5 AUGUST
Now that I’ve made the transcription I noticed two things: 1. I took over entirely for I had to explain everything to Au in a nutshell, what we had done, what we were intending to do and how.
2. I didn’t actually hear Sandra say that she didn’t like the topic of abortion and she felt that the lesson wouldn’t be quite as good. T’s demotivation? Motivation clashes again?, which made me think whether she should be open to the stu, tell them that she doesn’t feel comfortable with it and whether it’d be a good idea to deal with drugs/decriminalisation which was the second most voted topic. I’ll ask her today what she thinks.
This has made me wonder to what extent we need to accept what stu say and want and to what extent we need to negotiate and compromise so that one’s wishes/interests whatever are not carried out at the expense of others’, in this case the teacher’s. If she already feels the lesson will be crappy, do we still have to go on? Who am I to still push her to do sthg she doesn’t really want to do? Wouldn’t it be fair to discuss this with the stu and say ‘ok, we can still debate/discuss/exchange opinions and watch videos and all that but with another topic? FOOD FOR THOUGHT
viernes, 5 de agosto de 2011
jueves, 4 de agosto de 2011
title here
4 AUGUST 2011
Today we had our first teacher meeting. Change? Due to health reasons, A is leaving Year 2, her replacement, Au, was happy to continue with the project. Needless to say this will change some things during this second cycle.
I handed them copies of the survey results stressing that their exercises and input should reflect what the students wanted. We can still do some reading and writing, but listening and speaking need to be exploited.
I gave Au Sandra’s sources as she has now to teach about the Nazis. We said that again we’ll work alone but we can share and exchange our ongoing work next Thu.
We agreed that all of us would teach 2 lessons only for there are many school things coming our way :S
All our lessons will take place between 5-7 Sept. In that month I’ll do the interviews, surveys etc etc etc, we will then see whether we can start a third cycle but we’re not very sure about that.
Now, transcription time again!
Today we had our first teacher meeting. Change? Due to health reasons, A is leaving Year 2, her replacement, Au, was happy to continue with the project. Needless to say this will change some things during this second cycle.
I handed them copies of the survey results stressing that their exercises and input should reflect what the students wanted. We can still do some reading and writing, but listening and speaking need to be exploited.
I gave Au Sandra’s sources as she has now to teach about the Nazis. We said that again we’ll work alone but we can share and exchange our ongoing work next Thu.
We agreed that all of us would teach 2 lessons only for there are many school things coming our way :S
All our lessons will take place between 5-7 Sept. In that month I’ll do the interviews, surveys etc etc etc, we will then see whether we can start a third cycle but we’re not very sure about that.
Now, transcription time again!
lunes, 1 de agosto de 2011
CYCLE 2
Action Stage
01 August
I'm in Buenos Aires. I can sense some time issues cropping up in the near future as I’ll be travelling around the country :S…that’s why I’ve been collecting sources for my lessons on Drugs for Year 1. First I downloaded pdfs from Wikipedia about cannabis and drug legalisation. Later I went for YouTube: I got trailers, some news reports about drug decriminalisation in Europe, and USA-LatAm. Then I remembered Amy Winehouse’s Rehab song. It fits perfectly for in their evaluation they said they wanted songs and documentaries. I went back to the results from Year 1 Evaluation Survey and I searched for more short vids about marihuana effects and all that.
As I was beginning to select my sources and think of activities I decided to keep Year 1 feedback at all times as a reminder of what they had said. I thought of adding more reading input but it wasn’t ranked. But because they suggested activities such as ‘summarise and comment orally’ I did include reading extracts from one of the articles.
OK, I decided to start with the song. Reason? To have a cheerful start. I did the usual brainstorming and use her drug/alcohol to introduce the topic. Because they had previously liked the ‘listen and complete the lyrics’, I did the same here. Then, rather than doing the ‘answer these questions’ I gave that a tweak and turned it into a group discussion to report later orally as they also demanded more speaking opportunities.
From there I went to some vocab work. I reread the Wikipedia articles and I decided not to use them because of their appalling quality. I only used one picture which I could link to one vid about a doctor talking about short-term effects. The vid was better than the articles and I could still develop the listening activities they had chosen in the survey. Because the vid is also flawed content-wise, I designed a simple exercise to encourage critical thinking.
For each of the three videos I selected, I did activities like they wanted. I disregarded some of the other news reports and trailers because their English was a little too high and were quite European in treating the topic. I also selected only one bit of a video for it specifically deals with marihuana as a gateway drug.
I ended with a debate-type of activity.
I think that experience, feedback and observations from the first cycle have allowed me to be more selective. Rather than preparing a 9-page handout, now this one has 4 pages. They’re not as crammed as the others. This will take 2 lessons only so that I am fair with A and S.
Nice first attempt! Let’s see what I can get or change during August J
01 August
I'm in Buenos Aires. I can sense some time issues cropping up in the near future as I’ll be travelling around the country :S…that’s why I’ve been collecting sources for my lessons on Drugs for Year 1. First I downloaded pdfs from Wikipedia about cannabis and drug legalisation. Later I went for YouTube: I got trailers, some news reports about drug decriminalisation in Europe, and USA-LatAm. Then I remembered Amy Winehouse’s Rehab song. It fits perfectly for in their evaluation they said they wanted songs and documentaries. I went back to the results from Year 1 Evaluation Survey and I searched for more short vids about marihuana effects and all that.
As I was beginning to select my sources and think of activities I decided to keep Year 1 feedback at all times as a reminder of what they had said. I thought of adding more reading input but it wasn’t ranked. But because they suggested activities such as ‘summarise and comment orally’ I did include reading extracts from one of the articles.
OK, I decided to start with the song. Reason? To have a cheerful start. I did the usual brainstorming and use her drug/alcohol to introduce the topic. Because they had previously liked the ‘listen and complete the lyrics’, I did the same here. Then, rather than doing the ‘answer these questions’ I gave that a tweak and turned it into a group discussion to report later orally as they also demanded more speaking opportunities.
From there I went to some vocab work. I reread the Wikipedia articles and I decided not to use them because of their appalling quality. I only used one picture which I could link to one vid about a doctor talking about short-term effects. The vid was better than the articles and I could still develop the listening activities they had chosen in the survey. Because the vid is also flawed content-wise, I designed a simple exercise to encourage critical thinking.
For each of the three videos I selected, I did activities like they wanted. I disregarded some of the other news reports and trailers because their English was a little too high and were quite European in treating the topic. I also selected only one bit of a video for it specifically deals with marihuana as a gateway drug.
I ended with a debate-type of activity.
I think that experience, feedback and observations from the first cycle have allowed me to be more selective. Rather than preparing a 9-page handout, now this one has 4 pages. They’re not as crammed as the others. This will take 2 lessons only so that I am fair with A and S.
Nice first attempt! Let’s see what I can get or change during August J
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