Norma´s E-portfolio en Enseñanza del Inglés.: mayo 2013

viernes, 24 de mayo de 2013

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.

lunes, 20 de mayo de 2013

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.

miércoles, 15 de mayo de 2013

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.

domingo, 12 de mayo de 2013

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:

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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 10^th, 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

martes, 7 de mayo de 2013

Partner Professional Dialogue. Unit 2, Lesson Plan

This is my lesson plan on unit 2, for my level 2 students. I am having my professional partner dialogue in two days, and I am really looking forward to having this session. I have previously taught this unit, and have wanted to make it more meaningful and more dynamic for students.

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