Review: World Adventure Kids

A few months back, I was excited to hear about the release of a new story book for kids learning English by Jason Renshaw (a.k.a. English Raven). Anyone who knows the Raven knows he has considerable talents when it comes to material development and design so I was curious to see what his new creation would be like. I was even more delighted when he offered me free access to the final product to trial with my kids and review. Unfortunately, work and study swamped me soon after so it’s only now that I’m getting round to reviewing the thing (apologies Jason) but this is a work that deserves some attention so better late than never!

The story book is called World Adventure Kids and the first thing that impressed me was the fact that you actually get two adventure stories in one: Doctor Darkleaf and Tomb of the Pharaoh.

Here’s the first thing that sets WAK aside - it’s a ‘choose your own adventure’ style book. You may have read something like this in your younger days (I know I read a few!) but the idea is simple: you read a paragraph or two and then you are presented with a choice and, depending on what you decide, you are directed to a specific page number. For example:

The book itself is in pdf format so when you make your choice, you click on the relevant blue box and jump directly to that page!

This format of storytelling has the advantage of putting the reader ‘in control’ of the story (and this is why such books are often called interactive fiction). Therefore, the story is told in the second person with use of ‘you’ really giving the feeling that the reader is inside the story. This increases reader engagement in a number of ways - at times you may be asked to make a decision about what to do next that effects the progression of the story (as in the example above), at other times you may be asked something based on what you have just read and be required to answer the question correctly. Make the right choice and you can move on through the story; make the wrong choice and you may have to go back or, even worse, start all over!

WAK exploits these ‘choose your own adventure’ features to the full. While reading, you can’t help but feel involved in the story and instructions to note things down should be heeded if you are to make the right choices later on! Several of the choices also act as a clever way of weaving comprehension questions into the story - rather than a boring post-chapter exercise, your students will most likely see them as an integral part of the story.

For me, a stand-out feature of WAK is that it is very well written. Books like this are not easy to put together so hats off to Jason for making the story flow even through the differing paths it can take. Furthermore, it is beautifully illustrated with colourful character portraits and atmospheric backdrops adding to the sense of engagement and involvement. Another masterstroke is that one of the main characters you interact with, the President of World Adventure Kids Golden Sky, is female. Boys will have already been drawn in by the adventure theme and girls will be drawn in by this strong lead character.

But that’s just what I think. The best people to give opinions about this book are the children it is aimed at so I distributed copies of the book to six of my students. I didn’t want to influence their feedback at all so I just asked them if they would be interested in reading it and that was that. The only thing I told them was that someone I knew had written it and wanted to know what kids thought of it. I also instructed them not to share the book with anyone as it was a review copy.

The first sign that the book was a hit came when I discovered that, despite my instructions, the pdf file had been passed on to other kids. It seems the six I had given it to had been overheard talking to each other about it and they were put under pressure to share! Anyway, they really got into the stories and, as I suspected, the girls were impressed with Golden Sky and all the kids, boys and girls alike, loved the stories.
They were very keen to share their ‘secret names’ (even though I pointed out that this defeated the point of having a secret name!) and they were also keen to discuss the different choices they had made and the consequences. It was great to see such excitement and discussion arising from a book they had read, even more so because it was a book they had read in English.

All of them said the book was as good as or better than the books they read in their English lessons. One thing that surprised them was when I revealed the author was in fact an English teacher himself. “Oh, I thought it was a real storybook” was how one boy put it! They also enjoyed being given a book just to read rather then to study. As one girl commented “I’m reading this just like a normal book.” Both reactions are very much in line with what Jason was aiming for - a story to be read and enjoyed instead of interrupted with vocabulary reviews, comprehension checks and grammar exercises.

That makes WAK markedly different to the majority of readers for kids learning English on the market today. I showed it to a colleague as well and he immediately expressed doubts about how useful it would be as a class text. “The students will all be in different places and at different stages at the same time” he said. “How can you build a lesson around that?” To me, that is exactly the kind of ‘approach’ to using readers with young learners of English that WAK is trying to change. Somewhere along the line, readers and stories have become nothing more than extended exercises with more of a focus on language than plot. With all the narrated recordings available or reading aloud going on, students don’t even have to read them anymore. WAK has a good crack at getting kids to actually sit down and read something in English. There would be nothing wrong with setting up a lesson in which kids read quietly (why should there be?) As a teacher, you could monitor and help kids when they are stuck or not sure what to do. Or why not let kids read the stories in small groups and discuss the options and arrive at a decision together?

The only real criticism to come from me and my students is to do with the pdf format. The internal links work well as you jump from one page to another but I did wonder as I looked at it before giving copies to my kids if they might have problems with it. Sure enough, a couple of them (not the majority I might add) reported that they ‘got lost’ due to clicking on the wrong button or going on to the next page instead of selecting one of the options. The other issue was that the clickable links did not work on the electronic device of choice for many of the kids, the iPad. That was a shame as reading something like this on a tablet device would be more relaxing and enjoyable than reading from a computer screen. Good news for Android tablet users though in the shape of Mantano Reader, which keeps all the links usable. Perhaps there is an iPad app that allows the same but the ones I have tried did not.

Anyway, technical issues aside, this is a great book and I would strongly recommend it for children learning English. It works well as a book for kids to read through on their own (as holiday reading or a book for ‘reading hour’ for example) and, with the right approach, it would work as a class reader as well. I think the ELT industry as a whole needs to shift away from the idea that everything needs to be guided, supported and littered with ‘concept checks’, ‘vocabulary development’ and ‘language focus’ segments - a text, story or reader can stand on its own as a work of fiction to be read for pleasure and enjoyment - World Adventure Kids lets your learners do just that!

And, saving the best for last, in a surprise announcement, Jason has made the whole book and additional resources available for FREE. If you wish to download a copy to share with your students (and I strongly recommend you do) or you want some more information (from the Raven’s mouth so to speak), go to the English Raven World Adventure Kids page - the adventure starts there!

Working on the Web with Kids (2) - We Love Blogging!

My 5th graders started working with their wiki back in September. As I reported in the first post in this series, it’s been useful for them to engage with extra activities, have their work displayed digitally and discuss things. However, we have been limited to an extent by the restrictions put in place by the school - kids can only comment on pages, not edit or add content and no comments are allowed from anyone who is not a 5th grade English teacher or student at the school.

That’s unlikely to change and, even if we got permission to let the kids do more than just comment, pbworks isn’t exactly the most child-friendly site to get to grips with and I don’t really fancy teaching ten year-olds how to use it in a classroom with only one computer! So, I thought why not have this site for extra activities and displaying work and another site that allows the students to take a bit more control. After much persuasion and insistence on my part, the school finally gave the thumbs up to trial blogging with one class.

Image by tarop

We settled on the class that had been most active on the wiki so far and offered to set up a blog for them using Kidblog. I stressed to the kids that this was not compulsory and gave them the option of not taking part in the project if they didn’t want to. Only 2 out of 28 kids declined the offer and everyone else was very excited about what they deemed as ‘their own website’.

I had lots of ideas about introductory activities, both in class and using the blog itself, but in the end, I decided not to interfere too much. I wanted this to be a pressure-free place where they could write as and when they wanted too rather than feeling obliged to do it, which would quickly lead to them seeing it as just another form of writing task.

Instead, we just looked at some examples, such as Greta Sandler’s classes in Argentina, and talked about what the blog could be used for. We also talked about comments and how to use those to respond to posts meaningfully and ask questions (on the wiki, many exchanges of ‘hello everyone - how are you?’ - ‘fine & how are you?’ repeated several times had started to appear so I was keen to avoid that).

Once they started blogging, the first thing to strike me was that the posts were very short, often just a couple of sentences (“Hello world! I love basketball. I think it’s a great sport.” for example). My initial reaction was to go over these in class, point out ways the posts could be made longer and more informative… but, no, I reminded myself that this was their space and they needed time to get used to this new form of writing. Instead, I posed questions through the comments to try and get them to reveal more (“Do you play basketball? What’s your favourite NBA team? and so on). I also started making use of #comments4kids on Twitter to get some outside comments in.

My students loved getting comments from around the world and they were thrilled when I showed them a map on the class computer with all the countries we’d received comments from highlighted (unfortunately, kidblog doesn’t seem to allow users to embed things like Clustrmaps). That helped establish a purpose for using the blog (although they did still need some gentle encouragement to start replying to these ‘strangers’).

As always, there are unexpected results from doing these things with kids. One side effect of my attempt to get them to write more by posing questions was that they started to write posts consisting entirely of questions posed to their ‘international friends’!

Now, this class has been blogging for three months or so and I’m starting to see some positive effects. Some of them are using the blog to share stories they wrote in class, others are sharing accounts of things they did at the weekend or special events. Many of them are still using the blog even though they are now on holiday, which has been a pleasant surprise! Alas, some are not using the blog at all but, as I said earlier, I don’t want them to be pressured into using it.

The only complaint my little bloggers have had so far is a lack of comments from other kids. One kid asked me just before the holiday “why do only adults comment on our blog?” They were very happy when we got a few visitors from Dina Dobrou’s class in Greece but I know they would like more interaction with kids their own age from around the world.

So, if you have a class who blog or know any kids who would like to leave comments for us, please direct them to:

http://kidblog.org/e-blog/

And also share details of your class blogs in the comments box. Perhaps we can set up some kind of ‘virtual comment exchange’.

MA Reflections - Writing Assignments

I did the course. I read the articles. I chose a topic to focus on. I discussed it with the tutor. I read around the subject. I kept notes of useful references. I swapped ideas with my course mates. I planned in detail. And still I spent an estimated 20+ hours just writing the damn thing!!

Focus on your education! Image by cityyear

Writing an assignment is hard work, no doubt about it. It can be very rewarding or it can be punishing and torturous - extended moments spend starting at the flicking cursor on the screen, rewriting a sentence several times until it sounds vaguely academic, your shoulders and neck aching from being sat at the computer too long…. and still 2,000 words to go!

So how can we avoid the above and make it more rewarding? My experience over the last couple of years has taught me the following (again, some of which I have done, some of which I learned the hard way that I should have done):

• Set yourself a deadline before the deadline

Julian Edge, the now retired and very much missed tutor on my first course, offered a sage piece of advice as my course mates and I approached that first assignment date: “Don’t work to the submission deadline - tell yourself it is 2 weeks earlier and work to that deadline.” Two weeks might be a bit much but I believe it is important to aim to be finished with a few days to spare. That gives you time to check things in a much more relaxed manner and means those “I wish I had written that” moments instead become “ooh - I can still write that” moments. Besides, you never know what’s going to happen - some unexpected event (like suddenly being told you have to write report cards for each of your 180 students) may rob you of precious time right before the deadline. Better to be done or nearly done before that happens.

• Read and re-read as you go

One eye-opener from doing a course like this after a decade of teaching is how the things I advise my students to do when writing absolutely do not come naturally to me! One thing I had to train myself to do, despite the fact that I always go on at my students about it, was to read what I had written and think about how it sounded and whether it could be improved or reworded. Doing this as you go (after each section or few paragraphs for example) can really help with clarifying things that perhaps came out in a muddle. I find it my constant self-editing usually helps keep me within the word limit as well.

• Space your writing time out

Writing can actually take a lot longer than you expect. Many times, after more than an hour at the keyboard, I have looked back at what I’ve written and discovered that it amounts to just two or three hundred words. I find it’s better to plan for a ‘little and often’ approach - better to write 500 words per session over the course of a week than attempt 3,500 words in one weekend! Typing for an extended period of time is hard - it can give you headaches, a stiff neck and an ever-growing sense of despair. Writing a few hundred words each day, even if you have to force yourself to do it after a long and tiring day at work with another to come the next day, will ultimately cause you less stress than doing it all in one go.

• Check your references carefully

One thing to be very careful about when editing - you may add a reference to an article that was not in your original list or you may delete one that was originally there. Make sure you check your references list at the end of the assignment several times - you may end up forgetting to list an article you referred very briefly or leaving in an article reference that you ended up deleting from the assignment otherwise! I also find it useful to do the reference list while writing the assignment - it can be a time-consuming task to rush through at the end if you are not careful!

• Back everything up!

Keep your assignment Word file on a flash disk or external hard drive and maybe even online via a service like Dropbox. Do the same with any pdf articles and course notes you will or even might need as well. Back them up daily. Don’t let a virus, a malfunctioning hard drive, a wayward cup of coffee or a curious two-year old make your nightmares come true! If anything, just do it for peace of mind.

• Leave a little time to relax

You need time to write an assignment but it should be quality time. Better to spend an hour working in a relaxed state than 3 or 4 hours when you feel tired, stressed and on the verge of a nervous breakdown. So, by all means make you assignment your priority but make a little time each day to do something for yourself as well - read a book, watch a favourite TV show, exercise, bake a cake (for me ) - if you make sure you don’t leave everything to the last minute, it should be easy.

• Print it out and read it one last time

You’ve typed the concluding sentence of the concluding paragraph, checked the word count, ran the spell-checker and completed the reference list - ah, the relief! After weeks or worrying about it and hour upon hour sat at the computer typing, you’re all done, right?

Image by Gerard Stolk

What do you always tell your students? Read the whole thing again and check that it all makes sense! The best way to do this (or so I have found) is to print the whole thing out and read it away from the screen. Somehow, certain errors that the spell/grammar checker may not pick up or certain awkwardly phrased sentences stand out more when I read them from paper. It’s good to have enough time to wait a day or two before finishing and doing this final check as well - leave some space….

Of course, the next time I deal with any of the above, I’ll be doing it on a much larger dissertation scale. I’ll let you know how that goes but in the meantime please share your tips for tackling MA assignments and extended essays. I for one would love to get some different pointers!

MA Reflections - Preparing for Assignments

This blog has been on the backburner recently while I tried to drag myself from the hell that is writing an assignment. For someone (like me) who embarks on an MA course after a long break from formal study, being asked to write assignments again can be a bit of a shock to the system. All that reading and getting your head round what you want to say can easily lead to thoughts of “Why am I doing this?” (or to put it another way, #whyamIdoingthis). Thankfully, I (just about!) got it all finished ahead of last Monday’s deadline but, after such an intense bout of writing, decided to take a break from the keyboard and leave the blog waiting for a few more days.

Almost burned out… Image by stonelucifer

So what better way to return than to share a few words of advice about preparing for MA assignments. Of course, this comes a little too late for those of you who were working to similar deadlines to me but it will hopefully come in handy for future reference. The list includes some things I did to make the process easier and some things I should have done - I’ll leave you to work out which is which!

• Find out what your assignment is as soon as possible

“Well, duh!” you might think but this is an easy one to overlook. Some of my course tutors have been kind enough to include details of the assignment with the introductory materials of a course but others have not provided this information until later. The sooner you know the better as it allows your study to be more focused and gives you plenty of time to raise questions about any part of it you are not clear on, which neatly brings me to the next point…

• Make sure you are aware of exactly what the assignment entails

We may often equate ‘assignment’ with ‘extended essay’ but that’s not always the case, especially if there is a practical application element to the course. There’s nothing worse than suddenly finding out (as I did part-way through a course in my first year) that you have to create a fully-functioning website which will be assessed together with your written work or that you have to design materials to be used for a computer lab or online lesson. Also, the written part of the assignment may ask you to focus on an aspect of your teaching, or provide a rationale for choosing a certain web tool or research method, or to reflect on your experiences during the course - all of which require a very different approach.

• Start to look for inspiration everywhere

Once you know what your assignment is and exactly what you need to do, it’s best to never keep it far from your thoughts. An idea for how to approach the task may come while reading the literature, or it may come while your reading a blog post, or while you are in class, or while you are in the middle of watching a Quentin Tarantino film in the cinema (why Inglorious Basterds made me think of investigating how 9 year-olds engage in self-assessment, I’ll never know!) Make sure you have some way of noting it down as well.

• Be prepared to change your mind and start over

Having said all that about getting a head start, it’s important not to commit yourself to one avenue without exploring other paths as well. Just as a moment of inspiration may come at any time, another better one may come later. The key thing is to have no fear of changing your mind. Last year as part of a course on Teacher Development, I spent a long time looking into action research in the language classroom with the assignment very much in mind only to abandon that and decide to investigate using a blog for self-development instead. Nearly a year on, that change of heart has had a heavy bearing on the direction my dissertation will take so it’s a good thing I was ready to try another path.

• Make a note of useful articles (including page numbers!)

There’s nothing worse than thinking that you read something a while ago that would make a useful quote or be a useful reference for your article but then being unable to remember which article it was. Or maybe you will locate the article or book chapter only then to realise it is over 50 pages long and that little piece of insight that you’re looking for is buried in it somewhere. That’s why I always keep a note of articles, book chapters and page numbers that might be useful when it comes to assignment time as I read them (something like Evernote is great for this). In the end, many of them may be discarded when you actually come round to planning and writing but it saves a lot of time to have all those references to hand rather than be frantically searching for them and wondering whether you actually read or it was all a dream….

• Don’t be afraid to ask for help

In my experience of distance learning, both as a student actually taking an online course and as a student learning about effectively leading one, it has surprised me how many learners seem shy about asking for help. Some people, it would seem, prefer to stay quiet rather than ask something that may seem like a basic question (the same is true for the classroom I suppose!) Don’t be. Ask your questions and state your worries either in the online forum or directly to your tutor by email. I’ve found the tutors at the University of Manchester are always happy to help and offer advice. Even better, if you ask on the online discussion boards, you often get great help from your course mates as well.

• Plan on paper!

I don’t have a problem reading from the computer screen or from my iPad and, as I mentioned above, I make use of online discussion boards and Evernote to develop and keep track of my ideas. However, when it comes to planning an assignment, paper just works better for me. I think it’s the fact that I can spread it out on the table or floor and see how it is taking shape… It’s also nice to take a break from sitting at the computer for a while as well. Also, when you get to the writing up stage, referring to a piece of paper in your hand is easier than clicking between windows of different Word files, pdfs, the online forum and Evernote!

Of course, saying those things is easy but remembering to do all of them is not! You may be thinking that I have left something out and, you’re right, I have. There’s hardly any mention of actually writing the darn thing but that’s another story for another post…

Making an Impact in the Classroom… Literally!

One of the (many) curiosities of teaching kids is the fact that for a short period of time you are one of the people they see and interact with in their daily lives but, once the school year is over, they may hardly ever see you again, except for the odd moment here and there in the corridor (if that). We learn to live with that fact and content ourselves with the thought that we have in some way made an impact on the learning of those children and maybe even on their lives. After all, that’s what being a teacher is all about, isn’t it?

A couple of weeks ago, I was having lunch during one of my trips up to the middle school when a girl from the 8th grade approached me.

“Teacher?” she said. “Do you remember me?”

It took a second or two to place her face and recall her name (no mean feat considering that she was 8 years old when in my class and I have taught over 300 other kids since!) but it soon all came back to me. I remembered that she was a good but quiet student who always worked hard. She seemed surprised that I remembered so much (my memory always seems to store names, faces, places and times well - a useful trick for any teacher!) and then said “my friends and I always talk about your lesson…”

“Ah,” I thought to myself, ignoring the minor error of ‘lesson’ instead of ‘lessons’. “No doubt they remember those breakthrough moments, the projects we did, the songs, the games and all the fun of our positive learning journey together.”

“….the lesson when the projection screen fell on your head!”

Image by Dell’s Pics

“Erm… what?!?” I said before another memory came back of one day when I pulled the projection screen down a bit too fast and the whole thing came of the wall whacking me over the top of the head in the process.

“When it happened, everybody went quiet but then you appeared from under the screen and said ‘ow!’ It was very funny!” Emergent teacher rather than emergent language then?

Anyway, we finished our chat and went back to our respective classes and I thought nothing more of it.

Until last Friday that is when I was in one of my classes in primary school. While the students were quietly reading a chapter of their book (yes, reading quietly - another off my ‘off the wall’ ideas that draws equal responses of derision and suspicion!), a pair of students called me over. “Do you know a boy called Berk?” they asked. That is the equivalent of asking somebody in an English speaking country if they know somebody called Steve so I asked for clarification.

“He says he was in your class… maybe 5 years ago,” they explained.

“Did he say which class?” I asked.

“He didn’t say the class,” came the reply “but he told us in one of your lessons the projector screen fell on your head! Is it true?”

Seriously? A year’s hard and productive work but all I remain known for is an accident involving a classroom fitting!!

Being philosophical, I suppose it is better to be remembered for something than not being remembered at all… even if it isn’t quite the impact I had hoped to make!

And at least I’m not alone - a quick look at Twitter last night revealed this little excerpt from a chat between Mike Harrison and one of my favourite new blog discoveries Phil Wade:

Well Mike and Phil, I can assure you that your students will remember you for a long time as a result!

Testing Times

Digital Storytelling with Voicethread (and How to Do It Offline)

As regular readers of this blog will know, I love doing things in class that are simple yet productive and full of student-generated content. It might be something like a drawing activity that leads into a whole series of other tasks, a couple of everyday items as the basis of discussion, or, as featured on my recent guest post on Teaching Village, a basic digital camcorder and some very creative young minds.

Another simple but effective web 2.0 tool I really like using is Voicethread. I love the interactivity it offers with different people able to leave messages on the same presentation slide as well as the option to combine images or text with audio or video comments. At the start of the school year, I was asked at work if I knew of any ways to make the activities we do for the school wiki more interactive and Voicethread was the first thing that came to mind. A crowd-sourced demo from my PLN and the suggestion that it could be used as practice for part of the Cambridge YLE Test speaking section was all it took to sell the idea.

“Great - do it” they said.

“Sure,” I replied. “Just get me some microphones, a webcam and user rights to upload from my class computer and we’re all set.”

(..pause..)

“Isn’t there a way to do it without all that?” they asked….

Luckily for them, I’m a resourceful guy and I found a way to make Voicethreads offline.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Cambridge YLE tests, one part of the speaking section is a sequence of 4 or 5 pictures. The examiner starts the story off and the student has to finish it off, following the sequence of the pictures. The problem with preparing for this in class is that you have to do it in pairs or small groups, it’s impossible to monitor everyone and they just don’t listen to each other (ok, so that’s three problems!) They have a lot to learn from listening to each other but one of the hardest things about working with kids is getting them to see that.

So, my idea was to record each group narrating their own version of the same picture story and add them all to a Voicethread. First of all, recording them in class leaves the other groups with no choice but to listen and secondly, we then have a nice collaborative record of work to put onto the wiki for kids and parents alike to listen to at home:

How did I do it with a so slow it’s almost dial-up class internet connection and no microphone? Simple really - I used the AudioBoo app on my iPad to make recordings offline in class. Later, I uploaded them then downloaded them to my laptop via iTunes and it was then just a matter of going to the Voicethread website and putting it all together. As I have an educator account, I used different ‘identities’ to group each class’s stories together and that was that.

Now it’s on the school wiki, they have the chance to listen to each other’s stories. The next step, now that I have introduced it in class, is to put up a Voicethread with just the pictures and get them to record their own stories from home! (Hmm, just had a thought - maybe I haven’t done myself any favours here. Had I said “there’s no way I can do it”, would the school have finally agreed to upgrade the class computers and the internet connection? …..)

Anyway, once again the presence of recording equipment and the promise of being showcased online worked wonders for motivating my students to produce some very creative stories (like the boys who decided the person who jumped out of the snowman in the second story was not the kids’ dad playing a joke but was in fact a hunter who wanted to kill them!)

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A Quick Plug for the Digital Storytelling for YLs EVO Session

If that has given you an idea or two for storytelling in the classroom, why not join me and a super group of EFL educators (namely Shelly Terrell, Barbara Sakamoto, Özge Karaoğlu, Esra Girgin, Jennifer Verschoor, Michelle Worgan, and Sabrina De Vita - I really did mean super group!!) for our EVO 2012 session entitled Digital Storytelling for Young Learners? We’ll be covering not only Voicethread but also many other simple but exciting and meaningful ways you can bring storytelling into your classroom via a variety of web 2.0 tools.

Registration is still open (but not for much longer!) - just join our Yahoo Group. You can also find out more information about our syllabus on our pbworks page and see some of the early introductions on our Posterous Space. Hope to see you there!

Food for Thought… and for Better Classroom Management

Last year was a bit of a tough one for me. After a few years of generally well-behaved kids and easy-to-manage classes, I had quite a few challenging students and one ‘difficult’ class (who you may remember from post such as “Outdone by the Pink Elephant” and “Like Crossing the Alps…” 

The best thing (in fact, the only thing) for any reflective teacher-blogger to do was to sit down and think about it all, what went wrong and what went right and what could be done differently next time. I blogged earlier in the year about some inspiration I had taken from other teachers’ sage advice on the web and I also wrote about the initial success of negotiating class rules with the kids but I was wary of the fact that such ideas often work out well in the beginning but fail to have a long-lasting effect so it was always my intention to return to the subject once we were well into the school year.

Mmmm… Classroom management!!

Image by @pysproblem81 via ELTpics

I’m pleased to say that, even though I face the sheer horror wonderful challenge of teaching that ‘difficult’ class again, things are still going well (not perfectly I hasten to add but better than last year at least). Of course, the fact that I know this class (and 3 of the other 5 I teach) and they know me from last year helps as does the fact that they are a year older and now carry the responsibility that comes with being in the 5th Grade (the last year of Primary education in Turkey before they move on to Middle School) but I feel there are also other factors, things that are different this year and thought I’d share them via this post.

• More engaging content

I know I blog about the benefits of a dogme-style approach a lot but the fact remains that, for part of my teaching programme at least, I have to use the prescribed books. Among the books we use are three readers. Last year, we did an simplified version of The Wizard of Oz, which was quite frankly boring, and a written adaptation of the Wallace and Gromit adventure The Wrong Trousers, which didn’t translate to book format that well and was only saved by the fact that we watched the short film together with reading it. This year, the kids seemed reluctant to get started with the books, even more so when they realised there was no film or video to go with it. However, once we started reading, they really got into it and I have to credit the authors for that. The first book was entitled Alien Alert in Seattle, an original story published by Black Cat and it was a huge hit! The theme of aliens and UFOs visiting Earth got the boys hooked and the masterstroke of then making the lead character a teenage girl got the girls hooked. The mystery element of it all kept them all engaged and enthusiastic.

One boy in particular showed a remarkable turnaround. Last year, he was very disruptive in class, constantly trying to distract other students or wind me up and never prepared to do any work. With this book, he was so eager to read and genuinely interested in the plot as it unfolded. Suddenly, he was engaged, on task, asking questions and making  a positive contribution to the lesson all the time. We have now moved onto another Black Cat title, Miami Police Files: The O'Neill Case, which has this boy and all his classmates gripped already.

• Lead by example

“Don’t expect your students to do anything you’re not prepared to do yourself” - this is something I strongly believe in, whatever the teaching context. It always bugs me if teachers complain about students not doing homework while they also refuse to do any kind of professional development activity outside of school hours or if they take phone calls in the middle of the lesson but then get angry at students for chatting to each other. We can’t expect students to follow basic rules or maintain certain standards of behaviour if we are not prepared to do the same ourselves, can we?

With that in mind, I strive to ensure that I:

• turn up for lessons and get everything ready before the bell rings;
• have all the books and other materials I will need for the class;
• listen carefully and don’t interrupt students when they are asking about or explaining something;
• keep any promises I make;
• and join in with the activities they do!

If I ask the kids to draw something, I will draw as well. If I ask them to write about their family or what they did at the weekend, I will write as well. They seem to really appreciate the fact that I am willing to do some of the tasks myself (especially writing) and it helps a great deal with giving examples to kids struggling for ideas or inspiration to those who are lacking confidence. It’s also useful as a check on the demands we place on kids sometimes - if I can’t write a paragraph in 5 minutes, I certainly shouldn’t be expecting them to!

• Let them eat cake… literally!

When negotiating class rules at the start of the year, one class asked if they could eat and drink during the lesson. At first, I tried to talk them out of it as school rules state that no food or drink (even water!) should be consumed during class - but then I thought ‘why not?’ The fact that I was prepared to go against the general school rule went down very well with the kids and I was very impressed by the fact that it wasn’t just crisps and chocolate that they brought to class but fruit, nuts and other healthy snacks as well. I did make it clear, however, that despite the fact that they could eat in class, there would be no ‘pic n’ mix’ - in other words, if they want a rule allowing them to eat in class, they had to follow all of the other rules we decided on as well, such as “be ready at the start of the lesson” and “listen when someone is talking”. And it worked! I have this particular class for the last two hours on a Friday, usually the worst time of the week, but they are always on task and enthusiastic…. and well-nourished!

Here’s a thought…. In case of bad behaviour, I could still allow eating in class but insist they eat something like this:

Bugs can be food too… or so says Brad Patterson via ELTpics

• If music be the food of classroom management, rock on…

Years ago when I was fresh off the plane from native-speaker land, I played music in class when my students were writing (I was teaching adults at the time). It helped contribute to a relaxed atmosphere and could lead to interesting discussions about music in general or particular artists and songs. I never thought of doing the same thing with kids though - maybe I thought they would get over-excited and forget about the task at hand or the school would frown upon it and tell me to stop…. This year, I thought “what the heck? If they don’t say anything about ‘picnic Fridays’, they won’t say anything about a song or two. So I suggested we played music when writing in class and the kids jumped at the idea. I only insisted that the songs be in English with non-offensive lyrics. I also said I didn’t want any teen-pop music and to my surprise, one boy asked ‘can we listen to AC/DC or Queen then?’ It seems that games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band have given these ten year-olds a taste for classic rock, one I am more than happy to indulge! We now write to the sound of guitar riffs, thumping bass lines and screeching vocals. And, despite their age, we still have those interesting discussion about music and a deeper level of respect for each other’s tastes. The songs are also good for time management - ‘try to finish before the end of the next song!’

As I said in the beginning, the classroom management situation is by no means perfect and we still have issues and problems from time-to-time. However, the factors listed above have made things better this year, not to mention more relaxed, more engaging, more fun… and more nourishing!

Working on the Web with Kids (1) - Wiki-waki

A major new addition to my list of responsibilities at the start of this year was to take over and revamp the 5th Graders pbworks site. It had first started a couple of years ago but hadn’t really gone anywhere with students and teachers alike seemingly unsure of exactly what to do with it. I blogged about this at the start of the year to get some of your ideas and promised an update about how it was going so here it is!

Image by Graham Stanley via ELTpics

So far, it has very much been a case of working within the limits set by my employers. For some reason, they don’t want the students to be able to edit or create their own pages meaning I have to find ways to get the students interacting on the wiki via the comments section only. With that in mind, we have been using the wiki in the following ways:

• To support work done in class

The first flurry of pages and activities I made for the wiki were based on the reader we used at the start of the year, a story called Alien Alert in Seattle. I found the wiki to be a great way to provide follow-up activities after each chapter that we read in class. In some cases, this took the form of general questions or asking for opinions about the chapter, which the students answered via the comments. In other cases, I embedded exercises made with Hot Potatoes such as crosswords to review vocabulary or quick quizzes. The students were especially impressed with my idea of recording sound bites using AudioBoo and embedding them into a matching activity - a great way to get them more engaged in listening! (See here for an example)

One great thing about doing this was the fact that it freed up more class time to get on with actually reading the book. I also found that more kids were willingly doing these activities online than I had ever seen in class.

• As a virtual ‘wall display’

Kids love having their work put on display in the corridor. The only problem is that apart from the kid who actually did the work, nobody ever looks at it! You might get the odd parent who wanders down the hall and has a look but that’s about it. Even though the kids aren’t allowed to edit pages themselves, I thought the wiki would provide a much more open space in which to display their work and so I have had the kids email me copies of their written work (also useful for getting them to re-write what they did in their notebooks after some feedback) or I have scanned their hand-made posters. We even went so far as to record some TV show role-plays! This has been a great way to ‘bring it home’ as they are easily able to show their work to their parents. I have also noticed a lot of comments coming from kids in other classes, which hardly ever happens with wall displays.

• For discussion and chat

Without any prompting, many of the kids started to use their class page as a place to chat and ask questions, something I was very pleased to see. I have also created some activities designed to encourage chat and interaction on the wiki. I recently posted a “Truth or Lie: 5 Things About Me” video after piloting it here with my PLN - thanks guys!

(I now think this has been seriously misused as an introductory activity - it’s much more meaningful when you know someone enough to take an educated guess at what they might be lying about and maybe learn a new thing or two!)

This was a big hit - good authentic listening practice, lots of comments and speculation and plenty of questions. In class, that level of engagement from that many students would have been much harder to achieve.

On the whole, it has been a success so far with many kids (in my classes at least) accessing the wiki regularly and eagerly awaiting new tasks and new content. There have also been some issues and points raised by using the wiki, which are as follows:

• The ‘digital native’ myth

I am now convinced more than ever that the whole ‘digital native’ idea is misplaced. These kids should be tech-savvy, completely at ease with registering, navigating the site and doing interactive activities, right? Wrong! So many kids had problems with registering for pbworks - many of them were thrown by the fact that they received an email inviting them to join rather than sending them a password - and many more had trouble with simple things like logging in, navigating the site and writing comments. I had to go over it several times in class and make some screencasted tutorial videos to help them along. And I’m supposed to be the ‘immigrant’ in this digital world!

• Parent Problems

One obstacle has been the parents. Even though they signed permission forms, many kids tell me their parents won’t let them use the computer, even for school work, during the week. A few even say they aren’t allowed to use a computer at all! A couple of parents have also expressed concern about this new element to the English programme (there is no web component in the earlier grades) and have called the school to question its value and insist that it should have no bearing on the kids’ grades at the end of the year… I guess they didn’t read the letter sent with the permission form! This is only a minority of cases though - most parents seem happy to have their kids doing something ‘useful’ on the computer (or at least I assume so by their silence!)

• “What about games teacher?”

All of the students were excited to hear about the wiki site early in the year. Most of them are still excited about it and engaged. However, there are a few who have lost their enthusiasm. I added a few games and funny videos in the beginning but it seems that is all they want - “more games please teacher!” and “more videos!” are their only comments about the wiki. The other activities such as questions about the readers or hot potato quizzes generally lead to interesting excuses: “I couldn’t do it because my computer isn’t working/ my internet connection is slow/ there was a power cut/ the dog ate my computer…” I guess the lesson to be learned is kids won’t be motivated just because something is delivered via computer or on the internet. Those who struggle to find motivation for regular classroom tasks will also have the same attitude to tasks on the wiki or in some other digital form.

Overall, it’s been a success so far. Most kids are active on the wiki and want to use it. They are starting to come to me with suggestions for things to put on the class pages and some kids are even doing extra projects and asking if I can make a page for them. There are the usual institutional restraints to wrestle with and parents/students yet to appreciate the value of what we are doing but as with many of the other issues we face in education, it’s all a matter of giving it time and trying to show them what it’s all about.

Another failure for the exam-based system

Sarah* is in many ways an ideal student: she is hard-working in class and keen to participate without trying to dominate proceedings; she makes an effort to speak English both with me and with her class mates; she is always on task; and she is very creative, producing beautiful project work, informative writing and entertaining short stories. I always let her know what a good student she is and how well she is doing and we have a good rapport.

Imagine my surprise then when her mother came to see me this morning to say how she came home upset on Friday saying that there was no point in doing her homework (which she usually does with enthusiasm as soon as she gets home) because she was never going to be any good at English. Obviously, her family were shocked to see her like this as was I when I heard about it.

Why was Sarah so upset? Because of a test score…

Image by Megan Skelly

I teach on the ‘conversation’ programme at my school. Despite the title attached to it, we actually work on their writing skills, reading comprehension and preparation for the Cambridge Young Learner Exams. One of the biggest challenges of these lessons is getting the kids to take it seriously. They often see us as their secondary English teacher (they have a non-native speaker as a ‘grammar’ teacher) and, if you let them, they can treat the lessons as ‘free time’. In order to add more weight to our lessons, it is the opinion of some (not me I should add) the we must have some tests, not a full test as we only see the students for a few hours each week but a test nonetheless.

And so, 2 weeks ago, I had to give a 25 question listening test based on questions from the KET exam, even though the students are getting ready for the Flyers test, which is one level lower! Naturally, they found it quite hard and results were mixed. Sarah got 72%, much lower than the 90%+ she gets in tests in the grammar lesson. I have spoken to her since, reminding her that the test is only a small part of the final grade I will give. Her project work is excellent as is her effort in class and her contributions to our student wiki site so her average will be much higher. That made her feel better but I still feel that I should have never had to have this talk with her in the first place. She should have never had to feel like this in the first place.
So, do these tests ‘add weight’ to my lessons? Do they make the students take them more seriously? I hardly think so. I try hard to show kids the value of my lessons through the work we do in class and the opportunities we create to use and develop our skills in English and that is what makes them value my lessons. Throw in a test and it becomes all about the grade and the stress that comes with it - a hindrance more than a help…

What’s your take on this situation? Are tests good for motivating students? Or is it the teacher’s duty to make sure the kids are motivated anyway?

*not her real name