Irina

  

Autonomous Learners

As usually this week was full of readings and expectations of the new project.

Together with my students we have visited a lot of sites with daily and weekly news, studied the structure of the posts and photos which can “talk” with the viewer. I have offered my students to choose themselves whether they wish to work in collaboration or alone. We are going to publish our school news in English in the Internet. The students decide what to write about themselves. At present they are looking for something interesting what has happened in November.  

I believe that this project will help me to bring up autonomous learners.

Learner autonomy brings to our classroom more learner-centered kind of learning and radical change in teacher and learner roles. First of all the roles of the teachers change - they become counselors and managers of learning resources.

Motivation is one of the key factors that influence the rate and success of foreign language learning. As we work with the students of the 21 century we should take into consideration that all of them belong to the world of computers and can't imagine their life without them. I observe my students with amazement because they are eager to fulfill any task which I give them using a computer.

Our students are not born autonomous learners. We, teachers, should help them to learn how to learn by means of adapting resources, materials and methods to their needs.

Thanks to the Internet all teachers have equal opportunities for the professional development and access to various resources. It is difficult for me to imagine how we could teach students without computers 10 years ago. Because by means of the computer and the projector my students do presentations of their projects, demonstrate writing skills in story writing, critically evaluate written materials and graph survey information. With the help of technology I can easily access to a selected Internet site to enhance discussion, illustrate the point and retrieve authentic data.

Irina

Getting Closer and Closer to the Final Project

I teach English at Rostov Municipal English Language School #65 (in the south of Russia). My students are 13 years old and they are in 7th form now. Their English language ability is pre-intermediate because they have been studying English for 6 years. There are 11 students in my class. We study English 6 hours per week. 

I took the group 2 years ago, before it they studied English with another teacher in the primary school. I must say, that the students were taught to pay much attention to grammar rules, they have a good memory, can easily learn poems and long texts by heart, but they are not interested in writing and can't communicate.

This week I have offered my students samples of communicative creative students’ writings in the Internet. We have studied samples of writing e-mails, biographies, news, articles, stories etc. They expressed the idea of writing school news. I have offered them an opportunity to write individually or in pairs. Most of them wish to write in pairs. We have brainstormed the ideas about the interesting events in November and the students have chosen the topics. I am really surprised to see the enthusiasm of my students to write in English and still can’t believe my eyes and ears!

All of my students have computers at home; most of them have the Internet in their mobile phones and at home. Our classroom is equipped with 12 computers, the Smart Board and the Projector. We have got the Internet in our classroom this year.

There are some difficulties with the use of the Internet in our school – you can't be sure that you enter the Internet any minute you wish because they switch it off from time to time (for some unknown reasons). Besides, it is very slow.  That is why we can’t use Skype in class. But still, now my kids and I have got an opportunity to use the Internet in the classroom! 

Here are my A B C D objectives related to the communicative writing teaching of my special needs students: 
the students of 7th grade – pre-intermediate level will be able to write their own stories (120 – 130 words each) on the topic which is interesting for them and publish them on the on-line school site or teachers’ blogs site. They will be able to illustrate their works with photos, maps, pictures, etc. They will be able to write 2 or 3 comments on their classmates' writings on-line. The learning will occur both in class and at home.

 A common setting - 80% of time. 

I believe that technology helps to motivate my students to develop communicative writing skills, write creative compositions (not only reproductions), exchange opinions, make comments, etc.

New Views on PowerPoint Presentations

I learnt to make PPP about ten years ago and used them from time to time as visual aids. I must say that they are bright, colourful and better than pictures or post cards. But I am not fond of them because I prefer active and communicative learning.

This week readings made me change my mind, because they brought me better understanding of the teacher’s role in the classroom where presentations are used. PPP is just an additional aid - a visual accompaniment to the spoken word. It is not a television and each slide should be discussed with the students. My students can be placed in the center of the class by means of the really interactive PPP. Students can be asked to anticipate information on an upcoming slide or be involved into interactive games or story writing. Video workshops in the Internet, offered to us by our instructor, helped me to learn how to do it. And I did it! I’ve prepared my first interactive PPP myself. Before it I only used ready-made software.

My students have learnt to make their PPP at the lessons of Computer Science and use them to illustrate their projects. It should be noted, that very few of them use fonts, colours, slide design in an appropriate way. Thanks to the articles which we have read this week I was able to create materials with the main tips and samples of PPP Arts. I believe they will be useful not only for my students but for my colleagues as well.

PBL and Web Quests

Week 5 brought  a lot of exciting materials about PBL and Web Quests, because it’s my favourite way of working with teenagers. It can satisfy students of different learning styles. 

I read many articles about WebQuests but I didn’t read any articles by the creator of this wonderful project Bernie Dodge, only quotations used by other teachers. And this week I was offered to read the whole article written by him in the original and that was exciting for me.

This week brought deeper understanding of the project-based learning as a dynamic approach to teaching in which students explore real-world problems and challenges.

 Firstly it’s an active type of learning; students are inspired to obtain a deeper knowledge of the subjects they're studying. 

Secondly, students explore real-world problems and challenges, developing cross-curriculum skills while communicating in small collaborative groups.

Project learning is an effective way to integrate technology into the curriculum. It can easily accommodate computers and the Internet, as well as interactive whiteboards, digital cameras, etc.

I believe that while doing the Web Quest students get the experiences of a life time and they are more likely to retain the knowledge gained through this approach more readily than through traditional textbook-centered learning.

Besides we were offered the necessary materials on assessing students’ projects. It has been a my problem how to explain students the merits and the drawbacks of their job.

Creating rubrics with the help of RubiStar was exciting and our discussions brought me some new ideas on using them in my classroom. Surely I am going to implement the idea about creating rubrics by the students themselves.

In the whole the week was full of interesting travel in the Internet, reading new articles, meeting new people and discussing our problems.