I am trying to make everything clear for me and my colleagues about my plans for the final project .
I. Background
•Who are the learners?
There are 30 students (18 girls and 12 boys). They have their English classes split in 2 groups of 15 pupils. Both groups consist of 9 girls and 6 boys each. The two groups have English classes in the same time but in different classrooms: one group in the English lab and the other in their own classroom. They have 2 English classes of 50 minutes a week and each week the groups change classrooms and the English teachers. My counterpart is an American Peace Corps volunteer.
All our students are Romanian and they are 12 or 13 years old. Most of them (90%) come from decent, caring and well-off families.
They have varying levels of English, with an overall high level of comprehension. They are engaged, hard working and creative. All the students are familiar with computers and the Internet and have computers with an Internet connection at home.
They can be competitive at times and it is important that the project is going to require everyone to have equal participation and individual goals. This is important, because the quieter or lower leveled students will not be left behind by more competitive and higher leveled students who seem to be more than willing to take charge or take over.
The students need to be engaged and challenged. They seem to flourish when planned lessons allow them to use their imagination inside of structured activities. Therefore they are given freedom to be creative but in a manner that hits directly to the objective of the lesson.
•What is the setting?
The English classroom setting (for a group of 15 pupils) is a cosy room with 15 tables and chairs arranged for group / pair work. There is a laptop with an Internet connection, a projector, speakers, a printer, a screen, a whiteboard and 2 CD-players (one is used in the other English class). There are also two cabinets with English literature, tapes, CD-s, DVD-s , English literature, dictionaries , posters , flashcards and other additional materials . We have posters about culture and civilization in England and the USA as well as the maps of these countries.
All over the walls and on the cabinets I have posted pictures and reports of my students' English activities, contests, and parties.
II. Issue or problem to be addressed that technology can help with
At this point I realized that I have diagnosed a lot of issues .Listing all of them will help me select the most appropriate way to handle all or will make me choose one or to in order to take care of them once at a time .
1. Thinking about me and my recent discovery about a difference between my lesson plans and Deborah's template for lesson plans involving technology, another issue could be that I, as teacher, do not address to all types of learning styles.
2. Speaking about student-oriented problems, I can also see that my students' vocabulary is not developed enough to produce fruitful communication (in writing or speaking). That is why my American volunteer meets them in a 1 hour and a half session a week outside classes for a so-called creative writing course.
3.Anyway, I feel that a common problem of each of us is that our students do not spend enough time for self-study. Most learning involves reading and the better they read, the easier it is to learn. The more they read, the more they know. Nowadays majority pf students do not read. Not more than the daily lesson, if they even do that. We have somehow make them understand that reading is a skill that enhances vocabulary, comprehension, assimilation of ideas and synthesis of arguments to arrive at conclusions.
4. For sure, I should try to motivate them intrinsically. Malone and Lepper (1987) have defined intrinsic motivation more simply in terms of "what people will do without external inducement." Intrinsically motivating activities are those in which people will engage for no reward other than the interest and enjoyment that accompanies them. According to their research I think I have to think more about ways of promoting intrinsic motivation.
5.I should pay more attention to choose subjects they are interested in- this way trying to challenge them. Because anybody wants to have control over what happens to them I could let them choose these topics in a special session at the beginning of semester .Of course, we have to follow a syllabus, but there are a few hours at the teacher's disposal. And I think if I knew from the beginning the area of topics, I could integrate them into syllabus topics.
6. Cooperation as a factor of intrinsic motivation could be enhanced in my class using group and pair work more.
7.Making the result of students' work visible, I believe they will feel prouder and will be more careful about their work.
III. Possible solution(s) to try
•What will you do?
Issues 1 and 6 -In my post regarding class issues I have mentioned that I do not address to all types of learning styles and students do not cooperate enough. The PBL discovered this week with its WebQuest seem a great solution.
Benefits of problem-based learning include, besides skills development, working in groups to realize a common, final product. This way my students will have a common goal. Their interpersonal skills will be challenged this way and they will have to refine them .They will gain greater respect for themselves and their fellow students working collaboratively. This way they will become good listeners and recognize that there can be many valid points of view. They will communicate their ideas so that all can learn from them. In conclusion they will develop transferable skills that are valuable to their life after formal education.
Searching, solving, creating and sharing involved in PBL will address to all types of learning styles. Using images, pictures, colours, and maps PBL will address to visual learner. The aural learning style will be challenged by sounds .The verbal one will be a good guide for the other at reading and writing. The non-static atmosphere during the project process will help the kinaesthetic one. Classifying and grouping information will help the logical style learner .Learning in group will be appealing for the social learning style and the way of letting children think independently will address to the solitary type .
As Azhar said in her last post , blogs can also be a helpful tool . I have already posted on my blog some ideas about how to use them under: "Week 1-pondering on using blogs in my English classes " , at http://cami-camisthoughts.blogspot.com/2010/06/pondering-on-using-blogs-in-my-english.html.
Because I also think international collaboration is a good way to involve technology and to foster our students' motivation, I would like to collaborate with you and your students starting from this school year. Having a common base in web skills so far, both of us could create a technology-enhanced and collaborative path to follow with our students. We can compare the compulsory topics in our curriculum for certain levels and decide what would work for both. Or we can expand the topics out of mandatory.
I would be glad to twin with any of my colleagues who think this way we can keep our students on the track of becoming good English users.
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