Course+Design

GROUP DESCRIPTION ** : **
**__ Class profile: __** The group is comprised of 20 students in their 2nd year of E.S.O.  **__ Level __** : A1- and some students do not even reach this level of English. They present very poor skills in the English language, due to bad habits and wrong language acquisition in previous years. Out of the four groups of 2nd year in this school, this is the one with the lowest level students. Most of them are going to be proposed as ‘Diversificación’ students next year. The school is a Comunidad de Madrid Bilingual one, but these students are in the Bilingual Programme not in the Bilingual Section. **__ Time __**** : ** 5 weekly sessions of 50’ each.

OBJECTIVES to fulfil with my Wiki page:
- // To integrate the digital competence in my class in a real and motivating way. // - // To develop a new and different kind of learning strategies together with their textbooks. // - // To develop strategies for listening and reading critically. // - // To interpret and evaluate contextualized info. // - // To encourage the writing practice in groups by using the wiki support. // - // To learn communication strategies //. - // To use technologies for research and/or to present info in various formats. // - // To face the subject in a different and broaden way by using ICT. // - // To be aware of the great importance of the English language when travelling abroad. // - // To develop //autonomous// learners’ strategies. // - // The main group specific objective is to create a virtual trip to London. //

CONTENTS :
- // To create writing diaries entries on a fortnight basis, using specific pages into the wiki, reporting their organization and trip stages. // - // To look for reliable resources on the internet to answer the questions proposed in the wiki or blog activities/project. // - // To develop reading abilities by a book’s selection. // - // To be able to link background and new vocabulary with grammatical structures in an oral situation, in order to prepare their travel to London. // - // To use video and audio files to support their work. // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">- // To produce a variety of oral and written texts by organising ideas. // <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">- // To use reference materials, including those offered by ICT, appropriately and effectively. // The contents will be: __communicative__ (to potentiate activities that face real communicative situations) and also __linguistic__ (to reinforce and practice structures already taught in class). <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">- Grammar and vocabulary activities, with links to web pages that offer on-line exercises. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">- Videos to explain grammar points or to show them examples of pronunciation, culture, interviews, for them to get a global comprehension of the language in a real situation. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">- Aid and support for writing compositions. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">- A collaborative project of a virtual trip to London. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">- Notes or grammar explanations by video support: Slideshare or .pdf, .word documents. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">- Reading comprehension exercises with video or images support, and adapted to their level of English. <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">- Useful links where they can find more information on students’ chat pages, interchanges, dictionaries, grammar books, etc… <span style="font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'; font-size: 16px;">- There is a page with films and songs worked in class that they can follow and watch again individually at home, as a reinforcement.

ACTIVITIES:
The activities proposed will be individual and collaborative ones in order to motivate students and improve their skills by practising with on-line exercises or web quests. The activities in the wiki page are designed as a complementary tool to their work in class. This group of students has not got working habits at home, so the learning of a foreign language is very hard with only the daily class, in which most of the time they cannot pay full attention. The blog activities are for everyone but especially for those students who are most advanced in class. Posting commentaries is not easy for the majority of the students, but the most advanced ones are able to do that in English language, so by that way I want to introduce my blog contents little by little. The wiki activities will be chosen according to their textbook units organization, in order to follow the printed material pace (Switch 2, OUP), e.g. reinforcement with grammar is worked on the wiki page ‘Activities and class notes’. By this way, some wiki exercises are developed to be done individually out of the classroom. So the wiki’s activities are designed to potentiate the four skills but in a complementary and different way from their textbooks. The project for the third term is the compulsory participation to design their own travel to London: ‘//My virtual trip from Humanes to London’//. As this school proposes this travel in 4th year, students are always very much motivated when they see the older ones go, and if they can prepare the trip in advance I think it could be funny and motivating for them. They will be divided into groups of four people, and each group will be in charge of one aspect: food, leisure, culture, etc… They need to present cultural, leisure or other kind of activities described and commented by themselves from videos or resources that I guided them to find on the internet. At the end it will be a personalized virtual trip for students of 2nd year. All the material will be supervised by the teacher who will evaluate the wiki participation every two weeks, and who will link all the students’ contributions at the end by creating a new page called “London Virtual Trip”.

ICT RESOURCES:
The classroom has a computer with internet connection, a projector and a screen. These are going to be the perfect support to develop the activities in a dynamic and funny way into the classroom. The school has a computer room when once a week the students will have the opportunity to work on the wiki page and ask doubts or technical problems to the teacher. The teacher’s ICT resources were edition programmes for audio, video and images (Audacity, YouTube, Picasa), also there were included many interesting and practical web pages of other colleagues, which are checked as reliable, professional and secure for them, such as: [|www.isabelperez.com], [|www.ego4u.com], [|www.aprenderinglesfacil.es], [|www.mansioningles.com], [|www.lyricstraining.com], etc.. are some examples.

METHODOLOGY:
The teacher is here the ‘facilitator of knowledge’ and who guides students effectively. For that reason my wiki activities are design to contribute to this requirement by: - //__developing students ability to control their learning processes.__// // - __believing in their own knowledge and ability.__ // // - __developing their creativity and personal initiative.__ // // - __acquiring discipline and study habits, that is, appropriate study skills__ //.

As a teacher and as the beginner of the learning process, I have to enhancing the teaching-learning process by exploiting a wide range of materials and trying not to be a ‘slave’ of a textbook.

I tried to focus my methodology within the communicative approach, where students are asked to perform real-world tasks that demonstrate meaningful application of essential knowledge and skills.

For the group project it is very important the creation of a warm and trusting community of learners in which everybody can work together, encouraging students capacity for ‘learning to learn’, fostering meaningful learning and promoting active participation on the part of the learner.

The philosophy of the Constructivist Approach has the premise that, by reflecting on our experiences, we construct our own understanding of the world we live in. Learning is the process of adjusting our mental models to accommodate new experiences. The emphasis now is placed on the learner. Constructivism supports co-operative and involves learners in real world situations and I think that a wiki or blog are perfect places for students to develop this.

EDUCATIVE IMPLEMENTATION:
I consider that this group can work more efficiently on the wiki class during the 3rd term, when the group of students is more mature and their level in the English language has been improved. Anyway, I consider that next year I can work since the beginning of the year course and propose different collaborative projects in each term

LICENCE CREATIVE COMMONS:
In order to protect the author’s rights, I publish my works into the wiki page under a licence Creative Commons. The type I chose was:



That is: attribution, non-commercial and share alike 3.0 uses.

PERSONAL REFLECTION:
Before I started this course I already have my wiki page created but in a very basic way, and I never used it with any group of students in a collaborative work or project. It always works as a ‘notice board’ complementary to the classroom. For that reason I felt that my objectives with the wiki tool were not the appropriate ones and decided to apply for this course to learn more. Regarding the process I consider myself more prepared now technologically speaking, and what is more important focused to one direction: the improvement of my wiki and blog. Of course, the help and support by teachers during all the way was crucial to this success, and I really appreciate their effort and patience. After this course I could learn more technical things that let me be more secure when designing or introducing new materials or activities with my wiki page. And, once you lose that initial concern, methodology and class implementation with your students is much easier. I still have my doubts regarding the final results with my students, because I consider that sometimes they receive so much ‘beautiful’ images in class and attractive activities or materials, but in the end they do not study more or improve their abilities in full way. Obviously a wiki or blog are not ‘miraculous’ tools, and we need to be patient with the learning final results.