Shaking Hands

Few days to finish this Winter Course, A wonderful experience!

Today I have two partners ΜΑΡΙΝΑ ΚΟΛΛΑΤΟΥ (Greece) and Yohimar Sivira (Venezuela),a virtual team, to help each other to review our final project, it is adorable to know that two colleagues using technology could be your handhelper in an important task like this.Be confident and friendly,are the most important value in this team to get the best performance with ourselves.
I'm happy because points in common join us: Likes such as Nik Peachey webpages, tesol webpages, jazz, and pop music, EFL teachers, women and participating in this Winter Course.

I hope you like this especial blog and we could make a huge work with our projects this week.



Yohimar Sivira Blog Link:http://weeklyreportwebskillswinter2012.blogspot.com







Marina Kollatou
Her Blog Link :http://marina-kollatou.blogspot.com/

I found nice Quotations about peer work:
“I really hope my peers appreciate and respect what I'm doing.”
Shania Twain

and I think it is the most real and important for me:
“If all your peers understand what you've done, it's not creative.”
H. Heimlich quotes
Thanks for be my peers Marina and Yohimar.

Tool and Learner Autonomy:

I will show my high school students blogs links about science themes that we are developing in this II period 2012.

Topic:HIV
Students blogs

http://vih-enfermedades-humanas.blogspot.com/

http://conelvihnosejuega.blogspot.com/

http://element917.blogspot.com/

http://notidiarioplus.blogspot.com/view/timeslide

http://www.rkobaby.blogspot.com/



My 4th year students show their autonomy in a "Biotechnology Fair",Unit 4 in their book talks about FERMENTATION and I asked for them to create a fermentation product follow the steps record them and prepare a public oral presentation to the high school in english and this is the result, technology is not applied here but some of therm used search engines to get recipes or procedures about FERMENTATION.

Dairy Products:



The process:

Masata: Fruit fermentation

GRAPE WINE:

























My online exercise is about American Holidays created using:Web Poster Wizard.


http://poster.4teachers.org/worksheet/view.php?id=160992


I would like to suggest:http://edu.glogster.com/ it is a web link to create interactive poster too.

Orquidia

Learner Autonomy & Independence

http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

This week I will take into consideration my student role in the learning process.I would like to start with Holec (1981: 3, cited in Benson & Voller, 1997: 1) who describes Autonomy as ‘the ability to take charge of one’s learning’.
Teachers always have a inner purpose in their teaching process :

"To form a student with Autonomy in their learning process and independence attitude to face task, project and classroom activities"

The autonomus learner in our classroom should be:

a self-activated maker of meaning.

an active agent in his/her own learning process.

The autonomus learner should have a (pro-) active role in the learning process.

Taken from seven main attributes characterising autonomous learners (see Omaggio, 1978, cited in Wenden, 1998: 41-42).

David Little’s terms, define learner autonomy is: ‘essentially a matter of the learner’s psychological relation to the process and content of learning…a capacity for detachment, critical reflection, decision-making, and independent action’ (Little, 1991: 4)

I think teacher must work with constructivism theory in our classrooms to give opportunities to their students to choose aims and purposes and sets goals,each opportunity to write rubrics with themselves in each activity; choose materials and tasks; exercises choice and purpose in organising and carrying out the chosen tasks; and choose criteria for evaluation.In my classes usually I offer options to them and ask for them their own ideas, they like offer to me iddeas like debates in groups, mental map ,or mind map about themes studied as way to evaluate, real project like science fair, right animals , and so on..

I'd share this link about this topic articles:

http://learnerautonomy.org/articles.html


Our students in this century want to have freedom in their families and more in their classrooms. Why don't we encourage them to use academically and we could be an optional friend or tutor more than a evaluator teacher?

One computer in Class:

It is my simple way to introduce technology in class, I'll would like to share a plan to create a collaborative example to write stories, using Charlie Chaplin videos and my 9th grade high school students cand describe the setting, plot and scriot for each scene..It will be an example from other ideas that I used to develop in class.

The Lion in the Cage

Only 4 steps

Large Classes


Example of one large class.I usually try to teach one or two class in open spaces like parks, museums, or different places to get more enthusiasm, confidence and new ways to be in contact with nature or ourselves.
SDome times develop dialogues and I record them or I go through different groups recording and checking their performance in next class I show them using my pc in class.


Woao!!It is incredible,we're just in week 6,Only four week to finish this Winter Course.This course looks like as semester in a normal course,becuase we have been applying all theories studied,and share our experiencces in a collaborative way as we 're sharing a physical room...But look around you:It is a Virtual group in a virtual room,with a moderator as tutor and technology as means to communicate, to evaluate,and to practice knowledge learned from our own discussions and tasks.We're in front of our next four steps to finish and a strong chain among our colleagues in this course.

Large Class in this class is a specific point that in my case is a model of clas that I live everyday in High school and University:Patience,Creativity,dynamics,and activities to group are the clue of this kind of rooms.

What do we need to control Large Classes?

Alastair Grant, a Teacher Development Manager in Buenos Aires, looks at the challenges in managing large classes of teenagers, and suggests ways to ensure successful lessons,I used the items to explain my own elements in my are classes:

Monitoring:our activities warm up,task,evaluating by ourselves with leadership.

Environment:To control reources in class is important to the teacher and students to develop an effective class.

Discipline: As teacher in front of large classes we need to take the control to get our goals.

Interaction:A big weakness like discipline, we could lose interaction with all students and it is not positive to keep the control of the discipline,we should organize activities that encourage interaction with teacher and students,students and students,etc.


Evaluation:Most difficult part,we want to live or to be in a hurry in our home and free hours...Let's introduce technology as our helper in this important point.

http://oupeltglobalblog.com/2011/08/30/teaching/

I found an UNESCO booklet about large classes that offer intersting suggestions:

Challenging Opportunities
Teaching large classes is a challenge, but it can also offer many
opportunities for you to improve your teaching and to make it more
enjoyable and rewarding for you and your students.

Evaluating learning and teaching in large classes, so that you can
provide good opportunities for students to show what they are
learning, and you can reflect on your own teaching practices.
Please remember, however, that there is no “best way” to teach
large classes. You must develop the approach that works best for you
based on your teaching style, the characteristics of your students, and
the goals and objectives of your lessons and curriculum.

I invite you to read more information about to manage Large Classes (http://icfe.teachereducation.net.pk/resources/res15.pdf)
The Dakar Framework for Action adopted at the World Education
Forum in Senegal during April 2000

MY LARGE CLASSES PHOTOS:

PNFA Technical Administration 2011-2012.



PNFA Bachelor in Administration 2010-2011





Pnfa:2008 - 2012

Saint Valentine's day in a Winter course!

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Happy Saint Valentine's to all my friends!

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Saint Valentine's Day, commonly shortened to Valentine's Day, is a holiday observed on February 14 honoring one or more early Christian martyrs named Saint Valentine. It is traditionally a day on which lovers express their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery, and sending greeting cards , I want to offer my blog for all my friends in this Winter Course.







This lovely week one of my main task is to create a "Rubric"

Rubrics help me and my students to be objective, clear,sincere with the assesment and help to my students to develop the best performance in their evaluations.As teacher a Rubric make me my evaluation process easier because I follow the pattern and I can observe specific elements to evaluate and adjust criteria and the degree of each of them according to my main goal or purpose in the class.

According to:TLT Group (Teaching, Learning and Technology group:It is a nonprofit organization) explains what is a rubric and found it a complete definition:


" A rubric is an explicit set of criteria used for assessing a particular type of work or performance. A rubric usually also includes levels of potential achievement for each criterion, and sometimes also includes work or performance samples that typify each of those levels. Levels of achievement are often given numerical scores. A summary score for the work being assessed may be produced by adding the scores for each criterion. The rubric may also include space for the judge to describe the reasons for each judgment or to make suggestions for the author".





My Rubric for a Poster Presentation:

There are many Rubric Builders,and I decided to work with a pattern of "Builder Constructor" from the site: www.teach-nology.com,to evaluate my students oral presentation about a poster and to evaluate the poster design I took as example a pattern from University of Kansas showed by Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators: Assessment and Rubric Information.In webpage: Recipes4sucess,there are more patterns to evaluate posters too.

My specific example is:

Student Group: Endangered Animals.5th Science “C”. Orinoco Crocodile.
Grammar to be studied: Don’t/should/shouldn’t



Criteria to be evaluated during the oral presentation:

@ Helping:

The teacher observed the students offering assistance to each other, in the moment to answer questions.

@ Listening:The teacher observed students answering according to the main question ,and understood evaluators questions.

@ Participating:
The teacher observed each student contributing and helping each other during the project presentation.

@ Persuading:
The teacher observed the students: defending, and rethinking ideas in front of the audience and teachers’ evaluators.

@ Questioning:
The teacher observed the students interacting, discussing, and supporting each other during all presentation of the team.

@ Respecting:
The teacher observed the students encouraging and supporting the ideas and efforts of others.

@Sharing:
The teacher observed the students offering ideas and reporting their findings to each other.


Examples of Poster Presentation:





Endangered Animals:









Biotechnology Project:





U.E.N.Nicanor Bolet Peraza Poster presentations:

High Schools Halls:

PBL : Project Based Learning

PBL is a synonim of "Authentic Learning Activities", that encourage teacher and students to work together and to start collaborative activities, respectful attitude and independency in teams of work. Teacher and student can find solutions to problems and they can make a real evaluation plan where their english learning skill could be reinforce or learned in an effective way with or without technology included.
PBL must take into considerations elements that show that is a real PBL, I will introduce this statement:

(http://pbl-online.org/About/whatisPBL.htm)

Project Based Learning is generally done by groups of students working together toward a common goal. Performance is assessed on an individual basis, and takes into account the quality of the product produced, the depth of content understanding demonstrated, and the contributions made to the ongoing process of project realization.

Project: Recicled products.
5TH YEAR High school students.
2011-2012



Dress made of newspaper pages.






Write Saint Valentine's PostCards:
High School 9th grade.




Next February 14th I'll celebrate Saint Valentine's Day writing postcards to friends out of Caracas.

I'll use a friend rubric' criteria as a pattern to build up my own pattern to write postcards if she doesn't have problems my partner Marina, designed letter Rubrics using Rubistar and each criteria could be adapt to evaluate postcards too.