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1) Using Teaching as Inquiry to Support Secondary English Programme Planning
Planning Using Inquiry - English Online - an interactive tool created by MoE and English Online. Steps you through using a Teaching as Inquiry framework to guide your programme planning. Includes questions you should ask yourself before planning your programme, plus lots of supporting research, reading and viewing.
English Online - one stop shop of resources, pedagogical advice and teaching and learning sequences.
NZQA English Resources page - English specific resources on NZQA, this links to Level 1, you can then access Level 2 and 3 from here.
Online workshops - just a few wiki workshops I have developed aimed at secondary teachers. Topics include how to set up a wiki, and differentiation workshops.
English Online listserves - join these! - great source of advice and support, you cn request resources and advice and get responses from over 700 English teachers across the country.
English Companion (American site) A place to ask questions and get help. A community dedicated to helping you enjoy your work. A cafe without walls or coffee: just friends.
Teachit - A free online library for English, media and drama teachers, offering quality worksheets, lesson plans, online lessons and links.
Web English Teacher - (American site) K-12 English Language Arts teaching resources: lesson plans for reading, writing, and speaking on all grade levels
Creative Writing and Essay Resource.doc - This is a creative writing and essay writing resource that was originally developed to support school based workshops.
Planning your programme and units.doc - A rather large and meandering document with lots of tips, advice resources. Some original, some borrowed, some tweaked. This is the one that has the "checklists" of what needs to be covered for each type of unit at each level. It's a bit huge so you may like top skim, copy and paste the bits you want.
Part Two: Integrating e-learning in the English (and Media) classroom
Information and communication technology (ICT) has a major impact on the world in which young people live. Similarly, e-learning (that is, learning supported by or facilitated by ICT) has considerable potential to support the teaching approaches outlined in the above section.
For instance, e-learning may:
assist the making of connections by enabling students to enter and explore new learning environments, overcoming barriers of distance and time
facilitate shared learning by enabling students to join or create communities of learners that extend well beyond the classroom
assist in the creation of supportive learning environments by offering resources that take account of individual, cultural, or developmental differences
enhance opportunities to learn by offering students virtual experiences and tools that save them time, allowing them to take their learning further.
Schools should explore not only how ICT can supplement traditional ways of teaching but also how it can open up new and different ways of learning.
Discussion Questions: How well is your present classroom providing for your students' future? With limited resources, how might we address this?
Discussion Questions: Do you agree? Why? Why not?
(Check out some of the responses online...or even add you own!)
To summarise, benefits to school learners with access to e-Learning affordances, include:
Motivation and engagement: Stevenson’s (2008) thesis identified Web 2.0 affordances as being useful here. These same affordances involve the social networking practices common among girls, and being harnessed by boys as well. Connecting in groups is also a feature often attributed to Maori and Pasifika learners and so including social networking practices in classrooms may support their learning (Ako Aotearoa, 2008; Franken et al., 2005). The tools which support motivation and engagement, as well as co-constructive pedagogies can also be factors in powerful learning that meet students’ needs in a range of contexts and at a range of stages of learning, including ESL and physical disability.
Independence and personalised learning: personalising learning can mean students are more motivated to continue engaging in learning because they can more readily access support when it is needed. Some 2009 e-Learning fellows’ experiences through their blogs demonstrates this well (see http://elearningresearchnetwork.ning.com/page/efellows-1 ). Claire Amos’s blog, documenting using blogs for developing student writing, is a case in point. She commented that students regularly read each other’s postings as a means of developing their own work, and even when they lost notebooks, their online work was still available (http://mye-learningfellowshipjournal.blogspot.com/). Web 2.0 applications (such as blogs), mobile devices, IWBs and other equipment can be useful in supporting personalised learning, as well as students’ existing knowledge of online socialisation protocols which can help them successfully navigate online relationships (Lewin, Mavers & Somekh, 2003; Lewin, Somekh, & Steadman, 2008; Wan et al., 2008).
Critical thinking and multiliteracies: these features point to the importance of student-centred pedagogies that allow students to engage with multiple texts, collaborate with others and develop deep understanding. These pedagogies imply the development of metacognitive strategies that support students being able to access prior knowledge, interact with other people and various kinds of texts, create meaning and produce evidence of this new knowledge. The kinds of learning processes, contexts, literacies and media predicted by the New London Group (Cazden et al., 1996) are particularly important for e-Learning classrooms because they closely link to the kinds of co-constructive and socially mediated learning that technological tools appears to foster.
Access to information, resources and experts: this is one of the strengths of e-Learning affordances, because they make information and knowledge quickly and flexibly accessible. Students can manipulate and navigate such texts in various ways that suit how they might prefer to work. These texts (whether electronic, written or human) can be interpreted, analysed and reformed by learners, because the technologies exist which allow them to mash and mod the texts, creating new ones for real, but cyber audiences. In these ways, students can become producers and publishers of their own texts.
Collaboration in wide contexts, including international ones: Stevenson’s (2008) thesis discusses such arrangements. The ongoing production of student podcasts and integration of other e-Learning technologies at Pt England School, also point to the power of international collaboration and audiences in motivating students to learn. It appears that this kind of learning centres on the motivators of relevance, purpose, context, immediacy, audience, creativity, collaboration and pliability for students. In turn, such regular and integrated access to these technologies, enhance more traditional skill development such as literacy and numeracy (Burt, 2007). In these kinds of contexts, students are learning about, with and through technology. This has positive impact on their social, cognitive and affective domains (Falloon, 2004).
Some conditions which lead to positive outcomes include: the role of the teacher, the types of pedagogy used in technologically able classrooms, and the ubiquity of access to technology for everyone concerned. These presuppose effective leadership at a variety of levels within a school - teachers’ professional development and mentoring, technical support, provision of equipment, and a drive to support e-Learning as fundamental aspect of classroom learning. It may also affect the way timetables are constructed, especially in secondary schools.
1) Create an online classroom - If your school has Knowledgenet, Ultranet or Moodle use it to create an online classroom environment. This can be used for support, extension and differentiating to meet your students readiness, learning style and interests.
If you don't have a school Learning Management System, the look at creating a class website using wikispaces. pbworks, Google site or Weebly.
2) Get students to collaborate and co-construct using Google Docs or a wiki
3) Get students to publish their work using a shared class Google Site, student owned blogger accounts or MyPortfolio
4) Use the technology in their pockets - most phones have a still camera, video and voice recorder that can be used to support the teaching of visual and oral texts, presentation and speaking skills.
Example -Using your phone's voice recorder you will record a dramatic reading of 1-2 stanza's from the poem 'The Tree'.
Using your mobile phone you will then take still shots of (or film) a tree of your choice. Try to capture the feeling of the poem. Feel free to use your partner in the shots as well. Try to include a range of the following shot types: establishing shot, extreme close up, close up, low angle, high angle, long shot, extreme long shot.
NB. Unsure of the film terms? Check out this handy reference here
5) Using Social Networks -Working with Facebook, Twitter and Google+
Working with Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites
What is your school's policy around Facebook use?
How might I use Facebook and what do I need to consider when using social networking sites?
Ideas and strategies - create a closed group for your classes to communicate with one another, then use this to notify them of upcoming assessments and useful resources
Activity - Read this article about how Facebook was used to support teaching and learning in a history class. How do you think this could transfer to an English class?
Free Technology for Teachers - probably the single most useful blog recommending e-learning tools and strategies
Using ICTs in English - resources from 2010 workshop day run at Kohia Teachers Centre (Team Solutions)
Teaching and e-learning blog - the blog that I have developed to support the ICT PD contract at Epsom Girls Grammar School. Resources and strategies to support using ICTs in and beyond the classroom.
ICTs in English blog - the blog that compliments the English online ICTs in English listserve
Bio Claire Amos resides in Auckland, New Zealand. She is married and has two young daughters. She is the Director of e-learning at Epsom Girls Grammar School. She is also the facilitator of the ICTs in English community on English Online. In 2010 Claire held the position of Auckland Secondary English Facilitator at Team Solutions at the University of Auckland. Claire has taught English for 13 years in a range of secondary schools, most recently holding the position of Head of English Faculty at Auckland Girl’s Grammar School. She has worked at a national level in assessment and curriculum in English as a part of the writing team for the redevelopment of the NCEA standards and as a marker for NCEA external standards. In 2009 Claire was a Ministry of Education e-fellow for which she undertook a study of how ICTs can be used to support literacy in and beyond the English classroom.
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