Empowering English Teaching and Learning

A lesson plan for using blogs

2009-02-12T07:06:00.000-08:00

well, this is my first lesson plan for blogs!
I'm eager to see your opinions and suggestions! When I revised it, I found it too classroom-oriented... maybe it could have been simpler, anyway, here it goes.
NOTE: the video I mention is the one posted, 'Stand by me' :)

Background
Teenagers. Friend's Day (July 20th) and/or revision of 1st and 2nd conditional; revision of language chunks for giving advice.

Goal
To make sts improve their writing skill through sharing their feelings about a relevant personal issue, such as friendship.

Objectives
By the end of this activities, sts will be able to:

use the language chunks for giving advice as well as the 1st and the 2nd conditional in a meaningful way;
write a message that has personal meaning for themselves and their friends;
comments on their peers' writings.

Activities
1.
Students are in groups of 3-4. Each group is given a proverb about friendship from the following:

"Misfortune shows those who are not really friends."
- Aristotle

"A friend is one who walks in when others walk out"
-Walter Winchell

"Ah, how good it feels...the hand of an old friend"
- Mary Englebright "

'Stay' is a charming word in a friends vocabulary."
-Louisa Mary Alcott [1832-1888], American writer, reformist

" A friend in need is a friend indeed"
-Anonymous

T writes the following questions on the board:

What situations do these proverbs show?
What would you do in these situations?

Sts plan their speech and then report to the other groups.

2.
Sts are going to watch a video with a song about friendship. Before watching, they're going to list ways of giving support to their friends. Fianlly, they are going to listen and check if their words appear in the song.

3.
Sts watch the video and check their list.

Follow up:
4.
Groupwork: In which situation would you send this video to a friend? discuss and then share your opinions with the other groups.

5.
Sts talk and share their opinions.

Homework:
For homework, students go to the teacher's blog (the video is posted in it) and writes following this rubric:

You sent this video to a friend. What would you write to him/her together with this video?

Problem: some sts may not find the video interesting enough to be as a 'trigger' for further writing.

Solution: a second option can be offered. Here goes the rubric:

Take a look at these proverbs:

"A friend is one who walks in when others walk out"
-Walter Winchell

"Ah, how good it feels...the hand of an old friend"
- Mary Englebright "

send one of them to your best friend together with a note giving him/her support in his/her difficult moment. The proverb can be wherever you want, at the beginning, in the middle, or in the end of the note.

Why should we integrate blogs into our teaching?

2009-02-12T05:58:00.000-08:00

The answer seems simple; to give our students more exposure to the target language, to give them more opportunities to participate through a medium that is 'natural' -and hence, meaningful- for them... to improve communicative skills, either writing or speaking, as blogs admit any kind of tool, from notes and podcasts to videos; to make them share relevant issues about their lives, to comment supportively in each other's blogs... in other words, blogs seem to have so many advantages that it's impossible at least not to try, isn't it

So how do we start?
Alicia Zuliani gave me the answer :) it's terribly useful to take a look at other teacher's blogs, so that we have a sort of 'guide' to follow and, the, we spice it here and there with our touch. We can also find a lot of food for thought in our colleagues' blogs ;)

You know, this looks wonderful, but... will my students get engaged with this??
As far as I could see, yes! you can take a look at this incredible blogs to see how the students contribute:
http://kellycilc.wordpress.com/author/kellissima/ she is a Brazilian teacher who uses her blog to interact with her students of every level. I was just wondering if you had to have a blog for each course! it's worth taking a look at it, it has plenty of photos and material. Excellent!
Another one that is starting and getting feedback as well:
http://missstaken.blogspot.com/ she is a Mexican teacher who is starting, like me :), and she's just launched a project for her students.

Here is a blog from Iran, yes! http://www.iransessions.blogspot.com/ he's inviting teachers to participate in a global project. Take a look!

Saro Rosales, from Canarias, posts assingnments and other activities in http://sarorosales.blogspot.com/ but I don't know what his students do, as I found no comments in it.

Here is Rita Zeinstejer's blog, it's really good, she's been working with technology in her lessons and offered a series of workshops and conferences about the topic, the difference here is that everyone posts in her blog, I see students and other people from other countries! http://ritamz.ning.com/profiles/blog/list

Wow! a lot to do, a lot to see and learn!! a great challenge, what do you think? ;)

2009-02-08T14:40:00.000-08:00

http://www.chinswing.com/pages/discussion.aspx?id=b9212a04-24b1-40d6-a631-3264554b5c24

2009-02-08T12:35:00.001-08:00

2009-02-08T12:08:00.000-08:00

hello!!!
I've created this blog to share thoughts, ideas, materials, resources... anything that could help in empowering our students and help us improve our teaching :)