9A – Group 1
9B – Group 2
9C – Group 3
9D – Group 4
9E – Group 5
9F – Group 6
As I said in the previous post, I had 8 small groups of 9th graders to work with but I only have feedback of 6 of them. 9G’s group was a pretty amazing group to work with, and AMAZING not because they did all that I asked them to do but because they were so engaged with each other, with me and the lessons, that they took every opportunity to use English. The boys really were into it while the girl was a bit of a dreamer. The boys, however, helped her all along by encoraging her to speak all the time. They said there was nothing they could say to improve the classes, so they didn’t write anything on the post-its. The last group though, on the other hand was the most difficult group I had to work with (9H), and that was not due to undiscipline at all. At some other time, I will dedicate a post to this group in particular as surely it will happen again and I need to come up with strategies to prevent the worse to happen, that is, not real learning really taking place.
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Hi Rose, what a great variety of feedback you gathered I hink this shows how you can never please all your students at once as some things appear on both the + and the – lists! ‘classes are cool’ now that’s a big compliment coming from a teenager – well done! Sounds like your students really love you and your classes.
Gemma.
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Yeah, Gemma you are right pleasing teenagers are not easy at all, and all of them at once??? uhmm there were moments and moments where I got all of them’s attention at once and I wonder why though, what made all of them engage all at once, or what doesn’t work for all of them anymore. If there is anything at all that doesn’t with all the talks about technology & digital natives. They are challenging to work, but I love to work with them.
It is very easy to get “cool” from them, especially if you let them be and turn the class upside down. LOL But that is unlike to happen in my watch. And some of them really get upset with me cause I will not let them do what they want, unless it has something to do with English and provides learning opportunity, preferable for the whole group to join in. When I get positive feedback from my most difficult teens, I rejoice because that means they noticed that learning took place. And getting them to move forward with English is what the classes for me are all about.
Tks for joining in and take this journey to reflect on what to keep and what to leave out next school term. 🙂
A pity I don’t have recordings to keep record of those moments. 2013 will be pretty different on reflections after BR course hopefully.
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Here’s my response to your tweet – ‘what next?’ How about getting students to explore the aspects they didn’t like a bit more, you could print off all the negative feedback onto slips and ask Ss to try to think of reasons why you wanted them to do that particluar activity or why you behaved in that way e.g. ‘we can’t choose who to work with’ and see if it might change their opinion of the activity and see it from a different perspective. And where some of the opinions clash some students can explain why they liked certain activities that others didn’t. Let me know what you think.
Gemma.
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Gemma thanks so much for coming back. Great idea! I suppose you haven’t seen my new post yet. I can’t wait for you to give me a feedback on that one. I was reflecting on the fact that I can’t get students to reflect on this with me anymore because these groups are gone – school term is from February to November. Too bad, right? But then, you came and got me started thinking again. TY. Your ideas are great pointers to help me out during the next school term… for sure.
The new post should explain better how I am feeling right now about their feedback and the next term.
You got me started on thinking on the activities I had worked with them, and looking at the tables with other eyes today, some of the things I notice as being extremely positive with them are the use of songs, vídeos and films. The use of StoryBird in class was very positive. Most students enjoyed during class working on it and even in groups, their feedback shows that as well. The use of digital tools, internet access and mobiles devices in class are seen with enthusiasm, but I can’t say yet for the use outside the class as most of our students don’t really like homework. Regarding that I want also to use a different approach next by using more of digital games, tools and activities. Something not as demmanding as it was the City Guide project that involved research skills, collaboration, decision-making, etc. As we can clearly see from their feedback, it was not positive. It was mentioned about 13 times negatively against 5 positively. I’ll come back to it on a post in the future soon.
Cheers Gemma for getting me started. I was having mixed feelings about it.
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You’re welcome, glad I could help. I have just read your more recent post, catching up on posts today! It’s strange that students didn’t like the City Guide project as sounds great, maybe it was just too much hard work! I will check out storybird and try it as it sounds like a good tool, great if you have access to technology to use in the class as this always seems popular with teens!
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Catching up with the feedback reflection Gemma. It does sound great, right? But the issues behind it may involve lack of perspective of why they are learning English in the first place. I have their motivation box to clarify point, but I’ll do it in a later time. Coming back to it has brought some new things which I have to do right away in the semester. One of them is really to expand the student’s reflection in the first day beyond to “why are you here” ( I usually do that in the first day and last semester we created our motivation box – I need to take a pic of it and post, need to reflect on that too). I just wrote a list of questions and thinking on how I can work with them in the first day to get a picture of how to work with homework issue, plan to bring them onboard on the discussion and together get tasks that they also can evaluate as productive and meaningful for the language development. I remember John F. also talking about giving different students differents tasks in multi-ability classes. Get some online tool to keep up with feedback, as well as f-2-f to balance class time.
As for the City Guide Project, yes very demmanding for students that got used to operating in lower cognitive processes and transcribing what they hear or read. They are in 9th grade and I should have known better that too give something like that outside the class would become more of a burden for them. However, most of the students did a great job, learned new skills and new tools online. There were benefits, but it was hardworking for all of us. I would do it again, but need to reflect on what need to be changed.
Thanks again for helping me with the reflection.
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Hi, was a pleasure glad I could help. There’s always so much for us to think about and change inbetween classes and semesters! But much better that way than not refelcting at all and doing the same thing all the time regardless of whether it’s any good or not!
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Definitely Gemma. I rather look into it and find something that wasn’t good,and it provides development overall, then pretending it was. What Nora Touparlaki said about reflection in Vicky Loras blog keeps coming back to me.
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