Week 8 uuuuuuuuf

(This is my cat, Pintas)

I finished my report in time. I reviewed Gaby and Yaling's reports. I rewrote some parts in mine and improved it according to my peers' suggestions. It was good work and then I took time to relax.
Today I'm not working besides writing this blog and going around other people's blogs as usual (I already took a peep at the discussions pages) and then I'm going to walk by the river among books in the book fair. It's incredibly hot here and the best thing is really to be near water in good company - in my case, family and books are a good combination.

As for what I learnt this week, well, online test and exercise makers are great, creating a website is a thrill but takes time and dedication, the more I find out of the internet world, the more I like it and the more I want to search. I'm a bit anxious about my final report. My peer reviews helped a lot but now I feel a bit insecure - should I elaborate more? Should I include something else? Is this the best I can do? What can I improve.

I wonder if I'm too much of a perfectionist or if that's only because I'm not used to doing this kind of work and it wasn't as hard as I had thought before. I'm going to reread it tomorrow again and decide. Now, it's relax time! Everybody follow my lead and take time for yourselves- we need and deserve it!
Take care, enjoy yourselves, have fun!

Project Report

My draft is almost done but it has been hard. The weather is too good to work and this week I'm also dealing with two other projects - one related to assessing aural skills and teaching English to children.
So yesterday I spent most afternoon watching aural exams and filling in forms, in an hour I'll be driving to another school to watch a 4th grade English lesson and then I'll fill in some other forms. Then I'll have to rush back for a class meeting. I feel I am rushing all the time this week and with the hot weather kids are going nuts and driving teachers nuts! Everybody is tired around here and many of us have a lot to do, while others, surprisingly, don't seem to.
Now got some tests to correct and some more to make for next week and yesterday I had to work late at home so I'm quite sleepy and living on coffee.
Even so, I'm ok. I feel that these projects are what really keeps me going because they drag me from the paperwork and school routine.
Now something is annoying me - I can't do much with my 7A class in the next days because tomorrow and Friday are "cultural days" at school and on Tuesday we have the school "walk for health" and then on thursday a test! All those uninteresting activities preventing us from learning English! Unfair.
:)

Week seven - project development

Hi, everyone.
First of all I'm really excited about this project. I'm so excited I find it hard to write it down. I mean, I've written most of it but it doesn't seem to fit into the template. LOL. I'll have to work it round!

Yesterday was my mobile phone video lesson. Kids were really excited! First they were amazed because they were the only class who ever got permission to use mobile phones at school. Then they were very enthusiastic about making the video. Curiously, two of my best students didn't want to make the video, while the weakest who rarely say a word in English in the lesson were very commited to making it right. Two girls who are usually very quiet and shy in every class partenered together, borrowed my mobile and did some nice work! In the end, twelve kids made videos, while four didn't want to and, as I didn't want to force them into doing it, I asked them to partner and write dialogues about hobbies, which they did.

After having made the videos and watched them, the twelve students filled in a self-assessment form about the video activity. Afterwards, all kids filled in an assessment form about the technology-enhanced lessons anonymously. I thought it wasn't important to know who wrote what or who exactly liked what as I wanted to get a general impression of their feeling towards those lessons. On the other hand, I thought I could count on their honesty, as it was anonymous.

Now I'm going to have a look at the forms and maybe put the results in graphs and add them to my project report.

Some other kids saw my class outside with their mobile phones and later came to ask me what was going on. Actually, they thought they were fooling me and came to warn me that my students were breaking the rules! I told them it was a special project but didn't tell them anything else as they are not my students and I like the feeling of raising some curiosity among kids who may be my students next year. [Is this being proud?]

Anyway, yesterday my husband asked me what I get from these projects besides being overworked and tired. I told him they make me learn and make me happy in my work and he thought it is fair! :D

my project

Full permission from the school director! Now my project can roll! YES!

My first all-computer lesson

Can I be biased and talk about good things only? Sure I can, this is my blog! LOL
Activity- webquest
Autonomy - kids worked in pairs, helped one-another and seldom called me to explain anything (except to solve some technical problems)
Freedom - some were quite surprised that they were allowed to choose which places they wanted to tour virtually (the instruction was to visit at least five places but there were many possibilities)
Commitment - except for one pair who were always trying to cheat, they all sticked to the tasks and followed the instructions; most took the vocabulary quiz twice so that they could get a better score.
Time- it took a bit longer than I expected but time wasn't wasted as kids were involved in the tasks.
Problem - solving - they used online dictionaries instead of asking me what the words meant and I congratulated them on that but forbade the use of translator in the writing task
Teacher- that's me and I didn't get tired. I didn't have to talk much and only guided and assisted and ended up being very relaxed and quite sure that some learning was taking place.

If you want to you can have a look at our class blog: thecoolseventeen.blogspot.com
:D

Week six- still beat but less happy! ;)

Here I am, sunday again- I've never liked sundays much.
This past week was TOUGH.First, last weekend I didn't really have a weekend, I mean, I didn't get to rest at all, so it ended up being a long 12-days week.
Then I had to prepare a lesson to be assessed by a colleague (who I don't consider to have the skill to evaluate me n anyway) besides the usual work, and then I had a headache all week and on friday I found out it was low blood pressure because of the heat (+- 30ºC) and my tendinitis decided to strike again. As my tendinitis takes up my right shoulder and hand, it becomes hard to work on the computer - in fact, the more hours I work on the computer, the worse the tendinitis gets. Even though I have been training my left hand to do most stuff, I'm not that good with it, so my interactive powerpoint ended up being less-than-perfect.
As for my project, so far, not so good. The parents of one of the kids refused permission for posting his photos or work on the class blog and now I have to decide whether I exclude the kid altogether - which I find unfair- or I get round it. So I decided to transform the class photo in order to make us all look like cartoons (which I have not done because it requires a lot of movement accuracy, which I can't do until my tendons go back to normal). As for mobile use, school director was not at school this week and I didn't manage to get permission. If I don't get it, I'll have kids make their recordings outside school. Anyway, on Tuesday we are going to have our first all-computer lesson. We are going to do a webquest and some interactive exercises online. Kids are going to work in pairs and the writing tasks will be e-mailed to the e-mail address that belongs to the blog. They are really excited about it and so am I.
I was amazed to find out I was the only one -or almost- who nevr used Forum in class and can't explain why. Everytime I read on of the print editions I find something interesting but end up not bringing it into practice. I have to reflect on that!
That's all for now.


Sara

Just to tell you...

If you want to check earlier reflection on teaching strategies, check my other page - Previous reflections by clicking the link on your right.
:)

Some final comments about this week

It's been a hard, busy, tiring, rewarding, brainstorming week. It seems to have had I don't know how many days.

I've learnt so much and discussed so many ideas I think it will take my brain some more days to process everything.

In the end, rubrics are incredibly useful and rubistar is a must! Webquests are great ideas but I didn't manage to stretch my time into being able to create one though I have it all in my head (in fact I tried to create one two years ago but I'd have to look for it in my CD's and that would be cheating and I created it in a test-software so it'd probably not work well). Anyway, I'll do it even if I don't get extra credit.

Delicious.com has become one of my most used tools as now I save every link there whenever I'm surfing the web and find anything interesting on any topic (even if I'm only helping my godson with his oral presentation about nuclear energy).

PBL was also an issue in the congress and it is a way of structuring learning-by-doing as kids learn what they do, not what we tell them and PBL creates very good learning habits they can use for learning anything (ask a question, get informed, select facts, find a solution).

So, I wish all my weeks were as productive as this one!

so much to say - beat but happy

Hi everyone!!!

I bet you found it stange that I disappeared for some days and I was not abducted by aliens!

I was in Lisbon for the 25th APPI congress which went great (I'm aware that I use the word "great" quite often).

Lisbon is quite busy but still very beautiful. I got to walk around a bit yesterday (walking around is my favourite way of "meeting" cities) and there were lots of different people, tourists, musicians, shoppers or people who were just walking around like me and some homeless people too (they sleep near Prada and Louis Vuiton shops)!

I always get the feeling that I must stay for a week or more to get to know Lisbon but I never do - it's quite expensive to stay there.

As for the Congress, it was called "Shaping the future of ELT" and we had speakers from several countries sponsored by editors, by the British Council and the Ambassaty of the United States. The talks I went to were really interesting (there were often five at the same time so I had to select - which I was quite successful at)! I learnt about literature in class, speaking, the use of images, assessment, memorisation and some good tips about motivating students.

While I was at the sessions, I often made connections to things in our course and I even wrote down some stuff to comment with you (I'll do that another time).

I also met another e-teacher who took a course similar to ours and went to Baltimore (I'm not sure of this). She is a very interesting person and we exchanged some ideas. Just like me, she also found it hard to leave the computer and all the activities and go to teachers' meetings and classes sometimes because what we do on the courses is so much more interesting than some school stuff! I also found out a colleague I worked with 5 years ago is also an e-teacher. Soooooo cooool!

For two days I listened and spoke almost only English and the nice thing is that the speakers are really accessible people, they go to other sessions too and they comment on them and make connections.

My conclusion? I LOVE learning. At the workshops I'm permanently making connections, writing them down and thinking about my students and lessons. I come from workshops really motivated and full of ideas. I go to people and exchange ideas with them, I feel at ease with English and I want to take more and more workshops.

Finally I came home totally loaded with handouts and books and two great dictionaries besides a tone of literature (Lisbon Book Fair was just across the avenue and I spent almost 4 hours there getting great books for my mother and me) and I felt that if I was robbed in the subway I'd thank the guy for taking some weight off me!!! My husband said I'm crazy as I left home with a small bag with some clothes and came back with a backpack (which I had to buy) too other bags which in the whole weighed about 25 kg (I'm not exagerating, I actually weighed them!!!)

Well, I'm crazy but I'm happy!

final comment for week 4

There is nothing more to say, actually. It was a technology stress week. Even today I had to rush from a family party (which left my husband a bit unhappy) to be able to finally post my comments as I was worried that I might no be able to do it. I usually work well under stress but I don't like it - it makes me use too much energy. I prefer doing things in a planned way, taking my time and this week it was impossible.

I had to go back to school, deal with my students, prepare their lessons and put up with internet boycutt which was all making me get really irritated. In the end, I managed to get everything done but I felt I was running against the clock all the time.

This coming week is going to be nothing easier as I'll be travelling to Lisbon on friday for some workshops. Besides lessons and meetings and the online course I'll have the trips and the extra work in the workshops. I feel I'm just too busy all the time but I also fell fulfilled.

finally

It worked after too many attempts! uuuuf