Wow! A wonderful week

Hi everyone,
I enjoyed doing assignments of week 4 a lot. the first task i did was i read the articles provided in our class wiki and share my ideas in nice-net. in other words, i posted it in discussion. similarly, i found the real problem of my classroom for which i want to implement the project as my students are using computers just for fun. another interesting task i did was, i prepared technology enhanced lesson plan. it was my amazing experience as i felt very difficult to understand initially but now when the plan is ready, i am happy and satisfied as build up a confidence that i can prepare a technology enhanced lesson plan. the lesson plan i prepared  is presented below:

Class (name, type of student): Grade eleven students who have already studied English as a second language for thirteen years, aged 17-18 years.
Topic: The Boarded Window (story) by Ambrose Bierce

Duration: 45 minutes
A computer will be there for the whole class with Wi Fi connection from where students will listen the story retrieved from the following link.

Materials
Technology component downloaded from/accessed in class at: http://www.manythings.org/voa/stories/The_Boarded_Window_-_By_Ambrose_Bierce.html

Other material: Handouts of the story (if technology didn't function), whiteboard, marker and question cards

Introduction
Review of previous lesson: The teacher will ask one of the students to summarize the chapter within ten sentences before s/he starts the lesson


Objectives of this lesson (tell students about them): By the end of the class, students will have been able to;
a)   Write the meaning of the difficult words
b)   Find out the theme of the story
c)   Tell the suitability of the title



Procedure
Presentation (teacher or student), including key vocabulary
At first teacher will provide the audio of the story and divide them in pairs and provide them the activity as solving questions;
i. find out the difficult words from the story and discuss its meaning in your pairs.
ii. Discuss in pairs on the theme of the story and write it down within ten sentences
iii. Discuss in your pairs on the suitability of the title and share your answers with your class.

Activity (student) students will listen the story. After that they will list out the difficult words from the story and discuss the meaning of the words in their pair. They will take help from the teacher if required. After completing the task they will discuss on the second question and after that they will shift to the third question and finally share their answers with their class.


Learning styles addressed: Pre –reading activities (pre- teach vocabulary), while reading activities (discuss the theme of the story) and post- reading activities (share their ideas on suitability of the title with their class)



Technology alternative (in case things don't work as planned): If in case computer didn't work, the teacher will be ready with the handouts of the story so that the lesson would go smoothly without any disturbance.




Review before the end of the class session:
Ask one of the students to share his/her feelings after reading the story.



Homework:
Write the summary of the story 'The Boarded Window' in your own words.

ops! sad ghost story

Hi everyone,

I visited the site; http://www.manythings.org which was shared in our class wiki and reached to  http://www.manythings.org/voa/stories/The_Boarded_Window_-_By_Ambrose_Bierce.html and listened very much interesting thriller story entitled ‘The Boarded Window’ by Ambrose Bierce with audio that can be downloaded. This story is useful for the advanced level of students as it requires ‘critical thinking’ to understand the story.  

 

Your comments for my improvements are always welcome.

Regards

Mandi

A gift for the teachers!!!!!!

Hi everyone,
I just Read an article by Mei- Ya Liang entitled 'Three Extensive Reading Activities for ESL/EFL Students Using E- books.
i found this article very much useful for us those who are thinking to use technology and teach our students using internet. the following link given in this article are very much helpful for us and can be utilized in our classroom.

• A story map worksheet: http://www.education-world.com/a_tsl/TM/WS_storymapws.shtml
• An advanced story map worksheet: http://www.lefthandlogic.com/htmdocs/interventions/rdngcompr/storymap1.shtml
• Carnegie Medal criteria: http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/carnegie/crit.html
• Newbery Medal criteria: http://www.ala.org/ala/alsc/awardsscholarships/literaryawds/newberymedal/newberyterms/newberyterms.htm

The classic argument structure: http://www.winthrop.edu/wcenter/handoutsandlinks/classica.htm

Reflection on week 3

Hi Everyone,
I am really excited this time that i got opportunities to join delicious. com where i am now habituated to save the useful links for me. the another interesting task i did was i went through all the articles as mentioned in the reading list and got different ideas of the writers regarding the development of listening and speaking skill as Gong's article has highlighted the importance of using CALL in improving listening and speaking skills of the students which i liked the most. similarly, the links for lesson plans provided another useful websites which i am thinking to use in my classroom in future. for instance;

http://www.esl-galaxy.com/grammarsheets.html

http://www.eslgamesplus.com/memory-games/

Another exciting task was to read the project which i read  and got a lot of ideas on preparing report.

Name: Nicolici Nadina Carmen

Country: Romania

Learners background:  the participants in her research are grade nine students,  aged 15- 16, total 24 at the technical college “ Lorin Salagin . Though the class is not very balanced in terms of gender, they work collaborate. They are aware on environmental issues and protecting the earth. Her learners were of mixed types of learners but were motivated to learn English.  The setting of her class is very nice as there is always SUN, S- SMILE, U- UNITY, N- NICE. Though, there are individual desks students prefer to keep them in row to be nearer with their friend. Unfortunately, there are no computers, projectors and other devices in the class.  As the students were learning English, the goal of that course was to develop their listening, speaking, reading and writing skills but for them the use of internet was to chat and they have understood using internet for the same purpose.

Further, the researcher has described how s/he found out the actual problem of the students. As she has described in this report that though almost all the students replied that they spend their free time reading, she later found out that they weren’t reading rather they used computers just for entertainment purpose. Similarly, she found the possibilities of using internet at school as well as in her IT lab and found learners interested when she involved students in eTwinning project ‘Where did the Romans get?

Though the initial phase was somehow difficult, later the blog became the students’ favorite and they were motivated too.

While reading the report, I found that she passes with a different experience as she was very much curious to use technology in her class, in between the project was going on she was in doubt whether she would be successful or not but finally due to her hard work in implementing the project she came up with positive result that has helped her to learn different skills as she has mentioned that ‘she made the best lesson plan she had ever made’ which even motivate us to implement the project and learn different innovative ideas to teach our students by integrating technology with our course.

As I was quiet confuse on developing the project in first step, after reading this project  the ideas are clear now and I am able to build up my confidence to utilize this project and prepare a report by including the things that happened while implementing the project.

Above mentioned is the review of the report and as i have already expressed that this report has really  motivated me to implement my project.

Regards,

Mandi