DAY ONE OF SCHOOL & GETTING TO KNOW YOUR STUDENTS

Unlike most teenagers, who are dragged back early (in their view) from sun-drenched summer holidays and forced back into formal education, every teacher I have ever met loves the first day of school.  It is not in any way a masochisitic appreciation, but, indeed, it is the pleasure of getting to meet your new group of students that you will work with for the upcoming academic year. However, it can be quite daunting for students to stand up and give some personal background to their peers; especially in a foreign language. So, I would like to share some ideas for you to try in your classes, should you not have any of your own, or you just would like to try something new and different.

First of all, I do not think it necessary to have the students introduce themselves at the outset.  Instead, we showed our promotional video posted below...

The video lets the students see something of what they are to expect in the following year.  Now, that they are all smiling and feeling a little more relaxed we then introduce them to some activities that take almost no effort, but end up being extremely effective.

ACTIVITY ONE

I particularly like this to start the ball rolling, since as you will notice, there is no language transfer going on.  It is all about eye-balling and movement through various signals and visual prompts.

ACTIVITY TWO

With this activity the students have their first opportunity to communicate verbally, albeit the idea behind the activity is for recognition of an unknown person, and memory of the students names that have gone before them.

ACTIVITY THREE

We wrapped with this today, and I felt it was the appropriate time to have them write a little sentence so that they could develop it should they want to.  We had several attempt to expand on their choices, which was very refreshing.  In fact, we were pleasantly surprised by some of the ideas the youngsters produced on a nervous scary first day.

We got the feeling that the students enjoyed their introduction to Hisar Hazirlik.  It was a smooth one, and nobody seemed to get stressed out, not did they go silent and introverted.  Tomorrow, we will do an orientation walkabout the school with 25 points of interest, and necessary places like the Principal's office, infirmary, library and food hall. My colleague and I are both looking forward to our year ahead in Hisar Hazirlik.

Publish Your Docs to the Web

For more than two years now, I have been an avid user of Google Drive in and out of the classroom.  Both my colleague and I have written several posts on the blog describing the various ways that we use Google Drive, from doing group presentations to giving students feedback, both done in real time.  We have enjoyed using it so much that, lucky for us, our school agreed to get us more storage space in Google Drive to put all of our resources there for instant access wherever we are. We now have over 100 GB of space to use as we please.

The amazing part, for me at least, is that the more I use Google Drive, the more I discover new tools and tricks it has to offer.  My most recent discovery was how to publish a Google Doc to the web.  This came about as my colleague and I were asked by our principal about how we could put our UbD (Understanding by Design) curriculum unit plans onto Drive to make it more accessible for her to keep track of what is being taught at school.  After coming up with a basic UbD template on Drive (which you are more the welcome to use by clicking on the image below), we spent the next several days copying and pasting our exisiting UbD unit plans on Microsoft Word to Drive.  

After that, I wanted to make them as easy to access as possible, and that's when I stumbled upon the 'Publish to the web' feature.  For avid users of Drive, like myself, you will certainly be aware of the normal 'Share' settings available at the top right-hand side of the screen after you create a Google Doc. You are presented with three options to share your document: publish on the web; anyone with the link; or only with specific people, as pictured below.

If there's already an option to make your Doc public on the web, then what's the advantage of publishing it to the web? I considered this myself before I actually tried out the publishing option.  However, what I discovered is a huge difference in speed when accessing the document.  When you share a document on the web, as opposed to publishing it, you have to wait a few seconds for the Google Drive to open up, and then the document appears.  On the other hand, when you publish a Doc, Google Drive actually turns your document into a web page, meaning you get instant access to it.

In order to show you this, I have created a test example for you to try out.  I created two Google Docs, one of which has been shared on the web, and the other has been published to the web.  Click the two links below...

Google Doc Shared Publicly on the Web

Google Doc Published on the Web

What do you think?  For my colleague and I, it was a no-brainer.  For documents that we want to share publicly from now on, we will certainly publish them to the web.  That is what we did, getting back to my earlier story, with our UbD plans.  We published them all to the web, and then linked them all together into one Google Doc (pictured below) for the principal to access whenever she wants.

In short, if you want to publish a Doc on the web, you can do it only two mouse clicks.  After you create a Doc, click 'File' at the top left-hand side of the screen, and then 'Publish to the web'.  Google Drive will then ask if you if you are sure you want to publish your document.  Click the 'OK' button, and you are done. Copy the URL address, and share it or link it wherever you want.  It is a wonderful tool that Google has come up with, and with all the research and development that Google is putting into Drive, there is without doubt doing to be many more features to be discovered in the near future. 

 

VIDEO CLIPS Can Springboard the Creative Process...

Being a long time advocate of using video in the classroom, I am constantly looking for ways to include it in almost all of my lessons with my young teenage student demographic.  They love visuals for lessons, and if they are presented with quality, thought-provoking ones, they tend to respond most favourably. Therefore, it makes sense to use visuals and video to stimulate the creative process in L2-students.  

The film I have chosen to use in this activity is a British prison drama, Starred Up. It is one of the gritiest and most powerful prison dramas I have watched in many years.  However, it is certainly not suitable for anyone under 18, so you may be asking what are you using it for with 14-15 yr olds then?  I 

agree, and would never do that.  In fact I don't use full length featured films as a springboard for lessons.  That is totally unnecessary, since there are fabulous editing tools now available for you to use to cut segments of films (e.g. Wondersher's Video Convertor- which allows you to hardcode subs too). It means when you find a section that is excellent, but the whole film is not needed, you can present it without any repurcussions of inpropriety. Plus, you don't use up valuable class time watching the whole movie.

That is why I have chosen this clip very carefully for the activity.

First of all, watch the short clip below and I will explain how I intend to use it with my new intake of students this year for a creative writing piece.

So, as this is the hook of the movie I thought it a really good time to show the students how important that is for any story, visual or textual.  I was struck by how well the director captured the mood of what it must be like for a young prisoner moving up from a juvenile detention center to an adult prison.  In the five minutes long clip, there is no dialog, only guards barking orders.  But, as a viewing audience member looking in on the plight of people like the teenager, you get a sense of foreboding of what a person is faced with when they first arrive in prison.

First of all I will give some necessary vocabulary for the students to use in their writing:

jail,  prison, prisoner, cell, guard, casuals, isolation, exclusion, lonliness, parole, depression

to strip, to stand still, to keep quiet,  to obey,  (not) to talk back

sad, frightened, worried, scared, terrified, lonely, alone, isolated, bored, angry, disappointed, regretful, isolated, embarrassed, ashamed, naive 

These lists, although not exhaustive, can give the students more choice for writing, and allow them the opportunity to write more freely during the process.

Before the students begin, I will have a small discussion that asks some critical thinking prompts or Essential Questions (EQs) as we prefer to call them.

What would you feel like being locked up in prison?

How do people cope with the situation?

Why do prisoners feel alone?

What do you think are the frustrations of being in a cell?

Should prisoners be locked up alone for great lengths of time?

Why do some prisoners become repeat offenders?

After we have discussed these salient points, I will get the students to consider how the character from the clip is feeling on his arrival. They will then be told to write as the character in prison and how he is feeling on that first day.  The next paragraph will be one week later.  The final paragraph will be learning that he has parole.  I will also ask the students to write the piece in the 1st person.  The students will do this on penzuclassroom and submit by the due date.

I know this is nothing new for you, but I wanted to share how it is possible to use clips from films that can hopefully lead to students writing more freely in English L2.  If we personalize the task, and get them to be creative for a character (probably) none of them will ever be, it could make for some quality writing practice and allow them to see how their creativity is an integral part to the learning of any language.

CLICK HERE FOR A BLENDSPACE TUTORIAL OF THE INTENDED LESSON ON PRISON LIFE

EDPUZZLE: Listen to this, it is seriously awesome!

Every few months a new ICT-Tool catches my eye, and I get hooked, obsessed, passionate and tell every teacher I talk to that it WILL really make a difference to their lessons. Well, that time is here again. My find, actually my colleague Brentson's find, is EDPUZZLE, a marvellous ICT-listening-TOOL. It is that good, I know you are going to start using it once you see the easiness with which you can make one, and how much your students will love it.

RATIONALE & ACADEMIC CONSIDERATION

Apart from ICT the reason for posting this is I believe by giving numerous listening formative assessments like these, the students can train their ears for better listening.  I noticed this by observing how many students, who may have been having lessons for up to eight years, yet still come to the English-preparatory-for-high-school-program with less than 20% in the final exams and after very poor returns on year-long projects in year eight, still have better listening comprehension compared to the students with little or no English.  Even those more successful student types who surpass those 'eight-years-in-English' students for reading and writing after a couple of months, tend to be no better in listening than those students with more years exposure to the sounds.  This has perplexed and frustrated me for years, so when I saw this tool I jumped at the chance of using it with a focus on making and ensuring the students with less exposure have more focused listening comprehension activities through this approach and platform.  The initial responses were extremely promising with the students saying how much they had loved it. It appears that since they can go back 'n forth and listen to it at their own pace with headphones on, then there is zero embarrassment or self-consciousness with peers.  

TECHNICAL ASPECT

The first step is to go to www.edpuzzle.com and sign up as a teacher. You will then have an account to make edited videos from your favorite shows/films, upload from several websites like youtube and vimio, or use video footage with your own audio track (this is good if your students like, and are used to your voice, so they can tune in quicker- it also allows you to share some of your own personal information with them, and they always like that).


Next, you work out the interface, which is reasonably friendly , and you will have it down in a few clicks.  You will make your videos, make your classes to which you then assign the videos you wish for those students, it gives you a summary of how much has been watched and formatively assessed for checking with the students later.

After you have uploaded a clip, edit or favourite video on to the site, OR, you have used the various websites available as direct uploads for video content, here is how it works...

Watch this video feed forward to learn more...

Once you make the videos they are stored in the Edpuzzle-listening cloud for easy access. 


Here below are some  EDPUZZLEs I made earlier and have embedded for you to have fun. 

THE CLASS CODE TO ACCESS THE FOLLOWING PUZZLES IS

dN0Gjv

EDPUZZLE ONE : MY TV SHOW EDIT

EDPUZZLE TWO: A YOUTUBE UPLOAD

EDPUZZLE THREE: MY EDIT PLUS MY AUDIO VOICEOVER

 

I trust you enjoyed doing the EDPUZZLES?  I would really be interested to hear any feedback from you, and if you do I promise to get right back to you.  We could even collaborate should you wish, starting in August.  I will also be showcasing this platform at the Hisar School Google-edu conference in Novemeber.  Watch this space for more details. 

The WRITING PROCESS: FOCUSING on ORGANIZATION

Although students may not like Reading and Writing while they are at high school, there is no doubt that they will have become reasonably proficient in both skills should they wish to go on to tertiary education.  That means, for me as a prep. teacher or hazırlık oğretmenı (in Turkish), I have the opportunity to try and convince my students that if they have the fundemental building blocks for a well-organized academic essay, it will go a long way to support them throughout their high school and university life. Many of you might comment that this way is too restrictive for the creative process, and I would respond that I know it is very prescriptive, and controlling. However, it gives EFL-students the basic blocks for building on their own creative process once they have mastered the organizational model of this framework.  That would be why I believe it is a worthy model to use while teaching the writing process in the early years of high school academic writing.

So, I prepared a powerpoint that goes through each part of the organizational process, and to which I will now make you party via pics.  The original powerpoint can be found HERE

So, how does this work in practice?  I will post snips of a student's work where you can see how she used her online journal, penzuclassroom, to write up a response based on the frmaework described above.  She then received color-coded feedback:

PINK= PUNCTUATION  

BLUE = BAD SPELLING/WRONG WORD

LEMON = LOGIC OR WEAK IDEA  

GREEN = GRAMMAR

ORANGE = ORGANISATION 

post-feedback draft

The drafts were done using teacher feedback and academic organizational models set up and checked by me.  However, what makes it exciting is how this students has managed to transfer the information, and done her own process by producing a superb draft for her final portfolio.  Here it is below, and remember this girl is fifteen, Turkish and had no feedback for this submitted essay.

What makes me very pleased is that Gözde, the student who produced this great work, has taken to the system very comfortably; the system and framework that she can now hone and develop, so as to identify her own academic writing style for the future. If teachers have any doubt that the Writing Process doesn't work, they should just have a wee read of Gözde's essays. 

REPORTING SONG/ALBUM REVIEWS

My long time EFL teaching colleague (different school) and Scots freen (different region), Gordon Dobie (A West Coaster, but he canny help thon), shared with me an activity for the practice and production of REPORTED SPEECH with my students. He uses it himself, and his students claim it is the best thing they do all year.  I immediately wanted some of the action and he explained how it worked. So, I informed Brentson, my colleague, and we made a BLENDSPACE tutorial for the students and also we wanted to share with you all.  Of course, the tutorial is self explanatory, but I would like to break it down a bit more on this platform so that you can see it at a glance without moving away from here.

STAGE ONE

Get your students to think of their favorite song or album of all time (with young teens this can be in an instant for forever depending how fickle they are being.  So, give them a time limit of 5 minutes only.

STAGE TWO

Tell them to open their computers and go to www.amazon.com or www.amazon.co.uk  to find their song or album they wish to read the reviews about.  There they will see on the left (as above pic shows) 1 - 5 star ratings from which the students can choose.  They should read the 5-Star review first so that they feel good about their own favorite matching someone else's opinion.

STAGE THREE

The considerations of EFL are part and parcel of our extensive planning, so vocabulary is tantemount to success and growth for the students. Monsieur Dobie is a huge (I don't mean his belly) proponent of extensive vocabulary instruction, and I strongly support him in this.  So, you will ask them to identify as many song/artist/album new examples of language about music itself.  It is surprising how many terms we take as granted being native speakers of the language.  Those items are highlighted in yellow above.

BTW, this is where ICT really comes in handy.  The students take a snip of the review from the website then convert the snip to a pdf or ebook page or insert it into a word document so they can highlight the text.

After they find the new vocabulary and record it for use later, they then find the opinions and lexical cues for use in the reported speech activity itself.  These are highlighted in torquoise or light blue above.

STAGE FOUR

The students then read the one star review, which will undoubtedly keep them engaged, since the reviewer is nothing but negative of the students' favourite song or album.  You can see from the image that the process for vocabulary and opinions is exactly the same.

STAGE FIVE

Now the students start to prepare for the final stage of the activity.  This involves GOOGLE DRIVE (of course), as we always like to get our students up to the board to report their own findings.  But before that, you give them reporting verbs suitable for written work.  Since we have instilled in them the use of SAY & TELL as the primary verbs in speech, it is important to also share with the students some more appropriate verbs for reporting comments in writing.  So, the list above, although not exhaustive, is a good enough size to get started.

The student reports to his/her friend who then checks for authenticity in the original review. They practice these before transferring them to their Google Drive ppp.

STAGE SIX

After the students have practised the single reported statements, and shared new-found "music" vocabulary with their friends, you will now have them write in paragraph form what they thought of their 1  & 5 star reviews/ers (like above).  I believe this is better than single response reported statements at this time, as they have done plenty during the rules and drilling stages. So, it makes it much more authentic to use the reported speech in a wee report/opinion piece for presenting to the class.  Point of note: there is absolutely no question that when you get students to write in paragraph length chunks there are far less grammar and syntax issues, compared to single statemenst out of context (but you knew that of course:-)

STAGE SEVEN

Here is a video of one student, Sinan, who allowed us to video tape his presentation. He is a student who embraces learning and loves to engage in everything we throw at him.  Below his video there are three snapshots of another student, Gözde, who probably has the strongest English in our 2013/14 group, overall.  She actually approaches her lessons with classic Turkish pragmatism, but the difference is she likes to complete everything by herself without cutting any corners; which is unusual for a 14-15 year old girl :-)

I would like to finish this lengthy post by saying thanks to Gordon Dobie for his heads up on the quality activity.  The fundementals are pretty much the same as Gordon's original, but by changing it to allow more ICT and grammar into the activity we have broadened it past Gordon's vocabulary and reading outcomes.  However, that is the way we do things in our program, and the kids have become used to it.  That does not mean it is better, but it is always good to do things that the students are used to; afterall, if you try to do too much in a different way, they simply rebel.

DON'T FORGET THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SUFFIX IN ELT

"To the amazement of many an ageing foreign language teacher, the development of language is often very much misguided through careless and uninspiring teachers, syllabuses and methodologies." (Mearns. D., 2014 www.davidmearns.blogspot.com)

This sentence is an example of how easy it is for us as English speakers, writers and teachers to make the necessary changes to word roots when we are putting together sentences, paragraphs and essays.  In those seven examples highlighted we can see the roots as:

amaze   age    develop   guide   care   inspire    method

However, it is quite normal for us, as teachers, to forget this essential part of vocabulary building and language development.  We not only want to have the students practise using roots and their suffixes (also some prefixes), but even more importantly, we want them to identify that these components exist.  Here is an example from our student today commenting on a News Video Monday she presented this morning, and she clearly was not aware that changes have to be made when using different word forms:

So our student, Selin, inadvertently wrote down the noun forms of the root words instead of the necessary adjectives: SAD, SECURE & SAFE.  This is after months of reminding her of the verb "to be " + adjective rule and the "More + comparative" rule of adjectives. However, there is no guarantee of when any individual will respond to rules naturally, right?  So, no worries, we then reminded her of the fact and did this activity...

STEP ONE

The students are given a vocabulary booklet (5 PAGES OF 10 WORDS, ON EACH) that has pages for them to identify and practise writing out the root words.

STEP TWO

As the instructions convey the students have to CIRCLE the root and UNDERLINE the suffix.  Then they write out the root word on the line provided.

STEP THREE

The students are then given one of the word roots and asked to make a sentence with two of the forms such as either: the adjective/noun or verb.  

STEP FOUR

In groups the students will be distributed cards.  These cards are laminated for longevity, and then cut for use in class.  They are given a mixture of ROOTS, SUFFIXES AND END-WORDS.  The students will distribute the cards evenly between the group members and then they will negotiate for the correct root + suffix + end-word.  Once they have tried their own piles, they then go to other groups for more negotiation.

STEP FIVE

The final part of the activity includes the students working with the cards and trying to place them onto their worksheets.  They will find them and then write them out as a group.  This will consolidate the activity and leave students with identification of the importance using ROOTS, SUFFIXES and NEW-WORD FORMS.

We tried this activity out and it was a success.  In particular the students walked away knowing that it is not just a case of translating any word they come across as a verb (a very bad habit in Turkish). 

The students worked in their groups to guess/recall work out the suffixes for the 12 root words they received beforehand.  They then had to write them onto the papers with the empty boxes.  This was finally followed with them choosing the FIVE sentences they felt most confident with and then they wrote them on the classboard. The images from this activity are below.  A great productive 40 minute lesson.

So, this will now be part of our syllabus, and in fact, we will introduce it much earlier in the year for the Hazırlık students 2014-2015.