"You talk as if a god had made the Machine.. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men. The Machine is much, but it is not everything. I see something like you in this plate, but I do not see you. I hear something like you through this telephone, but I do not hear you. That is why I want you to come. Pay me a visit, so that we can meet face to face, and talk about the hopes that are in my mind."The machine stops - 1909 - Forster
"What does a keen on blogging English teacher on a second honeymoon in Istanbul do?"
She posts cards. :)
I'd like to share a lovely idea a friend of mine, Daniela Becchio, had to teach her students the Present Continuous tense.
While on holiday in Istanbul she took the time to write a postcard to each student, describing what she was doing at the moment.
In the following lessons the students wrote new versions of the story with different points of view.
The narrators were other characters in the story such as Learnie itself, Chreate, some animals in the farm, a plant, a boy, dragons, and so on...
At this point digital media were introduced.
A new character came out: that was Lalla, Learnie's "girlfriend".
She spoke to the students and asked for their help.
Listen to the Blabberize.
The new task was helping Lalla find Learnie.
At this stage a glogster was created to introduce students to digital storytelling , to help them understand the meaning of "digital explanation" and to explore some of the tools available online.
Teacher: - Open your diary and write down homework for our next lesson -
Teenagers grumbling.
Teacher: - Homework: look at your Ipod and make a playlist of your ten favourite songs in English -
Surprised teenagers grumbling.
Lesson2
All the class have their homework.
Teacher: - Ok, now work in groups of three and, after looking at your classmates' titles, make a new playlist of ten songs. Then, write a text , something like "My day yesterday" , using the simple past and embedding the titles in the text in such a way that it sounds natural and meaningful. -
Smiling teenagers on task for one hour.
Lesson 3
Martino, aged 13 ( 21st century teenager interested in music, arts and internet ) comes to lesson
with a memory stick .
- Teacher, have a look at this. I thought I could record my voice and let the music play in the gaps with the exact songs words. It took me all Sunday afternoon, but I did it! -
Thus a pencil and paper make excellent concentration tools
( Michael Leboeuf)
Providing students with written passages to study and analyze is obviously a good thing for them. They notice vocabulary, grammar structures and syntax and use them as models for their own texts. In a recent post Copy that Jason Renshaw stresses the importance of making students copy down the inputs/models/samples in order to fully experience the text.
For language learners in particular, the process of copying out texts is a fantastic way to slow down the language and encourage some noticing of the finer details (before the teacher with the whole class helps them notice some of the bigger picture things happening with the text). It also encourages more uptake in the form of chunks, as learners gradually learn to memorise phrases and parts of clauses in order to speed up the copying process.
I totally agree with Jason: copying things down helps students improve concentration skills, it's good for spelling and it engages both eyes and hands.
Despite all these pros, copying down can also be labelled as a BORING activity. That's why I feel guilty if I simply tell my students " Copy that" without trying to spice up this exercise a bit.
The activities which follow are an attempt to find a compromise between the need for the copying process and the demand for more challenging, task-based and creative activities.
HALF-COPY
Students read a text which is displayed on the IWB. They work on pronunciation and , after that, they are given some minutes to read the text silently.
Here is an example. The text is about Edward Cullen's physical appearance ( adapted from Wikipedia to make it suitable for elementary level ).
Then, on the IWB, the same text is displayed with the last part of each word covered with coloured ink. The students have to copy and remember the whole words.
COPY RIGHT
This activity worked quite well with my students. We've been studying Martin Luther King and racial segregation. I wanted them to memorize some parts of his "I have a dream" speech, but I didn't like the idea of handing out photocopies of the printed text.
So , using the site Mirror Writing - pniTiяw яoяяim, I wrote it backwards.
The mirrored text looked like this.
Then we created a Wordle using their answers. That was the starting point for further work on vocabulary.
We also recycled common words introducing emoticons.
Students were shown smileys and had to guess the animals they represented.
Some new words were introduced using emoticons.
Here is a link to a site where you can find a lot of them
We thought we could let people comment on our creatures and we made a Voicethread.
Feel free to add comments if you wish.
Steps 6 : Wrapping things up
Teaching aims: making students reflect on the meaning of words such as "diversity", "imagination" and "creativity" Web2 tools used: Animoto
A class discussion was led to fully understand the meaning of creativity and the incredible power of imagination. As a final consideration they came up with these simple words:
