Languages: French, Spanish, English, German (a bit!).
Mum, teacher of Modern Languages, web 2.0 enthusiast, keen cook, eager member of Fosse Singers choir.
You will find my attempt to use web 2.0 tools in my teaching and to enthuse my students, recipes, singing news, film reviews, unusual stuff, stuff I've discovered thanks to my amazing PLN.
Please comment and discuss my posts, my blog is not intended to be a monologue, rather a forum for discussion :)
Today, I got very exciting when I checked my email box and found an email form one of my year 8 student (12-13 years old) saying:
Hello, miss, here is my montage. I would like you to know that I couldn't find a music that would fit in my presentation, I tried my best.
Anyways, hope you enjoy the presentation.
Take care
bye
See My Montage 5/25/09 online.
For the past few weeks, I have worked with my year 8 class on a project about holidays. I asked them to prepare a spoken presentation about what they usually do on holidays and to add pictures on One True Media. It allows you to create a presentation with pictures and sounds (a bit like Animoto). I recorded my students' spoken presentations on Audacity and saved them as mp3 files. They then added their voices to their One True Media presentations. All of this was class work and I never asked my students to finish the work at home. So I was very happily surprised when I received this email on a Sunday evening! This student had got to one true media on her own and finished the presentation on her own! This is the first time it happens to me and this is all due to the power of web 2.0!
What about you? Have you had students working on their own without you having "to bribe" them? Do you think web 2.0 tools engage our students much more?
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Today I received an email by Carla Arena (one of the organizer of Images4Education) mentioning an exciting project.
Alison Miyake was the one who suggested it on http://images4education.ning.com/forum/topics/exchange-of-photos-with
She says : "I am teaching English at my daughter's elementary school this year (in
the south of Japan) to grade 5 and 6 students. I was wondering if
anyone here would be interested in exchanging photos of school and
everyday life in other countries with us. My students are always asking
me about what is popular with kids their own age in Canada (where I am
from), and I have to say that I honestly don't have any idea! My
students don't have a lot of experience with the computer, although
they do have access to computers at their school. I am envisioning
possibly creating a special Flickr page for our project and then
deciding on themes to last a month or two (ie school, school bags,
classroom photos, lunch, lunchtime play could be the first starting in
September, then school events or holidays, popular books, favourite
foods, my house, my neighbourhood, unusual objects - ie something the
kids think might be unique to their country, etc.) and having the
students take photos."
It is such a fantastic idea, I want to join next year with my new school (although it is supposed to be only for elementary school?).
And you? would you be joining as well?
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Yesterday, I was telling you about Flickr groups.
After writing the post, I decided to create a group called Images to teach languages where you can share or use photos or videos to teach either a word, a conversation or a grammar point.
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You can join groups on Flickr where you can share similar interests for photos.
I joined two groups:
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Following my success with year 9 (13-14 years old) using BOOKR in the IT room, I decided to get my year 8 (12-13 years old) low ability group to the IT room and use BOOKR as well.
But this time, students had to create a photo book about their last holidays. You can see some of the work they produced, it's great and this is the first time I had no behavioural issues with this group in the IT room. All the students were engaged and focused in the task, and even some of them asked me if they could email their work to themselves.
So thumbs up BOOKR :)
To view some more of my students' work, go on http://www.leprofesseur.edublogs.org/
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I had a productive day today in the IT room. Because it doesn't happen that often (i.e. computers don't work, the Internet is off, this site is blocked ....), I thought I would blog about it ;)
I used an easy web tool called BOOKR. Again I read about this on Ana Maria's blog
Ana Maria is an EFL teacher and works at a language Institute in Brazil, she also played a big part in the online course Images 4 Education. You can follow Ana Maria on twitter @anamariacult
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This is another lesson I planned for year 8 (12-13 years-old) students. We are now learning European countries and languages in French and I wanted to have a change from my old flashcards showing flags of the different countries.
So I used a great tool called PHRASR. I read about this on Ana Maria's blogComments [10]
A few weeks ago, I had to plan a lesson on food and drinks to a year 8 (12 years old) low ability group to show how I use differentiation. I was going to be observed by some senior managers so I decided to show them my IT skills and what I have learnt so far thanks mostly to the great professionals I follow on twitter.
The aim of the lesson was to introduce different food from different countries to my students and to create a nice menu which would include the words they have learnt during the lesson.
My students were teamed up into groups of 3 to 4 and had to look at the mosaics and to decide the type of restaurant (French, Chinese, Mexican ....) and then on the nationality of the food and if it was a starter, main course or desert. In teams, they then created their own menu.
The lesson went well because students liked to work in teams and helping each other out and also because they liked guessing from the pictures.Comments [5]
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