Session 3 Activities

Interactive quizzes created by JMix , JQuiz & an online Google Forms quiz:

JMix : https://www.dropbox.com/s/divs3yyl44hii87/simple_past_tense.htm?dl=0

 JQuiz: 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dkhd3wq2kx7r997/simple_past_tense01.htm?dl=0

 

Google Forms:

~Let's try out the quiz here !!~

Session 2 Reflection

Corpus : http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/

The first activity that impress me a lot was searching how native English speakers use the language in a corpus. I was quite excited because I was thinking of some ways to improve my language skills and I know the best way of learning a language is immersion. I stayed in the UK for one year and in that year, I felt my English improved a lot. However, I couldn't go to England for another year now, how can I still keep in touch with "native English"? 

I finally found an answer from the lesson. It is the corpus. Not only my academic writings, but also my students writings can be ameliorated because we can type some words in corpus and a series of the example sentences will be popped up. After all, we can see how people use the words to express themselves in a more "native "way so we can imitate the style of writing, the collocation of words and the level of acceptance of some "new" English. I would like to emphasize that English is a language system which is keep evolving so I will definitely tell my students to try this out and experience how real and practical the English they are learning.

Quick slides !? : http://www.classtools.net/qwikslides/

The another distinctive tool is a website which can help people turn a list of sentences into slides that can be flipped. I have tried to use it to make some slides of classroom rules and it really worker! I just used less than 2 minutes to finish the slides!

I have experienced how efficient and amazing the tools is, as the "production procedure" is very simple , teachers can let their students put down the sentences that they need to recite here and make them into slides, they must be interested and have great fun!

Session 2 Activity One

If our students always write like this:

On the first day, we met our class teacher Mr Wong, we thought he would be very strict to us. After one week, we found Mr Wong was very nice! We like this secondary school and we like to be in 1A. This is a good school and 1A is very good . The teachers in this school are very kind and nice and our classmates are also kind, friendly and nice . We like each other very much.

As their English teachers, will we be able to teach them to use some tools such as online dictionaries and thesauruses to help out with their difficulties of limited word choices?

Once we use the thesaurus to check the most frequently used words: nice, good and like, we can pick some words from it and then go to other dictionaries and check their meaning in detail. This action is to find support from the dictionary that the word we choose can be swapped with the original one. Let's try to improve the range of vocabulary in a student composition as followed:

On the first day, we met our class teacher Mr Wong, we thought he would be very strict to us. After one week, we found Mr Wong was very nice! We like (Can be kept) this secondary school and we like love to be in 1A. This is a good  an excellent school and 1A is very good wonderful . The teachers in this school are very kind and nice likable and our classmates are also kind, friendly and nice sweet. We like cherish each other very much.

Session 1 Reflection

It has been a long long time that I didn't write a blogpost. It is because I suppose that people now are reading Instagram or Facebook, no one is reading blogs. However, to a certain extent, I was wrong. Once the teachers believed and started using a type of teaching tool, they can become very useful and professional teaching and learning platform because the teachers will try their best to promote their beliefs. And it is very true that students like playing online games or using different social apps nowadays so students can directly communicate and interact with their peers and teachers through internet.

I studied AS level computer application before so I was quite confident about using computer and I believed that my computing knowledge was enough for my work. However, more and more apps and online platforms are created, they are more instant, interactive, and creative. For example, I read some blogs that were written by different teachers, and they introduced an online quiz game called "Kahoot", teachers and students can create and make good use of the instant quiz programme and do revision. To be honest, I need some time to find the useful apps out and get use to them. But for writing blogs, it is much more easier for me to manage, and my students can feel free to express themselves as well.


On the other hand, as my school let all students to do online homework on some platforms, students are still adapting to the new mode of learning. Some students do not have computers at home, their families could not afford to buy computers so they need to stay behind at school and use the computers at IT labs to finish their homework. I found that is quite demotivating and annoying to students. I suggest that teachers can use some teaching tools which can be run in mobile phones, tablets or any computers so students can enjoy learning in anytime at anywhere. They can write and read teachers' blog whenever they use their mobiles or tablets,as easy as checking their Instagram or Facebook.