This week has been a good eye-opener in terms of the use of Power Point. It's a very common resource in my everyday teaching, but I had nearly forgotten how nice it is to create interactive activities to catch students attention rather than just 'throw' information at them. The documents we've read and the tips we've been given show its endless potential in the EFL classroom. This whole PPT topic reminded me of the time I started teaching a few years ago. It feels like I stopped being creative with PPT the time I started teaching adults – or maybe it's all due to lack of time, I'm not sure. The point is that this week has encouraged me to go back to those appealing and fun activities. In fact, since my academic year will be finishing at the end of the month, I've been preparing some nice revision activities: prepositions bingo, a jeopardy game on PPT, etc. I can't wait to put them into practice! I'm sure my adults will love them and will appreciate the hard work :)
And last but not least, I've done some work on what will be part of my final project: pronunciation. Tomorrow I'm giving my 4th year students (upper-intermediate) the task to record themselves at home using Vocaroo. I'll have to show them how to do it and I'll let them choose any paragraphs from the readings in the book. We'll see how they go about it... I just hope they'll be willing to participate! On the one hand, showing them how easy it is to use Vocaroo and the fact that I'll give them individual feedback on their pronunciation might engage them. However, some might feel shy and reluctant to do it since we all know that recording your voice is not everyone's cup of tea (especially if they're not used to it!)
As for large classes, after reading some of my classmates comments and problems getting students attention I've realised how "lucky" I am to have "only" up to 30 students in class. It's not an easy task for a teacher to deal with so many students at the same time, plus it also involves more marking and paperwork, but it's good to know we have some good technological resources at our disposal to "ease the pain".
Hi there patty:
ReplyDeleteI like the activities you’re going to implement with your students for the final project; the idea of the implementation of such things is a great idea and sounds fun! You mention that your students are Upper-intermediate, that is great you have a great kind of students, for work, I am going to be around to know how your project walks, see you then.