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