Learning technologies and using digital resources at the lessons increase the motivation of the students. I have recently attended the training, held by British Council. I have acquired new knowledge. I have studied different ways of using digital resources. They help the students to improve their English reading, listening, speaking and writing skills.Using digital resources at the lessons increase the motivation of the students. I have recently attended the training (20-22 January, 2017), held by British Council, where I have studied different ways of using digital resources. .
http://www.sweetsearch.com/, http://www.iseek.com or http://www.topmarks.co.uk These are the sites that are dedicated to education and it’s easy to find something appropriate. Authentic texts are more motivating than the texts in the coursebook. This was new for me. So I copy the paragraphs from training materials.
One of the most interesting part of our training was USING WORD FOR WHOLE-CLASS TEACHING. I was taught how to use Microsoft office word or power point as a resource in different activities, like One to three (our students always forget to add –s at the end of the third person singular), Descriptive Story or how to add speech bubbles in Power Point resources.
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Listening and speaking are one of the most important parts at the English lessons. Traditionally I encourage my students to listen to CDs, write down missing words, mark which speaker, listen and point to the right picture, write down the missing words and then listen and choose and so on. During the training I was introduced to different sites and the trainees discussed how each suitable the materials were for our needs in each site. They are:
The most interesting thing for me was cyber bullying. Using the internet and online communication tools can be a hugely rewarding experience for young people and adults alike. However, there are some potential risks that we would like to encourage our learners to avoid. We were discussed about the differences of traditional bullying and the cyber bullying. There are many different forms of cyber bullying:
- Sending mean messages or threats to a person’s email account or cell phone
- Spreading rumors online or through texts
- Posting hurtful or threatening messages on social networking sites or web pages
- Stealing a person’s account information to break into their account and send damaging messages
- Pretending to be someone else online to hurt another person
- Taking unflattering pictures of a person and spreading them through cell phones or the Internet
- Sexting, or circulating sexually suggestive pictures or messages about a person
Cyber bullying can be very damaging to our students. It can lead to anxiety, depression or even suicide. We discussed about some of the risks and the way of protection of our students.
Developing Reading Skills with Digital Tools
http://www.sweetsearch.com/, http://www.iseek.com or http://www.topmarks.co.uk These are the sites that are dedicated to education and it’s easy to find something appropriate. Authentic texts are more motivating than the texts in the coursebook. This was new for me. So I copy the paragraphs from training materials.
“ Once I find my text, I save the link then I copy and paste the text into Wordle at http://www.wordle.net/
and this produces a word cloud containing the main content words from the text. I print up the word cloud so that I can hand out copies in class. When the class starts I give each pair of students the word cloud and ask them to look at it and see if there are any words they don’t understand. They look at it together and then I help them with any of the words they are unsure of.
CuePrompter is a tool I use to help my students to gist read. It scrolls the text in large letters on my screen, so students can read it from the screen, but I can control the speed they read. This stops them from constantly stopping every time they reach a word they don’t understand and pushes them to read and scan more quickly. I set a gist-reading task and then I play the text through once. I stop the cue-prompter at the end of the text and give the students a couple of minutes to compare with the person next to them and see if they agree with their answer to the gist question. Then I ask the students to work together to see how much of the content of the text they can remember. The teacher can give the students comprehension questions.
You can also focus the students on some of the language points within the text. To do this you have to copy and paste the text into the cloze creator. This enables the teacher to produce an interactive cloze test at: http://l.georges.online.fr/tools/cloze.html I haven’t tried this activity but I hope it is funny and the students will like it.
Teaching Vocabulary Online
I will introduce you online vocabulary games:
Spell Up https://spellup.withgoogle.com/
Word Dynamo http://dynamo.dictionary.com/
Word Association http://wordassociation.org
Zondle https://www.zondle.com
One of the most interesting part of our training was USING WORD FOR WHOLE-CLASS TEACHING. I was taught how to use Microsoft office word or power point as a resource in different activities, like One to three (our students always forget to add –s at the end of the third person singular), Descriptive Story or how to add speech bubbles in Power Point resources.
As soon as I returned home I created a grammar resource about Future Simple Tense in Microsoft Office Word with some rules and an activity and it helped my students and me to understand and practice the new material better and quicker.
Practicing listening and speaking with online audio
Listening and speaking are one of the most important parts at the English lessons. Traditionally I encourage my students to listen to CDs, write down missing words, mark which speaker, listen and point to the right picture, write down the missing words and then listen and choose and so on. During the training I was introduced to different sites and the trainees discussed how each suitable the materials were for our needs in each site. They are:
This site is for recording your voice and upload your video. http://www.podomatic.com
I hope my students will like “What’s going to happen?” It is an activity using a short video for students. They have to predict what is going to happen next after watching the beginning of a video. It is possible with power point programme.
Using video
Using video at the English lesson develops the students listening and speaking skills. There are lots of activities with videos, like watch the video mute and decide what they are talking about or what they are saying, describe people in the clip, or watch and listen to specific facts and information and do True/False activity. The students can be also recorded themselves on video saying a short monologue. These and other activities enhances the students’ motivation.
This is a short review of lots of training materials. I developed and improved my experience in using technologies for the classroom. I think I will try to use them in class and after school activities and they help me to motivate my students. The lessons will be more interesting. The resources help the students to memorise materials better and for a long time. They will be involved using and creating digital resources too. I often use digital resources in my classroom. This is one of them about London Facts.
As I said, I have made a digital resource For Future Simple Tense for the VIII graders. I made it in Microsoft Word Office. It helped my students to memorize using Future simple. They made sentences using each rule and did exercise bellow correctly.
Future simple: will/won’t
· Predict or hope about the future
MP3 players will soon replace CDs.
· After the verbs:
Believe be sure expect hope know suppose think
· Will + infinitive without to:
I think she will to say it’s a great idea.
Complete with will or won’t
1. What do you think ___________ happen?
2. I don’t think Jay ________ say he’s afraid of dogs.
3. I’m sure Emma ________ miss a chance to go shopping.
4. Leyla ________ wear the black T-shirt because she loves black.
5. It’s raining, so they __________ have a picnic in the park.
6. They _________ go to an expensive restaurant because they haven’t got a lot of money.
Used materials: Learning Technologies Course 2016-2017 by BRITISH COUNCIL
http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/cyber-bullying-statistics.html
http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/cyber-bullying-statistics.html
