Breaking bad teaching habits

This video shows three negative teaching habits: talking to the board, echoing student comments, and interrupting students to supply answers. The teacher demonstrates alternative behaviors to help you change these ineffective approaches.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCifi4mgaAc

Why Online Learning Is a Smart Solution, Podcast 1

In this podcast, Suzan Patrick says that the United States spend more money than the other countries in the world (except Switzerland) but there still are huge disparities between kids. Those disparities are based on the neighbourhood they live in, the family's background... It is also because there is a real lack of teachers in some subjects. This last point is really hard to solve. For example, in Georgia, there are 400 high schools and only 89 qualified physics teachers !

That is why, Suzan Patrick says that online classes are a great solution to all those problems. It also give some flexibility and satisfaction to teachers : they feel that they have more than one at one interactions with the children, they can work with every child individually, and use time to support children to work on groups. For the students, it is also a good thing : they are going to be able to take more responsibilities, and to be connected with great teachers.

But to establish online classroom, teachers need to be prepared to teach online : someone has to teach them how it works and how to do their classes on it. 

Online learning is connecting people from all across the country, and even all across the world !

Learning differently in this new modern age

Podcast by Edutopia, The Georges Lucas Educational Foundation - Technology Integration.

What I have learnt this year

All this year in didactique de l'anglais course, I have learnt some technics in order to teach to children.

Teaching vocabulary:

• written learning (= memorize and repeat)
• association (= link a word to another or to an image)
• put the word into a context (= a song, a text...)
• make a game

We also have learnt the different stages of language acquisition :

1st language acquisition 

= the 1st language that you acquire. You acquire that language at home (not always your mother tongue).

1st stage         crying  : at birth. When they need sth or don't feel good

                     + cooing  : 2 months. When they are making vowel sounds. = an act of communication   

ex: aah, eeh, ooh, euh

2nd stage    babbling : before his 1st year. syllables (vowels + consonants) put together, make groups of sounds = distinguish & reproduce sounds              ex: mama, dada

3rd stage     1 word : end of the 1st year. 1word = a whole sentence        ex: cake

-->  UNIVERSAL ADAPTABILITY

4th stage 2 words : 1 year 1/2. 2words together = a whole sentence. They put a noun & an action verb. ex: eat cake 

5th stage telegraphic  : 2 years. adult-like use of language. manipulate tools / the words. Make simple sentences.        ex: I want to eat the cake

-->  REPRODUCE SOUNDS. SPECIALIZATION OF HIS OWN LANGUAGE

  3 years 1/2. grammar is in place

  6 years. spoken english is fluent

Every child goes through the same stages

To acquire a language, the parents do some things for helping their baby: 

•  speak very slowly & repeat very often
•  pronounce words very clearly 
•  make short sentences 
•  speak with a higher voice & intonation
•  point out some important things (objects) witch baby uses

According to Berko, the melody of words helps the baby to understand and permit the imitation 

According to Zimbrado, Nature (coo + babble) and Nurture (family take care of his baby)are at work in the development of language competance (=1st language acquisition) 

2nd language acquisition (SLA)

= the 2nd language that you acquire. you acquire that language at school or at home.

To teach a 2nd language, the teacher has to be interesting, as if everybody understood, speak slowly & with gesture, repeat himself, make breaks.

= «comprehensible input» = giving a message that every person can understand with no effort.

When you acquire a 2nd language, the notion of consciousness is important...

A child "picks up" knowledge --> without conscious effort

An adult works and studies (consciously) in order to succeed

(but adults are also capable to "picking up")

acquire knowledge = implicit knowledge

learn knowledge = explicit knowledge

According to Krashen, it's entirely independent

Richard Schmidt introduced the term of "consciousness" 

• as "intentionality" = learner makes conscious and deliberate decisions to learn some SLA
• as "attention" = incidental learning = learner picks up L2 knowledge through exposure

BUT, learning incidentally # learning without conscious attention (according to Krashen)

R. Schmidt gave another sense to consciousness in language learning : "awareness"

= learners are conscious of acquiring L2 elements : "intake" is converted into L2 knowledge.

--> psychologists disputed this : learners are always aware of what they are learning.

Make implicit (knows rules but not what they consist on) explicit and make explicit (knowledge about the L2) implicit  => conscious attention.

We have also learnt the meaning of the different levels in language acquisition

The Conseil Européen Commun en Référence des Langues (CECRL) are 

• A1 / A2 = basic
• B1 / B2 = intermediate
• C1 / C2 = advanced

The Virtual Classroom : online learning, podcast 2

1) What does the teacher ask the children to do ?

To log onto the internet.

2) What has the internet facilitated ?

The whole world of learning.

3) What does the internet provide ?

An alternative to traditional classroom instruction.

4) When are the classes open ?

24/7

5) What is the name of this school ?

Daniel Jenkins School

6) Where is it ?

Haines City, Florida

7) What would students normally do ?

They would do it at home

8) What is hard for the students ?

To get oysters and squids at home.

9) What is the great opportunity according to her ?

To get to meet her students face to face.

10) Why are the Virtual classes better than real ones ?

The teacher can relate better to her students.

11) What can you better identify with a Virtual class ?

The students’ strength and weaknesses.

12) When has the Florida School been established?

In 2000

13) For which levels is the course made for ?

For grade 7 to 12.

14) What sort of curriculum do they offer ?

The full high school curriculum.

15) What are the school in rural West Virginia required to do ?

They are now required to offer foreign language courses.

16) How long do the Spanish classes last ?

45 minutes.

17) What does the geometry teacher do ?

He splits his time between virtual and real classes.

18) How many high schools colaborate with the Virtual classroom program ?

300 high schools in 26 states and 16 foreign countries.

19) What did the music teacher developed ?

He developed «American Popular Music JC»

20) How higher is the success of VHS students in their examination ?

10 percentages points higher than the national average on the final exam.

Podcast by Edutopia, The Georges Lucas Educational Foundation - Technology Integration.

Stanford Summer Teaching Institute (SSTI) podcast 3

In this podcast, the teacher Pam Grossman explains that SSTI "is an opportunity for teachers to continue deepening their own understanding at both the content of their teach as well as teaching itself"

I think that it is important for a teacher to continue to learn, thanks to the deep learning of their subjects, teachers are even more able to teach properly. A good teacher makes a good program, and it leads to a good student.
According to me, SSTI can also reinforce their commitment in teaching, they focus more on their goals and they feel more concerned.
SSTI is a good thing to improve the teachers' technics in teaching. Thanks to this program, they can share (in team) what they learnt: it is a good way to distinguish what worked and what didn't in their way of teaching. They can mix their ideas and their experiences in order to try to reach an ideal way of teaching.


Podcast from Stanford School of Education

Which tools I have learnt to use

During this semester, we have learnt about teaching with technology ... so, we have learnt how to use some tools that we can use in teaching. It's making the class more interesting, interactive and funny :) It also makes the students closer to the new technologies.

• Voicethread : It transforms media into collaborative spaces with video, voice, and text commenting.
• Wordle : to make some words more visual.
• Podcasting : online audio content that you can download through the internet. 
• Blog : It's a personal website in which we can express ourselves, share information, discuss subjects with people around the world or exchange ideas with another class abroad.

I didn't know those tools before, but voicethread is my favourite one. We had fun in using it and it is a great solution to teach at a distance, every one can comment or add something.

There are 3 websites in which we can chat with native speakers :

- echangelinguistique.com

- busuu.com

- omegle.com

I haven't used those yet, so I can't give you my point of view... sorry !

Teaching with a story

A good story telling

• to put intonation + rythme in your voice
• to make gesture, mimes + facial expressions
• to speak slowly + repeat
• to have an eye contact with the audience
• to make pauses
• to vary your voice : change voices, 1 character = 1voice (don't change your character's voice during the story !!)

After telling a story

• play games
• sing a song
• act the story
• make a quizz
• make masks

How to make your own story ?

Choose your topic, what children like in stories ?

• animals (fable)
• fairy tails
• funny stories

Choose the type of your story : romantic, humorous, horror, detective ...

Choose the child profile : age, boys, girls ...

When you are making a story, you have to think about :

• how to tell the story : video, photos, drawings... ?
• what is the language input and output (vocabulary, grammar...)?
• what is the following activity ?

Then, when you are making your story, you have to

• introduce the main character (who is nice, kind...)
• present the conflict
• detail the climax of the story (= the most interesting and memorable scene)
• resolute the conflict (= how the character resolves the problem)
• what happened in the end ?
• PAY ATTENTION to never change the characters' clothes : the children have to be able to recognize them !!
• PAY ATTENTION to use simple language : transparent words, simple tenses, short sentences...

In your story YOU MUST HAVE :

• a beginning a middle  and a end
• a conflict : external or internal or environmental
• the resolution of the conflict
• an happy ending !

Vocabulary I have learnt during this semester

teaching a foreign language = 3 objectives :

• communicative objective (= it is when you are meeting someone for the 1st time)
• Linguistic objective (= it is things like vocabulary, grammar...)
• Socio-cultural objective (= the different way to live or talk, like "Hi", "Hello", Hey", "Good morning" ...) 

e.learning = teaching with technologies (it's more fun for children!)

edublogs = It's a blog written by someone in education, for example, a blog written by or for a teacher.

language input = what the teacher wants the student to learn

language output = what the student is actually able to give out at the end (+/- 10%) 

Are robots able to replace humans ??

Saya, the amazing Japan robot !!

The Japanese robot Saya has already been used as a receptionist and secretary.

Now she is to become the world's first teacher. The professor Hiroshi Kobayashi has been developing Saya for over 15 years.

A primary school in Tokyo will be the first recipients of Saya as a teacher.

Saya is multilingual and will do roll call as well as set tasks from text books.

Wordle

Wordle si a tool called a tag cloud or a word cloud. It is a visual representation for text data, typically used to depict keyword metadata (tags) on websites, or to visualize free form text.

'Tags' are usually single words, and the importance of each tag is shown with font size or color. 

This format is useful for quickly perceiving the most prominent terms and for locating a term alphabetically to determine its relative prominence. When used as website navigation aids, the terms are hyperlinked to items associated with the tag.

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/5158660/web_2.0

The lost necklace

Here is our project which shows a way of teaching english at a distance thanks to voicethread. 

This story is about a princess of Japan named Yuki, she will venture in different countries to grant her father’s last wish.

Do not hesitate in commenting our story so that we could improve our work !

http://voicethread.com/share/2970743/

Did you know ?

Technology is more and more present in our environment, there have been a lot of changes : you can have any information wherever and whenever you want. And the educational system should be adapted to those changes in order to avoid a generation gap.

Today's young people are known as a digital and technological generation and they are heavily influenced by all kinds of technology. However, in education the word "technology" has often a bad connotation.

According to the statistics of the NCES (National Centre for Educational Statistics), 80% of children in kindergarden use computers. This number increases to 97% for students in grade 9 to 12.

Schools should admit that there is a real need to teach to those children how to use computers and the internet reasonably and usefully. Teachers have to educate children using digital information and technology. But, they cannot do this without including it in their own classroom. Using technology in teaching has become necessary in order to best prepare students to their future in the new generation. 

Samy story

Samy is a little boy who travels all around the world thanks to his magical power !!

This story is dedicated to children, it helps to teach vocabulary : here the name of 8 countries.

Once upon a time in a far far country, a little wizard boy: Samy was alone at home and wanted to try a new fate, for that he went to the immense magic cupboard and picked one without even reading the label and swallowed it.

A magical thing happened: when Samy opened his eyes, he found himself next to lions and giraffes. 

It was unbelievable! All the time he winked, he found himself in another country. He winked more than fifty times and therefore, he visited more than fifty countries: Turkey, Japan, Greenland, France, Spain, China, Canada, Australia, ...

He really enjoyed it but at nightfall, Samy missed his parents and started to cry. He closed his eyes so hard that when he opened them again, he found himself at home with his parents who were looking for him all day long. When he regained them, they gave each other a big hug and Samy promised never to play with the fates anymore and since this day, he has been listening his parents.

Turkey

Japan

Greenland

France

Spain

China

Canada

Australia

Photos from flickr

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/5153594/Untitled

In close cooperation with  : http://thenabilaschronical.blogspot.fr/  and   http://justine-justine-38.blogspot.fr/

Facebook, a good tool to teach ?

According to me, Facebook is a good social network: you sign up to share photos, videos, write articles or to keep in touch with your friends. Besides the most of them use it, and it is also practical. 

Facebook can be a good to keep teacher-pupil and pupil-pupil interaction outside of the class. It can also help teachers to be connected with parents and to give them some important information (assignments, upcoming events...), or to show what their children do in class (with a diary for example).

The teacher must create a Facebook profile for professional use only to separate his professional and private life; plus he has to show to pupils how Facebook works. 

Not to mention that the social networks used in teaching can make a course more vivid and more interesting than a traditional one.

But Facebook might become intrusive quite quickly: when you have an account, everybody (or almost) can put information or photos of you without asking for your permission, and you cannot do anything to prevent it. Plus, Facebook is completely open, you have no real privacy even if you do not post things. Moreover, you cannot completely delete your account : it is still open to everyone and everyone can put some photos of you...

So, I am not against using Facebook to teach but as a teacher, we must be vigilant and pay attention to what is being asked to do for children.