Reflections: Week 3

Hello friends,

This week, like the previous one, has been very productive. Creating the delicious account was pretty easy. This is the first time that I am using any networking site to manage my bookmarks.

The project plan by Nalini Reddy is very inspiring. Barely two weeks through the course, she could tap the potential of all the web resources used by Courtney and her team to put together this course. She thinks of a classroom just as this one and plans to prepare teachers out of dedicated citizens.

The articles and websites about teaching different language skills are very useful. They have added a lot to my list of web resources.

I just keep thinking about all the possible ways of using these web resources in my not-so-technologically-advanced surroundings. I am also thinking about the final project plan. I can never expect my students to use all the technology that I am getting knowledge of. So my plan will focus on my use of technology to prepare lesson plans and executing them with my students without making them feel intimidated and/or inundated with  technology.

Vinita.

Reflections: Week 2

Hello everyone,

        As the second week of our course is drawing to a close, I look back at it with a sense of amazement and achievement. Our Instructor introduced a whole new world of search engines to me and brought me out of the limited sphere of Google, Youtube, and Yahoo. I never knew that we have search engines for such a great variety of specific tasks – from finding photographs (Flickr) to scholarly articles (JURN, Directory of Open Access Journals), from finding government information (Foreign Governments (Intl. Documents Coll., Northwestern U)) to finding information related to fine art (Artcyclopedia), from finding arguments for and against  debate topics (Glean Comparison Search)to finding basic information in encyclopedia(Columbia Encyclopedia), from finding extensive information about a country(CIA World Factbook) to finding historical information (Digital History) – oh! What an exhaustive list! I have already started using them and have found some relevant material for my research.

        As for the ABCD objectives, I have known about them for a while now and have been using them for some of my classes. The best thing about this style of writing objectives is that they make us be extremely specific about what we wish to achieve through that particular lesson. The measurability of objectives makes our assessment process easier and much more accurate.

        The final Project Plan that I am trying to put together is still in a nascent stage. I am still not clear about the class that I would like to do the project with. For now, I have thought of making the plan for my General English students who study English as a compulsory subject for B.A. Part 1 course. They have to just pass the exam as the marks for this paper are not included in the final grades. Obviously, the motivation of the students to learn is low. They just want to study enough that will enable them to get minimum pass marks. Teaching them, and cultivating in them an urge to actually learn is a challenging task. I am sure, technological novelty in the classroom will evoke some interest in them to learn for life, and not for marks.

        Their course includes basic topics of grammar such as tenses, active and passive voice, direct and indirect narration, basic phonetics, word stress, and basic comprehension and composition skills. I plan to focus my attention on grammatical part of the course. If you have some suggestions, please feel free to share.

        The other classes that I am teaching are – poetry and drama to the students of all the three years of B.A. course. I very often include certain tasks that focus on language rather than literature even in my literature classes. I might think of something for these students as well. Will decide in a couple of days. 

Happy learning to all my coursemates.

Vinita

Welcome to My Blog

Hello everyone,

Welcome to my blog!
 I created this blog four years before for a teacher-training course, but have not been able to use it for teaching or learning purposes. I am happy that I'll be able to do it now.

Teaching English Language to students of government colleges in Rajasthan where most of the students come from nearby villages or smaller towns is a very challenging task. I hope this course will help me find new ways and techniques for making my lessons easier and more learner oriented.

Good luck to everyone!

Teaching Speaking

It was much better than my previos lesson. I am satisfied to a great extent. The warm-up went well since the story of the Ramayana was familiar to them. The main task was also responded to well. But I think I should have spent more time on explaining the story to them after the task was over. I am happy that I included a follow-up exercise.
I also need to be more careful while framing my 'objectives'. I still have some problem doing that.

Teaching listening

Not really happy with the lesson........could have been better. My choice of song was not a wise one, but i could not realize that before the practicum. The good part was that the students responded well. They could relate themselves with the theme and the gap-fill task was also satisfactorily completed.

Teaching writing

Fun again! But since I had to change my whole lesson plan at the 11th hour, I don't think I could give my 100% to it. Anyway, the students enjoyed the activity.But there is scope for improvement.
I enjoyed my other group members' lessons a lot. So many new things that we can do in our classrooms...........

Hello everybody!
Oh! Finally the first practicum is over.
Hmmmm....good experience. The students were more or less like our own students - some being very attentive and active.
I tried to incorporate prereading, during reading and post reading strategies in my short session.I did a brief brainstorming. Then I went for GIST. Dividing them into groups, I made them write summary of their respective pieces. Taking help of their responses, I explained the story "Dad's Blessings" to them.
Since not much time was available, I could not adopt jigsaw reading as my postreading strategy(I would have loved to do that). I asked some of them them to explain the story to me in a nutshell.

I think the objective of making the students understand the story was achieved. But I realize that I should have distributed the complete text to them after they had done GIST exercise.
I also realize that we can make our classes much more interesting with help of these strategies (though we ARE using some of these strategies in our classes).