Technology for teaching

Throughout my teaching training course, my teachers have made me use technology inside the classroom. Technology can be a great way for engaging the students in their learning. They play games, create infographics or Power Points Presentations to name a few, and at the same time they learn or revise the contents. Here you have some ideas to improve your teaching in the classroom.

Kahoot!

I’ve used this app every chance I got, and it’s incredible how the kids loved it. The idea is for you, whether you are a teacher or a student, to create a set of questions on specific topics and they are answered through the cell phone or tablet. First, you need to give the students a pin, provided by Kahoot!, and then you can choose if you want to play individually or in teams.

In my case, I used it when I had to teach “reported speech” and a reading strategy.

For the reading strategy, I prepared a set of questions, in Spanish, due to the level of English of the students, and because I wanted to see if they understood the strategy. Here’s a video for you to see how it works and if you want to read about the strategy, I’ve made a post about that.

Video:

For the reading strategy, I prepared a set of questions, in Spanish, due to the level of English of the students, and because I wanted to see if they understood the strategy. Here’s a video for you to see how it works and if you want to read about the strategy, I’ve made a post about that and if you want to see how to fix a reading comprehension strategy, go here. 

Video:

When I taught reported speech, once the explanation was over, I used Kahoot! to revise and see if the kids understood everything.

The thing about Kahoot! is that you need internet to use it and it’s not entirely reliable when it comes to evaluating. You can download the results in an Excel sheet but, if the internet didn’t work at some point, the results will be affected by that. 

Plickers

I haven’t had the chance to use this one, but I’ve been on the side of the student, meaning, my teacher was the one using it. The idea for this app is almost the same as in Kahoot! but instead of using the cell phones or tablets, you print a set of cards (you can print them from their official site)  and give each student one. The cards have a letter on each side of the barcode, and when you ask a question to the students, they hold the card in front of them with the letter of their choice on top. Using the app, you scan the room and the app records the scores on a graph. The scanning takes seconds, and the teacher can see instantly whether the students understood the concepts or not.

Facebook and Soundcloud

A good idea is for your students to write a collaborative story. First, you need to create a group on Facebook, then, your students need to upload an image of their choice and write just a sentence about that picture or about the story they pretend to write. After that, their classmates will write a sentence each, trying to continue the story until one gives it an ending.

After the writing, a good idea is to correct the stories altogether, correcting mistakes, adding new ideas but without changing the main idea of the story. Once the correction is over, ask the students to record themselves telling the story and adding sound effects when necessary. The last step is for them to upload the recording to Soundcloud.

Writing collaboratively your students will be able to become more effective writers, think critically and they will be more aware of various writing strategies. 

I believe that technology has a great positive impact on teaching by engaging the students on what they like and feel comfortable using, and also, makes teaching a lot more fun. Besides, when we use technology in the classroom, students can take more control of their learning. So, I really hope you like these ideas for using technology not only for your life, but also for teaching. Go, get out of your comfort zone and make your classes more dynamic! 

Make reading a piece of cake

Make reading a piece of cake

A week ago I had to practice in a 5^th course of secondary school, along with a friend. The idea was to introduce a reading strategy but with a metaphor, so we decided to explain the strategy by comparing it with baking, ergo the title ;).The strategy and metaphor have 4 elements: PREPARING, MIXING, BAKING and EATING. 

For the PREPARING part, we organize the ingredients and we see if don’t miss anything. Comparing this with the first element of the strategy, what we need to do before reading is to take a look at the whole text paying attention to the heading, lay out, graphics, pictures, etc., to identify what type of text is and to predict about what the text is going to be.

For the MIXING part, we put together all the ingredients. Comparing this with the second element of the strategy we have to look at the semantic field, looking for words similar to our mother tongue, repeated words or the ones we already know. Moreover, we need to identify the topic of the text.

For the BAKING part, we pay attention to the temperature of the oven and how much time we will bake the cake. On the strategy, this would be the third element where we read paragraph by paragraph, looking for details to understand the main ideas of them.

For the EATING part, we taste the cake and think about previous cakes we’ve made to see how they were. When we compare this part with the forth element of the strategy, it would be when we relate the text to ourselves, giving our opinion about the topic.

After explaining the strategy, we show the students a text and we read it all together but stopping after every element and discussing what we were able to find. 

The class went great, the student paid attention and answer to all the questions we asked. Now what we have to do is a second class where we are going to create an anchor chart for the students and guide them through the reading of another text. 

Comfort zone

Comfort zone, a place where we all feel safe. Whether is in your personal, professional or academic life, we always want to stay inside that “bubble” where nothing can do us harm.

Once, at my Teacher Training College, a teacher told my classmates and I that one of her goals was to get us outside our safe zone. Of course I was scared when I heard that because I didn’t know what to expect, but here I am stepping out of my comfort zone and sharing my thoughts and experiences.

Even though I haven’t had too many experiences teaching at schools because I’m just a student, I remember one of the previous years when I had an assignment that was scary for me. I had to plan two activities for a group of students, who were going to spend a day at a picnic in a non-formal environment, with the idea of entertain them as well as teaching them. Along with two of my classmates, we came up with the idea of the “Hamburgame” and “Chinese Whispers”.

For the first game, we settled two stations with one hamburger, made of foam, on each station. We told the kids a list of ingredients to prepare the hamburger and they had to run, in two different groups, and do it; the faster and more accurate one, was the winner.

For the later one, instead of saying the words in isolation to the kids for them to pass around to their friends, we told them simple sentences. The first kid, at the end of the row, to say the sentence correctly and out loud was the winner.

To be honest with you, I didn’t want to do it. I thought that I wasn’t going to do very well with kids around 10 years old, but I did! Let’s say that that is my comfort zone, teaching to young adults. If I learned something about that experience is that I can do it, and even though there are still some fears hovering around regarding how to teach children from primary school, I believe I need to get out of my “bubble” more often. Everyone does.

We need to take more risks, more chances. But the thing is, sometimes we are afraid that we might get hurt or disappointed because the activities we'd prepared didn’t work or the students didn’t engaged as we thought they would. But that’s the thing, we never know until we try. And if that happens, we can always change something about the activity and try again and again until we are satisfied. So, let’s give it a shot and pop the bubble.