Week 8 : May 24-30

I suppose, the eighth week was unusual for all participants. In fact it was divided into two parts. The first part was devoted to our PROJECT REPORT.
During two last weeks we had to write our project report draft and sent it due Wednesday to our partners for peer review. My partner in Bulent from Turkey, but we also exchanged our reports with Nadina from Romania. And I would like to thank them for their comments.
ABCD -objectives of my project:
During the preparation to the English school exam (C) students of the 9th grade (A) will create wikispace page examskills.wikispaces.com and will work with the exam cards (reading, grammar, writing and speaking) with 100% accuracy.

The second part of the week we were speaking about learner autonomy and created lesson-plan for one-computer class.
At Nicenet I wrote the whole lesson-plan following the template, which was given us on the 4th week for the technology-enhanced lesson. It is a lesson about endangered animals for the 9th grade students. I took the article from scholastic news on-line magazine about pandaTai Shan.

As Wikipedia says, Tai Shan is the first panda cub born at the National Zoo to survive for more than a few days. During 4 years he lived in the USA and became a favourite animal for millions visitors of the Zoo. The special web camera was set in the cage of a small panda and everybody could watch video on-line. But according to agreement between China and the USA on February 4, Tai Shan left the National Zoo for his new home at Bifengxia Panda Base in Ya'an, Sichuan, China. Since December 2009 a lot of American newspapers, magazines and TV-programs were told about giant panda.

One more thing, which I have learnt this week. Every time, when I read Hala's blog, I admire with her pictures, which include topic of the week. I understood that she uses a great site for decoration of the pictures and creating photo frames http://www.imagechef.com/ .
Pictures in this post are made with help of this site. Thank you, Hala!!!

And, one more pleasure thing.
Well, I really like my job, I like kids and I like school, but ... Last bell and graduation ball are my favourite holidays at school!!! And this week we had both. On Thursday we said "Good bye, lessons" and on Friday was a ball for our 11th grade students and they said "Good bye, school ".
So, now I'll have more free time for finishing our course. From Monday I begin my work in the school summer camp for primary students - it will be fun.

Eurovision in OSLO - 2010

Hello, friends!

The best thing in our course is our diversity. We are so different, but at the same time we have a lot of things in common.
And one of them is Eurovision – the best song contest among European countries. During the week songs unite people from all the states of Europe.

The winner of Eurovision 2010 in Oslo became Lena from Germany with her song "Satellite"





As we know, among us we have some participants from European countries.

The second place in the contest took – Manga from Turkey - WE COULD BE THE SAME
Congratulation, Bulent!!!





The third place took Paula Seling & Ovi from Romania, with the song “Playing with fire”
Congratulation, Nadina!!!




Filipa Azevedo from Portugal with song "Há Dias Assim" took 18 th place
Congratulation, Susana !




And our Ukrainian Alyosha with song “Sweet People” took the 10th place.

Week 7: May 17-23

Week 7.
I begin to worry about the end of our course. And the reason is not our project task, which we have to discuss with our partner - NO. The main reason of my sadness is - finishing of our course.

Every week so much new information, so much new ideas!!!

This week we spoke about the teaching of the large class. And it is not that large Ukrainian class, where we have about 25 students - NO. It is a really large class with 100 students. Of course, we understand that the main teaching method in such class will be lecture. But it should be not a sleepy lecture - NO - it should be INTERACTIVE.

This week I have known about one amazing method - Just-in-time Teaching.
Simply speaking it is a method when the teacher send some useful links or tests or other materials of the lecture before the class, and students come to the class knowing the topic of the lesson.
Here is video about “Just-in-time Teaching” by Karen Grove, San Francisco University (http://pachyderm.cdl.edu/elixr-stories/serc-geoscience/).

Also I like the idea with small task, challenge at the end of the lesson on the note-cards, where she asks students questions relating to covered topics.

The next topic of the 7th week is INTERACTIVE Power Point Presentation. Everybody use PPT in teaching, it is very simple to present any information using it. We know that it is better to see then only listen to the material. If you are teacher you have to think about the visualisation of your words.
BUT have you known about 7x7 rule (7 words in 7 lines), or about the empty sheeet slide as a chance to focus more attention to the presenter and his/her words. Have you heard about the influence to the brain of different colours and size of fonts?
So, there are so much "secrets" about using Power Point.

By the way I have created my own Jeopardy game about the United KIngdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - and it was great to play with hyperlinks during work.

And the last, but not least thing this week - I have a new partner for peer review.

This is Bülent Alan from Turkey. He has been teaching for eleven years. He is an lecturer at a small university in the East of Turkey.He teaches English Grammar to the first grades,and likes to do it. Being with the young people makes his job more intresting. (from his introduction section in Nicenet at the beginning of our course ).
This is his blog: http://bulentalanyyu.blogspot.com/

Who Took the Cookie? - Teaching Tips

Whole Brain Teaching: 6th Grade, Classroom Management

Interactive PowerPoint.mp4

Interactive PowerPoint Template

View more presentations from David Criniti.

Interactive Powerpoint Tutorial.mov

My Jeopardy Game about UK

British jeopardy

View more presentations from shruslana.

Brazil Calendar

Week 6: May 10-16

This week was quite hard for me, such as I didn't know exactly what is ALTERNATIVE ASSESSMENT. But of course after reading articles about it in the Internet, it became clear, but still I have to tell about it to my colleagues. While I was looking for useful information, I found an interesting quotation about assessment:

"If assessment is to be a positive force in education, it must be implemented properly. It cannot be used to merely sort students or to criticize education. Its goals must be to improve education. Rather than 'teach to the test,' we must 'test what we teach.'"

Alternative Assessment Using Web-based Tools

View more presentations from sammydog.

Also, the information about different LEARNING STYLES was introduced me only a few months ago, so it was really great to read all post at nicenet about it and improve my knowledge . By the way, I’ve tested myself using Internet and now I know that I am the visual, interpersonal and physical person.

And, of course, creating RUBRIC was the most useful this week. I have created the rubric at http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=ShowRubric&module=Rubistar&rubric_id=1906940&. I realize that I need to create rubrics for all activities which we do during lessons. Students have to know before the beginning of the unit what they have to know, what objectives and standards are involved and what they would be expected to perform.

One more very pleasant activity, which I was doing during this week, is creating the wiki-page for my 9^th grade students – examskills.wikispaces.com The main purpose of my wiki – is to help kids to prepare to their examination on the 14^th of June. And I hope this page will became their home-page for the next month. They can edit it, add their own materials, translations if they need.
Yeah, this week sixth week was busy. Besides our course I have three my personal issues this week:
First of all, because it is almost the end of the school year in Ukraine, we finish school on the 27th of May. And, as usually, we have a lot of control-works and test, and you understand that the main problem of all tests is checking and evaluation.

Secondly, at the end of the school year we have different contests. This week, on Wednesday I was the so-coordinator of the quiz-program "The cleverest" and on Friday, my European club was held the show "School has the talant", where students from different classes sang, danced, recited own poem, played musical instruments. This show was dedicated to the European days in Ukraine.

And the third personal issue, on Saturday we went to the field-trip with our teachers. It was the hetman capital of Ukraine - Baturyn - and it was great.