Failure Fest #1: Inspired by great educators

Bram Stoker’s Dracula Story – Doodles & Visual Clues

“If you have failed, you must have tried something and  must have reflected on it. Otherwise you wouldn’t be having this conversation with yourself.” #metellingmyself #development #self-discoverythroughRP #gr8tblogs&educators

That is what I have just concluded after having a long and rather torturous reflection on why my teens aren’t responding to lessons as I wish they would have been to. It wasn’t hard though to link it to the great and inspiring session given by great educators at AITEFL 2013 “Failure Fest“, and the #ELTCHAT challenge of sharing the lessons we learn through our failures and the posts that had already been shared.

Among many of them … here is my #1.

A bit more than couple of weeks ago I made the decision of not introducing new contents ( or moving on to new lessons in the CB) until students could use simple past tenses, and also focus on stories using simple past narratives. The decision involved a beginner teen group in their second semester of English – age range vary from 7th to 10th grade.

I chose to use Timesaver Elementary listening lesson on Oliver Twister to start with and it focus on literature, adjectives and regular simple past as they had already been working with simple past for while, and It was all going well until I played the audio. The vocabulary tasks were easy and engaged them. They used their dictionaries. They used adjectives to express their opinions of the characters’ personality and appearance. Discussed it afterwards, shared! They completed the summary of the story with the right verb. But they couldn’t grasp the main points of the story when I tried to elicit them. I thought the problem was (and it might have also been the problem) the fact they were low level and the low proficience in listening was what prevented them from getting the whole picture and connect the vocabulary clues from the vocabulary activities to help them reconstruct the story.

However, when we worked on the Bram Stoker story of Dracula designed for their level, they still couldn’t retell the story using the simple verbs and noting the key points, different scenarios, stages, characters involved.  And they had done the tasks around each part of the story just fine  (Reading and answering – a short text introducing the story; putting the pictures/dialogue in the right order- second part; and, complete the third part with And, but and then.) I think is worth to mention that I had worked in part one and two with them in class and the third part was assigned to be read and completed at home. There was a possibility that some of them didn’t really read the third party. True. But the fact is that only reading the text didn’t engage them with the story. It became just a gap filling exercise.

At that point of the lesson, I remembered what they had said the week before. They had asked me whether there was a video of the Oliver Twist story. And then, I realised that I #fail to take into consideration their need to visualize it. Just the words weren’t enough for them. Having still 30 minutes left to the end of the class, I doodled on the board some key points of the Dracula Story. Did that help? Somewhat. They argued with me that something was wrong with the picture in the second part and the text in the third part. For them It didn’t match who was bitten actually. They didn’t notice that Lucy, then Mina was bittten by Dracula and in different moments and places of the story. Only then, using the structured lesson planned in the CB all according to their level without any doubt I realised that my students need more support to engage with the story and tasks that encourage them to explore the meaning and visualize it.

While doodling, eliciting from them the names of the characters, the places, main events and key words, I couldn’t imagine what I was actually learning with the #failures I have been experiences in the last few weeks. Then, after reading Kevin’s post Music, Stories and Magic, and reflecting on the question they had ask me about the video, I realised that audiovisual tools (videos) are really important tools for them to make sense of the words. Movement and sound is something to take really into account when comes to my students. There is also is a need to read with them and providing meaningful interactions with the text – the importance of storytelling. So when using narrative texts, I am considering…

…using youtube videos to illustrate texts and facilitate the input process.

…using storylines/doodles as an exploration tool for students to recreate/retell/understand the story.

…using storytelling tools for students to retell/interpret with their own words and ideas.

Shared by Josette LeBlanc over FB today – “Something All Teachers can use”

Virtual Exchange Projects: Lessons learned so far

http://www.safeshare.tv/w/DFHKFrVMnU

More often than not we tend to look into what students are learning to the point of view of language alone, and tend to bring to class only the things we are comfortable with. One of the things I have learned though through my teaching career is not to be afraid to take students on board and learn together. It has been always my philosophy that I don’t know all things related to language and I can’t pretend I do (although some Ss do expect me to know it “all”, but that is another story). That has also been part of my personal philosophy, so doing that in class was never something odd or awkward. And recently with the advent of technology and the number of opportunities available, I feel at times overwhelmed. But even so, I keep in mind that it is just a tool and as so, I shall not be afraid to use digital tools in class whenever it is appropriate and useful for enhancing learning, even when I don’t master the tools myself. And that is exactly what happened when I took the challenge of linking up my class to Gemma’s class in South Korea through videos. I had never edited any recording. And had no idea how to do it.

But what has this project represented for me and my students?

The Virtual Exchange Project or Linked Classrooms ( Alex Walsh has a wonderful blogpost – Creating a Linked Classroom Part 1 ) is a concept that put students in the center of the communication, and relating it to culture  Shrishti Choudhary summarized well in our discussion group over Facebook as follow,

It is all about sharing, collaborating & enhancing our horizons. An effort to erase all the geographical boundaries in an effort to understand each other better and to learn more from the students via dynamic interactive discussions. Share the knowledge & feel the joy…..

And this is the first lesson learned. I can remember very well, when living in London and in Alexandria, how important it was understanding language through the eyes of the speakers I was trying to understand and communicating with, taking into consideration their personal beliefs and life experiences. It made language learning meaningful because it was about learning how to communicate with those people, and not just a bunch of words on a sheet of paper. And interesting enough I had never realised that until I started engaging with teachers online. It probably has also something to do with the fact that learning in a monolingual classroom diminishes the function of language in communication when it comes to productive skills. And teens especially feel awkward to speaking in English in class when they could be speaking in Portuguese. You need the other one to make communication a need. And related to this aspect for teens it has already had already made an impact. Couple of them have said that now they understand they have to speak well to communicate with other English Speakers. They are eager to communicate with others in their own ways. And this is my second lesson learned. Give them the opportunity to engage through authentic and meaningful interactions and they will. Teens need freedom to make decisions and lots of guidance and time to reflect on their own decisions and outcomes. I learned to give them more credit and that they are all capable of doing more than my limited perception of them have ever thought of.

For those interested in Linked Classroom and engaging students in Virtual Exchange projects, here are some cool links to get you started:

Alex Walsh research paper on Computer Mediated Communication in Korean Public Schools: a Case Study of a Middle School Project in Busan, South Korea.

John Pfordresher shares thoughts on connecting classrooms – Kotesol Spring 2013 Publication.

“Tweet! Retweet! Share! Open the doors of your classroom and let your students learn from their international peers.” – Arjana Blazic gives a great interview to Daily Edventures website.

Discussing Virtual Exchange Projects – a Facebook group for teachers to share, collaborate and coordinate projects.

#ELTLink hashtag on Twitter to share all things related to Linked Classrooms.

Anna Loseva wrote for Blogathon at the BC website about Students Connected – a Facebook community for students aged 17+ (and their teachers, too).

Group Dynamics: Looking for solutions 1

Our school poster

I miss the energy I was putting into reading and writing during the vacation time (December/January/February). And I also miss being connected to my PLN on a daily-basis – reading the blogs, twitters, commenting, participating in ELT chats and in many other things I could do while I had only family to be with. But I work for 30 hours in class now, and  + the time I must put into planning, assessing what they do and reflection.

I love doing everything related to teaching, but I still wish though the days could be longer NOW that I have met YOU ALL.

I have been pretty busy as you will notice in my schedule below, but I am happy with so many opportunities to engage myself in RP as well as offering my Ss the best I can. Right now I am facing the challenge of improving the current group dynamic in two of my teens group. And talking about busy busy and how things are going, this is my schedule this semester on a fixed-basis and how one of my groups is going.

• 2 American Inspiration for Teens groups (level 1 and 2) in the afternoon. We meet once a week for 2 hours;
• 8 small groups of 9th graders in the morning. We meet once a week for an hour and a half.
• a group of 8th graders (12 learners), no coursebook, focus on listening and speaking. They have a class weekly (1h30m) with another teacher in the morning to focus on grammar, reading and writing;
• a 15-year-old group of 8 students in Intermediate level (New American Inside Out), also for 2 hours a week in the evening. Most of them study the whole day (they take technical course in the afternoon and high school program in the morning, it is pretty tiring for them, but classes are very productive and fun.);
• a beginner level group of 7 students working with NAIO. We meet twice for 2 hours on Sat. mornings;
• A group of young adults/adults (NAIO) that are moving to intermediate level on Sat. afternoon for 2 hours a week;
• an 1-2-1 student in pre-intermediate level in his middle-twenties who had decided about a year ago to have lessons alone because he couldn’t follow the group and has some special attention;
• a group of 10 students preparing for university entrance exams with the focus on grammar (40 minutes a week);
• and, a conversation class group for an hour every week.

And inspired by Vicky Loras and Michael Griffin’s posts, I have taken the role as a mentee and a mentor. So, every week (mostly) I have skype sessions with Vicky and I accept the request of a teacher in my school to help her with technology. After Mentoring EVO and with the support of Vicky, I have started face-to-face sessions with her in the teachers lab once a week. And I also have sessions with Barbara Butjas every week to discuss the book Big Questions in ELT and share our teaching context which has helped me tremendously. Plus I have coffee with my best friends at work twice a week after teens classes. The topics goes from what just happened in the class to what have our cute kids done recently. It goes from work to personal stuff and back again. And my daily round around FB where I talk to my wonderful friends, family & PLN.

Reflecting on Class dynamics and Issue: looking for solutions on April 9th

Big lesson has sunk in this week in Teaching. Open your mind to the possibilities, solutions to the problems… if any, are just around the corner. If I want to find a solution to a problem, I find not by complaining about it, but by experimenting with different possibilities. This has reminded me of the lessons I learned in Breaking rules course ( with John F. Fanselow and ITDI community ) . By experimenting, we find different ways of doing it and learning, not by being judgemental.

There are 8 teens in AIFT 2 class. I have learners who are in 7th, 8th, 9th and 1st year of high-school. So we have an age gap in the group. Due to this age gap, their tastes as well as their knowledge and relationship with the language differ a lot. Another thing that I notice is that they have difficult bonding which makes it difficult also to create a supporting each other environment. They are working as individuals in the group and engages (or likes to) engage in conversations (L1 in especially) only to those they already are friends with. I have also to manage the way they talk to each other. They are often picky and rude. And there are those who are way too quiet and says only what we ask them too. The only time I saw an improvement in the group dynamic was when I worked with the comparative lesson during the following activity.

View this document on Scribd

Watch the Presentation on Prezi website

Although they are taking level 2, they hadn’t studied together level 1. I know some of them from last semester, but as each group and program have their own dynamics, we are still trying to find ours. We have been together since the last week of February, that is 5 weeks now. And we will be together until July. Not plenty of time, so I need to find a way to get more effective with this particular group. Ways to bring them together and create the right learning environment for them to learn together. How can I do that? Any tips you may have would be more than welcome and appreciated. Some ideas I am thinking of right now:

• Think carefully every week who is going to work with whom during the pair/group activity and give them as many change as possible to get to know each other; I can say I have had enough time now to know the group and make some assumptions around their personality and tastes. As well as their language skills.
• Include dynamic activites that involve moving around (mingling, walks around the school and games) and get fresh air. Their classroom is really small. There is no room for mingling or games. However, noise could be an issue. We don’t have our own building yet, and next to our classrooms, the technical courses classrooms are our neighbors. So, that has to be carefully considered – where and how.
• ???

Any more ideas? Or activities suggestions?

I actually started this post last week. Yesterday though I was considering publishing or trashing for reasons I don’t even know myself. But I decided to publish when I was considering last class, so I edited it. Last class the topic was Vikings liked Music and the grammar point simple past. I used 3 videos clips, played Viking music and showed pictures of instruments. I used the videos, pictures and image to introduce the topic/the text and elicited from them reactions and responses about the material they were watching and asked specific questions.  Then, we read together the text. Much of what they saw in the videos were in the text. Their reaction to the song and images was amazing. I told them to skip the grammar box and go directed to the controlled practice and told them to match the infinitive form os the verbs given with the simple past on the text. I told them also to highlight the verbs in the texts and read the sentences again. After that they had to concentrate on the sentences given in the exercise to complete with the correct verb meaning. At this point, my aim was to show them the importance of the context and how they could match it by paying attention to the same context they were used in the previous text. Some insisted in doing their own way, some did what I asked. At the end they gave it a try. 

They were engaged in the lesson during the whole class, but I was pretty much in control of the whole process. I would like though to see them engaging by themselves and willing to cooperate and eager to learn. At the moment that is not the case and I am going to keep trying, experimenting, raising their awareness, engaging, fighting my frustrating (and theirs) until we get where we suppose to get: to a fun and productive class for all of us.

I read Motivation Lights a Fire and Other Myths of Learning blogpost from Kevin couple of days ago and I found it pretty insightful.