The 2010 Soccer World Championship in my Classes

My PLN members have shared lots of material about the soccer championship via Twitter and I've been selecting what I thought my students would find interesting. I've been uploading the material I've chosen in the classroom blogs and wikis for my students to go on practising the language at home. Unfortunately, I haven't written down the name of the Tweetterer who has shared or recommended the material but I have thanked the sharer and made comments as to the significance of the recommendation.

So far, I've uploaded:

1) The game calendar: Calendar Useful for my students to check dates and places where the games are played.

2) An insightful article: Follow your Football Team You can read information, look at pictures and see videos.

3) Articles for my students to read: News Item To encourage students to read about the latest news.

4) Vocabulary Tasks: Useful Vocabulary (by @esolcourses)

5) The World Cup Map: Map For students to be informed as to the countries that participate in the championship.

6) Quizzes: The World Cup Helpful to practise vocabulary and grammar.

7) A Game: Fling the Teacher Highly motivating for students to learn and have fun. (by @eflclassroom)

8) Pictures: Big Pictures For students to enjoy creativity and art.

9) Songs: Wavin' Flag (by K´NAAN)

Waka Waka by Shakira

Videos of songs are great resources for the introduction of talking points in the classroom, for learning vocabulary and for developing listening skills. Singing songs is a good way of practising pronunciation.

10) A video about the star of the champiosnhip "The Vuvuzela Horn": Should vuvuzela horns be banned from the World Cup? The idea is to introduce the talking point about the use of this type of horn and then students can watch the video and write any idea that comes to their heads while watching it (task suggested by Anne hodgdon, @annehodg, in her comment to one of my posts). After that, students can share ideas in pairs and whith the whole group. As a follow-up task students can suggest a different device for cheering teams.

11) A site for students to create a football character: SP Studio (shared by @annapires)

Have you used any other task in your classes connected to the World Cup?

Students' Foreign Language Assessment: A Challenge for Teachers

This week I've been busy writing my teenage students' reports for their parents to read about their children's performance and progress in their learning of the English language. It's still a challenge for me to create mental parameters as to the areas I teach: oral language, reading comprehension and grammar. Without doubt the most complicated area is oral expression as I deal with teenagers who feel reluctanct to speak English in front of their peers for fear of looking ridiculous, who instinctively speak their native language and I need to react quickly and insist in their using English in the English class. I've found out that I can break a Guinness Record in the number of times I say "in English, please!" in the classes any time free conversation is developed.

I've shared my experience with a colleague and friend of mine who told me that after assessing her students the school where she works organised a parents' meeting to exchange ideas and solve queries parents may have as to their children's progress in learning English. During the meeting, that friend of mine, who had taken tests to her students to measure their performance, felt that some parents were using the test results to assess her performance as a teacher.

I'd like to know about other teachers´experience so I've created a WallWisher I'd like to share with you so as to exchange views on this issue:

Students' Assessment.

Reading Comprehension Strategies

Reading comprehension involves complex processes and it is a fact

that teenagers do not like reading very much, specially if what they

should read is a long article. As teachers of foreign languages, we should

assist our students in the process of developing reading strategies such

as skimming and scanning.

Some time ago, I came across Joe Bower's blog and I read his insightful post about the way he makes his students practise reading comprehension. I decided to put his strategy into practice with a group of students who are learning the necessary strategies to sit for Cambridge First Certificate Exam. In this exam candidates are supposed to show understanding of specific information, text organization features, tone and text structure. In Part 3 of the Reading Paper, candidates are supposed to read a text or several short texts preceded by 15 multiple-matching questions. To do this, they need to understand detail, attitude and detail, attitude and opinion in the question and locate a section of text where that idea is expressed. Some of the options may be correct for more than one question and there may be one correct answer to some questions.

To develop reading strategies, students should read a wide range of texts in the classroom and at home. Certain times it is difficult to help students work their way through the text and interpret the meaning of more complex passages. It is useful to encourage students to be aware of alternative ways of dealing with texts so they can decide which ones suit them best.

After making comments on the picture that accompanied the text my students were supposed to read and reading its heading so as to speculate what the text was about, I explained to my students that they were going to read the text with pencil in hand. I told them that they were supposed to write what came to their mind while reading. It could be a question, an idea, a comment, a connection with something they knew, etc.

The strategy was successful to help them concentrate more and interact with the text. They managed to remember more information after finishing. Their notes included questions about the meaning of words, comments, views and memories.

In this way, my students found out that reading a one-page text is not such a tedious task

I would like to thank Joe Bower for sharing such a useful strategy.

Is there a reading strategy you have used which proved successful?

A Different Presentation

I enjoy trying new tools that prove motivating for my

English classes.

One of the members of my Personal Learning Network (PLN),

Marisa Constantinides (@Marisa_C) has shared a helpful link for

language teachers via Twitter: 21st Century Teacher Tools. From these useful

tools I've selected issue as a creative way of uploading pdf files.

In my previous post I shared a song for the class and I've used this song to offer

a different way of presenting material to my students:

Song: Enjoy the Silence by Depeche Mode

Have you tried a new tool this week? I'd like to hear about it.

Classroom Web Conference

After three unsuccessful attempts due to technical reasons, one of my classes had their first Skype experience with a group of Fifthgraders from a school in Jacksonville, Florida, USA.

We had arranged the video call with Shelly Zavon (@shellyzavon) in Around the World with 80 Schools, a project started by Silvia Tolisano (@Langwitches).

The video call was highly beneficial for my students because they were able to use the language they are learning, English, in a real situation. At the beginning they felt a little shy to speak but as time went on they felt more confident and interacted with the American students.

I believe these virtual meetings foster understanding between people from different nationalities and contribute to make young people more open-minded. At the same time, it prepares them for a new kind of communication that is becoming trendier and trendier.

Have you ever connected your class with a class from another country? What was your experience like?

A Song for the Class

After reading a post in Jason Renshaw´s Weblog, in which

Jason embedded the video of the song Enjoy the Silence, I thought it would be interesting to make use of the song as a way of introducing a talking point in my upper intermediate class.

As to the selection of tasks, I was inspired by a post I read in Janet Abruzzo's edublog and by another one I read in Eva Büyüksimkesyan's blog, A Journey in TEFL.

Here's a link to the tasks I prepared: A Song for the Class

I hope you find it helpful. Which songs have you found suitable to be used in your classes?

A Creative Tool

I like finding out innovative ways of presenting material to my students as part of my self-improvement edtech skills. I'm far from being an expert but I do my best to make use of the free tools available.

Among Google docs I've chosen a format to devise charts so as to summarize a book module and help my students organise the topics they have to study in order to be prepared for the end-of-module written test.

These are the summaries I've created and I've been able to download them in pdf format too:

• Module 1 Chart
• Vocabulary: Extreme Sports
• Grammar Section: Verbs
• Wordbuilding: Families of Words (For my students to complete with families of words)

Which tool do you use to create summaries in order to help your students organise their material for studying?