Supplementary materials and activities

Supplementary material could be:

Class library of readers
Skill practice books
Teacher's resource books / downloadable
Worksheets
Websites
DVDs
Language practice books
Electronic materials
Games

Check this site:
http://maryglasgowplus.com/teachers


Consulting reference resources to help in lesson preparation

Reference resources are all the sources of information about language and about teaching that we can refer to for help in lesson preparation.

Reference materials:
Dictionaries
Grammar books
Books
Articles in teacher's magazines

Supplementary materials in a course book:
Phonemic charts
Lists of irregular verbs
Websites

As teachers, I mean, as professional ones, we should:
* Check the form and use of grammatical structures.
* Check the spelling, pronunciation and use of lexical items. 
* Develop our understanding of language.
* Anticipate learners' difficulties.
* Look for new approaches to teaching lessons and new classroom activities.
* Find out how to use the material in our coursebook.

Is a portafolios a good way to assess?


Portafolios are:
* Easy to integrate into teaching and leraning.

* Are inclusive, they include the whole range of learners work, not just a few tasks.

* Are informative. They provide a wide range of useful information for teachers, learners and parents, as they focus on productive receptive skills, and they show what learners can do with language in classroom and outside.

* Are developmental, they show how learning is progressing.

* Can be reflective when the owner of portafolios writes some comments.




Check this link:
http://www.mrowe.co.za/doku.php/safri_portfolios

Chossing assessment activities

Assessment mean collecting information about learners performace, progress or attitudes in order to make judments about their learning.

We need to think first about reasons for assessing.

The assessment could be informal (by monitoring or observing) or formal (by tests or examinations).

Examinations' purpose could be a proficiency test, to assess overall language ability, achievement test, to assess learning at the end of a course, or a progress test, to assess learning at the end of part of a course.

Some forms of classroom assessment


Assessment












Five Classroom Assessment Techniques

Give a click in the file and and you could read this article

Five Classroom Assessment Techniques:

Planning: Project work with teenagers

Project work is a good way of planning a motivating sequence of lessons with plenty variety. For ideas on planning project work and some good examples look at this.
This was taken from:

Project work with teenagers

Project work is becoming an increasingly popular feature within the ELT classroom. Common projects are class magazines, group wall displays about students' countries and designs for cities of the future. A project involves students in deciding together what they want to do to complete a project whilst the teacher plays a more supporting role.

Some advantages
Planning the project
Some possible drawbacks
Example projects
References

Some advantages of project work are:
Increased motivation - learners become personally involved in the project.
All four skills, reading, writing, listening and speaking are integrated.
Autonomous learning is promoted as learners become more responsible for their own learning.
There are learning outcomes -learners have an end product.
Authentic tasks and therefore the language input are more authentic.
Interpersonal relations are developed through working as a group.
Content and methodology can be decided between the learners and the teacher and within the group themselves so it is more learner centred.
Learners often get help from parents for project work thus involving the parent more in the child's learning. If the project is also displayed parents can see it at open days or when they pick the child up from the school.
A break from routine and the chance to do something different.
A context is established which balances the need for fluency and accuracy. Haines (1989)

Planning the project

Opening
To give learners an idea of what projects are and what they should be aiming to produce, it is good to have examples of past projects: a photocopy of a previous group newspaper or a photograph of a wall display.

Proposing
After explaining the idea behind the project I ask learners to propose a scheme of work:
What they want to include in the project
What form it will take
Who will be responsible for what
An idea of the time it will take to produce each part of the project
Any material or resources they might need

I would then sit down with each group for 10 minutes to discuss their proposals (a copy of which both I and the learner would keep to refer to as the project develops). At this point the evaluation procedures would also be explained.
Time
Allocate an agreed amount of time for the project. For a summer 60 hour course of 3 hours a day I would dedicate 5 hours to project work so approx. 6 sessions of 45 minutes each with a round up session at the end. I would also have the sessions on the same day each week - Wednesday, and Friday, for example, so learners know to bring materials to class on that day.
Space
Show the learners the space they will have for the project, it could be wall space or a corner of the classroom, so they have some idea how much material they should produce and can plan the layout.
Materials and resources
Provide the learners with materials they might need: card, scissors glue, paper etc. It is fairly common now for learners to want to use the Internet to find information for their projects. Encourage a keen student with Internet to do this at home! If there is time and Internet available in the school make sure the students have informed you of exactly what they're looking for - photos- or that they have prepared a list of information they want to find. Simply giving the learners time on the computers can lead to them aimlessly surfing the net. If the facility is available learners often like to write finished drafts of their work on the computer.
Presentation
Projects need to be seen, read and admired so schedule the last project session as a presentation. Ask the group to prepare a task for the others in the class to do connected to the project: it could be a quiz with questions for a wall display, a crossword using vocabulary for the project or comprehension questions for a video that learners have made.

Evaluation
As with any piece of work a project needs to be acknowledged and evaluated. It's not enough to just say 'that's great' after all the work learners have put in. I use a simple project evaluation report, which comments on aspects of the project such as content, design, language work and also evaluates the oral presentation stage of the project.

Some possible drawbacks to project work
Learners using their own language
If the class are monolingual they may use their L1 a lot (it often happens anyway in YL classes) so you should decide whether the benefits of doing project work outweigh this factor.
Some learners doing nothing
By giving more freedom to the learners you may also be giving them the freedom to do nothing! If the project is planned carefully and roles decided at the proposal stage this is less likely to happen.
Groups working at different speeds
One group may have 'finished' the project after a couple of hours and say they have nothing to do. Remind them it is their responsibility to fill the time allocated to project work and discuss ways they could extend the work they have already completed.

Examples of project work

A project based on readers
At a summer school I worked in learners were encouraged to have a reader during the month course. This is not always a popular requirement so I decided to have the learners use the readers in a way they might find motivating. 
First I chose 4 different readers that had also been made into films - The Full Monty, The Client, Dracula, Mosquito Coast. Each group were given copies of their reader.
The learners were then given free rein to do whatever they liked as long as it was somehow connected to the reader.
Examples of the work produced were: 
Summaries of the story.
Crosswords / word searches of vocabulary from the story.
Reviews of the book.
Information found about the history of Dracula.
Filmed scene from the book.
Presentation of a clip from the film of the book compared to a scene in the book.
Biographies and photos of actors from the film.
Music Project
If your class loves songs this could be a motivating project. 
Make a CD Cover.
Invent the band and the names and biographies of the band members.
Video an interview with the band.
Record a song. (Students often borrowed the music and wrote their own lyrics)
Write gig reviews.
Photo shoot of the band.
Design a poster advertising gigs.
 

There are also many other ideas but I hope this shows the variety of work which can be produced.

References
Haines S (1989) Projects for the EFL classroom London: Nelson

Further Reading
Phillips D, S Burwood & H Dunford (1999) Projects with Young Learners Oxford: OUP
Fried-Booth D (1986) Project Work Oxford: OUP
Wicks. M (2000) Imaginative Projects: CUP

Book: Planning Lessons and Courses by Teresa Woodward


The TKT course book suggest to look at chapter 7 of Planning Lessons and Courses by Teresa Woodward. Cambridge University Press 2001.

I found the book on line.
Give a click here   Book  and you could read the book.



Planning an individual lesson or a sequence of lessons

When we plan an individual lesson, we think about its aims, how to achieve them, the "shape" of the lesson and the kind of techniques that are most appropiate for a pacticular group of students. We also think about the connections between the aims of the lesson and the procedures, the material, the lenght of the lesson and the information we have about our students all help us to identify possible procedures.
A sequence of lessons is a number of related lessons that develop language knowledge and/or language skills over a period of time. Sequence may develop a single topic or language area.

Planning a sequence of lessons
A scheme of work help us plan a sequence of lessons in the best way to cover a syllabus or the units of a coursebook in the time available. It also helps us to think about what we want to achieve and what materialas we might need.

Schemes of work are not as detailed as lessons plans.

Like any individual lesson, a sequence of lessons should have logical and learning-friendly progression and a good balance of approaches and activities.

It's important to avoid always doing the same kinds of things  in the same order.
Here is a list of things we can vary:

Pace
Interaction pattern
Level of difficulty
Content
Mood
Exciting or calming activities

Planning (I loved this video)


Why is Lesson Planning Important?


Do you plan your class just because the coordinator asks to do it?
Do you like to plan your lessons?
I love to be in control of my lessons, so a lesson plan is ideal to know your material and the possible problems you may face, and I love using extra materials for the class. 

Stage aims examples


To contextualise the topic of holidays.
To give students a model for the speaking activity.
To give students time to plan their speaking.
To give students fluency to practice.
To provide opportunities to practise the sequence of tenses in spoken narrative.
To practise deducing meaning from context.
To check students' understanding of what they have read and activate language.
To read for gist.
To check predictions.
To use limited information to predict possible content.
To get students actively involved.
To put students into pairs.
To read for more detailed information.
To review the whole lesson.
To raise awareness of what lesson aim will be.
To encourage personal involvement.

Books you may need to buy


Learning Teaching by Jim Scrivener, Macmillan


How to teach English by Jeremy Harmer, Logman


Children Learning English by Jayne Moon, Macmillan



Teaching Practice Handbook, Macmillan

Identifying the different components of a lesson plan

The main aim components of a lesson plan show us what the lesson plan is for, what the teacher and the learners will do during the lesson and how will do it.

We have to think about:
Before the lesson
During the lesson
After the lesson

Lesson plan components:
a) Class profile (level and number of learners)
b) Main aim (s)
c) Subsidiary aim (s)
d) Stage aims
e) Personal aims
f) Assumptions
e) Anticipated problems
f) Possible solutions
g) Timing
h) Procedure
i) Stage aims
j) Aids and materials
k) Interaction patterns
l) Homework