Connecting with learners inside and outside of class

Socrative Quiz: #14036601

I created a socrative quiz for my P.5 students to check if they can tell the difference between adjectives and adverbs.

The polls are about my students’ favourite subjects, the places they want to visit the most and the time they spend on reading English books every week.

   

  

Reflection:

Before taking this course, I expected it to be very challanging as I was not good at IT. As time went by, I found the the course was useful and technology could make the learning process more interactive and fun. Technology like Padlet, Socrative and Polldaddy enabled me to collect students’ ideas more effectively.

Students also enjoyed creating  their digital stories by using Photostory 3. They were more motivated to involve in different tasks set by me such as HotPotatos tasks even though they were weak in English.

Preparing teaching materials with technology could be fun but time-consuming, I hope I will continue to use technoloy to facilitate my teaching  and my students will find my lessons more interesting.

S13 Using Online Resources for English Language Teaching

eLab can help students enhance their language awareness when they work on the first drafts of their compositions. It points out the basic grammatical mistakes they make such as subject-verb agreement and spelling. Also, it also shows the range of vocabulary students are using. If a senior primary students uses a large amount of KS1 words in his/her writing, teacher can encourage him/her to use more KS2 words. However, eLab has its own limitation. Only a limited amount of writing topics are included in the system.

Artifact: Pinterest

This is my Pinterest board about different place in London. My P.5 students are going to learn a chapter called Have fun in London. This board shows different famous places in London and also the map of London.

S12 Spicing up Teaching and Learning with Presentation Tools

This is the my prezi site: http://prezi.com/uvayzwqv_ydh/edit/#1_95982358

Prezi is something new to my students and me. Most teachers use Power point in their daily teaching because it’s already installed in the computers and it’s easy to handle. Using Prezi seems to be a bit complicated but users are required to show their trace of thoughts logically. Compared to Power point, it’s more time-saving as users can download the photos from Google and insert the links of the videos directly.

S11 Creating Videos for Flipped Teaching and Various Instructional Purposes

The flipped youtube video created by me:

http://ed.ted.com/on/2593nn7G

I am going to teach my students present perfect tense (PPT) in the coming chapter. The flipped youtube video I have created was about how to form PPT and when we should use PPT.

The instructional video I created:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/q8ybvtogdmt88bu/Write%20a%20caption.mp4?dl=0

I have created a narrated instructional video by using Screencast-o-matic.The video teaches my students how to write the captions of their family photos by using the key structure they learnt in the recent chapter.

Flipped youtube video and the instructional video are useful tools to promote students’ self-learning. Flipped teaching helps students prepare for what they are going to learn in the lesson. By watching the flipped youtube video about PPT before the lesson, students have the general idea of what PPT is and it is easier for them to follow the what the teacher is going to teach during the lesson. It makes the lesson more effective and students will be more willing to answer teachers’ questions as they already have the general understanding of the concept. The instructional video about writing a caption helps consolidate students’ knowledge when students view it after the lesson.

S9 Designing CALL lessons and projects

At this moment, I am planning to ask my P.5 students to create their digital stories with Photo Story 3. Photo Story 3 is a user-friendly tool for students to write and tell their personal stories.  Digital storytelling enables them to collect their photos, choose the background music and record their stories. Kids are always keen on watching video clips, so I believe my students will be motivated to produce their own narrated videos. They will be asked to write about their families with the key structure they learnt in Chapter 3.

The link of my Padlet:

http://padlet.com/lty125/wip0zocdfwsy

Session 8: Developing Listening and Speaking Skills through Digital Storytelling

The first part of my story is about my personal background, the most influential people in my life, i.e. my teachers and the reason why I chose to be a teacher.

The second part of my story is about the conversation between me and a student I met two years ago. His name’s Johnny, He came from a single-parent family, just like me, and he had very low ability. He was asked to stay after school doing his homework in the staff room every day. One day, he came to my seat and asked me to teach him to do a particular question. He crossed his original answer and wrote the one I taught him. Later on, I found out that his family was too poor to get him a new eraser because his jobless grandma needed to save money in order to buy some diapers for his granddad. The next day, I gave a new eraser to Johnny and said a few words to encourage him.

I have chosen this story to tell because I need to remind myself of the reason I wanted to a teacher.

Photo story (A story about an eraser):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8f5yysnyisxatxt/PhotoStory%20%28An%20eraser%29%2011.8.wp3?dl=0

Session 7: Radio Drama and Text-based Digital Stories

By using text-based digital storytelling, students will be able to write their scripts, record their voices, add some pictures or their personal photos along with some captions to devices like Photo Story 3. Students are motivated to write well because they can produce their own ‘products’ and show them to everyone.

Also, they can share something they want to and share them in a more interesting and creative way. They can pick the background music, their personal photos or even read aloud the stories created by themselves.

Here is the link of my digital story (People who made me a better person):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pz2tmsg9i761jjc/PhotoStory1.wmv?dl=0

Session 6: Podcasting for Developing Students’ Listening and Speaking Skills

To help my students with their listening, I can recommend some talk shows like Sunday Smile to my students so they get the chance to brush up their listening skills even at home.  They can listen to English songs and learn some new vocabulary via Podcast. I can even create my own podcast and read aloud some passages, poems or even the dictation. To help some weaker students of mine, I can record some audio clips teaching them how to break the words into syllables and pronounce the words.

Students can upload their recordings to Podcast. Some of my students are going to participate in the coming Speech Festival, they can upload the readaloud poems to the Podcast so other students and me can leave them some comments and appreciate their performances. Students can also read aloud their good writing and group work on Podcast.

The MP3 file of my recording ( A poem called Polar Bear by Spike Milligan):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sqgd42mbhqcxxp5/Polar%20Bear.mp3?dl=0

Session 5: Wikis for Promoting Student Participation and Collaboration

I have created three pages on my wiki. Wiki is a useful tool for self-learning. One of the pages is about common errors of the use of article. The page shows the incorrect examples and also the correct answers. I can collect incorrect use of article from my students’ writing and provide them with the correct answers. For students with higher ability, I can invite them to edit the page and provide correct answers.

The second page is grammar teaching. When teaching adverbs, I can ask the students to compare the highlighted words and differentiate between adverbs and adjectives. Then I can ask them to guess the underlying rule of using adjectives and adverbs.

The third page is about the using English websites. Students can expose themselves to English learning environment at school and at home.

Wiki link: http://liutszying.wikispaces.com/