Meaningful Learning

I believe that when learning is meaningful and relevant to students, they get more out of the learning process and can have fun doing it.

Therefore, I try my best to think of ways to motivate and stimulate students to give them an added value. I combine technology, card and online games inside and outside of the classroom to that end.  

In order to make the process of learning literature more meaningful, I decided to have the students more involved in it. While teaching the poem Count That Day Lost, I encountered some confusion among the 10^th graders who could not really grasp the poetic language. One evening I watched a lovely news report about an Israeli English teacher, who did a project with her students to encourage them to do good deeds. I immediately felt that this was the opportunity to link the material learned in class to the students' reality. Ever since I showed the news report to the students, our good deeds project went viral. The students were asked to send pictures of videos of them doing something good to our Whatsapp group to make the day "well spent", as the poem learned in class suggested. Each student thought of an act of kindness to family members and passersby and tried to be creative. One student gave a flower to an old lady, another made breakfast for her little sister, while yet another student washed the floor instead of his mother; some others arranged chairs in the classrooms and more. Every time I got a new picture/video I was excited. The students enjoyed the process and made the connection between their good deeds projects to what we learned in class.

This experience was a proof for me that as a teacher it is essential to make learning meaningful and there is no limit to the ideas.    

Your second, personal blog post

Now that (most of) you have posted your first, professional post we're going to move to the second blog post, which should be of a more personal nature, specifically a review. Read on to find out what you can review and how to go about it.

My favorite speaking activity

There are four language skills that an EFL learner has to master: writing, reading, listening and speaking. Some might say that the skill of speaking is the most infamous one. In other words, speaking is considered to be the most challenging one to teach and to acquire.

Pedagogically speaking, the EFL teacher has to acknowledge two main things. First, providing the students with various opportunities to speak is fundamental. There must be different types of speaking activities throughout the lesson. Second, speaking is hard to master mostly because it has a lot to do with confidence, or the lack of it. The teacher has to make sure the students feel comfortable enough to speak freely and confidently within the classroom by providing a tolerant, safe atmosphere for them to explore and make mistakes.

In my classes, I try to encourage my students to speak as much as possible even though it is not always easy. When I was a college student, I was observing an amazing English teacher in an elementary school in Holon and she had a wonderful speaking activity, which I adopted, Each student receives a sheet with common personal questions, such as Where do you live? What is your favorite season? When is your birthday?. There are between 30-41 questions, depends on the grade level. Firstly, we go over the questions together and the students write down their answers. Then, the students practice asking and answering in pairs or groups. Later on, each lesson a student is given the chance to be the "Pupil on Duty", in which he is to answer the other pupils` questions without looking at the sheet. Thus, the pupils get the opportunity to speak English freely using memorized chunks.

Over the years I have seen that this activity is very relatable and enjoyable for all ages since the students get to speak about themselves, their habits and their interests. Also, the teacher can adapt the content to the learners` level. Another reason I like this activity is that being able to ask and answer personal questions in English is something that can help them in various situations in life.

What is your favorite speaking activity?

Tomer

Barak Zluf - class experiment

Introduction:

When our students just look at us and listen to what we are saying they remember only 10% of the given information. When we ask them to write it down they can increase the amount of information they remember up to 50%, but when we ask them to actually practice, they can remember even 90% of the information!

I always think of how to integrate students’ participation in class and truly feel like the textbooks give us great opportunities for that. We, as teachers, have to use them.

Hypothesis:

Last month I started the second unit in the textbook with my 11th grade, 5 points. This unit talks about gender. We read a text about the effects of gender stereotypes and the fact that girls don’t speak up in class as much as boys.

One of the proposed tasks, after reading the text, was to let the students choose a lesson in any subject, and run a class experiment to find out if it’s true and who really contributes more to the lesson; boys or girls.

I found it very beneficial for the students. First, if they run the experiment they can easily learn more new words from the text and additionally great vocabulary related to experiments. That would help them with unseens, most of which describe various studies and their results. Second, using their new vocabulary orally by presenting their results to their peers in class can build their confidence. And at least, to remember what we have learned.

Procedure:

So I prepared an experiment sheet (attached picture) and handed it out to each student. I asked only 5 to make a big presentation and the rest were asked to share their results afterwards, in the final discussion in class.

Conclusion:

When I shared it with my colleges, other English teachers, they said they didn’t even notice that task in the textbook or avoided it since it sounds too complicated. So when you have new ideas, share it! For my students, they enjoyed the research they conducted, remembered the new vocabulary much better and the correct way to use it.

And for myself, I’ll keep thinking about more ideas to make my students more active in order to help them remember the material. It surely works!

Thank you for reading!

Barak

Teaching like you like it

Well, this is my third year as a teacher and every day I wonder,

sometimes I'll keep to myself and at times I'll give it voice or write it:

Do I want to be a teacher? The kind that goes to school every morning?

The kind that deals with all the paperwork to keep track of students and

their progress or lack of progress? The kind that walks into classes of

almost 40 students to hear their complaints about their friends, the

homework or even me, yes me?

And then the day begins, I walk from one class to the other, some are

greater than others, looking at their creations and desire for learning

and I say, “Oh well, I can stay for a little longer and then decide”. And to

be honest, it gets better every year.

I noticed one extraordinary thing I lack. My publicity skills. Not like Hollywood

actors and actresses but close.  We can be sort of public figures, in our school

realm, if we play our cards right. Especially us, English teachers.

During the last two weeks, I have been working with my students on creating

English games. I have noticed that when kids work, look for information and

create, they are happy and learning and so am I.

Socrative

In order to help me keep track of my students' progress (or lack of it) and reduce my workload, I use Socrative Teacher. Socrative is a website and also an app that enables you to design online quizzes, short surveys and games. I use Socrative to design weekly tasks that my students do as classwork with or without a grade.

I use it to sum up the material that we have studied during that week or review the material before a test. I even use Socrative to check reading comprehension (I photocopy the text and they answer the questions on Socrative).

So what's so great about Socrative? Well, I only” have to” prepare the quiz / task and the minute students finish doing it and I press on the FINISH button, I get the results. That's what is so awesome about Socrative ( I know that there are other apps/tools that do the same, like Google Forms). I do not spend time checking each student's work. It is done automatically. My students also like using Socrative very much and one of the reasons is that they get immediate feedback from me.

So, how do you prepare a Socrative quiz?
1. Sign up on Socrative Teacher.
2. Go to Quizzes and press on "Add Quiz" and then on "CREATE NEW".
3. Give your quiz a title.
4. Start inserting questions. I suggest you only use multiple choice and true/false question types.
5. Type the question and the answers.
6. Once you finish typing a question press SAVE and move to the next question. When you finish typing the whole quiz press on SAVE AND EXIT.
7. To make the quiz available to your students, you have to "launch" it. Choose your delivery method and settings. Your "room" will open and all you have left to do is to invite your students to go to Socrative Student> type their name and the room name... and start working.

What's in a Grade? 

Since I'm in the midst of doing final grades for the semester this is the burning issue that I want to share with you. Our school decided that in 7^th grade we will not use numeric grades in the report cards this year. Instead, we have to do an alternative written assessment. The report card should consist of comments written by the teacher and the student.

The learning goals of this period should be defined and the assessment should reflect the students' performance according to those specified goals. I should also add a few sentences with explanations of what exactly was covered and how the student performed in each area. The parent and student should be able to identify the strengths and weaknesses so as to allow the student to focus on what was difficult for him or what he/she didn't manage to achieve.

I 'm also going to include a remark on effort and motivation, especially to encourage the students and show them that their efforts are noticed and appreciated.

As for the students' part, they are supposed to reflect on the last semester, what they have learned and how have they performed in class and set goals for themselves for the next semester.

I started working with the students this week on their part for the report card and they are facing difficulties. The students are too young and they have never reflected on themselves before. This is a learning skill that they have to acquire and practice in advance and we haven't done it up until now. Also they are having issues with expressing themselves. What they write should be printed in their report card but their expression in writing is inadequate.

This process of making report cards has become a big challenge and the work load is pretty exhausting.  Have you ever had to do something similar?

Blog

I want to share with you my experience reading a post written by a teacher. I find this post very exciting and touching.

Surprisingly, the teacher who wrote the post has the same name as I have.

The teacher describes the most significant lesson in his life in 15 years and this is what he says-

Towards the middle of the year teachers are asked to write assessments for each child. 

The teacher offered the children an exercise to write an assessment about themselves in the third person. He asked them to write at least one page, and only good things. They began to argue with him. "I do not have anything to write" "I'm willing to write only one line" "Where do I know what to write”.

They began to squirm. They began throwing into the air all sorts of positive judgments in a dismissive and cynical tone. The teacher began to think that perhaps he was offering them something bigger. Or maybe it's an exercise that gets them bored. And he almost gave up. Then he realized he had two voices. One voice who knows this is a formative exercise. An exercise that he wishes he could have done when he was a child. An exercise that can enable them to experience something that may be possible only when they reach a workshop at the age of 40. An exercise that will break the wall of self-image based on external approval.

The second voice in him was the voice of an ego that was afraid it was boring. Afraid that he will not be able to attract their positive attention. A voice that suggested that he should do something else with them, something "more fun."

He knew instinctively that their reaction was due to embarrassment. But the little boy in him, afraid of being bored, almost gave up the exercise. As soon as he caught these two voices inside him, he stopped. He felt a deep pain in his little boy who did not hear how amazing, beautiful, wise, successful and loved he was in such a way that it would convince him for the rest of his life.it was a pain that the child in him could not believe what good things are said about him also today as a grown up.

The teacher insisted and said - “You are about to receive the greatest gift I can give you this year ... Look how absurd this is! I suggest you to write about yourself good things, and you argue with me that you do not want to. Do you get what's going on here??? "

The students fell silent. He shared this is what he felt. He told them about the little boy inside him who is seeking external validation, because there is no voice in him that plays him what he so longs to hear. No one has trained him to talk about the best in him. He told them that he was a footballer who was physically excellent, but he had an inner voice that he always felt was not good, so he retired at a young age.

 It was the sound of a wound that goes through deep healing. They were silent. One of them insisted that he would not do this exercise. And folded the page. The teacher told him that he could write ten full pages about him, how smart and sensitive he was and how successful he was during the year and a half they’d known him. The student looked at him with a look of” I can’t let myself believe you.”

 One girl said she would write, but it's very hard for her because immediately she had the voices of others who would tell her she was arrogant. He offered her a point of view on why. He said that maybe those who tell her she is arrogant feel difficulty and there is nothing wrong with telling the truth. On the contrary, we owe ourselves this truth. She watched and there was a small smile of understanding.

The teacher insisted that everyone writes and they started doing that. Some had difficulties so the teacher and the rest of the class gave them compliments.

One student wrote only 3 lines so the teacher completed his assessment. The teacher said many good things and the other students added other compliments. This student started crying silently after those warm words.

 Another boy just wrote- “I AM A BOY WHO…” so the students completed his words. The child’s eyes sparkled with joy and happiness. Eventually everyone happily talked while standing on a chair. Every time someone read about himself or herself the whole class cheered and everyone was very excited.

This exercise illustrated what we sometimes forget. The children’s self-image is a direct outcome of what we- adults, tell them about themselves. Therefore, it’s crucial for us to build up the children’s self-image by teaching them to be aware of their strengths and uniqueness.

What are your thoughts on this?