More interaction for Reading activities (PART 3)

Continuing my exploration with tools suggested by different edtechers (check PART 1 and PART 2 for more ideas), this time I've decided to try https://edji.it/#/dashboard

With EDJI. IT, as the website says, you can ensure your students have a voice when reading.

Basically what it does is to invite readers to highlight parts of the text which call their attention and leave comments. With the free version students cannot interact with each other, but everyone can read all the comments. It could be a great starting point for a class. Another plus is that the more students select the same part of the text, it becomes red and the teacher can start face-to-face discussions from these parts.

HANDS ON MOMENT 1

Click the image below to take part in the activity and experience the website. I've selected a text from Edutopia about Teachers.

THE CODE IS qgvf

HANDS ON MOMENT 2

Another idea I found in the website is to ask students to react to the text by selecting a gif and then explain their reactions as a comment. Click HERE to participate.

THE CODE IS zpcf

What I liked about it

• It's free.
• It's very user-friendly.
• You can see how students are interacting with the text.
• Students can collaborate on the same reading with their classmates.
• The activity is less guided by the teacher so students have more voice.

What I didn't like about it

• It would be great to have some feature which would allow students to reply to other comments (in the free version, of course lol).

How to make an interactive reading activity (PART 2)

My previous post explained the reasons for writing this post and also brought the results of my exploration with a tool called ACTIVE TEXTBOOK suggested by Shelly Terrell.

This time, I focus on a website called NOWCOMMENT recommended to me by Nik Peachey.

At first glance, NowComment was exactly what I was looking for: a tool which allows teachers to turn documents into conversations and is appropriate for a large number of students.

It's free and you can upload different sorts of files.

Once you upload the document you want your students to read and discuss about, the site will alert you to possible overlays it may find on the document you've uploaded. I had problems with pdf files with images, graphs and also a pdf in two columns. I advise you to check the preview on the website to see if the formatting of the text is ok or not.

Check what happened to the PDF file I tried to upload.

Now, if the same thing happens to you, you can edit the document right there or try a different document with text only. And that's exactly what I decided to do next.

I copied and pasted the text into a Word file and also decided to try out something else, to embed a video to my word file. Following the instructions found in the website, I selected a video about the same topic and grabbed the embed code. Next, I pasted the code directly into the Word file I was going to upload to the NowComment website.

I clicked the blue button SAVE AND CONTINUE and Voilá, the video "magically" appeared.

You can use different color schemes to highlight parts of the text.

And you can also select specific paragraphs around which you can start a conversation by clicking on the speech bubble with a plus sign.

The conversation can be viewed by students in two ways: 2 panes or combined.

If you select the 2-pane view, the text is on the left and the conversations appear on the right side of the screen.

The other possibility is the combined view, with the text interspersed with conversations.

The conversation can be started by the teacher or the students themselves. And to interact with a previous comment, all you have to do is click REPLY.

Another plus is the possibility to develop discussions around videos. If you add a Youtube video embed code to the Word file you upload to the website, it's fairly easy to propose a discussion.

Above the video player, when you click ADD COMMENT, you can add a comment/question to a certain point of the video or to the video as a whole. The image I've added below shows a question I add at a certain time in the video.

HANDS ON MOMENT

Would you like to try it out with us?

If so, click HERE and feel free to leave comments, highlight parts you find important and play with the website. Be aware the text is not complete as I just wanted to test the website.

WHAT I LIKED ABOUT IT

• It's free.
• It works well with Word files.
• You can easily create Word files + embed code to different videos to create conversations around videos or flipped assignments around videos.
• You can create great conversations around images you add to a Word File you prepare beforehand.
• Using the COMBINE page view, you can create reading tasks which ask students to pause reading, discuss and then continue the reading.

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE ABOUT IT

• PDF files are easily deconfigured once uploaded to the website and it's really time consuming to edit the whole text.
• The documents are private as default so it takes some time to locate where to edit the document properties so that large groups of people can participate (especially if you don't have everyone's emails)

A video about NOWCOMMENT

Next week, I'll be exploring one more tool!

Learning with String Phones

I remember Giselle Santos' workshop during Braz-tesol Technology Seminar in SP in 2015 and how excited teachers were when making their own string phones. I thought, "how can use this activity in an English Class?".

This post aims to share my first attempt of a "MAKER" activity with a group of undergraduates who are taking an English course with me. I planned it carefully, however, I have to confess I feared students would find it childish. After trying it out, I'm happy to say their reaction was rather positive.

These are the steps of the activity developed in class yesterday:

1. I prepared the plastic cups with holes and strings beforehand. (2 cups and a string)
2. In class, students were divided into groups of 3 or 4 students.
3. Each group received instructions in English (about how to make a string phone) which were out of order. Students had to read the sentences, try to understand the words and order the instructions.
4. I elicited the order of the sentences on the board and called their attention to sequence connectors.
5. Then, I asked them what the instructions were for. Many of them guessed right. I asked them to tell me what words helped them come to that conclusion.
6. At that moment, I took out the cups and strings out of a bag which I had hidden somewhere and told them we were going to play a little bit.
7. Groups followed the instructions to make their string phone and instructed to test their device by asking each other questions in English. Pairs stood up around the room and had some fun. It was nice to see that some of the students had never played with string phones and a few were pleasantly surprised at how well they work.
8. Making use of a text taken from the website Fun Science Projects for Kids, I used the site www.goconqr.com/ to create a fill in the gap activity. The text explains how string phones work scientifically speaking.
9. Each group used a piece of paper to write down their guesses for the missing words. I used my laptop and the projector to show them the sentences one by one. Finally, we corrected the answers.

Created with GoConqr. You have to sign in to play the game.

The aim of this activity was to develop reading comprehension, language awareness, speaking practice and have students play while making a physical object which they used not only during the activity, but throughout our class.

Chinese Whisper with Whatsapp

The more I use Whatsapp in class, the more I realize how rich this tool is.

Last week, I tried a very simple activity with my Basic Students who had just learned how to express themselves in the Past.

Have you ever played Chinese Whisper with your students? It is an activity where Student A whispers a message to Student B who then tries to whisper the same message to Student C, so on and so forth. Or another one where the first student says "Last weekend, I went to the shopping centre", then the next student repeats the first sentence and adds one more sentence? We adapted these activities using the recording feature of Whatsapp.

These are the steps we followed:

1. I recorded the first sentence saying "Last weekend, I went to the cinema."
2. Then, I asked students to make their recordings for homework. Before they made their recordings, they would have to listen to the last recording, repeat all the sentences and add one more.

It was amazing how fast they started making their recordings as they knew the later they did it, the longer their sentence would be.

listen to ‘Chinese Whisper with Whatsapp’ on audioBoom

3. In the following class, I asked all the students to get their cell phones ( the ones who didn't have a device, sat with someone who had one) and listen to the last recording, which was the longest one, in order to write it down. It was great to see how involved they were listening to the sentences, repeating them, until they were able to write everything down. Similarly to Chinese Whisper, the last student to record the sentences ended up getting a few words wrong as he misunderstood what the previous student had said. As a result, students had to go back and listen to previous recordings to see where the mistake started. We heard quite a few laughs.

4. After most students had written all the sentences down, I asked them to dictate the sentences to me as I wrote them on the board. I used the opportunity to correct mistakes and practice the right pronunciation of words and verbs in the past.

ANALYZING THE ACTIVITY:

In the initial phase of the activity, students had to create their own sentences with verbs in the past. As more sentences were used, they had to think of different verbs and their collocations to make new sentences. They needed to take special care pronouncing the sentences clearly so that their classmates would understand their sentence and continue the game. The longer the sentence became, it was necessary for them to write the words down in order to make the recording. Step 3 was a great way to practice listening and writing again. In a way, it was a dictation created by students themselves. During the feedback moment, I tried to focus on the right forms of the verbs they had chosen and their collocations.

Reading Collaboratively with Point

This post has the objective to share a tool I've learned about today: POINT.
http://www.getpoint.co/

Point is a Google Chrome Plugin which allows you to quickly share links to websites and videos with other people. And how does it work? You install the plugin to your Google browser, then every time you want to share a link with someone, press the key @ on your keyboard and a small box pops up prompting you to choose the person or email to share it with.

Check the video below with a demonstration.



What I liked about it is the possibility to work collaboratively. By sending the link to someone, whether they are online or not, we can use the chat box which pops up to develop a conversation and reflect together. You can highlight the parts of the text you find relevant and discuss about it as I did with a colleague, Juliana Gense, tonight (we are reading in English but discussing in Portuguese).

You can share and discuss about articles and blog posts:

You can share and discuss about Youtube videos:

And even share and discuss about pdf files which have been embedded to https://www.scribd.com/

Another amazing feature is the possibility to share the whole chat with someone else via email. And how to do that? After finishing a chat, you click the key @ again and type the email. This would be perfect for sharing a chat with the teacher. The screenshot below is an example of what the chat thread would look like after being sent by email.

How can we use Point with students?

Brainstorming uses with Juliana, we imagined some possibilities:

• Have a whole group of students discuss about an article synchronously or asynchronously.
• Divide EFL students in trios and have them get together synchronously to discuss about texts or explore new vocabulary in a text. Then, when they finish the task, the can send the whole chat to the teacher.
• Invite students to discuss about a video they watch together.
• Invite undergraduates or post graduates to analyze academic papers and discuss about the parts they find relevant, then email the chat to their professor or tutor .

Guest Post: Calling an old friend to our classes

I have the great pleasure to have Aysegul Kaban write a guest post about some activities she has tried with her own students. I love reading about real life examples of classroom activities, what about you?

There are many online tools for generating QR codes which you can then use in the classroom. All of these different types of information can be stored in a code: A short piece of text, Website address, Email address, URL… 

Why not try some of these examples? 

Most Smartphones will have a barcode scanner as an app which will read QR codes. I love integrating technology to my classes and I teach English as a foreign language to young adults in İstanbul, Turkey.

This lesson plan was created to revise Past Simple, Present Perfect Simple, and Present Perfect Continuous.

I asked questions about QR codes: E.g. Have you ever seen this? Have you ever used QR code? If yes, where and when did you use it? How do we use QR codes? After getting the answers, I talked about the activity and showed some QR codes and asked the students to solve the mystery of the QR codes on the board.

Although most students had seen QR codes, none of the students were sure about QR codes. Only one of them had a QR code reader on his smartphone. I asked the students to download the free QR code reader. They enjoyed when they first scanned the QR code and asked some other codes to scan.

After doing the first trial, I asked the students to scan the code on the board and do the exercise with their partners. They did the first activity. After 4 minutes, I gave the correct information to the students. Some pairs answered all questions correctly and they felt happy because they realized they knew some information about their teacher’s personal life.

Now that the Students had seen an example, I divided the class into groups of 3 (or 4) and gave each group a self-prepared handout about basic rules of simple past, present perfect and present perfect continuous. I told the students that this was supposed to be a group contest. The winning group of the contest received a surprise at the end. I said I would record the score on the board.

I gave students a handout lacking of example sentences and told students to fill in the gaps. Students started a treasure hunt in the class and when they found they wrote it on the handout. While Students were doing the activity, I observed the groups. I checked answers by asking each group and recorded the score.

You can use QR Codes for many other purposes. Here are some tips for you!

1. You are the best forget the rest badges!

Everybody loves awards. Why don’t we give QR code awards to our students when they achieve something great? Award prizes by having students scan a code leading to an animation or badge. When they accomplish a test on Present Perfect continuous, they can get a special code that takes them to a badge for Present Perfect Continuous Guru!

2. Discovery Stations

You are going to cover a new reading but you want to try something different. Breaking the routine is always good for us and our students. You can put codes in different areas of the class that will take students to different online activities, videos or content. You can use it as a warmup activity or reading activity.

3. Answer Fortuneteller

Have students check their answers by scanning the QR code after completing a test or assignment. As a teacher, you can visually confirm when students are checking their work and can also check in to see how they are doing. Creating QR codes for difficult topics and attaching them to students’ homework. If they get stuck, they can scan the code and watch a video of you working through the problem step-by-step.

4. Provide Extension Assignments

A great way to provide optional activities for students who want to improve is to simply put the code on the class assignment and let them follow it to the extension activity or question. It won't take up much space, and might facilitate a little excitement about the extension assignment. You can give URL of a beautiful song with present perfect continuous tense as a warming activity as a homework.

5. Compile Research

Discovering new things is always exciting and by QR codes we give a chance to discover. You can ask students to make a research about their favorite star and have students create codes linking to start discovered during research. These could be posted in class wikis on a specific topic, or on a wall in the classroom. It helps give them ownership of the research process and literally creates "walls that talk."

Bio:

Aysegul Liman Kaban works as an English Instructor at Bahçeşehir University. She has finished her BA in TEFL and MA in Interpersonal Communication at Marmara University with distinction. She has been recognized by various entities, such as the ELT BLOGATHON Awards, The German National Agency Teacher Trainer Scholarship, and IELTS Morgan Terry Memorial Scholarship 2013 as an innovative, technology integrated project creator. She has been giving talks and workshops at international and national conferences, especially focusing on Mobile Learning, Google Apps, E-portpholio, digital learning apps. She is also Newsletter Editor of IATEFL TEASIG. She shares regularly on eslaction.wordpress.com and on Twitter (@Aysegul_Kaban).

Text Genres and digital possibilities

Last week, I was invited to facilitate a 3-hour mini course to EFL teachers from public schools in Uberlândia, Brazil. The topic I selected to work with was "Text Genres in English: exploring digital possibilities".

I wanted it to be a course where teachers would explore different webtools themselves and then discuss about the possibilities.

My plan was to use a Google Docs page as the basis of our course. As the course would take place at a school lab, I imagined each teacher would have access to a computer and we would use the google docs first as a space for synchronous brainstorming ( Part 1), as a guide for the activities we would develop, as a library with the links to resources we would use, as a notebook where participants would also post and share whatever they produced during the course.

However, as usual, many things didn't go according to plan. The first problem we encountered was to get each teacher to be on one computer. Although the lab had several desktops, few of them were ready to be used, so teachers ended up having to share the same computer. Well, not a big problem, I thought, at least the internet was working.

As soon as we started, I provided them with  the link bit.ly/cemepe1 and started our brainstorm activity by proposing two questions:

I made the google docs public and after they discussed their ideas with a partner, they started typing their ideas synchronously. They were amazed with the fact that they could all type on the same document at the same time and were also able to see what others were typing. I could say this was a highlight that morning.

The text genres I had selected to work that day were: poetry, message, poster, e-mail, text message, storytelling and the news.

From that moment on, the hands-on mini course became more of a lecture, against my will.

The internet was very slow and at times inexistent. Fortunately, I had a plan B with all the activities on a powerpoint presentation, so instead of trying out the tasks, I explained what the tool allowed us to develop and showed some images with examples.

By the end of our course, participants got together and exchanged ideas about what tools they imagined using with their own students and what activities they could develop.

In spite of all the problems we faced, the opportunity to be in contact with these teachers and also learn from their realities was priceless. Right below, I bring a feedback message posted by one of the participants in Portuguese (our native language).

If you would like to see our google docs, click HERE. In June, we're having the second part of this mini course. 

App Fun Day: exploring 3 cross-platform apps

Friday afternoon, we had one more APP FUN DAY at Cultura Inglesa Uberlândia.

We are still focussing on apps which work OFFLINE and are available for both IOS and android devices, such as:

- Songify 

- Instaquote 

- Buddypoke 

We had one hour to demonstrate the apps, try some possibilities, a hands-on activity and then pairs brainstormed other activities for their classrooms.

These are the activities we tried together:

Songify turns your recorded sentences into a songified version.

Challenges for using the SONGIFY:

- when recording you have to speak very close to the microphone.

- covers of devices can muffle the sound and spoil the recording.

- pronunciation has to be very clear to be understood.

Having said that, we tried recording sentences and isolated words.

With Instaquote you can create short texts with beautiful background and fonts. You can use default backgrounds or even your own photos.

First, I asked teachers to imagine ways of ending the sentence "Where there is love, .......", create an instaquote with their sentence, share with others and choose the best one.

Then, I asked them to try to guess the original quote, which was "Where there is love, there is life." by Mahatma Gandhi.

Buddypoke is a great app for children and young teens. It allows you to create customisable characters and create video recordings using your own voice.

For the background you can use default backgrounds provided by the app, grab pictures from your device or even use your camera.

After having played with the three apps, before saying goodbye each teacher was handed an EXIT TICKET where they contributed with more ideas to use the apps.

Their suggestions:

SONGIFY

- Each student records a short sentence about their last weekend and the partner tries to guess what it is.

- Record 5 to 10 words and use the app to present a different dictation.

- Students leave the room to record a sentence, then the sentence which is more easily understood gets a prize.

INSTAQUOTE

- Write definition to find out words. For example: Sentences using relative clauses (which, where) / It's a place where we buy food (they can use pictures in the background)

- Students can prepare a gap fill sentence (using comparatives for example) and their friends have to fill in the blanks. As a round up, they can practise speaking and can elect the best or more creative background.

BUDDYPOKE

- Two students create a short dialogue (with two characters) about the subject they are studying and present the recording to the class.

- Students can use it to give funny orders and their classmates have to obey. For ex: go to the front of the class and start dancing samba.

- A student records directions using Buddypoke. The other student listens to the Buddypoke and follows the directions with the help of a map.

Some examples:

SONGIFY

- A recording made by a student of mine where he reads two sentences in the First Conditional. 

Can you identify them?

listen to ‘First conditional sentences’ on Audioboo

This is a previous blog post where I explained the activity. http://lifefeast.blogspot.com.br/2012/08/songifying-first-conditional.html

INSTAQUOTE

- two instaquotes created as a test by Ana Cláudia.

BUDDYPOKE

- This is an example of what can be done by adding images from the web to the background. In this case, it's used to describe a bedroom.

Storytelling with Adobe Voice

I've just learned from the amazing blog http://www.freetech4teachers.com/ about an interesting IOS app called ADOBE VOICE which allows us to create video stories.

I just love storytelling and I was thinking of what story I would tell to try this out. The other day I was talking with a group of students of mine, some teenagers, about this love and hate chemistry. I was saying that sometimes feelings change and I mentioned that I knew that from experience.

I caught their attention straight away. They all wanted to know about my love/hate story. I've been postponing this storytelling, but they don't seem to forget that, LOL. This week, we've been focussing on narrative tenses, trying to improve our storytelling by using different verb tense combinations. This is a video grammar class about the topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPQjKcnn2No

Well, back to my ADOBE VOICE trial. I thought to myself, why not use the opportunity to tell my story and see if they can notice the verb combinations we worked with last class?

Last class, apart from doing grammar exercises with Simple Past, Past Continuous, Past Perfect and Past Perfect Continuous, I asked students to choose a story to tell: a funny story, an accident, a surprising story or meeting a famous person. They had 4 minutes to choose one of the topics and write notes which would help them tell their true story to a classmate. After pairs of students told their stories, I asked them to send me their stories via Edmodo.

Next class, I'm going to start with notes I've written down about "Our love ? story" 

Can you guess my story? After students try to predict the story, I'll play the following video which I've created using ADOBE VOICE.

http://voice.adobe.com/v/Nfo2ryMskoi

 

A friend of mine, Lívia Fernandes and her very creative boyfriend, Matheus Pinheiro, created and Adobe video with their adaptation of the story "The secret of the king". I had to share it with you, it's really worth listening.

How can we use ADOBE VOICE?

This is a tutorial showing step by step how to create your own stories. The app is FREE and very intuitive.

Humanizing the Oral Assessment moment

Do you have to assess your students' oral performance in English? Do some of your students feel anxious and end up speaking less than they normally do in a normal class? Do you, teacher, feel exhausted after a whole class assessing pairs of students? If you can relate to some of these questions, this post might interest you.

The objective of this post is to share my experience in trying to make the oral assessment moment a less threatening one, where my students can speak to each other while I observe how they have been using the English language.

In 2012, I had the great pleasure to study about Evaluation at UFU (Universidade Federal de Uberlândia, in Brazil). I learned a lot and one of our first topics was about the difference between ASSESSMENT and EVALUATION. I had always understood an assessment as an ongoing process which involves observing not only the 10 minutes a pair communicates in front of a teacher for marking purposes, but specially the overall performance observed during the classes. 

So, what is the difference?

Table from online document http://duke.edu/arc/documents/The%20difference%20between%20assessment%20and%20evaluation.pdf

While reading several books and participating in discussions, an important point I had failed to observe was the objective of an Oral Assessment. If an Oral Assessment in the middle of the semester is supposed to be formative, its goal should be to diagnose areas for improvement. I asked myself: Have the Oral Assessment interviews I've been conducting with my students for years and years been diagnostic or judgmental? 

Due to my dissatisfaction with the way I had been assessing, or better, evaluating my students, as a final project for the Evaluation Class I had been taking at University, I decided to try something different.

Considering that we can continuously assess our students orally during our classes, the oral assessment moment would be one more opportunity for focussing on the speaking skill, therefore, there would be no need to check every little word each student spoke.

My proposal:

1. ONE CLASS BEFORE
Tell students about the oral assessment moment which will take place the following class and explain that they will be doing the same kind of activities they normally do in class. Show the rubrics to students:

By explaining the rubrics to students, they could understand that my focus was not to write down every little mistake they make, but how well they can communicate with others. I also asked them why the item INTERACTION had a different mark (1-2-3-4) from the other items. They promptly answered "Because it's more important". 

I told them their marks (yes, for the school record there has to be a mark) would be a combination of 3 observations: my impressions, their own impressions and their peers' impressions.

2. THE DAY OF THE ORAL ASSESSMENT

The idea is to use 40 minutes of a normal class ( we have two  80 minute classes a week) for the oral activities during which pairs or groups of students will be engaged in communicating while the teacher can move around the room observing and taking notes of their oral performance individually on the following marking sheet. 

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bzu68Gr4amCudmxzZWptT3FrVG8/edit

Before the activity, organize the desks into 4 groups at different corners of the room ( I normally have a maximum of 16 students). So with bigger groups, I might have groups of 4 and in smaller groups, trios or pairs. On each corner of the room, there's a communicative activity they have to carry out for the period of 5 to 7 minutes. To set the time limit, I normally use http://www.youtubealarm.com/ , then when the time is over a song is played and students move to the next station and a different activity, like a "carrousel".

This is a video I made of a group of students during the Oral Assessment moment. 

Do they seem nervous?

After all the groups have covered the 4 stations or the 4 different activities, show the rubrics to the students again and ask them to write their impressions about their own performance and the performance of their partners (5 to 10 minutes). This is the form (in Portuguese ) that we used.

3. THE FOLLOWING CLASS

-The teacher shows the rubrics again reminding them they have been evaluated in 50 points. The total mark involves the mark given by the teacher, the students and their peers.

- Ask for suggestions for how students can improve their oral performance in each of the items observed (Grammar, Vocabulary, Pronunciation and Interaction).

- Cut out the squares from the form used by the teacher during the oral assessment and hand to individual students. Ask students to observe the aspects they did well and the points they need to improve.

- Ask the whole group about the major difficulties they faced and what kind of activities they can do to improve their English.

What comments did I get from students?

"I didn't feel nervous!"

"Wow, I've never talked so much!" 

"This is much better!"

" I don't want to do the other type of oral assessment anymore!" 

Points to consider:

-You might question "If the objective is to have an ongoing assessment, why have an oral assessment moment?" Well, for the simple reason that, teachers at our school find it hard to abolish an evaluation moment. Another reason is to have a moment to pause and reflect with students about their progress.

-I don't know if this "Carrousel" dynamics would be appropriate for all levels and all the groups. I've piloted the idea with Lower Intermediate and Upper Intermediate students and have been thrilled with the results.

REFERENCES:

https://comoavaliar.wikispaces.com/ 

http://duke.edu/arc/documents/The%20difference%20between%20assessment%20and%20evaluation.pdf