Hello colleagues,
This week has been full of so many readings and sharing ideas on making the classrooms more interactive and engaging. This week has a special focus on large classes. Large classes are our realities in many parts of the world. Sometimes, we, teachers are reluctant to try new and innovative ideas due to the excuse of large number of students we have to teach in our classes. Therefore, looking at the possibilities of making the large classes interactive and engaging has been a very useful excise for me. I have come across many interesting as well as useful ideas of making lectures more interactive by using thinking question, motivating learners to collaborate with each other, to share ideas and to use alternative assessment techniques. One very useful practice is to use interactive power point presentation which we created and posted in the Wiki. We have been using power point slides for a long time but sometimes reading out the power point slides in the class could be quite boring for the learners. That is why we need to think about making our power point slides more interactive by inserting some slides with short thinking questions, questions for short, instant responses and setting small tasks before moving on to more slides full of even more information. The idea of using 'blank slides' for capturing the attention of our students sounds very useful too.
This week I had to start thinking of giving my project a tangible shape. I have decided to use and adapt some of the technology supported features for my project. I have decided to create a WebQuest for my students of Communicative English Course in my Foreign Language Training Center. I have chosen the topic "Let us save our planet" for the WebQuest. In this webquest students will have the chance of exploring the issue of climate change and its effects and the ways of saving the earth from the adverse effects of climate change. I have deiced to get students browse some selected websites to gather information on the issues and respond to questions individually and in pairs. They will also be asked to make lists of the dangerous effects of climate change and suggest ways of reducing them. There will be two video clips for the students to see and prepare some posters to make people aware of the dangers of climate change. Finally on the using the information from the websites, power point slides and video clips, my students, in small groups, will prepare oral presentations as part of their final assessment. Students will be assessed on the basis of a checklist, oral presentations and poster making activities. Three rubrics will be developed for assessing students on each of the three assessment methods, checklist, poster making and oral presentation. In doing so I'll be able to integrarte the idea of alternative assessments with the project based learning practices.
I have already shared my WebQuest on the course Wiki, though it needs lots of improvements in the coming weeks.
This week has been full of so many readings and sharing ideas on making the classrooms more interactive and engaging. This week has a special focus on large classes. Large classes are our realities in many parts of the world. Sometimes, we, teachers are reluctant to try new and innovative ideas due to the excuse of large number of students we have to teach in our classes. Therefore, looking at the possibilities of making the large classes interactive and engaging has been a very useful excise for me. I have come across many interesting as well as useful ideas of making lectures more interactive by using thinking question, motivating learners to collaborate with each other, to share ideas and to use alternative assessment techniques. One very useful practice is to use interactive power point presentation which we created and posted in the Wiki. We have been using power point slides for a long time but sometimes reading out the power point slides in the class could be quite boring for the learners. That is why we need to think about making our power point slides more interactive by inserting some slides with short thinking questions, questions for short, instant responses and setting small tasks before moving on to more slides full of even more information. The idea of using 'blank slides' for capturing the attention of our students sounds very useful too.
This week I had to start thinking of giving my project a tangible shape. I have decided to use and adapt some of the technology supported features for my project. I have decided to create a WebQuest for my students of Communicative English Course in my Foreign Language Training Center. I have chosen the topic "Let us save our planet" for the WebQuest. In this webquest students will have the chance of exploring the issue of climate change and its effects and the ways of saving the earth from the adverse effects of climate change. I have deiced to get students browse some selected websites to gather information on the issues and respond to questions individually and in pairs. They will also be asked to make lists of the dangerous effects of climate change and suggest ways of reducing them. There will be two video clips for the students to see and prepare some posters to make people aware of the dangers of climate change. Finally on the using the information from the websites, power point slides and video clips, my students, in small groups, will prepare oral presentations as part of their final assessment. Students will be assessed on the basis of a checklist, oral presentations and poster making activities. Three rubrics will be developed for assessing students on each of the three assessment methods, checklist, poster making and oral presentation. In doing so I'll be able to integrarte the idea of alternative assessments with the project based learning practices.
I have already shared my WebQuest on the course Wiki, though it needs lots of improvements in the coming weeks.
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ReplyDeleteGreetings Haider!
ReplyDeleteI think it is wonderful that you have chosen climate awareness as the topic that your students will focus on for their projects. This is an incredibly important topic. I would like to share a link to a TED talks related to this topic that I think you might enjoy. Here is the link, Tough Truths about Plastic Pollution by Dianna Cohen
Don't feel like you need to incorporate this video into your project. I just wanted to share it with you, as it is relevant to your topic.
Enjoy!
Courtney
Hello Courtney,
DeleteMany thanks for your encouraging comments. And thanks for the video link, I will definitely look at this. I have chosen this topic of climate change for my project as this topic is included in the curriculum document of National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB), Bangladesh. Moreover, there 2 units on climate change in the National English textbook of class 7 and 9 which units are taught all over the country as part of the school syllabus. Hence, developing a technology supported project on Climate change will enable our teachers and students of concerned classes to supplement the existing textbooks with some e-learning materials.
Again, global warming and climate change are issues with an universal appeal. Therefore, I think, the project that I'm working on will be useful for my local learners and as well as for a wider audience all over the world.
Many thanks for your mail once again.
Thanking you.
Z. Haider
Hello Haider,
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to ask if you are going to evaluate their posters and what criteria you are going to use in doing that.
Best regards,
Hi Jurgita,
DeleteThanks for your questions. I have found quite a good list of criteria to consider for assessing poster making tasks in RUBISTAR. I have decided to choose only some of them such as, Content (accuracy), Graphics (Clarity & relevance), Knowledge gained, attractiveness, labels, title, etc. However, I am not yet finalized my criteria for assessing the poster making task, as the task is yet to be explained for the learners. I hope I'll be able to provide you with more concrete examples of my assessment plans by the end of this week.
Thanks, Jurgita, again for your interest about my project. Please, feel free to suggests me with any relevant ideas.