FL Teaching Courses by Sabrina Mulholland Jjones

Resources & Opportunities

tajana_tusek — 2017-03-21 22:16:33 UTC

Provide optimal conditions for rich play: space, time, flexible resources, choice, control, warm and supportive relationships.
Make materials easily accessible at child height, to ensure everybody can make choices.
Provide experiences and activities that are challenging but achievable.
Provide activities that require give and take or sharing for things to be fair.
Plan first-hand experiences and challenges appropriate to the development of the children.
Convey to each child that you appreciate them and their efforts.
Ensure children have uninterrupted time to play and explore.
Incorporate recognisable and predictable routines to help children to predict and make connections in their experiences.
Use puppets and other props to encourage listening and responding when singing a familiar song or reading from a story book.
When you use songs and nursery rhymes, help children understand the words by using actions as well.
Help children to predict and order events coherently, by providing props and materials that encourage children to re-enact, using talk and action.
Set up displays that remind children of what they have experienced, using objects, artefacts, photographs and books.
Display pictures and photographs showing familiar events, objects and activities and talk about them with the children.
Provide activities which help children to learn to distinguish differences in sounds, word patterns and rhythms.
Encourage correct use of language by telling repetitive stories, and playing games which involve repetition of words or phrases.
Follow young children’s lead and have fun together while developing vocabulary, e.g. saying ‘We’re jumping up’, ‘crouching down low’.
Talk through and comment on some activities to highlight specific vocabulary or language structures, e.g. “You’ve got a blue ball. I’ve got a green ball. Hannah’s got a red ball”.
Provide collections of interesting things for children to sort, order, count and label in their play.
Provide different sizes and shapes of containers in water play, so that children can experiment with quantities and measures.
Offer a range of puzzles with large pieces and knobs or handles to support success in fitting shapes into spaces.
Provide a wide range of materials, resources and sensory experiences to enable children to explore colour, texture and space.
Provide space and time for movement and dance both indoors and outdoors.
Lead imaginative movement sessions based on children’s current interests such as space travel, zoo animals or shadows.
Provide a place where work in progress can be kept safely.

Map Link

tajana_tusek — 2017-04-24 10:38:43 UTC

https://www.zeemaps.com/edit/cv0zId_xkFHtZBDTZQvDGjnxiNQD5DGV

TBL

tajana_tusek — 2017-05-06 17:52:14 UTC

First, the primary attention to meaning is emphasised in terms of propositional content and pragmatics.

For example, a task might consist of looking at a picture story (a story told through a series of pictures) and then considering the initial meaning of the pictures and what they represent. Learners might also consider the appropriateness of the images for their own cultural context or background. A teacher or researcher using a picture story, would also need to consider whether the images themselves, and their implied meaning or ‘story’ were appropriate for their particular institution or age-group of learners.

Second, there is an emphasis on language forms. In using linguistic resources and choosing particular forms, the students, with or independently of the guidance of the teacher, engage in decisions such as the tense to be used in telling a story, or the particular adjective to represent happiness or sadness.

Such engagement serves as a reminder to students of the complexity and situated nature of language use.
Third, there is a focus on how language is used in the real world. This sets a challenge for the teacher in setting up a task: the activity should ideally correspond to how the students use language already, or how they might aspire to using the target language.

Picture story scaffolding

tajana_tusek — 2017-05-06 19:44:24 UTC

People have contributed creative and colourful stories. But how do we help our students create such colourful and creative stories? One way is to first just get them to write simple sentences so that they aren't overwhelmed by the task. Then get another student to ask them questions (mostly wh questions) about the story to help them fill in the details, and of course to practice their language skills together and collaborate. For example, in Step 1 - Student 1 initially writes - A man comes home. student 2 asks Who is the man? What does he do? Where is coming home from? etc...

Identifying task

tajana_tusek — 2017-05-08 10:03:37 UTC

Will the activity engage learners' interest?
Is there a primary focus on meaning?
Is there a goal or an outcome?
Is success judged in terms of outcome?
Is completion a priority?
Does the activity relate to real world activities?'

Online teaching - tutor's roles

tajana_tusek — 2017-05-10 11:11:10 UTC

SOCIAL
Commenting in forum
Establish positive atmosphere

ORGANISATIONAL
Assignments
Objectives
Discussion topics
When to give information (weekly?)
Records of activity, progress and achievement

PEDAGOGICAL / INTELLECTUAL
Focusing discussion on specific issues
Recognizing and clarifying misconceptions

GLOBAL ENGLISHES

tajana_tusek — 2017-05-17 09:43:37 UTC

Week 1 - Think, Plan, Create, Evaluate

tajana_tusek — 2018-01-27 11:51:16 UTC

Week 2 - 5 shots

tajana_tusek — 2018-01-27 11:51:19 UTC

Week 3 - Animation

tajana_tusek — 2018-01-27 11:51:40 UTC

Sound Tell Me Grids

tajana_tusek — 2018-01-29 12:10:34 UTC

Feelings
Genre
Dialogue
Characters
Silence
Loaction

Relationship
Puzzle
Surprise
Prediction
Similarities

To begin, you could follow these steps

tajana_tusek — 2018-02-02 12:33:09 UTC

There are several good and free apps for creating stop motion animations, including iStopmotion, iMotion, Stop Motion Studio, Aardman Animate It!, Lego Movie Maker and many more. Download one of these to your computer, tablet or phone. (We will be using iMotion - a free app.)
Open up your software and centre your object in the camera viewfinder. Animations are created by: framing the object or objects; tapping a button on the software to take a single photo; moving the object very slightly; tapping the button to take a second photo and so on, until you have a series of frames long enough to tell a simple story. As a guide, this can be around eight frames/photographs per second.
You may like to create an animation with your objects moving from right to left across the screen, or from the back of the screen to the front, so choose an appropriate starting point for the two mugs.It is key to keep the camera still, however not every school has access to a tripod. Therefore we have attached a Cardboard Tripod template below that should help you steady your tablet for very little outlay. You can also use a stand (bookstands work well) to keep your device stable and leave your hands free to move your object.
If you are using a camera attached to a PC or laptop this may be simpler to complete.

Top tips

tajana_tusek — 2018-02-02 12:34:24 UTC

Make sure ‘Manual’ mode is selected, so that frames are only captured when you press ‘Capture’. Some programmes default to automatic capture.
Select ‘Onion skin’ mode, this helps you to see the previous frame you captured, as well as your current frame. This is particularly helpful if you are swapping cameraperson, or the tablet or camera is knocked by mistake.
Press ‘Capture’ at least ten times at the start of your film to set the scene.
Experiment with pressing ‘Capture’ once or twice per still frame and see what happens during playback when you have pressed it more times. You can easily delete frames you don’t need, and this will help you learn how to time characters moving, thinking or blinking.
We would recommend pressing ‘Capture’ four to eight times for each ‘still’ you want to capture.
Find the ‘Undo’ and ‘Delete’ functions to remove unwanted frames - hands will inevitably be photographed by mistake!
At this point, don’t add any sound to the film. If you’d like to add sound, or if you’ve made any mistakes you’d like to rectify, you’ll learn how to do these in the next step.

Top tips for in-class animating

tajana_tusek — 2018-02-02 12:47:28 UTC

Chunking

If you would like your learners to create a short film of 2-5 minutes long, divide a topic into small scenes of action and allocate one ‘scene’ per group. For example, one verse of a poem per group, one cause of World War One per group or one stage of the water cycle. This way, when all ‘scenes’ come together they will have produced footage for a longer film, rather than groups working individually to produce many, shorter films.

One way to speed up the animating process is to look for where you could loop your footage when editing. For example, one second of your character moving their mouth can be duplicated ten times in iMovie to last for ten seconds of dialogue. Similarly, it is possible to create ‘false close ups’ from your footage. Use the ‘Zoom’ function in iMovie to create a close up of a particular character, prop or plot point. By doing this you get more use out of your footage, however, it is important to limit how far you zoom in to your footage as it can become pixilated.

Workstations

Having planned your class topic or narrative, you may like to set up several workstations to complete the animation film. Groups can then take it in turns to work at each animation station, working on a different element of the animation. This may help you manage and support students working with the animation software. You may wish to set an ‘animation leader’ at each of the other workstations, which may be a pupil who has worked through an animation project before and who can support fellow students.

Your choice of workstations may include:

Animation – where models and sets are being moved and footage is captured using your chosen device and software
Props and characters – where characters, sets and scenery are made using your chosen materials
Editing - where the footage is edited and polished, adding sound/voiceover/narration and titles, and deleting unwanted scenes
Soundtracking – composing and recording a soundtrack for the title sequence and incidental music
Publicity department – creating posters and invitations for your film screening.

Roles and responsibilities

To support students in the organisation of their animation group, or to organise a whole class, you may like to issue each learner with their own Job Roles card (available to download below), which they can wear on a lanyard. This will also help you to remember and identify which task a student should be engaged in.

Start with stills

In between storyboarding and capturing animated footage, you may like to ask students to capture six to nine still images to tell their story. This involves moving the set and characters as needed and taking photos (using a stills camera or the camera function on your tablet or Smartphone). Students can label these with descriptive sentences and dialogue, which is less time-consuming and may be less daunting than using animation software. This approach also helps students to focus on their narrative before introducing the animation process, and the stills can be dropped into editing software where music, narration, dialogue and titles can be added to create a stills film.

Peer evaluation

tajana_tusek — 2018-02-02 12:52:32 UTC

A good start to the evaluation process can be briefing pupils in advance of filmmaking to give them a clear set of objectives against which to evaluate their film.
As previously discussed, you may also want to include filmmaking skills in the set of criteria, for example, ‘Use at least three different shot types in your film’ or ‘Include an element of Foley sound in your film’.
You may also include creative constraints that pupils could follow and overcome by developing problem-solving strategies. For example, ‘Your film should not contain any dialogue’, ‘You must create a film where there is an element of threat without any weapons or explosions appearing in your film’ or ‘Every member of your team must appear in front of the camera during your film’.
The criteria can then be entered on a sheet, like the peer review examples in the downloads section below. As films are screened, ask pupils to work in pairs or small groups to complete this sheet and then feed back, making sure that the feedback is focused on the positive and outweighs areas for improvement (improvements should also be achievable).
Engaging in this process will improve learners’ ability to follow instructions, identify next steps and areas for improvement and boost confidence. Peer review helps learners to develop the wider life skill of constructive critiquing and, perhaps most importantly, to identify different ways of approaching similar problems, learning alternative approaches from their peers.

Image

tajana_tusek — 2018-02-06 12:03:32 UTC

Visualising place

tajana_tusek — 2018-02-06 20:21:41 UTC

Szalotundo

Role on the wall

tajana_tusek — 2018-02-06 20:31:22 UTC

What would you like to ask the character?

Short film 'Les Crayons'

tajana_tusek — 2018-02-06 20:50:43 UTC

GLOSSARY

tajana_tusek — 2019-06-06 16:51:35 UTC

TASK is defined as an activity that:

is goal-oriented
is content focused
has a real outcome
reflects real life language use and language need

CONSTRUCT is what a test measures.

RUBRIC / RATING SCALE is a numerical scale used to evaluate a test taker’s spoken or written performance. Modern approaches to rating scale development emphasize including a descriptor that defines performance at each level on the scale. There are two types: holistic and analytic.

BACKWASH / WASHBACK is the result that a testing practice may have on teaching a particular program or lesson planning. It can be either positive or negative. For example, if a standardized test, based on an outdated view of language plays a very important decision-making role, teachers and learners likewise will probably decide to pay more attention to “how to pass the test” rather than “how to learn to communicate in L2”.

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT generates data on student learning while it occurs. In contrast to summative assessments or standardized testing capturing the point of knowledge or mastery after a lesson or unit, formative assessment is conducted during the learning process. Formative assessment is a way of framing learning activities such that they generate observable and measurable data for teachers and learners alike. During formative assessments, learners can discover what they have mastere

Peer and self assessment - SPEAKING

tajana_tusek — 2019-06-09 11:21:49 UTC

SPEAKING

tajana_tusek — 2019-06-10 14:19:22 UTC

SCALE BASED FEEDBACK

Choose a band on the scale that you think describes the speaking ability of a student or class that you teach.
Next, look at the level above that. What are the differences between your students’ current level and the next level up?
Based on those differences, what aspects of speaking could you focus on in feedback to help your student(s) progress towards the next level?

Example: In speaking, my students’ ‘grammatical range and accuracy’ is about IELTS 3.0; they tend to rely on memorised phrases and make lots of errors in simple sentences.

At the next level up, 4.0, they should start producing some correct basic sentences. So, in addition to their memorised phrases, I need to encourage students to try some basic sentences of their own.

In feedback, I need to help students correct common errors in simple sentences, e.g. using past simple tense to talk about the past.


Of course, they will still make mistakes sometimes, but getting some simple sentences right will help them to move up to 4.0.

READING

tajana_tusek — 2019-06-12 14:49:08 UTC

TYPES

Skimming is when we go through a text quickly to understand what it is about and to see if we need to read it more carefully. We can also refer to this as ‘reading for gist’.
Scanning is another form of quick reading, which we use when we want to look for something specific within a text. We can also refer to it as ‘reading for specific information’.
Intensive reading is a form of careful reading. When we need to pick up as many details as possible, usually in order to perform a task based on our reading, we read intensively.
Extensive reading is what we do when we are reading something for pleasure. More on extensive reading here.

Text Inspector

tajana_tusek — 2019-06-12 15:15:18 UTC

English Vocabulary Profile

tajana_tusek — 2019-06-12 15:17:07 UTC

English Grammar profile

tajana_tusek — 2019-06-12 15:18:19 UTC

LISTENING

tajana_tusek — 2019-06-12 18:27:47 UTC

TYPES

Listening for gist - Gist is a general understanding. Students do not have to understand every word because the idea is clear enough.
Listening for specific information - Listening for keywords and important ideas. Students focus more on the main points and should be ready to note down answers.
Listening for detail - Listening to someone speaking and trying to get as much information as you can.
Listening for inferred meaning - Students guess the real meaning from what someone has said. The answer may not be as clear, so they are paying attention to cues.
Listening for attitude - Focusing on the tone and on some keywords, listeners try to work out the behaviours and feelings of the speakers (e.g. whether they are enthusiastic or annoyed, bored or interested, kind or aggressive, etc.).

Special educational needs

tajana_tusek — 2020-03-10 16:57:19 UTC

What to prepare

tajana_tusek — 2020-03-14 15:41:21 UTC

Learners needs and interests | A topic which interests most learners, which skills they need to develop
Language | The level of language should be appropriately challenging. What language do learners need to do what I want them to do? How will I introduce this?
Examples | In this case, the Haiku poem
Grouping | Who will work with who in the group stages of the lesson
Boardwork | When and how to use the board in the lesson. This might include preparing a powerpoint or a flipchart if you have this technology in your classroom or you teach online
Instructions | How to set up the activity so that learners know what to do
Materials | In this lesson, sticky notes, a copy of the example poem and learners’ own notebooks
‘What if’s’ | What will I do if the activity finishes early? What can I cut if it is taking a long time? What if learners don’t have ideas of what to write? etc.