Ending our blended learning course with a final Project.

Trying to make final projects meaningful.

The students I work with are college level students and as part of the final evaluation process, students have to give a final presentation to their classmates at the end of the course.  This  final work applies to the blended-learning English course students too.  For this  final project, which must last no more that 8 minutes and not less than five, students get to choose a topic and work on it applying  at least  80% of the content seen  in the course.   The teacher can gives suggestions on the kind of topics, work with colleagues to establish guide lines,  and takes students suggestion into account.

From passive  audience to active audience.

Final presentation projects area a good opportunity to promote audience participation. For a while, I have been asking audience to ask questions to the presenter after the presentation. It is the audience who should be evaluated on how logic and coherent are their questions.  The audience can use their notebook to aid their participation. Presenters should answer at least three questions.  Audience can be very productive. At the end everybody participates, asking and answering questions, and listening to such interaction,

Joint Productive Activity.

Let´s begin by commenting that the content of the presented unit matches the requirements of the syllabus. The length assigned for this unit is of maximum 5 hours and minimum 4 hours. This time was presented in 4 hours.

It is important to mention that the kind of activities presented were among the most popular activities suggested by students in a survey carried out just before   we would start the unit 5.  Group work, vocabulary games, and listening were the most popular along with the suggestions on movies and music. Some other had suggested including more reading too.  Definitely, speaking was the most popular.

Our Joint Productive Activity was very productive. Ss participated actively; however, many forgot to bring the material they supposed to for the final product. I noticed most of them didn´t know much about Greece and its geographic location.

There was dynamic and variety in the group works; form large to small, mixed by friendship or academic ability. When they formed into pairs, some worked beautifully with people they hadn´t work that much before.

There was no problem with the classroom arraignment since these groups are used to move along the classroom to work. We usually sit in a semicircle at the beginning of every class.   The lesson plan was carried out in tow different groups. In the first group, which was quite small because of students’ nonattendance, students were not as creative and motivated to work as it was in the second class. During the first class( 10:00am to 12:00pm)  Students tended to use quite a lot their L1 to communicate when drawing the house. So, for the second class (12:00 to 14.009) I told the students since the very beginning of the activity, that I would evaluate their effort to communicate in English – it was more of a persuasion than a threat, and they did  it wonderfully. They were using lot of the structure and vocabulary that had just been seen in the unit.

In general, Ss showed commitment and seemed to have enjoyed, as much as I did, the unit and in particular the activity about presenting in pair an ideal house in which both participated collaboratively.  We all enjoyed the pictures I took during the activities.

ITSX, Xalapa

COORDINACIÓN DE IDIOMAS. LESSON PLANNING

Teacher: Norma  Hernandez Nava

Level:  1

Unit:  5

Hour:      10:am to  12:pm

Date: May .29/2013

Unit theme: Describing houses and apartments
Competence : Students will be able to describe houses and apartments
Objectives:	Time:	Activity	Interaction
1.Students will learn vocabulary on adjectives, parts of a house and furniture. 2.Ss will recycle the use of verbs  To Be, and Have. 3.Students will learn and use There is  and There are in affirmative form. 4.Ss will recycle  vocabulary and structure on prepositions of location 5.Students will learn and use There is  and There are in interrogative  and negative  forms.	10:00 to 10:15 10:15 to  1030 10:30 to 10:40 10:40 to 11:00 11:00 to 11:15 11:15 to 11:30 11:30 to  11:50 10:00 to 10:20 10:15 to 10 :20 10:20 to 10:35 10:35 to 10:45 10:45 to 11:00 11:00 to 11 :25 11:25 to 11:50	Wednesday, May 29, 2013 Unit 5 vocabulary introduction: Vocabulary, Activity 1. An image of a house is projected. The house has the names of its rooms. Ss are assigned a name of a room in the house so they can make into teams according the room they got. Vocabulary, Activity 2. Team work.  Once Ss are made into teams of 4 they, another image is displayed containing furniture in each part of the house each with a number, and a column with the actual names of each piece of furniture.  Teams work together to make map words on their notebooks. Vocabualry, Activity 3. Teamwork. Class makes into only two teams  and  use the projected image to  play “ I spy  a word that starts with letter __” Members  from the opposite team  try to guess the word by making Yes/No questions. Activity 4.  Individual work.  T  tells SS they are groin to describe  their won house and  models an example on the board making emphasis on the use of adjectives. Ss voluntarily  give a short  description of their houses. Activity5. Listening. Ss listen to an audio and number the houses according to the description they hear. Then listen again and mark true or false according to the statement they hear. Activity  6. Writing on the board.  T hands out cut outs with classroom vocabulary . T goes telling students they are going  to study a new topic, then divides the board into two columns, in one column  T writes  There is and on the  other one There are.  Ss come to the front and stick or write the vocabulary on the column they think is appropriate.  T goes over vocabulary on the board and corrects if necessary. T  helps Ss to learn and  understand  the use of verb Activity 7. Collaborative writing.  T tells Ss that now they are going to describe  the classroom, in a more specific  and descriptive way, and they will need to use preposition of location used in unit 2. Ss star calling out prepositions they remember and T writes a list on the board. T or a volunteer start  pulling classroom vocabulary out of each column and  start writing on the board a paragraph  describing the classroom where each piece of furniture is located.  Ss are encouraged to ask questions or clarify doubts. Homework: A.      T  tells Ss they will give a short and informal presentation of their ideal  house to the class , so that they bring material they would like to use for their presentation, like; scissors, glue, markers, collage paper, magazine cut outs, or pictures and slides in the computer. B.      Students are asked to draw their favorite room or place,  and to write a paragraph of minimum 30 words describing it. They can send it through e-mail or hand it in on paper.  C.      Ss will be evaluated on vocabulary spelling next day. Ss need to study  vocabulary furniture. Material for Wednesday class:   notebooks, projector,  computer, markers, white board, cut outs, Cd player, audio Cd ( goalbook1A). Thursday, May 30, 2013  Ss hand in their homework  Activity 1.Spelling activity. Each student is given a name of a room in the house, then,   they (the rooms) look each other until  they form teams of four or five. Ss use one web words from yesterday´s class to spell vocabulary.  Student who spells it correctly put his or her initials on top of the word.  Activity 2. Listening. Students listen to an audio about the locations of objects inside a house .  Students circle the correct option. Activity 3. Reading “ My Ideal House.” Before reading. T asks Ss to describe a typical Mexican house . While reading:  T hands out a photocopies of a text about a house in Greece. Ss participate voluntarily read out loud for the class.  Ss circle adjectives and the forms There is and There are. After Reading A.  Students answer the reading comprehension questions, and circle true or false. After Reading B. Pair work Speaking Activity. Ss form pairs as they wish.  Ss ask to each other about their ideal house, Ss take notes of their partner’s answers. When they Finish, T asks them to make a combination of both students´ ideal house description and to draw it on the collage paper.   After, pairs give a short presentation to the class, where audience is encouraged  to make questions. Material for Thursday class: notebooks, audio CD, CD player, collage paper, glue, cut outs, laptops.	S-S Ss-Ss &  Ss – T Ss- Ss Ss-T & Ss-Ss T- Ss Ss-T /S T-Ss S-Ss Ss-T S-S S-S Ss-Ss

                                                   

Partner Professional Dialogue Follow Up.

Post-reflection Dialogue Report, Part 1.

It has been a while since I had carried out my lesson plan towards promoting collegiality and professional dialogue to improve teaching.  I had been waiting  for the second part of the observation, which will be after  watching  the video. Due to some  family health problems  my dialogue partner has been  facing,  it has not been possible. Here it is part one of the follow up posterior to the class I presented. My partner stayed only during     the introductory part of my class ( it was fo  about 30 minutes), and we agreed that we would get together in a later time to watch the video of the whole class.  

The day after the observation, I was very anxious to learn about her comment.  I chose this partner because she is very critical, professional and has a good eye. I would have preferred she would have written a formal comment, but instead she gave me feedback though a chat the day after  she observed the class. It is good that she has a good memory too.

She said that the format we got form coordination did not convinced very much to be use during her observation, so she took out some informal notes   she wrote during the observation and said that first of all she thought I had done a pretty good  job with the lesson planning content, that is was very specific and involved lots of  oral production and students interaction with each other. She also said that during   the beginning of my class, she had noticed I had been  a little nervous, but that I had managed to get over it soon. She liked the way I welcomed students at the beginning of the class.

On the other hand,  she pointed out some  issues with regards the  fact that I didn’t  make emphasis on the Can Vs Can´t pronunciation. She also commented on that my introduction to the unit content  created certain level of confusion in students probably due to the presentation  and short meaning explanation of other verbs  used to express abilities ( Be able to and  know how to) together with Can. I totally agreed with her observation. Next day, I worked fixing the issues observed by not bringing out any other verb form in the   unit that wasn´t Can and Can´t   -it´s use and   pronunciation, along with the use of the new topic, adverbs.

The unit content was covered pretty well, mostly due to the amount of speaking interaction and to the gradual increase of level of difficulty in the presentation and use of structure.  I have been aware for  awhile that I need to improve  how I manage information  on the board, on how I distribute it and on how I addressee it . Now, I am looking forward to close this activity by finishing watching the video with a colleague.  My dialogue partner has not recovered completely, so,  for the second  Saturdays on the row,   I have scheduled an appointment with my boss to watch the video and have her commenting on it.  Tomorrow Saturday is the day! I hope.

Thanks  for reading and take care.

Speaking Production!

Saturday  Morning  Class, Level 1.

You really have no favorite food, no routine on the weekends and wear  nothing else than   jeans during summer?

A  matter of words and sounds.

This is a group in which most students   work very hard at everything, except at oral production.  Only few participate efficiently all the time. My perception had been that they have been feeling  intimidated by those ones who participate willingly and nicely, and with self confidence .  In the  previous class the lack of oral participation was brought up by me, and suggestions were given by students since not having enough vocabulary and  lack of self-confidence on pronunciation were the main issues   expressed by the them  during  the  oral self assessment session.   We all agreed that we need to increase the amount of exercises on pronunciation, and give vocabulary for its previous learning  before a unit is presented.

 Saturday afternoon Class, Level 1.

Blended  learning on-line participation Journal entry. 

Oral production online.

 I had two of my blended learning course students participating for the second time in   Skype considering we have a ready had about 14  participation so far during the semester. These tow learners did an awesome pair work  during this second participations and I told them right away about how well they had done the activity, mainly in pronunciation.  I encourage them to continue participating. They said they had prepared   with time and in the ways I had suggested it in class. One of them mentioned that she doesn´t like English because of bad experiences she had during High School – I think the teacher made fun of her once about  a word used incorrectly when she was saying good bye.  Guess what?  After their awesome participation in Skype, these tow peculiar learners continue rebelliously   talking a lot to each other in Spanish, but are showing an improvement on   commitment towards working in-classroom sessions.  I am looking forward to have them participating in Skype this Wednesday.

Wednesday of Skype sessions.

 Back to   numbers.

 Today the attendance in Skype increased from 10% last tow week to 25% percent tonight.   However, only half of the participant was able to perform the task, the other half were not ready to perform speaking production but were able to listen. The ones who didn´t completed the task, will connect tomorrow or send it through a voice recording application to my e-mail. The asked questions about the forum activity for this week,  and tutoring was given through Skype calling system. None of the students from this blended course has sent a recorded voice task yet, interestingly, most of the students from week days have already sent their voice recording, and have used the suggested web page to do so.

One more thing I noticed during  my  last Saturday  classes was the  lack of vocabulary on  the topic of seasons and vocabulary to describe season – even  in Spanish, from my blended learning course compare to the  good performance on the same topic from my morning normal  course. This might   have to do not with the kind of modality of each course, but rather with other issues about cultural background or levels of exhaustion of students from the blended class. Their participation was still poor even when I asked them to say the moths that correspond to each season and the main characteristics of each season. All the vocabulary for this topic  was in the platform, but only one student studied it during the week.

Implementing my Action Plan.

Redesigning    the Project  

It has been already more than three weeks  since the beginning of the implementation of my action plan and modifications  have already started to begin  gaining immediate attention. So far, it he participation in the Moodle platform increased but not enough, it keeps being bellow 30%. Students  argue that they do not have time because of work.  So “ If the mountain  will not come to Muhammad…”  Well, in this case I had to bring  “the mountain”  to the classroom. Last Saturday I started using some of the  short precious time  from the class for students to access the platform and navigate a little. I couldn’t open a video because the internet         connection kept on failing. I think I need to plan better activities to make student actually perform producing something that can be shared in front of the class while they are in Moodle .

A stone in my shoe.

Skype participations  dropped from  60% to  10% last week.  I have interviewed them  several times about their lack of n-line work, and they went  from giving argument on  that  they had problems accessing, to say they didn´t have time to participate during the week.  They keep on attending  their in-classroom session despite the fact that many of them have almost no participation on-line work , and despite the fact they did Terrible! Terrible! during their oral midterm exam.  However, most did ok in the written exam.

I am happy that they continue to show interest in coming to class for whatever reason it, and these kind of attitude that have been  happening  give me a motive to think about changing a little the dynamic and teaching methodology for the blended  learning course.  

Partner Profession Dialogue Session.

My partner arrived a little late to our appointment and looked   kind of unfocused during our chat. I tried   to be as clear as possible when  stating my points and to keep her focused on the conversation. The following is a summary of the most important aspects we discussed in our chat.

Community  involvement and Join productive activity.

The inclusion of family, teachers and friends in the carrying out of an interview was the type of community involvement.  Students were free to design an interview and to choose a family member, a friend or teacher to be interviewed. Most of the content of the unit had already been established in the syllabus, so students had little to do with the design of such unit content. 

Language development.

The lesson plan contains several Language development activities and most of these activities promoted opportunity to generate more dialogue. The content of this unit content   focuses a students’ personal context and famous people abilities.  Structure and complexity in activities is graded.  Ss are asked to use simple structure to express abilities, then area asked to ask and answer questions. There are many opportunities for students to interact with each other through short dialogues.

Step 6 was not bought up during the dialogue. Designing a Pictionary and an interview seems to be the only students’ involvement in the design of content.  However, it seems that the content provided almost no opportunity for students directed activities. Considerations on this issue previous to writing the lesson plan should provided more students involvement in the design of content and students directed activities I further lesson plans.

My partner and I agreed on that written productions, questions , peer correction  and active participation  during  class, would demonstrate  a skill, task, concept or process.

Additional opportunity for student observation will be added at the end of the unit. Ss will not only do self evaluation but will also fill out a short questionnaire the teaching activities that class.

As a final comment it could be said that it took a awhile to my partner to focus on the questions, but she managed to give   valuable and professional comments. Her over all opinion was that teachers in our work context usually consider the unit presented in the lesson plan as something simple to be taught and simple to be learned. The lesson plan presented was seen by my colleague as a very complete work, that integrates diverse content making coherent connection between one topic and  another, and having activities that promotes meaningful and  well contextualized production. She suggested including an activity on job skills using modal Can. After the dialogue, there were some changes done to the lesson plan.  Changes have been highlighted:

 

ITSX

COORDINACIÓN DE IDIOMAS. LESSON PLANNING

Teacher: Norma  Hernandez Nava

Level:  2

Unit:   2

Hour:      10:am to  12:pm

Date: May 7 to May 10,2013

Unit theme: Abilities and Talents
Competence	Objective	Time	Activity	Interaction
Students will be able to: Talks about abilities and talents.	Students will : -Use Can to express ability. -Ask questions with Can -Identify sounds can Vs can´t -Use adverbs -Understand the difference between  Can / Know how to / Be able to  for  expressing  learned or  natural  ability. Structure Yes/No questions with Able to and with Can - Recycle sentences connectors; and, but, so and or.	Thursday  May 09,2013 10:00 10:10 to 10:20 10:20 to 10 :30 10:30 to 10:50 10:50 to 11:00 11:00 to 11:15 11:15 to 11:30 11:30 to 11:40 11:40 to 11:55 Friday, May 10th, 10:00 10:10 to 10:25 10:25 to 10:40 10:40 to 11:00 11:00 to 11:15 11:15 to 11:35 11:35 to 11:50 designing the Pictionary. 11:50 to 12: 00 get questions ready for the interview. Mondays May 13, 2013.	MAERIAL: Flash cards  and pictures / projector and computer, photocopied material,  CD player and Cd. T introduces  the class topics, and writes the objectives on the board.  Opening Task  A: T shows to Ss several pictures of people doing an activity, and students will describe the picture. T makes emphasis on the actions and abilities represented in the pics. Opening  Task B. Step 1, Before reading. Ss work in pairs and   describe what ‘s an intelligent  person like? And What does an intelligent person look like? a according to their opinion or stereotypes. ( recycling content form  level1) T writes  on the  board new vocabulary. Step 2, After While reading:  T hands out  a chart containing a list of multiple intelligences, Ss check the things they can do. Then, they ask  a classmate about his or her abilities, using the same chart. T models questions ‘Can you..?´ Step 3, Speaking: Ss take turns telling the class what kind of intelligence they think their classmates have, and why . Listening for Can Vs Can´t : T hands out photocopied material and plays track.  Students listen and tick the sentences they hear. After reviewing the correct answers, student practice saying the sentences. Reading and Writing: Ss look at a chart about two girls in relation with a list of abilities. Ss work in pairs and discuss, and then fill in the blanks of an exercise about the same two girls. After Reading: Ss write sentences about their abilities with Can or Can´t, using the same chart that describes the two girls in the previous task. Grammar  & structure. Then T asks Ss to describe how well they can do such activities, so T writes  on the boards well, very well, not very well,  a little and Not really. T models sentences on the board an then the class pays hot potato and participate in class in pairs describing their abilities.  As homework: Ss rewrite the sentences form previous activity by adding an adverb to the sentences that describe ability or  talent. MATERIAL: cut outs, photocopied material, T introduces the class topics, and writes the objectives on the board, and Ss show evidence of  homework. Grammar  & Structure: T divides the board into two sections and writes  “learned ability” in one column and “ natural ability” in the other column. T writes the verbs that can be used in each column. T hands out photocopied material so Ss work in pair to    make affirmative or negative statements  that express ability using Can / Know how to and Be able to. Speaking ( practicing the adverbs):Ss make into teams of four and T puts a pile of  cut outs with written expressions on abilities. A member form each team takes a paper and mimics the ability together with the adverb. Teams asks questions trying  to guess the exact sentence written on the papers. (Content from unit 1,about food and cooking, is included) READING. Before reading: Ss mention Mexican people they know  who have special talents or abilities. While reading the text about Evelyn Glennie: Ss fill in the blanks in the sentences with negative or affirmative  forms using  Be able to for learned abilities or using Can for  natural abilities. Class checks  correct answers. Grammar& Structure: T hands out photocopied material, to review and practice the use of sentence connectors: and but, so and or.  LISTENING. Before listening. Ss work in groups of three and try to talk with their partners about abilities they have developed in the engineering programmed they are attending encourage Ss to use  Can, Know how to, and Be able to. While listening: T plays track and Ss listen to a Job Interview. Ss read the statements and check Yes or No.  Listening and Speaking. Designing a Pictionary and Recording an interview) Pair work homework: Ss are asked to design in no more than two pages a  Pictionary with  abilities.   Then, individually, they   find a friend or a  person form other levels / classes or someone  who is fluent in English and ask him or her about the abilities she or he has that are related to the ones shown in the Pictionary . Ss record the interview. Closing up Unit 2. While in class, T asks Ss to make into teams of three and to listen to their recordings. T asks Ss to  identify how many time the speaker uses the verbs  (Can / Know how to and Be able to) and  adverbs learned. Ss to listen again to the recording, and draw a comparative chart about the abilities of the  interviewed people and  include themselves in the chart. Self evaluation: As they do at the end of each unit, Ss fill in a chart where they evaluate what they have learned in this unit. They also write in their portfolio about the new expression and experiences the learned in unit 2 ( this last activity abut expressions and experiences is new) *Note:  As part of the unit review, the valuation chart will make emphasis in the use  of Can, Be able to, Know hw to.	T-Ss Ss-T S-S  S-S S-Ss Group work.  S-Class S-S Ss-S Ss-T S-S, & T-Ss. S-Ss T-Ss,  S-S