A Revising Circle: vocabulary activity

Looking for a simple idea to help your students revise VOCABULARY?

This week, we had to revise for the final tests.

I was trying to think about a simple activity for my Upper Intermediate students and I remembered something I'd tried with my Intermediate students in the past.

What would I need?

- For 8 students = 4 slips of paper (or as many slips of paper you feel are necessary).

- Five words students need to revise written down on each slip of paper.

In class, I organized the desks in a circle and had 4 pairs of students: 1a + 1b , 2a + 2b, 3a + 3b, 4a + 4b.

1. I gave a slip of paper to each STUDENT A who had to describe the words on the slip of paper for STUDENT B to guess the word. I kept monitoring in case students needed help remembering what words meant. (Ex: 1a describes for 1b to guess)

2. When I noticed most students had guessed the 5 words, I asked STUDENT A to pass the slip of paper to STUDENT B who now would have to describe the same words to the next student to their left. (Ex: 1b now describes for 2a to guess)

3. The slips of paper kept on passing to each student, the student with the slip describing and  the other student listening and trying to guess the words.

Why do I like this activity?

- it's incredibly easy to organize.

- you can revise any kind of vocabulary.

- students are involved all the time.

- students keep alternating partners as they talk to the people to their right and then to their left.

10 Tools / Apps to flip your class

Interested in flipping your class?

If so, you'll probably need  some tools to make the videos you intend to share with your students.
http://learni.st/users/anamariacult/boards/35935-tools-for-flipping-classes

Same list in a different format:

Tools for flipping your class

View more lists from Ana Menezes

BYOD in Brazil - Apptivities for ELT

This is a blog post which follows a presentation given by me at the IMAGE CONFERENCE in Brasília today.

While thinking about the topic I had chosen to discuss, I decided to build my talk around an infographic with all the information I'd collected, along with links. 

- First, I used PIKTOCHART to create the embeddable infographic.

https://magic.piktochart.com/output/442066-flow-2

- Then, to make it interactive, I added the resources to it using THINGLINK. So if you hover the mouse over the image, when clicking the little dots, you'll be taken to different resources.

I initially talked about different aspects we have to consider when adopting either a BYOD or a 1:1 approach. Then, I presented some apps and activities involving the use of IMAGES and VIDEOS.

For THE LINKS I shared during the talk, pass the mouse over the infographic and look for some "magic dots".

Forming questions with VINE

This week, my Basic 1 students were learning how to ask questions in English. Each group, decided on a question they thought was interesting to ask, wrote words on slips of paper and we recorded a VINE. Can you please help us by answering one or all the questions in the reply area?



I've also posted the videos separately so that people can choose what question to answer
http://ourprojectsci.weebly.com/blog.html

Thank you to everyone who has already contributed.

Tell us more about Brazil

Weeks ago, I was contacted by Larry Ferlazzo about having our students collaborate somehow as his students have been studying about Brazil. We exchanged a few messages trying to decide how this collaboration would take place and this is the result.

First, Larry's students recorded videos asking questions about Brazil.

http://sacschoolblogs.org/larryferlazzo/2013/10/07/questions-for-our-sister-classes-in-brazil/

Wow, there were many questions to be answered!

I asked my students if they accepted to collaborate with them and assigned a video to each student. The student would watch the video at home, select 3 questions to answer and write a draft on a piece of paper. 

In class, I had a quick look at the texts, helped them with the pronunciation of some words while they practised reading their texts to their classmates. To make the recordings, I took a digital camera, my smartphone and an ipad to class, divided the students into 3 groups and asked them to record themselves. Although some of the video recordings have a lot of noise in the background, I believe they did a great job. They talked about  our typical food, carnival, our schools and much more.

Learning about PBL: A blended course

Changing our way of teaching is not an easy task.

How can we help teachers learn, discuss and try out new approaches in English Language Teaching?

With this objective, we've started a  blended (part face2face + part online) methodology course at the school where I work when we'll be studying about 3 different approaches: PBL, the Flipped Classroom and Mobile Learning.

The course started at the beginning of September. Each week, we have presential meetings as well as online readings and tasks to carry out.

Following a PBL model, we started our course with a "driving question" :
How can we use PBL in our classes at Cultura Inglesa? 
this question was later refined to "How can we create a project which could be used with our students?"

Our final goal would be to think of a feasible project which could be implemented in our classes considering our reality.

But, how could we reach the final goal? What would be our NEEDS TO KNOW?
We needed to know more about characteristics of a PBL lesson, see some examples, talk to teachers using PBL.

Our group came up with the following steps:

- read different articles about PBL.

- watch different videos about it.

- interview a teacher who uses PBL for teaching English.

- try to imagine our own projects.

As a teacher to interview, I suggested a dear friend, Vicky Saumell, from Argentina, who has successfully implemented a Project-oriented approach at the school where she works.

The interview happened assynchronously, first we brainstormed some questions at our EDMODO group, then I sent Vicky the screenshot of our thread and  hoped Vicky would have the time to record a  video-response for us.

Here, I take the opportunity to thank Vicky again for kindly taking her time to share her experience with us. http://vickysaumell.blogspot.com.br/
For those interested in examples of projects for ELT, check  one of Vicky's presentations on slideshare http://www.slideshare.net/vickys16/saumell-meaningful-use-of-web-20-projects

 

It has been a great opportunity for me not only to study with a group of teachers who are my colleagues but also to try to be a more collaborative teacher.

Our next module is about "The Flipped Classroom".