Lesson Plan: When Ends Change

One of the most wonderful experiences that I have gained during these precious weeks is to make use of these tools in our curriculum. It takes time to devise a lesson plan that adapts one or two ideas or tools. However, I feel so happy to achieve this aim. The current plan will adapt another lesson plan created by Haley Fishburn Moore. I liked its idea very much. How would the story have changed if Romeo had received the letter? It can develop my students' creativity, critical thinking skills and how to look at things from different perspectives. This treasure includes not just a great idea, but a variety of amazing tools that help students to analyze and understand novels and plays. Among these tools are Story Map, Drama Map, Timeline, Plot Diagram, Venn Diagram, Comic Creator, and Stapleless Book. In addition to the printout materials, e.g., Plot Tree Worksheet, Ideas for "Happily Ever After" Presentations, Group Assessment, and Grading Rubric.

I will use the same idea, but with the use of other tools that we used during Week 5, e.g., Bighugelabs, and epubbud. In English textbooks for Egyptian secondary schools, there are a lot of narratives included. I will choose one of them and try to adapt Haley's lesson plan.

Title

The Pearl - A Story of Greed

Materials Needed:

1. Computers 
2. Internet access
3. The Pearl: A Story of Greed  (Copied by Me using epubbud)
4. Plot Tree Worksheet  
5. Grading Rubric
6. Group Assessment
7. Blank sheets & pencils

Digital Tools:
 

1. Story Map
2. Bighugelabs 
3. epubbud

Class Level:

• 12th Grade (Between 18 - 19 years old) advanced students.

Time Frame:

• Two 50-minute classes

Lesson Objectives:

 

By the end of this lesson, students will:

• read a story to get the main idea and the moral lesson behind it.
• analyze a story ( ... characters, setting, conflict, and resolution) using Story Map Tool.
•  determine a turning point of a story.
•  write a new happy end.  
•  use Bighugelabs to create a cover to the new story.
•  use epubbud to create the story using the new end.
• share e-stories in their edmodo group. 

Steps:

1. Divide the class into groups of three.
2. Ask them to read the story (The Pearl: A Story of Greed) in their textbooks or read it online as I typed it using epubbud. The aim of the first reading is to get the main idea and the moral lesson behind it.
3. Tell the students that they are going to read the story again to analyze its elements, e.g, characters, setting, plot, conflict, and resolution using Story Map Tool.
4. Once they finish the analysis, ask them to print their products and share with their colleagues.
5.  Using Plot Tree Worksheet, ask the students to determine a turning point of a story (e.g., Kino agrees to throw the Pearl away ..... ) and think of another happy end.
6.  Ask them to work into groups and write their first draft using a blank sheet putting in mind the Grading Rubric criteria.
7. After finishing their first draft, tell them to use Bighugelabs to create a cover to the new story and save it on their computer.
8. Then, ask them to start creating their stories with the new ends using epubbud. 
9. Once they finish their stories, ask the groups to share their e-stories in their edmodo class and give feedback to each other.
10. Ask the students to complete the Group Assessment to check what they have done and how other group's members work and cooperate while working together.
11. Using edmodo, create a Poll so students can vote for the most wonderful e-story. Then, create badges for the Top 5 Winning groups.

I'm sure that my students will create amazing e-stories with different ends. Of course, there are other tools involved in the lesson plan created by Haley Fishburn Moore. However, I don't want to overwhelm my students with such variety. I think that two or three are enough in a lesson. This will help students focus more on the content not only the form. 

This is the last task of Digital Tools with Purpose in the Classroom e-course, but it is the first step towards my new journey. I feel that I have a big bag full of tools, experiences and more chances to innovate and create. I think that you will hear about another revolution in Egypt in the coming weeks .... but in Azhar's Classes. I will try to pick up what is suitable for my students' levels and learning styles. Last year, I amazed my students using wikis. This year will be more productive, interesting and excising. Really, I can't find words to thank all people responsible for such amazing chances to learn. You changed my life to a great extent. Now, I'm interested in everything new in the field of teaching English as a foreign language. I can't stop myself! All the time I search for a new beginning. 

If you are interested in this e-course, here are our session online spaces:

• Edmodo: main environment, message board for announcements and discussions.
  Group Code: 9m0oq6
• Our Wiki: syllabus, weekly tasks, weekly discussion threads and tutorials.
• Our Diigo Group: online social bookmarking space where we keep all the resources being shared by the group.
• scoop.it : visual content aggregation.
• Recording of EVO Wrap-Up.
  

Last, but not Least

BIG THANK YOU TO DIGITOOLS COMMUNITY

 

See you @ EVO 2013

How to Digitalize What you Read?

Many people think of reading as a skill that is taught once in the first few years of school. All what teachers do is just to teach only new vocabulary and concepts relevant to new content. Seen this way, reading is a simple process: readers decode each word in a text and then automatically comprehend the meaning of the words. Do you think … this is the right understanding of reading?

Think for a moment about the last thing you read … an essay, a newspaper analysis, a report, a novel? If you could recapture your mental processing, you would notice that you read with reference to a particular world of knowledge and experience related to the text. The text evoked voices, memories, knowledge, and experiences from other times and places. As experienced readers read, they begin to generate a mental representation, or gist, of the text, which serves as an evolving framework for understanding subsequent parts of the text. As they read further, they test this evolving meaning and monitor their understanding, paying attention to inconsistencies that arise as they interact with the text. If they notice they are losing the meaning as they read, they draw on a variety of strategies to readjust their understandings ... an article about reading by Christine Cziko et al.

Reading, according to this view, is not only knowing some new words and concepts, but also knowing new experiences, cultures and other voices. Students need to adopt some strategies that can help them to learn how to read to make connections and build new perspectives. Week 5 provides me a variety of tools and ways to involve my students in reading texts and novels. Let's know more about how to make your students want to read not just for understanding but also for pleasure!

Objectives of Week 5:

During this week participants will:

• have an overview of the possibilities for developing learner's reading skills in a digital world
• discuss what they've acquired for their teaching toolkit and assess their own learning during the session

Tasks of Week 5:

Task 1 Creating Magazine Covers to Summarize Texts

During this task, we read a very great lesson plan. It is a comprehensive plan where you can find objectives, resources, tools and steps. Then, we were asked to choose an article from this link. It is really a very rich link where you can find a variety of articles that can be a guide for your teaching in the 21st century with its numerous requirements. The third step was to choose one of the following tools .. ReadWriteThink interactive tool, Fodey or Bighugelabs to create a magazine cover, news page, or brochure to summarize the article we chose earlier. I took a lot of time and effort to choose an article. All of them are so rich with ideas and thoughts.  At last, I selected an article by Marc Prensky "The 21st-Century Digital Learner". 

This article talks about involving students in making decisions about their learning. I do this with my students all the time. I listen to their views about their way to learn and what make them involved and like their school. We have to do this, because we talk about the life of a person not a pot. We have to give them a VOICE to tell us what they feel, what they need, and what they want to do. I just want to send this message to all teachers from all over the world .... PLEASE GIVE YOUR STUDENTS A VOICE .... I'M SURE THEY WILL SURPRISE YOU! Here is its cover using Bighugelabs. It is an innovative way to make connections and visualize new concepts. 

Task ... Cool Extra Idea: Publish Your E-book

In this task, we were asked to use Epubbud to publish our e-books. It is a great idea where we can feel ownership by creating our own books and let all people around the world read them and leave comments. By this tool, you will give your students a chance to e-publish themselves and create their own world. While surfing the internet about how to use Epubbud in my teaching, I found a wiki about this tool. It can be a beneficial resource for you to read and create your e-books to enrich your classrooms. For me, I created an e-book about some of the tools that we have explored during our Digital Tools e-course. Here is the link .... Happy Reading!

This is not the last task to do. There is another thing that I have to do before saying Good Bye EVO 2012. The next post will discuss how to use such tools adapting a lesson plan provided by our moderators in my own teaching context.

Week 4: Reading/Vocabulary Skill-Building

Another valuable week is about to say “Good Bye”. I’m still enthusiastic and happy with this course despite of having two other courses at the same time. I want to involve in the discussion more and more, but again time is a big problem. Any way, I’ll try to divide my time wisely to accomplish all tasks required.

For this week, we have 4 tasks in addition to an optional discussion about lesson planning. One of the tasks that I’ve accomplished is to read some articles about ways to use computers to enhance ways to teach reading and vocabulary, then find specific web pages that work with my students. One of the articles provided by Deborah is “Using Technology to Assist in Vocabulary Acquisition and Reading Comprehension” written by Constantinescu (2007): http://iteslj.org/Articles/Constantinescu-Vocabulary.html. This article stresses the idea of integrating language skills and areas. Although it is important to focus on each skill separately to identify its elements, we can’t do this. We will find them integrated unconsciously. Here for vocabulary and reading, there is a close relationship between them. As Constantinescu (2007) concludes that the better the students’ vocabulary knowledge is, the better they perform with reading comprehension tasks.

Technology also enhances this relationship and provides teachers with many tools to do this. One of these tools is multimedia. Constantinescu (2007) reviewed many studies regarding the effect of using multimedia on developing vocabulary and reading comprehension and he found that multimedia plays an important part in both vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension, therefore, teachers should be a ware of the potential benefits of integrating technology in language classroom.

For me, I like the idea of integrating more than one sense to develop students’ skills. Multimedia meets this need. I think it is better to present a text with audio, video and graphics. It will be more interesting and make students involve in doing such tasks. That’s why I’m taking “Visual Basic” course these days. I just want to design some reading programs. I want my students to be good readers as reading is one of the most important ways for rich input. I’m sure if students read more, they will be proficient.

Another way for developing reading comprehension is using suitable and rich websites. One of these websites provided by Deborah is “Breaking News English”: http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/. It is one of the most valuable websites that provides well-organized lesson plans. If you choose any lesson, you will find everything you need as a teacher: print materials, mp3 downloads, complete lesson plans, games, .... etc. Also there is a handout that includes step-by-step guidelines of all what will happen in the lesson with many alternatives. Any lesson plan follows the 3-stage approach: Pre-While-Post. I think it is a successful approach as it makes students concentrate on a certain task at a time. At the end, I recommended my colleagues to use this website with their students as it provides many activities from which they can select putting in mind students’ levels and interests.

Many of my colleagues recommended the same website: http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/. Juliet & Bella for example used it to search for more authentic text that is suitable for their students. Janet used it as it allows students to work with material focused on current events. Luiza also used it with her students. I like her idea about adapting lesson plans taking into consideration the objectives and target students. You know it is not desirable to adopt something and apply it as it is, we should decorate it with our experience putting in mind the context in which students live. Hanan also recommended this website for teachers who have difficulty working online most of the time. As I mentioned above, we can download and print all activities and handouts we need. For Arbi, what he liked about this website was its smooth integration of all skills in a well-organized lesson plan.

For developing vocabulary acquisition, I’ve visited another website suggested by Deborah. This website http://a4esl.org/ is also well-organized with many quizzes and crosswords for all levels “easy, medium, difficult”. Of course, students sometimes need to play and have fun. So, this website provides them with many printable quizzes and crosswords that can be used as closure activities. It will be more interesting. Reading my colleagues’ posts, I have not found them visit it except Victoria. She also used it as me to search for quizzes and crosswords.

By doing this task I’ve learned a lot about how to develop vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension. Also, I want to thank my colleagues for their fruitful discussion. Although we use the same websites, we deal with them differently. This makes me think from different perspectives and now I’m a lady with “30” minds or more.