Hi, stakeholders
This week, too, I have read a lot about large classes and PowerPoint and learned how to use PowerPoint interactively in class through 10 basic steps. What I find so interesting about PowerPoint presentations is that they allow making learning vivid, and making learners become more interested, responsible, autonomous, inquisitive and critical thinkers.
One way of using PowerPoint presentations interactively in my class that crosses my mind is the teaching of some vocabulary items – using photographs and hyperlinks to Web links. So, instead of losing my time defining some words, I will allow them to see the real-to-life pictures of the new vocabulary items. More often than not, definitions and explanation seem to of little help. For example, the Internet links could provide with a variety of vegetables if my students and I decide to study vegetables. For this lesson, I think there is no better way than using visuals with PowerPoint. It is obvious that learning will take place easily and in a relaxed way.
In addition to learning how to use PowerPoint presentations interactively, I learned from the readings some practical and efficient ways of dealing with larges. You know, in my educational setting, small classes are the ones that have at most 40 to 50 students, and knowing strategies could only benefit my students. Some of the strategies I retained from the readings include personalization. Personalization is a good method for meeting all the students’ needs and styles in a very discreet way. For example, Next time I want to find a topic or an issue for discussion, I will devise open-ended questions for my students to answer before deciding a final topic or issue.
The readings this week have definitely given me new interesting ways of bringing positive changes in my classroom for the benefit of my students.
Best regards,
Bruno
Friday, February 26, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Comment on Rubrics, Alternative Assessments and Learning Styles
Hi, Deborah, Rick, Sandra and classmates
In addition to the multiple intelligences I mentioned in the previous blog, I learned about alternative assessments and rubric creation. Alternative assessment is a way of monitoring students’ language progress and performance that is different from the conventional ways. Alternative assessment is, according to Charles R. Hancock, “an ongoing process involving the student and the teacher in making judgments about the student’s progress in language using non-conventional strategies.” On the other hand, the article “Creating a Rubric: Tutorial” defines the rubric as a tool designed by instructors to assess the students’ performances. It is specifically used for subjective assignments like writing, discussion, presentations…
These articles have helped me gain a deep insight into planning and assessing subjective assignments. In the past when I gave my students a writing assignment, I used the holistic approach to assessing their performances, which consists in giving a global grade for all the student’s performances. I did not know that for subjective assignments creating rubrics was important for assessing performances and tasks.
As a matter in fact, rubrics are very important in that they help the teacher assess in an objective way the subjective assignment. “Rubrics also show students how to meet the instructor’s expectations, i.e. what they need to do to be successful.” For example, next time I have to assess a piece of writing I will specify to the students the elements that will make a performance or task poor, average, or good. Now I will take into account the effect of context on performance and provide adequate contexts in which I will assess competence. In these contexts I will get the students involved in monitoring their own progress and performances. Both my students and I will be involved in the assessment progress. That will be possible because the students will have already been well acquainted with my expectations through the rubrics.
I realize that using rubrics and alternative assessments is a practical way of meeting students’ different learning styles.
Alternative Assessment and Second Language Study: What and Why? by Charles R. Hancock http://ww.cql.org/resources/digest/hancoc01/html
Creating a Rubric: Tutorial at http://health.usf.edu/publichealth/eta/Rubric_Tutorial/default.htm
Best wishes,
Bruno
In addition to the multiple intelligences I mentioned in the previous blog, I learned about alternative assessments and rubric creation. Alternative assessment is a way of monitoring students’ language progress and performance that is different from the conventional ways. Alternative assessment is, according to Charles R. Hancock, “an ongoing process involving the student and the teacher in making judgments about the student’s progress in language using non-conventional strategies.” On the other hand, the article “Creating a Rubric: Tutorial” defines the rubric as a tool designed by instructors to assess the students’ performances. It is specifically used for subjective assignments like writing, discussion, presentations…
These articles have helped me gain a deep insight into planning and assessing subjective assignments. In the past when I gave my students a writing assignment, I used the holistic approach to assessing their performances, which consists in giving a global grade for all the student’s performances. I did not know that for subjective assignments creating rubrics was important for assessing performances and tasks.
As a matter in fact, rubrics are very important in that they help the teacher assess in an objective way the subjective assignment. “Rubrics also show students how to meet the instructor’s expectations, i.e. what they need to do to be successful.” For example, next time I have to assess a piece of writing I will specify to the students the elements that will make a performance or task poor, average, or good. Now I will take into account the effect of context on performance and provide adequate contexts in which I will assess competence. In these contexts I will get the students involved in monitoring their own progress and performances. Both my students and I will be involved in the assessment progress. That will be possible because the students will have already been well acquainted with my expectations through the rubrics.
I realize that using rubrics and alternative assessments is a practical way of meeting students’ different learning styles.
Alternative Assessment and Second Language Study: What and Why? by Charles R. Hancock http://ww.cql.org/resources/digest/hancoc01/html
Creating a Rubric: Tutorial at http://health.usf.edu/publichealth/eta/Rubric_Tutorial/default.htm
Best wishes,
Bruno
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Comment on Week 6 Multiple Intelligences and Technology
Dear mentors and colleagues:
This week I have read the sites recommended for reading and learned a lot about learning styles and multiple intelligences, and how multimedia could positively affect teaching and learning. In the past I taught my students in a given way as if they were all learning the same way. Reading about Gardner’s theory I realize now that I failed to meet all my students learning styles. Gardner has shown us that people learn differently; he has come up with a theory of eight learning styles. Based on to Gardner’s theory, teachers could devise class activities or tasks to meet every student’s learning style. These activities must engage learners in ‘fostering knowledge transfer to new situations, higher-level thinking, attitude change, and motivation for further learning’ (Rick Finnan and Donna Shaw quoting James L. Cooper and Pamela Robinson) in “Enhancing Learning by Engaging Students”.
Now a new problem arises from the ‘multiplicity of our students’ learning styles: How can teachers cope with such a situation? I think that being aware of the differences that exist between our students is already a good start for solving the problem. For schools which have scarce teaching and learning materials, technology seems to offer various possibilities to meet our students’ different needs and interests. The idea of introducing technology is well perceived in “Multiple Intelligences and Technology” at hht://www.cascanada.com/multech.html: “Multiple Intelligences can be enhanced with the use of technology.” The article goes further to give a specific example of the use of word processing softwares to help teach language aspects - like writing, editing, and rewriting - that could be designed to meet, for example, the linguistic learner style.
Other applications of technology can be used to meet our students’ learning styles, but what matters is how judiciously the teacher chooses the most appropriate and available materials for his specific students. As my students’ language need is writing, the project with my students will be on ‘Writing an Invitation Letter.’’ As far as I am concerned and for the time being, my students and I limit ourselves to the simplest uses of the computer and the Internet like logging in and out, sending and receiving mail and web searching. Anyway, my students and I have already gotten on the technology ‘bandwaggon’ to stop right now.
Yours,
Bruno
This week I have read the sites recommended for reading and learned a lot about learning styles and multiple intelligences, and how multimedia could positively affect teaching and learning. In the past I taught my students in a given way as if they were all learning the same way. Reading about Gardner’s theory I realize now that I failed to meet all my students learning styles. Gardner has shown us that people learn differently; he has come up with a theory of eight learning styles. Based on to Gardner’s theory, teachers could devise class activities or tasks to meet every student’s learning style. These activities must engage learners in ‘fostering knowledge transfer to new situations, higher-level thinking, attitude change, and motivation for further learning’ (Rick Finnan and Donna Shaw quoting James L. Cooper and Pamela Robinson) in “Enhancing Learning by Engaging Students”.
Now a new problem arises from the ‘multiplicity of our students’ learning styles: How can teachers cope with such a situation? I think that being aware of the differences that exist between our students is already a good start for solving the problem. For schools which have scarce teaching and learning materials, technology seems to offer various possibilities to meet our students’ different needs and interests. The idea of introducing technology is well perceived in “Multiple Intelligences and Technology” at hht://www.cascanada.com/multech.html: “Multiple Intelligences can be enhanced with the use of technology.” The article goes further to give a specific example of the use of word processing softwares to help teach language aspects - like writing, editing, and rewriting - that could be designed to meet, for example, the linguistic learner style.
Other applications of technology can be used to meet our students’ learning styles, but what matters is how judiciously the teacher chooses the most appropriate and available materials for his specific students. As my students’ language need is writing, the project with my students will be on ‘Writing an Invitation Letter.’’ As far as I am concerned and for the time being, my students and I limit ourselves to the simplest uses of the computer and the Internet like logging in and out, sending and receiving mail and web searching. Anyway, my students and I have already gotten on the technology ‘bandwaggon’ to stop right now.
Yours,
Bruno
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Reflection on what I learned this week about PBL and WebQuests
Dear stakeholder:
This week, I learned about two new methods of teaching language in the classroom: the Problem-Based Learning and WebQuests. What I retain from the two methods is they use a different new methodology for teaching in the classroom. They advocate the involvement of students in meaningful and interesting activities in which they will have to work as a community to perform a common task.
In her article “Less Teaching and More Learning” Susan Gaer at http://www.ncsall.net/?id=385 shows how efficient PBL is because she successfully reached her goals using PBL.
Bernie Dogde in "Some Thoughts About WebQuests" at http://webquest.sdsu.edu/about_webquests.html defines WebWuest as “an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the internet, optionally supplemented with videoconferencing”.
WebQuests seem to be an alternative to teaching language in the classroom. Yet, in some educational environment it will not be possible to take advantage of this new teaching technology because the use of computers and the Internet is still at a nascent stage. So, the option remaining for the teachers will be PBL. I do not say that PBL is better than Webquests, I simply mean that PBL is more like to have success in some countries for the reasons mentioned above.
As far as I am concerned, PBL is definitely the method I will choose between the two methods because my students and won’t need any equipment for realizing the project.
What do you think?
Wishes,
Bruno
This week, I learned about two new methods of teaching language in the classroom: the Problem-Based Learning and WebQuests. What I retain from the two methods is they use a different new methodology for teaching in the classroom. They advocate the involvement of students in meaningful and interesting activities in which they will have to work as a community to perform a common task.
In her article “Less Teaching and More Learning” Susan Gaer at http://www.ncsall.net/?id=385 shows how efficient PBL is because she successfully reached her goals using PBL.
Bernie Dogde in "Some Thoughts About WebQuests" at http://webquest.sdsu.edu/about_webquests.html defines WebWuest as “an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the internet, optionally supplemented with videoconferencing”.
WebQuests seem to be an alternative to teaching language in the classroom. Yet, in some educational environment it will not be possible to take advantage of this new teaching technology because the use of computers and the Internet is still at a nascent stage. So, the option remaining for the teachers will be PBL. I do not say that PBL is better than Webquests, I simply mean that PBL is more like to have success in some countries for the reasons mentioned above.
As far as I am concerned, PBL is definitely the method I will choose between the two methods because my students and won’t need any equipment for realizing the project.
What do you think?
Wishes,
Bruno
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Response to Gaby's posting on Recommendations for Multi-skills Websites
Hi, Gaby and All
You did well by choosing a reading story for your class activity. I think your students will enjoy it. I agree with Luba that the idea of using funny stories in class is great, but I agree with Jonathan and Luba that your learning objective is more centered on you than on your students. If you take a look at the Audience, the Behavior, and the Degree you will see that the activities you designed for the reading story are not congruent with your learning objective.
In similar cases, there are two things that you can do about it: either you re-word your objective or you re-design your activities. For the specific case, I suggest you re-word the instructional objective.
Also, should you retain the option of re-wording the objective, two possibilities can be offered, depending on our interest. If your interest is on developing students’ sense of social values, namely the moral in the story, so you may reformulate the objective the following way:
After reading a story (C), students (A) will be able to (infer) the moral from the story and tell/or write the moral (choose what best serves your purposes) (B), with 80% of grammar /or vocabulary accuracy (D).
But if you interest is on developing students’ language skills, I would suggest this reformulation:
Given a reading story (C), students (A) will be able to give synonyms for words and correctly answer comprehension questions (B) with 80% of accuracy (D).
Do you think the suggestions could work?
Waiting for your reaction.
Kind regards,
Bruno
You did well by choosing a reading story for your class activity. I think your students will enjoy it. I agree with Luba that the idea of using funny stories in class is great, but I agree with Jonathan and Luba that your learning objective is more centered on you than on your students. If you take a look at the Audience, the Behavior, and the Degree you will see that the activities you designed for the reading story are not congruent with your learning objective.
In similar cases, there are two things that you can do about it: either you re-word your objective or you re-design your activities. For the specific case, I suggest you re-word the instructional objective.
Also, should you retain the option of re-wording the objective, two possibilities can be offered, depending on our interest. If your interest is on developing students’ sense of social values, namely the moral in the story, so you may reformulate the objective the following way:
After reading a story (C), students (A) will be able to (infer) the moral from the story and tell/or write the moral (choose what best serves your purposes) (B), with 80% of grammar /or vocabulary accuracy (D).
But if you interest is on developing students’ language skills, I would suggest this reformulation:
Given a reading story (C), students (A) will be able to give synonyms for words and correctly answer comprehension questions (B) with 80% of accuracy (D).
Do you think the suggestions could work?
Waiting for your reaction.
Kind regards,
Bruno
Response to Gaby's posting on Recommendations for Multi-skills Websites
Hi, Gaby and All
You did well by choosing a reading story for your class activity. I think your students will enjoy it. I agree with Luba that the idea of using funny stories in class is great, but I agree with Jonathan and Luba that your learning objective is more centered on you than on your students. If you take a look at the Audience, the Behavior, and the Degree you will see that the activities you designed for the reading story are not congruent with your learning objective.
In similar cases, there are two things that you can do about it: either you re-word your objective or you re-design your activities. For the specific case, I suggest you re-word the instructional objective.
Also, should you retain the option of re-wording the objective, two possibilities can be offered, depending on our interest. If your interest is on developing students’ sense of social values, namely the moral in the story, so you may reformulate the objective the following way:
After reading a story (C), students (A) will be able to (infer) the moral from the story and tell/or write the moral (choose what best serves your purposes) (B), with 80% of grammar /or vocabulary accuracy (D).
But if you interest is on developing students’ language skills, I would suggest this reformulation:
Given a reading story (C), students (A) will be able to give synonyms for words and correctly answer comprehension questions (B) with 80% of accuracy (D).
Do you think the suggestions could work?
Waiting for your reaction.
Kind regards,
Bruno
You did well by choosing a reading story for your class activity. I think your students will enjoy it. I agree with Luba that the idea of using funny stories in class is great, but I agree with Jonathan and Luba that your learning objective is more centered on you than on your students. If you take a look at the Audience, the Behavior, and the Degree you will see that the activities you designed for the reading story are not congruent with your learning objective.
In similar cases, there are two things that you can do about it: either you re-word your objective or you re-design your activities. For the specific case, I suggest you re-word the instructional objective.
Also, should you retain the option of re-wording the objective, two possibilities can be offered, depending on our interest. If your interest is on developing students’ sense of social values, namely the moral in the story, so you may reformulate the objective the following way:
After reading a story (C), students (A) will be able to (infer) the moral from the story and tell/or write the moral (choose what best serves your purposes) (B), with 80% of grammar /or vocabulary accuracy (D).
But if you interest is on developing students’ language skills, I would suggest this reformulation:
Given a reading story (C), students (A) will be able to give synonyms for words and correctly answer comprehension questions (B) with 80% of accuracy (D).
Do you think the suggestions could work?
Waiting for your reaction.
Kind regards,
Bruno
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Reflection on Ahmed's Blog Posting
Dear Ahmed,
Thank you sharing some useful links with us.
When I read your blog on Using Computers to Enhance Learning I realized that you have done a great job. You comment gives a greater place to writing by stressing the merits of WAC (Writing Across Curriculum). I like WAC philosophy according to which ‘writing to learn facilitates learning to write’. As a matter of fact, WAC is new to me, but it seems it can solve many writing pitfalls, according to you.
One question I have for you: Can WAC work for lower grade students?
Thank you for contributing and your response.
Best regards,
Bruno
Thank you sharing some useful links with us.
When I read your blog on Using Computers to Enhance Learning I realized that you have done a great job. You comment gives a greater place to writing by stressing the merits of WAC (Writing Across Curriculum). I like WAC philosophy according to which ‘writing to learn facilitates learning to write’. As a matter of fact, WAC is new to me, but it seems it can solve many writing pitfalls, according to you.
One question I have for you: Can WAC work for lower grade students?
Thank you for contributing and your response.
Best regards,
Bruno
Reflection on Skillbuilding Websites
Hi, mentors and colleagues
This week I visited http://edtech.tennessee.edu/~bobannon/lesson_plan.html and at http://edtech.tennessee.edu/~bobannon/lptemplate_08.pdf and learned how I could use technology-enhanced plan for better planning my reading and writing lessons. In fact, I learned new things about planning the instruction. Among the new things, I can mention the following elements that I have never thought of or used in planning a lesson: writing my name as the author of the lesson, specifying the number of meetings or hours needed for the lesson, giving a short description of the lesson, writing the class layout and the grouping plan for the lesson, setting performance indicators, using technology in class as a resource or medium, closing the lesson, giving supplemental activities for the lesson, making adaptations for special learners, and writing the assessment methods for the lesson.
I think that taking into account these aspects in planning lessons will make a change regarding teaching and learning, specifically in classrooms which have computers and Internet access. The non-equipped classroom teacher could also adapt the lesson to meet his students’ needs.
In addition, I learned through browsing recommended skill-building sites how to improve teaching and learning reading/vocabulary and writing. To this effect, sharing relevant websites with students could help them build their autonomy while learning English in an interesting way. Some of the websites include http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl.section/1/ and http://www.learningandteaching.dal/taguide/WritingasaToolforLearning.html for writing and http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/, http://spot.pcc.edu/map/prev/, and http://www.englishclub.com/esl-quizzes/vocabulary-quizzes.htmlfor reading, and vocabulary.
Teachers should help students to create their own so they can write to one another and to the teacher through blogs to develop their writing, reading and vocabulary skills.
Wishes,
Bruno
This week I visited http://edtech.tennessee.edu/~bobannon/lesson_plan.html and at http://edtech.tennessee.edu/~bobannon/lptemplate_08.pdf and learned how I could use technology-enhanced plan for better planning my reading and writing lessons. In fact, I learned new things about planning the instruction. Among the new things, I can mention the following elements that I have never thought of or used in planning a lesson: writing my name as the author of the lesson, specifying the number of meetings or hours needed for the lesson, giving a short description of the lesson, writing the class layout and the grouping plan for the lesson, setting performance indicators, using technology in class as a resource or medium, closing the lesson, giving supplemental activities for the lesson, making adaptations for special learners, and writing the assessment methods for the lesson.
I think that taking into account these aspects in planning lessons will make a change regarding teaching and learning, specifically in classrooms which have computers and Internet access. The non-equipped classroom teacher could also adapt the lesson to meet his students’ needs.
In addition, I learned through browsing recommended skill-building sites how to improve teaching and learning reading/vocabulary and writing. To this effect, sharing relevant websites with students could help them build their autonomy while learning English in an interesting way. Some of the websites include http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl.section/1/ and http://www.learningandteaching.dal/taguide/WritingasaToolforLearning.html for writing and http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/, http://spot.pcc.edu/map/prev/, and http://www.englishclub.com/esl-quizzes/vocabulary-quizzes.htmlfor reading, and vocabulary.
Teachers should help students to create their own so they can write to one another and to the teacher through blogs to develop their writing, reading and vocabulary skills.
Wishes,
Bruno
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