Group items tagged

"This study aims at investigating the efficiency of web quests in enhancing the 8th graders' descriptive writing. The 8th graders in the Lebanese public schools in general usually demonstrate poor writing skills. Consequently, they don't show motivation to write in English. The subjects of the study are one control group (n=22) and one experimental group (n=23) enrolled in grade eight in a public school in Beirut and whose ages range from thirteen to fifteen years old. The purpose of the study is to examine whether or not the web quest helps 8th graders achieve unity and coherence in writing descriptive paragraphs and to examine if the motivation towards writing is increased after using the web quest."

Shows how a teacher can meet needs of relatively high-level ELLs in 5th grade through guided discussion and preparation for writing. Teacher provides the rationale for each step in her lesson. Includes small group discussion as well as whole group.

These wonderful videos take you from initial lessons to interviews with teachers and students to advice by the expert, and a view of how those lessons are put to use in the classrom. Amazingly good teacher training in 26 videos.

"Here you can start thinking about what you want to do with the rest of your life. This Web site was built to help you plan for the future. What will you do after high school? Will you work? Go to college? Live in a place of your own? By using this Web site, you can plan for your future right now!" Uses polls and questionaires as well as bulletin boards for teens to communicate. Not specifically oriented to ESL/EFL, but of interest to a difficult age group.

Tricider is an online bulletin board/polling system. The teacher can set a question and then let students make comments; or provide suggestions/Ideas that students then comment on, using icons for "pro" or "con" comments. Limited to 20 collaborators, but students can work as a group or in pairs.

Collect ideas and vote. Your students can write pro and con sides to an idea or question you suggest. 20 collaborators allowed, but students could work in pairs or groups to formulate their opinions. Tricider could also be used for teams working on a project. A social voting tool.

Preparing a "crib sheet" for an exam involves not just writing down some facts, but when done in groups, the sorting out, prioritizing, organizing, and integrating of course content. This article suggests using crib sheets as a study tool and provides a lesson idea that sounds quite promising.

This blog offers "prepared Brainstorming" as a way to avoid the common abuses of brainstorming: . . . "brainstorming is clearly an oft-used and abused strategy in both classes and staff meetings at school. While we have developed this strategy somewhat with techniques like Think-Pair-Share, we can still fall back on the traditional model when strapped for time, with far from stellar outcomes. "While this infographic focuses on brainstorming, I think its message resonates across all forms of group work that occurs in schools, involving both students and teachers. I think it deserves reflection." The infographic offers the tips to good brainstorming in class and preparation beforehand.

"ScheduleHangout is great for scheduling group hangouts on Google+ Invite your guests, give them a few date options and ScheduleHangout does the rest. We'll help you organize the Hangout session around your friends/colleagues optimized availability." This may be a way to organize Google+ a little.

Interesting concept of choreographing movement in the classroom when students break into groups or move from one learning station to another. The pay-off is in a more orderly class, more focused on the content, not on bumping into people. Might be especially good in very large classes and with younger students who get easily distracted.

Having an online mirror of everything taught in the classroom, and instant communication with teachers and working groups helps this technological high school overcome typical school-based problems with using 24/7 technology.

A look atMOOCs from the co-founder of Coursera. Shows how video lectures are delivered with spot-check questions and feedback, and the use of peer/self grading. The conversations, home-work assignments, and so on, are all data fodder for an examination of how MOOC learning works. Students were also self-selected into virtual and land-based study groups. Feedback on quizzes and spot-checks also led to the development of "individualized" responses to wrong answers/misconceptions. Demonstrates how tutoring one-on-online is far better than lecture courses. The goal of Coursera is to ignite students creativity through active learning.

Brainstorming or creativity by committee may hinder rather than help productive thought and encourage "social loafing," conformity to group-think, and fear of criticism, among other hindrances to divergent, creative thinking.

Over 8,000 websites created by students as part of the ThinkQuest Competition. Should give you ideas for projects in all the various content areas. Browse by age group, country, or subject matter.

Among the advice offered: "the person doing the most talking during an education session is the one doing the most learning. So that's actually the speaker. "We need to create more learning opportunities where the speaker talks for about 10 minutes and then the audience talks to each other. We talk in pairs or small groups so we can understand. We talk so we can remember. We talk so we can process."

"What you are looking for is a clearly structured sequence of learning activities and tasks that lead somewhere. You want a beginning, middle and end that relate to learning content.... But at the same time, your online course needs a beginning, middle and end that relate to the group...." A good way to think about how to structure both learning and your students' relationship to it.

You can have students create their own groups to share photos and videos.

Share multimedia activities on any device using HTML5. Gamify classes using Educaplay groups. Many examples are searchable.

Log in to Quizlet ad try Quizlet Live -- you need a set with 12 Q/A flashcards and at least 6 students to make teams. You can view a Demo or go ahead and start live. Teams of students get 3 possibilities and must agree on the right one. (Groups are assigned randomly, but you can shuffle teams to re-sort if personalities class.) In class students can sit together. Teacher View of the game shows individual students cues and team scores. At the end of the game, teacher can see what words are confused with what others.

A follow-on video to the more advanced features of Quizlet: copying cards, editing, embedding, sharing with class groups, creating your own flashcards, etc. R. Stannard recommends viewing the first video before attempting these (link to intro included).