To Class 2020....

Epilogue … to a “book” that was written by you.

Well, these are my afterthoughts after having experienced some wonderful teaching presentations and after having read some great reflections!

As some of you were inspired and became creative during this time, the same way your work has inspired my thoughts and I am going to share them with you, as if I were writing on my Penzu. 

I know that sometimes you were pressed for time “telling yourself or your friends or even your parents how mean teachers are”. It is true, sometimes we are and remember you are teachers too 😉 

You all displayed your teaching skills during this course and I was happy to read your reasoning and arguments and the way of thinking, which was similar to that of an ambitious teacher. While reading your peer review comments, it felt like I was reading real teachers commenting and motivating their students. For a moment I forgot whether I was reading my students’ evaluation or those of a colleague. 

Why did you have to complete so many tasks and assignments? Usually, when we try something new or when we want to recommend something to our friends, we have to experience it ourselves. I could have convinced you with words or with studies how helpful technology or multimedia might be but if you never tried it yourself, would you have been convinced? I doubt it!

You all talked about the many times that you practiced before class and you all mentioned how good it felt to write to a “friend” whom you trust or to a team mate that you shared the work with. So, you all experienced the benefits of Cooperative Learning yourself and now you are able to recommend it to other peers or keep applying its principles in real life. This is only one simple example but there were numerous like this throughout these last four months. 

I was also glad to read that some of you went back to your childhood memories and some others experienced new things never lived before. Being a learner is not about what happens exclusively in the classroom but you also have to find ways how to relate to it and how it can stay with us for a long time. And it does stay once you have your emotional intelligence activated as well. 

Technology savvy teachers! This is definitely a statement that describes you best. You were not equipped with a formal certificate or with a formal assessment for something that you performed; on the contrary, you are equipped with real-life practical skills. You are more knowledgeable when it comes to integrating innovative tools and media into your teaching. You are more skilled and have improved your use of technology, thus, you are able to compete at the job market with some more advantages in your possession. 

A journey/experience, skills, knowledge, call it as you wish, that you have just embarked on! (these are only some of the terms that I came across while reading your work) I truly enjoyed this journey as a co-traveller and I wish you all to encounter as interesting “places” in the future as you have done so far!

Enjoy a well-deserved holiday!

Teacher Daniela 

Approaching the end of the assignments

Hi,

As we are approaching almost the end of the assignments, I would like to make sure that you all understand the last assignments.
This week's assignment is for you to choose a Peer Review Partner, which you have already done and attached you will have the document with your names and partners. If someone does not have the name included or if he/she is alone, please send me an email and let me know.

Peer Review Partner 

The very last assignment, which is very important as it is part of the final examination, needs also considerable time.
The first draft of your reflective essay/report will be uploaded on the Dropbox on Wednesday, the 20th of May. Then your partner will work with your essay by activating the Track changes option on the Word document in order for their work and comments to be visible. In the end of the page you will also write a summary of your opinion for what you read and what needs to be changed. Then the peer review partner will submit their work on Monday (25th of May), our normal deadline for the assignment. You will submit the report that you have reviewed!

Regarding the reflective essay/report: you already know how to write an essay or report and you will have to respect its normal structure, such as the introduction, the body of the text and the conclusion. The final essay/report will be a combination of all the theoretical material that you have read for this class and the practical skills and knowledge that you have acquired while carrying out all your assignments including your teaching experience (which has been GREAT 😀). You can go over your posts, your journal entries, the materials that we have discussed to include them in your essay/report. The steps, which have been your weekly assignments, will also guide your writing and they should be also accompanied with findings and opinions from your readings. Pay attention to plagiarism and to cite the source!
In the end, do not forget the bibliography, which will also be a list of the apps and programs that you used for the teaching class.

Keep up the excellent work that you have done so far!

Best,
T :)

Penzu entries

Hi, 

Attached you will find some different ways that you can share the Penzu entries with me. Read the caption below each image. 

You can either send all the links in one email, as in this photo. 

Or you can export your entries in this way!

Or you can copy all the entries in a document !

There is no rush sharing them with me. I know that you are all busy at this moment so take you time! I have a few to start reading. 

Have a nice afternoon!

Hi everyone

Apologies for this late post, two days overdue :(

The last two days were quite overwhelming with the organisation of the work for resuming contact classes end of August beginning of September.
I will report for both groups to have the exam online in the end of June so that you can have one less subject for September.

As I mentioned in the seminar on Monday, I will share with you all the content and the rest of materials that we are supposed to cover in this course. The reason for that is to help the groups who have their projects to present next week, so they can access some other tools or tips for their presentation or for the classes that they are going to teach.

You do not need to post for all of them this week. You can organise the content as you deem most appropriate or useful for your projects and the posts should reflect the materials that you are reading or referring for that particular week.

The last topics to be discussed include the Developing stage in a project and the Evaluation/Assessment not only of the project that you are preparing but also for the students. How does assessment change and what are the latest research and study about assessment.

I will also share some templates for lesson plans as the groups that are presenting next week will have to submit their lesson plans too.

As for the rest of the students, I would like them to go review once more the document that includes the rubric for the assessment of the presentations and providing feedback for your friends when teaching. I would also encourage that you all participate actively in the classroom and with the feedback, thus, it would be better that you are all prepared to take down notes. So you will have a double role, that of the observer as a master student and novice teacher, and that of the students of the level that your friends will assign us to be.
The assessment will be online, I will organise that and I will let you know which app we will be using. It would be the same as a poll, some of these features are used in Instagram by celebrities. One app that we used last year and the students enjoyed using it was Kahoot, perhaps you could check that one out; or another one that I find quite interesting and it is part of interactive PPT is the Mentimeter; or if you find another one more interesting, you can share it with us. Please, I would like that you make a decision about the tool or app so I can arrange it to be ready for you for the presentations.

I think that was all I had to say for this week. Some of you are already sharing their journal entries with me. Thank you! From now on you will share every week your entry so you do not have to go back over your work and share it with me in the end as it will take you more time than it normally takes if you do the sharing every week.

Develop Phase-Media Components.        DDD-E Model_ Chapter 5
Develop Phase.                                         DDD-E Model Chapter 6     List of Web 2.0 Tools
Evaluation/Assessment.  
E-assessments.                  https://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/about.html               

Lesson plan samples

Do not be overwhelmed with all the resources that were shared on this post. Remember that you have one more month to go over them.

If you have any questions, please comment to this post or you can send me an email.

Enjoy the rest of the week,

T. :)

Great job with the Interactive PPT

Hi,

We all witnessed today some great presentations using the various features that Interactive PPT provides us. I think that you are ready to present your projects as you all had a go this week. You are ready to teach through the use of different media and bring to your students a variety of resources.

The topic for this week is related to your project and it helps you to organise the information. I will upload both topics in a PPT presentation where the information is organised according to my reading of the information on the book. However, you will also have the materials published so you can read them.

Chapter 2 and 3

Chapter 4

PPT Presentation Decide

PPT Presentation Design

From this week onwards you will be focusing mainly on your work with the project and the assignments are mainly related to that.


Be safe and have a nice week,

Best,
T

Interactive PPT instructions

Week 8

Hi everyone,

Below you will find a presentation about different ways of teaching grammar,
challenging the traditional approaches. And there is another video where both Grammar and Vocabulary are addressed since most of your topics for the teaching project included grammar and vocabulary. I have also included the link of the website so that you can consult it from time to time for various topics related to teaching English as a Foreign Language.

Out of your seat grammar
Grammar and Vocabulary Learning Stick by Weaving a Critical Thinking Web

Webinars videos or slides from American English Webinars webpage:
https://americanenglish.state.gov/resources/american-english-webinars#child-2522

With regard to this week's assignments and the volume of work that you claim cannot be managed.
I don't think that watching two presentations and commenting on them (which is again the maximum one computer page or even less sometimes) or creating PPT presentations (I have asked only two slides with two effects per person) and writing about Step 2, which does not take you more than a page the maximum or even less as you have all defined the skills with the topic, all of this will not take you more than one afternoon.
However, if you are not happy with this way and with the practical aspect of this subject. We could continue with the traditional way and I give you only theoretical lectures and materials and then you have your final examination based on the material. You can discuss it among yourselves and then let me know on Monday how you would like to proceed.

Have a nice week,
T