HOW IS EVERYTHING GOING NOWADAYS?

Hi EVERYBODY, How is everything going in your life nowadays? I think most of us were relaxed last week when assessed teaching issue was completely over and we took a deep breath. Also, there are not many lessons that you have to study, which is really good for our mental health in my opinion:) Applications to private institutions are over for me and I do not want to deal with anything related to preparations for meetings, lesson demonstrations, etc. (I am really fed up with them:( Now I am very fine and I believe I need a peaceful life for the rest of my life:) As you see I am a bit tired, what about you? what are you doing? I wish good luck and a peaceful life for you in your future life...

TED- ELT CONFERENCE

Hi everybody, Let me tell you that there is an ELT Conference at TED Ankara on 24th May, 2008. It is not free as it had been at Atılım University so you should spare 30 YTL for such a conference. I wanted to attend, but on this day I have a drama course. I suggest that you should do your best to be there because all the speakers are foreigners and you may get lots of things from them. If you are interested in it, you can visit the website and here you are http://www.tedankara.k12.tr/ I will keep informing you on such occasions:))

A FAREWELL TO OUR LITTLE STUDENTS AND DEAR MENTOR TEACHER

Unfortunately today was the last day of our practice teaching adventure:(( We did our teachings and at the end of the lessons took photos with our students and mentor teacher. All the students were very kind to us. We really liked them throughout the term. I believe that I am very lucky to be together with them and have such a dear mentor teacher like ours. In the end our mentor teacher gave a detailed feedback to us and we gave her a present. She was very kind and concerned with our teachings, problems, etc. She was very friendly and sincere while talking to us in the school. In short, everything went without a problem and we were happy to be there...

So my dear friends what about your farewells?

ASSESSING... ALL THE TIME ASSESSING SOMETHING...:((

Hi friends,

Today ı have done my assessed teaching. I did not like my performance in the class. I think I made a mistake in deciding on the difficulty level of the reading text. My mentor teacher said it was really difficult on the part of the students as they are both young learners and at elementary level of English competency. In my previous teachings I had never made such a mistake- as my mentor teacher said. Nevertheless I believe that every failure will add valuable experiences in my competency.

I wish good luck for my friends who haven't done his/her teaching yet...

READING SKILL WITH A GRAMMAR POINT

Incorporating different skills into the lessons is really important because reaching as many students as possible is our aim. In this ways, we have the chance to encourage our students to participate in the activities. To make grammatical points be internalized on the part of the students, we can benefit from reading skill a lot. What can we do with a reading activity? we should choose a meaningful passage covering the target structure and the function. Your text may include different people's plans in the future. While making the students read the text, we may include a pronunciation game (it is like a game in which one of the student starts to read the text and if s/he makes a pronunciation error, then the turn will be given to the next student). After all the students take part in reading the text, you can ask some questions related to the passage in the target structure like "what is Sandra going to do?" Also, you may provide your students with a task in which the ss are provided with some kinds of plans taken from the text and asked to find out the person whose plan given there. At the last stage there should be some comprehension questions so as to give the ss the chance to produce sentences in the target structure.

SO ı like reading very much and ı will make use of this skill a lot in my future lessons because ı want my students read a lot in their daily lives. I believe that most of the students will get bored, but if we enrich reading time with different materials the ss will gradually have fun. What do you think about this skill? What can be done with listening for sake of making reading an enjoyable task? ı am waiting for your creativity:D

CONDUCTING AN EXPLICIT TEACHING... the steps...

let's choose "going to future" as the grammar point.

• provide lots of communicative exercises, activities, different kinds of multi sensory materials,
• gradually come to the point of teaching the grammatical aspect explicitly, but how can you do this?
• you may provide your students with an info-gap activity and expect them to ask questions to each other and give answers of them,
• after such a speaking activity, you may tell them to make dialogues making use of the previous information,
• you should write the dialogues on the board and underline the target structure after the ss produce them,
• after making dialogues ask the ss to form sentences with the structure and again write them on the board,
• if they give a sentence starting with "she or he", then ask them to reform the sentence with "they"
• then, ask them such a question: "which tense is this? what can you say about it?" here the ss are expected to talk about "plans, future, etc."
• the other question should be related to the form. you can ask, "what about the form? how can you make up sentences with this tense?"

as you see, you can complete such a part in this way.after completing explicit teaching you can enrich your lesson with a speaking activity.

so what do you think? does it make sense to you? if you have suggestions, ı will be pleased to read all of them:D

http://brainenrichment.blogspot.com/ by SİBEL KORKMAZGİL

A Roadmap for Teachers -Create an emotionally and physically safe and comfortable learning environment.

-Make the content relevant and meaningful to students.

-Present the new information linked to prior knowledge or skills.

-Identify the immediate relevance and the possible future use of the lesson content.

-Thematic instruction is a powerful tool to bind the subject matters together and to find how they relate to each other.

-Make learning fun and interesting. Use interesting instructional strategies that make the skills so interesting that they can’t help but learn it;

-Provide students with a lot of alternatives or choices in their learning.

-Integrate the skills in the learning process. Make use of different modalities (visual, kinesthetic and auditory) at each lesson.

-Use hands-on learning, active learning in your lessons. It always arouses interest and joy.

-Use discovery learning. Develop problem-solving skills. Don't give them the answers, rather provide them with questions, which makes them find their own answers and construct their meanings.

-Infuse some surprise, humor or spontaneity into the learning. Use clothes, songs, games, puppets or props to get their attention.

-Let them speak, discuss and share their ideas.

-Try to spark interest and confidence by giving positive and inspiring suggestions with your words, intonation of your voice, your body language and your attitude.

-Present the information into meaningful chunks so as to make the information useful and manageable to remember.

-Provide as many real-life, authentic experiences as possible to minimize the experiential differences between students. Examples may include field trips and experiential learning by using hands-on activities, simulations, websites, models, experiments and guest speakers.

-Provide high-volume input for the students because such an environment makes the brain’s cortex more fully functional. The cortex manages higher-level, more meaningful thinking processes including problem-solving, creativity, critical thinking, analysis, synthesis and decision making.

-When some control and choices are provided for students, the content relevance is increased, their interest is heightened, stress is reduced, learning styles and ability levels are better accounted for, and both motivation and effort are enhanced.

-The more ways we present information, the more senses are involved, the more chances we give our students to understand and remember the material.

-Each student should experience a sense of success through their dominant intelligences and should be encouraged to strengthen their weaker intelligences in a multi-sensory, rich stimulating learning environment.

-Brain-compatible assessments should be learner-centered , performance and curriculum-based. These assessments may be formal or informal. Assessment should match the nature of instruction process. If the brain-based instruction involves active participation, emotional engagement, stimulation, activities addressing to senses and different intelligences and integration of music and movement into the curriculum and application of what has been learned, that is, skills and knowledge, then the assessment should be designed accordingly. Essays, products, performances, oral presentations, portfolios and demonstrations can be given as examples for such assessments.