Well, I've been reading and reflecting a lot about collaborative / cooperative learning and self-directed learning in search of ideas for my classes.
But, changing your ways IS NOT EASY. I have to think of my own reality, with certain limitations as the methodology adopted by the school and my own beliefs, of course.
This semester, I have a beautiful and very enthusiastic group of teenagers with whom I'll be experimenting new ways of being in a classroom. Taking one tiny step at a time, we're going to follow a kind of a "project-oriented approach", in which I propose a challenge for students at the beginning of a lesson, we discuss what kind of knowledge we need to accomplish that goal and after 3 or 4 classes working with the content, students have to present a final product using one of the suggested tools. http://culturainglesaudi.wikispaces.com/Inter+A+Challenges
These past weeks, students brought to class VOCABULARY related to kinds of food they like and we complemented it with vocabulary from the coursebook which we're supposed to cover. If we were to talk about our habits, we had to know how express them in sentences, which led us to the GRAMMAR TOPIC (Present Simple and Present Continuous).
Yesterday, students started sharing their final presentations in Edmodo, which I then assembled in the school wiki page so that we can share it with parents as well. I was extremely happy with the results. From their presentation, I was not only able to learn more about my students but I could also observe how well they could express themselves.
THIS WAS ONE OF THE PRESENTATIONS SHARED
The other presentations can be found at
http://culturainglesaudi.wikispaces.com/1.+My+eating+habits
I prepared an activity with the most common mistakes I noticed from their presentations, we discussed them and then my students asked me to show some presentations in class to the whole group.
Like I said at the beginning of the post, these are just baby steps aiming for more meaningful learning.
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