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To Eliz Leite and Lidia Vanessa,my dear moodlemates, for your support and encouragement, for sharing knowledge and laughs
HELLO EVERYONE!
The first bimontlhy period’s over, here we go!
As you know,this blog is the way we're using to monitor the in-service programme this semester.Therefore this is the tool I'll be using to monitor and assess your work with readers.
Now, returning to your work with readers:
This time we’ll look at it
FROM STUDENT’S POINT OF VIEW .
That means you’ll be required to share
your students’ views on the this kind of reading,
and also their productions: texts, videos, sketches,
pppresentations,etc.
As for their views(testimonials)you can post them here.(see link for posts right after my text).
Concerning your students' productions you can comment on them here and in order to deliver them to me you may choose from three different options:
-as for films you can send the link to me via e-mail.
-for pppresentations you can attach them to an e-mail to me.
- for the written productions you'll find a folder on my table where you
can leave them.
Next Friday Lidia Vanessa we'll be sharing very interesting news from Macmilan.(Prizes for students and for teachers as well)
Looking forward to having you and your students here,
AnaMaria
PS:the deadline for our readers' project is June23rd.which means all student's projects should have been finished by then.
Looking forward to having you here,
AnaMaria
I'm sure you'll have a lot to share
“LIFE’S TREASURES ARE PEOPLE...together”
( Collin MCcarthy)
Enjoy this song!
SPECIAL THANKS
To Eliz Leite and Lidia Vanessa,my dear moodlemates, for your support and encouragement, for sharing knowledge and laughs
Dear Ana,
ReplyDeleteYour blog is so amazing that I would like to be the first to post a comment on it. I would like to share with you all what I have been doing with my K32 group concerning Readers. Hope you will like it as much as I do.
Kisses,
Lidia.
http://zimmertwins.com/node/676793
Dear all,
ReplyDeleteI ´ve been asking my 42 students to read about 10 pages of the book a week.Then,the students have to make a short speech about what they´ve read.The book is The Phanton Of The Opera.
I´d like to get some more ideas,
Luciano.
Dear all,
ReplyDeleteThis is one of the activities I've done as a pre-reading: I presented the chapter titles to the class.Then, I showed SS a flip with some books covers and they had to guess which book the chapters were related to. Finally, they speculated on the story. (Upper-Intermediate - 42 / book: A tale of two cities).
Hi everyone,
ReplyDeleteThese are some activities I've been doing:
1-Blue Flash - level 2 - SS have been asked to read books and post their short comments on their blog:
http://blueflashsjdr.blogspot.com/2008/09/lets-read.html
2-Advanced groups: 51,52 and 53 - We've been working with THE PELICAN BRIEF. After a pre-reading activity (flipchart with some questions and film trailer), they've been reading 3 chapters a week. At the end of the project, they are going to choose one of the CAE writing tasks. I might as well ask them to present the book via zimmertwins or movie maker.
Hi Luciano,Rosana,and Karla,
ReplyDeleteHurray,here we go!
It's a pleasure to have your comments here;I'm sure we'll get lots of ideas from each other.
Now a genuine question for Luciano and Ro:how do your sts like the speech?(I'm just curious)
Well ,let's hope that Sirley and Paola share those fantastic readers sites here so that everyone can benefit from those simple and interesting ideas.
Cheers,
AM
Hi everyone!
ReplyDeleteI fimly believe that Beth´s session was enlightning. Well, I´ve been using Eliz Leite´s idea for the FCE groups. We ask students to look for a text that would be interesting for the group. Then,they prepare a FCE reading part 2 task for the group to do it. It´s a way to hold students interest in reading and it helps dealing with such a demanding FCE task. Students seem to be much more motivated to read since they have chosen the topic of the texts. Let me know if you need any further information.
Cheers,
Patrícia
Hi everyone,
ReplyDeleteWell, I've been trying some activities in different groups. For instance, my action four is gonna use zimmertwins, suggested by Lidia. In addition, my Total English 2 is gonna write a letter to the author expressing their opinions about the book and/or story. To make things better, I found a new website in which students can create a passage from the readers, my action 6 is gonna be responsible for that. It's worth visiting the page www.stripcreator.com.
That's all for the moment!!
Best wishes,
Rômulo
Hi everyone!
ReplyDeleteThis is what I asked my FCE groups (42) to do while they are reading the book:
In their notebooks they made columns with the following headings:
- Chapter or section
- What happened (mention events, characters, places, times)
- Comments (give your opinion of characters, events, etc)
- New words or key words
It's a way to check if they are doing the reading, and also that they have understood what they have read. By completing the story summary, students can react to the story as they read it. Also, for each section, they can keep lists of words which are new or important. As a post reading activity, I'll ask them to write a composition (like in FCE exam).
The idea about the while reading activity was taken from the book "Penguin Readers Teacher's Guide to Preparing for FCE". If you want to have a look at it, please let me know. It'll be a pleasure to share it with you.
Cheers,
Rosana
Hi Eveyone!
ReplyDeleteI liked Beth's session a lot mainly because it became clear to me that we MUST vary the tasks!!! SS can get really demotivated if they're given the same task every term. I'd like to thank Beth, Sirley, Paola, Luciele, Diana and Natália for sharing their ideas. I'll be trying different approaches to readers and leaving my comments here soon.
All the best,
Eliz Leite
Hi everyone!
ReplyDeleteI've always asked my students to read, and as they were a bit reluctant to read books they were given the choice to read magazine or newspaper articles. To tell you the truth, I'd never thought how important extensive reading and graded readers are. Only after the beginning of this project my penny dropped. Now, I'm much more concerned about the richness of such a thing.
As a result, this term my students have to read books. I told them that this semester we are going to focus on readers and magazine/newspaper articles will no be acceptable. We signed a contract (Beth's idea) and all of them agreed to read one book a month.
As march is coming to the end, all my students had read their first books. First, they were asked to read a book and prepare a speech about it. In class, they were given the opportunity to tell their stories to 3 different friends (2 lines. I also asked them to listen careful to their friends and choose the most interesting story in their opinion. After this, they had to post a comment with a brief summary of the story in a blog.
Next month, I'll try something different. I haven't decided yet, but I'll have a look at people's ideas and suggestions.
Cheers!
Cainara
Hi lads,
ReplyDeleteI've just visited Rõmulo's stripcreator: it might be even easier to use and richer than the one we used at Going Webby.It's so user-friendly I couldn't help giving it a try....
Hi Cainara,I felt like visiting your sts's blog;could u leave the address here?
Cheers,
AnaMaria
Dear All
ReplyDeleteIt's a foregone conclusion that reading is a window into knowledge. This isn't hard to spot as we're surrounded, let alone, bombarded by the written word. Hence, motivating learners to read should technically be a rule of the thumb. One would be amazed at the sight of what a thumping good read, page-turners, grippers, heart-warmers, tear-jerkers, laugh-out-louders can do.
When getting my learners to read I kind of come clean with them in terms of what reading entails. That's to say that, reading will help them, first capitalise in 'culture', secondly in 'reading skills' followed by 'vocabulary enhancement', which will be building bricks to develop 'speaking', therefore, 'communication'.
Bearing such points in mind, now both teachers and learners may have extrinsic/intrinsic motivations to get the reading process going.
Here it goes a few ideas simple yet useful ideas:
a) judge the book by the cover or the magazine article by the pics or title/headline
b) a few discussion points on the book blurb or article captions / comments
c) speculating / predicting what the characters / story line will be like
d) encourage a 3D-vision of characters / ppl involved in the book / article
e) have a lexis corner as sth feasible to refer to, eventually, activating new chunks whenever applicable – actually that’s what I myself do
f) make sure you have chit-chats of the reading materials so that 'rogue' learners might sense they're losing sth.
h) have learners compare what they read with what they see, like books / films and articles / news items
i) have any sort of checking / follow-up work: discussions, descriptions, writing essays
j) have learners share their knowledge by going public abt their reading experiences – that’s where the PPS presentations fit in. I’ve been witnessing an awful lot of those made by teenagers – believe it or not.
Have I've been of some help
Cheers
Adriano
Hi everybody,
ReplyDeleteI haven't finished my readers projects yet, but what I have so far is:
Action 4: I just set the deadline for reading the book and IN CLASS students were asked to write a journal about everything they could remember from the book. Although it was written in portuguese, it was very interesting because I could clearly see the ones who haven't read and they felt really embarassed because they had nothing to do while the great majority of class was writing their journal silently.
In the pre intermediate groups I took the readers to class and let them choose the one they'd like to read. Then, I provided students with a list of suggestions on how to present their book. They came up with power point presentations, designing a comic and even a sketch which will be presented on Saturday(28th, March).
Ana Maria, why don't you give us a pleasure of watching their performance. Let me know if you are coming so that I can arrange their presentation for before or after the coffee break.
See you!!!
Hi Ana!
ReplyDeleteTrying to post.
See ya.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteHi everyone!
ReplyDeleteHere goes an idea to be used with Blue Flash groups.
My students have just studied Story Telling (Unit D5). So, I've selected some books, which I thought could be interesting for them, and I scanned the covers. I designed a flipchart with the covers of the books but I hid the titles.
In pairs, SS had to choose one of the covers and they had to create a story (orally) by just looking at them. Then, they had to tell their story to everybody in class. (It was really amazing, because all of them were able to tell the whole story in English!!! Obviously, I had to encourage them to do that using their own words)
Afterwards, I showed my students another flipchart in which they could see the titles of the books. They had to match the titles and the covers. I showed them the real books and they could check their predictions.
Finally, SS chose one book they would like to read.
As a final task, SS will have to make a Power Point presentation telling the story of the book (except the end). But they can only use pictures in their presentation, not words, because the aim of this work is speaking. After each presentation, in pairs, SS will have to try to predict the end of the book and say if they would like to read it or not and why.
Hope you appreciate the idea!
Natália
Hi everyone!
ReplyDeleteWell, I think that so many of you came up with lots of really good ideas on how to work with readers. I particularly liked Paola's idea, so I "borrowed" it to use in the classrom to get students to choose a book. I then asked them to start reading but didn't tell them what to do.I think at that point, if I did tell them what to focus on they might have not read the whole story. They all thought I was going to ask them to report the story. Last lesson I gave them a task to choose. It was all related to the characters. I took the idea from the "100 ideas" web site. The students were really surprised and each chose a different task to perform. I firmely believe they will enjoy doing the work and will learn a lot from it. The next book they read I'll pick up the setting to work with.
Thanks everyone for sharing your ideas.
A big hurray for Ana and the wonderful blog.
Cheers
Sirley
It's me again!
ReplyDeleteI just would like to say that Eliz has done a fab job preparing a motivating flip chart about the "Phanton of the Opera". I used it as a pre-reading sort of activity with my FCE group. They were really impressed with the trailler from the movie and seem to be engaged with the reading. We agreed to have a 5-10 minute at the begining of the lesson to talk about the book. I've asked them to read the first 3 chapters to begin with. I am thinking about using Paola's idea to work with this group: each person has a different task about the same book. The thing about Paola's idea is that students do different tasks but one student depends on the other one to acomplish it. I'm sure it will have a very positive result.
Thanks everyone.
Sirley
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteFollowing Sirley´s comment on The Phanton of the Opera,I read news this week,and it ´s said that the musicals in the States(most considered is The Phanton of The Opera)has helped strengthen the economy.It`s risen about 1%.Isn´t that something in a period of slowdown?
ReplyDeleteLuciano.
Hi everyone!
ReplyDeleteIt's a great pleasure to be part of this team!
I'm so proud to work with you all! =D
I'm learning a lot with you!
Thanks!
In fact I only have beginners groups, so I didn't start working with readers. I'll do it next bimester, as the beginners mentors suggested.
But I'm keeping all the ideas in mind to use them in the future.
See you
xoxox
Laís
Hi everyone!
ReplyDeleteBeth's session was rich specially because we do want to vary activities to get our students involved on readers.
I followed Paola and Diana's idea and I discussed the cover of five books with my 12E group and asked them to choose one of them to read. Then, they had to write about the book they've chosen (opinion, new words and summary).
It was really effective! Some students came to me and said that they enjoyed the activity because they had an opportunity to read a book in English and learn some new words.
I do believe that they are really thinking of getting the habit of reading!
Hi everyone!
ReplyDeleteWell, I guess I should start by sending you the link to a very useful site for those who are preparing students for FCE, CAE and CPE (of course we could adapt it to other levels…) http://fds.oup.com/www.oup.com/pdf/elt/products/obrc_photocopiables.pdf?cc=global
or you can also find it on aulas on servidor – Paola – Reading circles
It’s the activity I mentioned last Friday during Beth’s session called “Reading circles”. I couldn’t use it in my groups so I would love to get a feedback if you get the opportunity to try it.
I developed another project with my young learners (Green Flash). Firstly, I read “The Napping house” (Big Book) with them in class working on reading strategies:
1- look at the title and predict what the story is about
2- look at the pictures and guess the end
3- read the book and check if you were right
For homework, I assigned them to read a book and tell me the story (I suggested audio books). Then, I asked them to prepare a presentation, just like I did with them in class, and show it to someone from their family. They got really enthusiastic and I received a great feedback from their families through notes on their notebooks.
I’ve been using the two lines report (name, summary, new words, opinion) with my 13 and 23 groups.
Hope you appreciate the ideas!
Paola
Dear All,
ReplyDeleteFor those who teach any group in the upper-intermediate level, I have some suggestions to motivate SS to read the Cambridge set book: The Phantom of the Opera. The ideas are in: aulas/FCE Laser/the Phantom of the Opera.
Hope you like it as much as my SS did.
Eliz Leite
Dear All,
ReplyDeleteLast but not least, I'm here! ( you won't guess why I took so much time to find my way through this blog... )
I'm delighted with all the comments from the teachers. It's really rewarding!
I'll try something with my groups for the second bimonthly period:
I'll think of a way of exchanging the reader's recommendations between my two groups of intermediate students.
I may do it by means of the notice board ( the " mural " )or via e-mail...
I'll try it and let you know.
Again,congratulations! keep on doing this good job!
Beth
Uau, I made it!
ReplyDeleteIs anybody skilled enough to help me undo my name in the follower section? I don't know what happened there!
ReplyDeleteHi everyone!
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I´d like to mention that i´m really happy with the readers projec which ´s being develop this semester. I´m sure students and teachers are going to benefit a great deal with it.
From the very first activity I prepared for my students I kept in mind that quality should overcome quantity. No matter if students are going to read one or 2 books a term, the most important issue in this project is to make learner feel not only comfortable when reading in L2 but also involved and interested in the reading itself.
For this reason I decided to prepare simple but effective activities. All my groups are reading books at the moment and from their feed back they´ve being enjoying it.
SS were asked to read 10 or 15 pages as part of the homework. Each day I gave a different oral activity.
Here are some of the activities I worked on.
Step 1- I took some books to the classroom. Ask SS to chose one and made some guesses about the story, possible vocabulary they would find, what kind of characters... and talked to a partner
Step 2- SS talked to their partner about the books. I showed a flipchart with the following:
The book I´m reading at the moment is ...
It´s a love/a detective/story/a war story...
There are...characters and the main one is...
The story is set in...
It´s about...
Step 3 - I asked students to describe the main character (personality / physical description...)
Step 4- SS were asked to tell their partners something which happened in the story and they liked and something they didn´t like and gave their reasons.
Step 5- SS chose a character from the story they wanted to be and gave their reasons.
Step 6- I told the SS they could choose an "extra character" to be part of the story to make it more interesting, funny. I asked them to choose a VIP and give reasons.
Step 7 - When SS finished reading their books I asked them to talk about the end of the story. They had to mention if they liked it or not.
Hope you enjoy my ideas!
Elis Freitas
Hi everyone!
ReplyDeleteFirst of all of I'd like to thank you for all the amazing ideas you've been sharing here. They are really useful, specially because this is the first time I work with this kind of project on readers. Well, as I've just said, I dont' have much experience on that and I don't feel confident enough to risk something very elaborated, so I mixed some of your ideas.
I used Adriano's suggestion to judge the book by its cover to motivate students and rise their interest on the books. After doing so I asked them to choose one of the books we've seen in the classroom to read. As it is their first book at the pre-intermediate level, I did not give any task, just some reading strategies tips. Then, I set a date when they would be prepared to talk abaout their books, giving information such as what the is story about, the main characters and their opinion about the book. To do so, I used Beth's suggestion to make 2 lines and have SS talking in pairs, front to front, then changing pairs and having them talking again, so as each SS could talk to 3 different partners. After that I asked SS to report something about the books their classmates read, so that they had to listen to their partners. Finally, as a follow-up they are going to write a "book review", which is, in fact, a short summary with their opinion about the book (due to their level) and I intend to display their texts on the classrom notice board.
Hurray!!!
ReplyDeleteAs ClaudiaSR said we've got an amazing number of good ideas here.Starting from Adriano's up there-I like his chit-chats specially -we go trough Sirley's /Paola's '100 ideas'-please make sure u visit this site!See my post in 'Blog Archive'up there and just click on
http://english.unitecnology.ac.nz/resources/resources/books.html
Well Magda I've been there...let's wait for the next...Tks Eliz/s,Natália, Roberta ,Lais
for your comments/idas.
AM
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHi everyone,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your contributions!!!
I've just come across this interesting competition from Macmillan:
http://www.macmillan.com.br/videomakers/_home.html
Basically, what SS have to do is simply prepare a very short video (30-45 seconds) based on a Macmillan Book.
I'm toying with the idea of encouraging my students to take part in it. Let me know what you think of it.
"As the Internet is rapidly emerging, the web has become an increasingly powerful, global, interactive, and dynamic medium for sharing information.The Web provides an opportunity to develop new learning experiences for students not possible previously"(Alexander, 1995).As a result, students from around the globe can enjoy equal access to the many learning resources available on the web. (KHAN, 1997)".
ReplyDeleteIn this way, the Web became a powerful resource to help foreign language learners (students and teachers) to improve their language skills and keep updated quickly and easily of all the world´s information.
I´m very proud of having a blog to share experiences among my colleagues and I do believe that it´ll provide us with many ideas to work in the classroom.
Well,my students have started reading and I reckon they´re having fun. The projects
I´ve been working on are:
Group: ACTION 1/ TOTAL 1(INTENSIVE)
I took some readers to the classroom, spread all of them on the floor, showed the cover of the book and read the title. Students were supposed to predict the story. After having done it with several books, I distributed the books among students and I gave them the opportunity to flick through the pages.
As a task, I offered them 4 activities and they had to choose at least two.
1st) Make up interview questions (with answers) for the main character.
2nd) Design a book cover for the book.
3rd)Create a poster for the book.
4th) List new words learned from the book and give their translation in Portuguese.
Note: I talked about reading strategies and about how to enlarge their vocabulary.
GROUPS: Pre-intermediate and Intermediate
First of all, I asked students what sort of books they like reading and if they are not interested in it, they had to give me reasons.Then,I talked about the importance of reading and how to improve their vocabulary.
In the activity, I scanned some book covers and the following blurbs. They had to match the titles with the book covers. Then, students were elicited to predict the story.Some of them, have read some titles or watched the films. They provided their classmates with interesting information about the books. It estimulated their interest and curiosity about the books.
In the beginning of the lesson,some students mentioned that they aren´t keen on reading, but in the end, I had convinced them to choose a book and read.
I asked them to read a book and give their opinion about it and say if they recommend or not and why.
I intend to stick all their pieces of work on the whiteboard in the classrooms and share with other students.
Leonardo
Hi!
ReplyDeleteI'm here again just to share my students's blog with you: www.readers2009.blogspot.com
Hi,Everyone!
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I'd like to say that it took me a long time to learn how to make a blog, how to post comments,etc. Finally, I'm here!
Firstly I'd like to mention that I developed different blogs to my different groups. The idea was to ask them to post their opinion and recommendations about the books they are reading at the moment.
I'm having a positive feedback. My students are having fun, especially when they have to help the teacher with the blog.
It's really important to share with you two blogs that the students have already posted their comments.
Let me know what you think of.
Cheers,
Karina.
Sorrry, I forgot to write the adresses.
ReplyDeleteaction2-sjdr.blogspot.com
action4-sjdr.blogspot.com
Bye.
Hello everybody,
ReplyDeleteI created a special folder with some e-books, specially for beginners. You can find it in Servidor/aulas/e-book. I´ll be adding more e-books as soon as I have access to them.
An idea of using it in the lesson is to send the books by e-mail and do a classroom project.
If you download any e-book, feel free to add to this list.
Cheers,
Patrícia
Just to say how amazed I was yesterday when I saw my 42 SS. so excited about the final discussion of the book.I picked up Paola´s site on "reading circles" to round off the book´s activities.
ReplyDeleteCheers,
Luciano.
Better late than never, right? So, here we are to share with you what we've been doing with our 13 groups. We thought that by reading, SS could not only improve their reading skills and vocabulary, but also get better when it comes to speaking, interacting with one another in a communicative way. And that's what we do. After reading a book, SS are asked to report back as a 1' speech following the "useful language" below:
ReplyDeleteSS A: What's the name of the book you read?
SS B: It's...
SS A: What's it about?
SS B: It's about...
SS A: What's your opinion about the book?
What do you think of the book you read?
SS B: In my opinion / I think, the book is interesting/exciting/boring/silly... because...
SS A: Would you recommend it?
SS B: Yes, I definitely recommend it.
Absolutely!
Not, really!
Absolutely not!
SS A: Did you learn new words?
SS B: Yes, I did. The words I learned are...
All in all, we must admit that these reading activities have been amazingly effective. We've noticed that reading is a matter of practise. The more SS read the more they get used to it. And then, it becomes a habit!
Hope you try and enjoy doing this as well.
Eliz Costa and Lucy
Better late than never, right? So, here we are to share with you what we've been doing with our 13 groups. We thought that by reading, SS could not only improve their reading skills and vocabulary, but also get better when it comes to speaking, interacting with one another in a communicative way. And that's what we do. After reading a book, SS are asked to report back as a 1' speech following the "useful language" below:
ReplyDeleteSS A: What's the name of the book you read?
SS B: It's...
SS A: What's it about?
SS B: It's about...
SS A: What's your opinion about the book?
What do you think of the book you read?
SS B: In my opinion / I think, the book is interesting/exciting/boring/silly... because...
SS A: Would you recommend it?
SS B: Yes, I definitely recommend it.
Absolutely!
Not, really!
Absolutely not!
SS A: Did you learn new words?
SS B: Yes, I did. The words I learned are...
All in all, we must admit that these reading activities have been amazingly effective. We've noticed that reading is a matter of practise. The more SS read the more they get used to it. And then, it becomes a habit!
Hope you try and enjoy doing this as well.
Eliz Costa and Lucy
Ops!!!The same comment twice!? Sorry! We were having problems when posting.
ReplyDeleteLucy and Eliz Costa
Hi everybody,
ReplyDeleteFor those who are working with Penguin Readers, there’s a site (www.penguinreaders.com/pr/teachers/download-area.html) where you can find “Teacher’s Support Programme” with activity worksheets that can be downloaded and printed.
Rosana
Hi everybody,
ReplyDeleteAs I’ve already mentioned, I asked my FCE students to write a composition as a post reading activity. This is what I asked them to do:
Answer one of the following questions based on your reading of the set book.
1. An English-speaking friend is going on a long journey soon and has asked you to recommend a book to read during the journey. Write a letter to your friend, giving some information about the book you have read. You should give reasons for your recommendation.
2. A television company has given you the opportunity to interview one of the characters from the book you have read. Write a letter to the television company, telling them which character you would choose, what questions you would ask that character, and why.
The questions were taken from FCE mocks.
Cheers,
Rosana
Hello everyone!
ReplyDeleteAll of your contributions have been very important to me as a newcomer. Even though my share may be modest, still I'd like to share with you lot what I've tried with this adult intermediate group of mine.
First of all, I advertised: I brought books to class, asked them to read the blurbs and try and guess what they'd find in those books. I asked which one appealed most to them. Then, so as to lower their guard (they didn't look so interested in reading) I collected suggestions from them on how they'd like to work on the book. Funnily enough, they asked whether they could write a summary or a commentary.
Having that settled, I told them that, every lesson, I'd stick a poster-card on the whiteboard in which they themselves could jot down new vocabulary they'd learnt, expressions they liked, etc. My intention was that everybody might benefit from individual readings. Second, they'll have autonomy to come to class and 'spread new words'.
If anybody's tried that, please, let me know - I'd like to see it from other perspectives, getting to know what harvest have you reaped.
Thanks (for your attention),
Vitor.
Dear all,
ReplyDeleteI followed Paola's idea with with my young learners (Green Flash). Firstly, I read “The Wheels on the Bus” (Big Book) with them in class working on reading strategies and for homework, I asked them to read an audio book and tell me the story. Then, I asked SS to tell the stories to someone in their families. I got some great comments from their mothers. Have a look at the messages I received:
"Cainara, eu fiquei encantada com a pronúncia do Pedro, nem parece que ele faz inglês a tão pouco tempo!!! Além do mais ele leu e traduziu tudo o que lia, muito bem vocês dois estão de Parabéns! Adorei. (Fátima)"
"Gostei muito da leitura e interpretação da história do livro "The Magic Barber", feita por minha filha. Deveria haver mais atividades desse estilo, pois, dessa forma, o aluno se sentirá mais enriquecido e entusiasmado com o curso, assim como minha filha. (Déborah)"
"Oi Cainara, tudo bem? Após a leitura da história realizada pelo gabriel, comprovo cada dia mais a qualidade do inglês. Acho a pronúncia muito boa e o entendimento do vocabulário também. Parabéns! (Gláucia)"
Thanks for your idea Paola!
Cainara
Hi everyone!
ReplyDeleteWell, I asked my 2.8 and my 4.1 groups to read a book and then, they focused in the end of the story. Their aim was to change it in order to have a more exciting end. They were really creative and they express interest in doing so. After that, they were asked to visit the zimmer twins site and create the comics using their own end for the book. It was motivating for them and some students asked me when I would tell them to read another book as this one was really cool!!! Thanks for introducing me to zimmer twins! It rules! See ya!
EASTER TIME EVERYONE!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteMy fantastic 'chocolate egg' was this huge and meaningfulparticipation of the teachers' team!
Tks for your contributions.Rosan, your Penguin link is great;really worth visiting!Patricia,Vitor,Cainara,Barroso Girls,Karina tks a lot!Luciano,hope your sts benefitted from Paola's suggestion.
May we enjoy the holiday season and take some time to think about the meaning of Easter.
Bjo,
AnaMaria
Hi everybody!
ReplyDeleteJust to let you know that the new readers we bought are ready for use!
There are seven of the same title so that you can have half the class working with the same story and try some different tasks.
:) Beth
Hi folks! Just to add on what Beth just mentioned...
ReplyDeleteI've been using the new books with my intermediate group and I found their web site worth checking:
www.helblinglanguages.com/readers
You can find worksheets and interesting suggestions.
Take care!
Paola
Hi everyone,
ReplyDeleteI needed an activity to keep my action 1 group, which is quite big, quiet while we were having the oral test. Then I took some readers to class and some dictionaries, as well. Then they were asked to read, checking the new words in the dictionary and listing them. They were allowed to red the book in pairs, if they wanted. I was amazed to see how silent and involved they got and we could have our oral test in a quiet environment. I think it's worth giving this a try.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteCan anyone tell me what should I do in order to create a separate section in tis blog in which we could share different activities, sites, warmers we have been doing in class? By the way, Leo thanks for all the useful sites you are sending me by e-mail.
Hi everyone,
ReplyDeletewell, in order to call student´s attention (mostly teenagers) to our reading project, I decided to relate songs to books. I asked my students to read a book and then, choose a song which, in their opinion, would remind them of the story of the book. It was a great success and I also showed them part of the clip of the songs. Cheers!
Dear all,
ReplyDeleteAt this time I asked my students to read a book and in class I tried Paola's idea: reading circles. I adapted it a little, but students really liked the idea. For the next book, students are going to prepare a poster recommending or not the book and why. In class, I intend to spread their posters on the wall and ask them to choose one they would like to read. That's it!
Hi everyone!
ReplyDeleteI'd like to share with you my students' feelings about the reading projects I developed with them.
- Blue Flash: I asked them to prepare a Power Point Presentation using pictures to tell the story of the book. They felt really amazed, because they realized how well they already can speak English, I mean, they were able to realize the importance of paraphrasing when they didn't know a specific word in English.
- Intermediate (T38) and Upper Intermediate (41): I also asked them to prepare a Power Point Presentation about the books they read. What really made the difference for these groups was the fact that they could improve their speaking skills when telling a story in English, because I could notice their effort to try different past tenses to do that.
- Elementary (11 and 17): For these 2 groups, I simply asked to read and tell me the story in Portuguese and they were not allowed to use a dictionary when reading. It gave them a great feeling of achievement, as they could realize that it's not necessary to understand all the words in a story to get its general idea.
- Pre-intermediate (28 and K27): For my 3 pre-intermediate groups, I asked to read and do three things: a summary, write 3 or 4 new words, give your opinion. For these groups, the most important thing was that they could break their former reluctance to reading. The last reading activities I asked them to do were much more pleasant for them than the first ones. I think they could see how much they were improving in terms of lexis, speaking, etc.
That's all for now!
Natália
Hi everyone!
ReplyDeleteSince I’ve already shared with you what I’ve been doing with some of my groups concerning readers, I’d like to share now their points of view towards the project. The following testimonials belong to my intermediate SS:
“In my opinion our work with readers was very good. The most important thing was that we learnt many new words and expressions and we improved our reading and writing skills.”
Paola
“In my opinion the work with books is great because this way we learn more, improve our English and prepare for the tests.”
Elisa
“Although I read slowly, I think this work is very important and interesting because improves my speaking skills and gets me excited about reading other books in English.”
Raphael
“In my opinion reading is good because I can learn new words as well as I can understand fantastic stories in English. Although I hate reading books (I prefer writing in English than reading books in English), the readers project is a fantastic project that Cultura is making happen.”
Agostinho
“I think the readers project is a very important way to adapt students to the language and the vocabulary is always rich.”
Isabella T.
“The project is excellent! I don’t like reading, but in my opinion people who like reading can learn new words and expressions, and if you read aloud you can improve your pronunciation.”
Isabella A.
“I think that the work with books helps us to read faster and learn new words, it helps a lot! And I think it’s good to everyone because reading is good.”
Mariana
That`s all for now...
Bbye
Diana
Hi everyone!
ReplyDeleteAll my students read at least four books this term and let me tell you the feedback I got from them:
- although some students don't like reading much they are aware of the importance of it;
- they recognise reading as a very useful tool for lexis acquisition;
- most of them loved making videos in the Zimmertwin;
- many students had fun discussing the stories they had read;
And I also have some parents' point of view (as I mentioned before)
"Cainara, eu fiquei encantada com a pronúncia do Pedro, nem parece que ele faz inglês a tão pouco tempo!!! Além do mais ele leu e traduziu tudo o que lia, muito bem vocês dois estão de Parabéns! Adorei. (Fátima)"
"Gostei muito da leitura e interpretação da história do livro "The Magic Barber", feita por minha filha. Deveria haver mais atividades desse estilo, pois, dessa forma, o aluno se sentirá mais enriquecido e entusiasmado com o curso, assim como minha filha. (Déborah)"
"Oi Cainara, tudo bem? Após a leitura da história realizada pelo Gabriel, comprovo cada dia mais a qualidade do inglês. Acho a pronúncia muito boa e o entendimento do vocabulário também. Parabéns! (Gláucia)"
That's it!
Cainara