Five myths about formative assessment

As I am involved in the planning and execution of a formative assessment system for my institution’s adult course, this is a topic that has been on my radar lately. In fact, my previous post was exactly about a formative oral assessment activity. I was also recently invited to conduct a discussion with a group of Language Arts high school teachers implementing an innovative portfolio system for the assessment of their students’ writing.

This recent and extensive contact with teachers in my institution and our partner high school, both piloting formative assessment systems, has raised my awareness of some common myths about formative assessment:

Myth # 1: Formative assessment cannot result in a numerical grade

It is common for educators to associate summative assessment with numerical grades and formative assessment with qualitative performance descriptors. Actually, it is not the grade or the lack of grade that makes the assessment summative or formative. You can have summative assessment with qualitative descriptors and formative assessment with numerical grades.

What makes an assessment tool summative, be it a test or a performance assessment, is the fact that it is administered at the end of a learning cycle. Examples of summative assessment are final exams and proficiency exams. An oral test with qualitative can-do statements, administered at the end of a course, is summative. Conversely, formative assessment is used to “evaluate students in the process of ‘forming’ their competence and skills with the goal of helping them to continue that growth process” (Brown, 2004, p. 6). A graded test aimed at gauging student’s retention of the course content, followed by re-teaching of the areas students had difficulty with and re-testing, is an example of formative assessment, even if it generated a numerical grade.

Myth # 2: Formative assessment can only be used as an informal assessment tool in more traditional settings

This second myth is the result of the first one. It is believed that because formative assessment cannot result in a numerical grade, systems that rely on numerical grades cannot use formative assessment or can only use it informally.

Some time ago I attended a talk in which the presenter showed various examples of how her institution used formative assessment in its courses. At one point during the presentation I asked her what percentage of her final grading system comprised formative assessment. None! Despite the beautiful work done with formative assessment, such as projects, at the end of the day, what really counted were the tests! Thus, the formative assessment ended up being only informal assessment, the type that “elicits performance without recording results and making fixed judgments about students’ competence” (Brown, ibid, p. 5). With well-developed scoring rubrics, though, encompassing not only the product but also the learning process, these formative assessment tools can generate a grade that can compose the general grading system.

Myth # 3: Multiple-choice and selected response tests are always summative, while performance assessments such as portfolios and projects are always formative

How an assessment tool is used  determines whether it is summative or formative, and not whether it is a test or another type of assessment. . Even a portfolio can be summative if students collect work during a period of time and only receive feedback on it at the end. The same applies to project-based learning. If grades on projects are based on the final product only, with no consideration of the process and no feedback during the execution of the project, then the assessment is only summative. Thus, the use of rubrics per se doesn’t qualify an assessment as formative. It is how the rubrics are used and what they consist of that makes the difference.

On the other hand, as mentioned above, a very traditional multiple-choice test can be formative if it is used to gauge student learning and there is opportunity to take the test again. I remember when I moved to the United States to get my Master’s Degree and had to take a driving test. I failed the theoretical test and was asked to go home, study the items I had gotten wrong, and go back the next day to re-take the test. To my surprise, it was the exact same test. What they wanted was for me to master the content, not to punish or trick me!

Myth # 4: Formative assessment isn’t rigorous enough, so it cannot compose a major part of students’ final grade

We tend to confuse rigor with punishment. Traditionally, rigorous tests and other types of assessments are those that are extremely difficult and that very few students do well on. According to traditional testing theory, a good test is one that discriminates the good and the bad students effectively.

Formative assessment is based on a different logic, or paradigm, one in which it is believed that every student can do well under the right conditions and the right amount of practice. If a student needs to retake a test again and again until he/she masters the content, why not? Formative assessment is for learning, not of learning. Thus, the rigor of formative assessment is of a different nature. Formative assessment is not a funnel that only a few get out of, but rather, it is an inverted funnel, which few may get into at first but all or most will get out of eventually.

Putting together a writing portfolio with multiple drafts of compositions, based on the teacher’s and the peers’ feedback, and writing a reflective piece explaining what one has learned from the experience and how the portfolio portrays growth requires much more critical thinking and agency, and is thus much more rigorous, than merely writing a number of one-shot compositions and receiving a meaningless grade on each one.

Myth # 5: Formative assessment is not realistic because students will have to take summative tests all their lives

Students might have to take summative tests all their school lives, before schools adopt more formative types of assessments. Other than that, how many tests do we really take in life? A university entrance exam (in the case of Brazil)? A foreign language proficiency exam? Or perhaps a public service entrance exam? How many of our students overall will actually take these types of exams, and how frequently? Of course, we do have to prepare students to face high-stakes exams and must include summative assessment in our curriculum, but does it need to be the only type of assessment we use?

With the exceptions mentioned above, most of what we learn in life is assessed formatively. We make a mistake, receive feedback on it, and have the chance to correct our path the next time. I’m in the process of learning how to make risotto. I’m not a good cook at all, so I looked up a recipe that I thought was straightforward enough for me, tried it out with my family, received feedback on it, improved my risotto, and then felt ready to invite some close friends over to try it out. Now that it seems that they, too, liked my risotto, I might be ready to invite other people over, maybe even some friends that cook very well. This sounds more real-life to me!

Reference:

Brown, H.D. (2004). Language assessment – principles and classroom practice. White Plains, NY: Longman.

photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

This is a crossposting from my blog TEFLing

Seating Arrangements?

Most species arrange themselves in juxtapositions which are indicative of purpose or customary convenience. A lone eagle grasps a rocky crag or high, bare branch: He takes a position which will offer the best vantage point from which to sight a salmon swimming upstream, a rabbit pausing in a clearing. A trio of lions hunting: Their proximity is guided by expediency, the strategy which will result in the separation of a slow calf, a lame elder, a single zebra in panic and tiring. Elephants circle for collective protection, penguins for warmth. 

What about people? When they are safe and comfortable, people are gregarious. They seek convivial exchange and the reassurance of belonging, similarity to each other. People congregate in various situations for specific purposes: In church, with each individual reflecting on a speaker’s words, people sit in pews. In a theater, attentive to a sequence of actions designed for their appreciation – not participation – people sit in rows. The arrangement is the same, expanded, at soccer and baseball games. Viewers are not in attendance to perform. But what about a business meeting? Each person present will be somehow judged according to their input, the timeliness of a suggestion, the interjection of pertinent wit. 

Many communal rituals, from primitive to pompous, take place in a circular conformation, with a common view of each face, each voice having equal value. A party? How do people situate themselves at a party where everybody’s having a good time? Do party-goers naturally convene in lines along the walls? Reiterating: people are naturally gregarious – i.e. social, companionable, tending to “flock” together. This characteristic relates to what is most inherent in humans – their dependence on communication. Language teachers study, among many things, strategies to propitiate communication – natural, spontaneous exchanges between humans of all ages. 

What are the most convenient conditions for these exchanges – the windswept rock, the dusty plain, dimly lit lines along the walls? Probably not. The vital potential of democratic communication lies in the equality of exposure, of being comfortably visible and audible. A neighborly livingroom, a table at a local eatery – these are situations propitious to communal communication; our classrooms, when they can, should emulate this companionable condition. So…. Are you planning class activities that maximize genuine communication? Think about it:  Shift your focus from “seating arrangements” to “speaking arrangements.”  

Katy Cox

On Wearing Two Hats: Teaching & Responding to Writing

This morning I had the opportunity of engaging with quite an interesting and energetic group of bright individuals as part of our institute's training of newly-hired teachers. The goal was to discuss the teaching of writing to our EFL learners, what it is that an effective pre-writing lesson should entail, as well as ways of responding to students' writings. It was a hands-on session, with some initial discussion and brainstorming of lesson stages with a specific writing prompt in mind, which was then followed by their response to and correction of an authentic writing sample. The idea was to familiarize teachers with the kind of response to writing that we believe to be in keeping with the principle that writing is a recurrent process, non-linear in its creative nature, and the very expression of one's voice.

Roll up your sleeves and let's get down to business

Teachers worked in smaller groups and were asked to respond to and provide corrective feedback to a first draft sample of a five-paragraph essay written by an upper-intermediate level learner. Along with the sample, they received a copy of our correction and proofreading symbols, as well as a scoring rubric by means of which they'd grade that first draft. They immediately set out to accomplish the task, industriously reading the piece, red pens in hand, and... Stop. Wait a minute. Do you feel an urge to begin crossing out and underlining spelling mistakes and wrong verb tense use? You do, don't you?

Step away from the red pen

Before you unleash your full corrective-feedback-giving potential, put on a different hat. Be a reader. Respond to your students' content and ideas as a real person. Familiarize them with that sense of having an audience. We use language to communicate, be it in spoken or written form. Let them know that you are truly listening to them. Try to find at least a couple of aspects in their writing that are worth a compliment. Relate to their ideas, share a little about your own experience by commenting that maybe you once felt the same way as they did facing a certain situation in your own life, and that you know how wonderful or how difficult it must have been for them to go through it, as well. Empathize. Connect. Engage. 

Respect individual stylistic choices

It's always a challenge to provide corrective feedback without stifling the writer's voice. What I mean is, are you (over)correcting to the point of forcing the student to write as you would have if expressing a similar idea in written form? Of course there are instances of L1 interference that must be addressed, such as word order issues to name one, but we teachers walk a fine line between pointing our students in the right direction and simply imposing our own style on them. Keep an awareness of the fact that your students are experimenting with language (a foreign one, as a matter of fact), and that they are, knowingly or not, in their own quests to finding their voice. Cherish. Allow. Enable. 

Sounding curious as opposed to judgemental

Instead of saying something like "this paragraph is too short. Please develop your ideas here." how about offering something more in the lines of "I wonder if you could tell me more about this experience/situation." or even "how did you feel?" and "what did you do next?" The point is that by asking a simple question, you may elicit just the response you want from a student, instead of making a direct comment that might come across as judgemental, in that it is an affirmation made by you, the teacher, who is supposedly the knowledge authority on all subjects language-wise. Don't point fingers. Ask more questions. Provoke. Entice. Foster.

This set of guidelines sprang up from this group's engagement and reflections during our training session, so that gives you a pretty good idea of how lucky we are to have gathered such a great collection of curious and avid learner-teachers. Thank you all, Casa newbies, for inspiring me to write this piece.

Welcome aboard, guys!

Clarissa Bezerra

Using I-Pads to practice the Present Continuous with Flex 8 students

A poster made by a student

In an effort to overcome my resistance to – or fear of – using technology in class, I gathered all my courage and, in the second week of our classes, I  decided to take the risk of using IPads with my Thomas Flex 8 group of adult students.

I chose PicCollage, an app I am quite familiar with and not very difficult to deal with. My aim was to have students practice the Present Continuous, a tense which, although having its correspondence in Portuguese, causes a lot of problems to students. I started perspiring when the guy entered my class with the IPads; however, I tried to disguise my lack of confidence and asked the class what they knew about the chosen app. To my disappointment, no one had ever heard of it. I carefully demonstrated how to find and open PicCollage. 

To model the task I had in mind, I picked up a slip of paper where I had written an action – “read a book” – mimed it and asked a student to take my photo. Then I showed the class how to use the photo on PicCollage and how to add text, using a verb in the Present Continuous: “The teacher is reading a book”. When I was sure they were ready for the activity, I distributed slips with actions – “draw on the board”, “play basketball”, “dance” etc. - and had them work in pairs. One of them would mime the verb, and the other would take the picture, use it on PicCollage and add a sentence. To my surprise, some students were even able to insert stickers to their PicCollage posters. After they had finished the task, I wrote a short exchange on the board:

A: What’s your friend doing?

B: My friend  Bruno is playing basketball”.

Students were supposed to stand up and talk to three people, asking the question above.

My students had fun, were able to identify their problems – omission of verb to be or final –ing – and I was happy to have taken the risk and been successful! 

Do you see yourself trying something like this with your adult students? 

Beth Blom 

In the EFL Classroom: Simple mLearning Activity that Works with Beginners

On the second day of class, I was supposed to review the verb to be to talk about a third person (This is Ana. She's a teacher. She's 36 years old. She's from The United States). 

We practiced questions/answers in pairs and played a guessing game about Brazilian celebrities. I had planned to use the I-pads after this practicing, so students could share some curious facts about different international celebs. However, I had no idea what tool to use in order for the students to, once again, practice the structure they had learned and share that. 

So, I called Carla and she suggested that I use the students' cell phones instead. It would be simple, practical and fast because students were already acquainted with their devices, so they would quickly know exactly how to perform the task at hand, which was search for information about an international celebrity. 

That's what I did and the result was fantastic! Thanks to Carla. I'd NEVER have thought of using the cell phone. I was appalled it hadn't occurred to me! 

Activity: Google a Celeb

1) Hand out slips with names of international celebrities. Here are a few:

Bruce Willis 

Keanu Reeves 

Nicole Kidman 

Mila Kunis 

Martin Lawrence 

Natalie Portman

Emma Watson

(Late) Audrey Hepburn 

2) Explain that students will search for the following: Their name, birth place, age and occupation. 

3) Ss search for the information and take notes using the verb to be.

4) Ss in small groups share their findings by showing their cellphones screens to colleagues and saying, "This is... He's ... years old. He's a…He's from…"

5) Monitor Ss' errors in pronunciation/structure. 

TWO THUMBS UP!

It was great to see how students enjoyed the authenticity of such task and their reaction to their peers' findings! Some were very surprised, so they would say,  "Oh really! Interesting! Wow! I don't believe it!"  In sum, they had a lot of fun, and I was glad with the result.

Starting Afresh with Ipads in the Classroom

Yesterday I taught my very first class to a lovely group of upper-intermediate teenage students in one of our many outposts. I'd made up my mind to try something different and fresh this semester so I went for an ice-breaker activity using Ipads in the classroom. Here's how it went.

My PicCollage

We used an app called PicCollage, which allows you to create posters with photos, stickers, and text, among other cool features. I had previously used it to prepare a poster of my own, so I began the lesson showing it to students so that they'd get to know me a little better. I then asked students to pair up and, inspired by the imagery, come up with some questions they'd like to ask me about the poster and about my life.

After about five minutes, students began asking me questions, which were, at first, mostly prompted by my poster, but once they began feeling more at ease with each other (and with the teacher), they began asking me other questions, such as "what does your tattoo mean, teacher?" (They never fail to ask me that one, I tell you.)

Sharing time!

Now it was time for the fun part. Each student got an Ipad to make a poster of their own - a small snapshot of who they were, so that later they would share it with everyone else in the group. I could literally see their faces light up the minute I unzipped the two suitcases and began handing out the Ipads. That in itself already gave me such a heartwarming feeling. They were truly engaged! So off they went, and began to work on their posters. I set a time limit of 10 minutes and made myself available throughout, walking around and monitoring. Some took a little longer to get started, as they were figuring out how they'd add their photos to the app and some ideas began to came up. Pairs were helping each other and English was being used for an authentic purpose (how delightful!) right off the bat, on the very first activity of the very first day of class.

A couple of students used
their own devices.

Once they were finished, it was time for them to share. I asked them to stand up and walk around the room, showing each other their posters, asking each other questions. I did, however, give them one very specific piece of instructions: they had to first talk to people they didn't know so well or had never met before. I also gave them a clear goal: in the end, they'd be asked to share something interesting, funny, or surprising about someone they had talked to during that stage of the acitivity. This stage lasted for about 10 more minutes. There were 12 students in the group so they could talk with absolutely everyone. We rounded up by sharing interesting things we'd found out about each other. 

The entire activity lasted for about a half hour and it was worth every minute. Students were using the language authentically at all times, they were curious and engaged, and were fully energized for the rest of the afternoon. They got to know me a little better, they got to know each other a little better, and I have a feeling they actually enjoyed themselves in their very first English lesson of the semester. Talk about good first impressions, huh?

Students showing off their posters!

How about you? Would you be willing to try something like this? I certainly hope so!

Clarissa Bezerra

Empathy: Another Challenge in the Classroom

flickr by @auro

As I see it, an important tool a teacher should always have in his/her box is empathy: the ability to put himself/herself in his/her students' shoes. By doing that, the teacher is able to prepare and evaluate his/her class from both perspectives. It is through the eyes of empathy that a teacher considers his/her students' characteristics, development stage, interest,  learning styles among so many other aspects. According to Jacob Moreno, the creator of Psychodrama, empathy is the ability to see the other through his/her eyes. By looking at the world from our students' perspective, we'll surely be more lenient when they text message instead of looking and paying attention to our wonderful power point presentations. We still belong to a time when students paid attention, took notes, read, and communicated. Nowadays, more is asked from us. Students are unable to stand still for more than ten minutes due to the many new cultural tools we have and the effect they have on information processing. So, empathy helps us reach the students and also respect our strengths and weaknesses. I do not mean we should let students do whatever they want to keep them motivated. The key is to use the tools that are appealing to us whenever possible.

One of the activities I usually develop on the first day of classes is to take to the classroom as many diffferent objects as possible t. Then, I display the objects and ask the students to choose one that says something about him/her. They work in pairs and later share their ideas with the whole group while I take notes as a means to use the information whenever applicable. Finally, I ask the students to choose an object they think would represent me, and they have a chance to ask me questions. Since empathy is a two-way road, it is also important to let students know something about their teacher (10 minutes).

Another idea is to include five or six pictures about my likes/dislikes, family, teaching experience, for example, in a slide (PPT) and ask students to work in groups of four and create as many questions as possible (10 minutes) to ask me. They should pay attention to their partners so as not to repeat the questions and they should also take notes about what I say. Then, it's their turn. The students draw their likes, dislikes, interests (10 minutes), show them to their partners, ask and answer questions (15 minutes) and then share their drawings and information with the whole group (10 minutes). The students can also use the I pads for this activity and prepare a slide with pictures. I'm sure I learned this activity from a teacher a the Casa in an In-Service and I apologize for not remembering his/her name to him/her credit.

As one can see, there are many activities to develop empathy in class. The most important, however, is to remember that empathy is built every single class not only on the first day. 

The Culture of 'Busyness'

Is 'busy' your middle name? 

Read this...and think again. 

Over the recess period, I spent loads of quality time with my family. Having decided not to travel, not physically at least, I took the time to connect with people who had something to say. I began by reactivating my Twitter account. And so my journey began...

On the second day of the new year, I came across this Tweet by Dean Shareski (@shareski), which had been Retweeted by Alec Couros (@courosa):

The 'anti-busy' bit caught my eye. I decided to check it out. In his post, Shareski expresses his annoyance at the word 'busy' and how often it has been thrown around in day-to-day conversation. I instantly thought about - guess who - all of us, teachers. We are definitely a kind that has a lot on our plate, all the time, so you might imagine how it felt to read the following: 

"I'm not suggesting your life isn't full but for the most part 
it's the life you've chosen. You can argue that sometimes 
it's not, but you decided to have kids, you choose to work where you work, 
and you choose to be a good person and help others out." 

Dean Shareski

Shareski then argues that many of the people who constantly declare their 'busyness' may actually come across as wanting to bring others down, as if not being busy all the time meant one of the following three options (or all three of them): a) there's something wrong with you, or b) you're clearly not doing your job right, or c) you're just plain lazy. 

I was blown away by Shareski's honesty. Reading his post would be my first 'Wow' moment of the day. I wanted to read more on the subject, so I decided to check out his other suggestion - a great article by Tyler Wardis. In it, Wardis eloquently explains "why busy isn't respectable anymore", candidly admitting how being busy actually used to make him feel important, valuable, needed. I was compelled to read on. 

According to Wardis, there has recently been what he calls "a widespread frustration with the perpetual busyness of life," which has been raising more awareness of, as well as questions about the issue of 'Busyness'. He ventures into giving some answers himself, which for me turned his article into a must-read, but not before sharing a very interesting experience carried out by a friend of his, and finishing by proposing a challenge. 

There I was, on day two of the new year, and I'd already had two 'Wow' moments thanks to my PLN. In the spirit of new beginnings, I invite you to read what these guys have to say about the culture of 'Busyness'. I want to thank @courosa, @shareski, and @tylerwardis for the inspiration. 

I have made up my mind to take on the challenge proposed by Tyler Wardis.

How about you? 

Clarissa Bezerra

@Clarissamfb

What do You Think? Questions in the EFL Classroom

“What do you think?” For most students, there is no question more enervating than this one. In reality, Fernando is thinking about Natalia’s rear end, Leticia is thinking about red shoes, and Amelia is wondering if her hair should really be so pink. The teacher is referring to the North Pole, to a week in the desert, to a flight to outer space. “What do you think?” Think what?!

Let’s get more specific. Look at the paragraph on page 94. “Most people start a diet on the first day of the week.” So, asks the teacher, on what day did Mary probably start her weight-loss program? Monday, teacher. Great! Is that enough thinking for the day? How many minutes are left in this class, anyway…..

Is it hot or cold in the Amazon? Hot, teacher. Is Florida north of the equator; yes or no? Yes, teacher. What do you think about the architecture in Brasilia? Think what?

Questions that are too broad or too narrow are really a dead-end with regard to inducing extensive thinking or communicating. “Thinking” is usually best fueled by substance, in the form of reasoning, figuring out, relating to experience. For example, among the classes which are a requirement for people wanting to obtain a driver’s license, there is one session devoted to small-group discussion of contentious traffic situations  described by the teacher on printed handouts. In this case, “what do you think” sparks a heated exchange between persons who have experience these or similar situations, who know others who also have, whose speculations and opinions are percolating with reciprocal mental energy in the buildup of accelerating reactions among the participants. This is thinking.

Yes/No questions, queries which ask for a fact or statistic, all have their place in classroom work, in the daily constructs of communication. But they do not usually result in the extent or complexity of thought – hopefully, expression – which the teacher has in mind when he envisions students in the process of interested reaction to stimulation of thought. Some questions inspire furtive, repeated attention to the movement of the minute hand on the clock on the wall. On the other hand, effective thought-provoking strategies can open up fields of mental/verbal exploration that will result in looks of surprise and slight frustration when the bell rings. Already, teacher?   

Katy Cox

The Teacher - Only Human

The teacher is only human, after all. The repeated emphasis on students’ needs indirectly encourages forgetting about those of the teacher. Male or female, the human ego feeds on reward and recognition, and your teacher ego perks right up when a student loves to respond, laughs at your jokes, asks you for help as though you were the last life-saver on the boat. 

You use your instructional energy generously and it doesn’t really take much to – in return – make you feel like a good looking genius. Therein lies the cyclical danger. The teacher’s well-known duty is to pay equal attention to all students -  to prevent the guilty recognition that the girl in the left-hand corner never says a thing because she is not spoken to; to avoid having to admit that most of your lesson moved energetically along with lots of participation but – come to think of it – not from the left-hand side of the room. Why can’t you remember the face of what’s-his-name who always sits by the door (and who eases smoothly out of that exit as soon as the bell rings)? Even the trouble-makers are more appealing, testing your patience and your class management skills; victories with these in-your-face challenges can make you feel especially self-congratulatory….while the “escape artists” shroud themselves in a cloak of invisibility as they look for a dropped pen, a misplaced paper, a book in a backpack, and successfully evade the teacher’s attention (which is inevitably on the eager beavers with their hands in the air…).

The skilled fugitive knows how to keep his head down; the wave of willing responses will satisfy the also needy elicitor… Every teacher should have a fool-proof system of checking production frequency among all 12 or 16 or 20 students – who spoke, how often, how much – and making sure they know who you are and that you care. In ensuring uniformity and truly collaborative direction in your work in the classroom, your heart-strings are not as consistent a guide as your intellect and your eyes.   

Katy Cox

Seeing your Students

Can “seeing” your students influence your relationship with them and their willingness to communicate? What does this question really mean? 

Let’s examine the following situation: You have created an eminently respectable lesson plan; it includes the requisite phases for pairwork, attention to textbook activities and grammar orientation, hands-on dynamics to practice the topic of the day, periodic white-board use, and appropriate technological inclusions. Your “flight check” for that last part resembles NASA pre-lift-off procedures as you punctiliously check CD tracks, PPT slides, computer connections, volume register…..all that is essential to take your lesson safely to its destination. 

Your concentration on your multiple responsibilities occupies your thoughts almost exclusively as you enter your classroom and attend to setting up what your students will experience for the next 150 minutes. Ah, yes…the students…. a gaggle of girls and a band of boys, all dragging roller bags and the paraphernalia of study and play…. assemble in noisy desks, a crowd with a collective identity. Who among them so you see and greet? Believe it or not, this could be a moment of potential significance – the fresh encounter, the time to reconnect and begin anew. 

There is one of two ways to envision this scenario: (a) The teacher is absorbed in class prep, back turned, the students gathering facelessly in their predictable arrangements, or (b) the teacher greets the students as they enter, acknowledging a new hairstyle, a happy face, a new pair of bizarrely bright orange running shoes…..If it can be managed, the time for the lesson and techno-check is when the classroom is empty, silent, awaiting the next round of action. The time for precious rejoining with your students is when they enter the environment you share; that is when you “see” them and rekindle the energy that fuels what you will experience together in those minutes that you hope will be memorable, that will make your students look forward to the days and weeks to come. 

Even with all your attention to your lesson plan, first and foremost, smile and look your students in the eye. This is the moment that could determine how far and how well your lesson will actually fly.     

Katy Cox

iPads in the Kids´ EFL Classroom - A Post by Two

I am currently on maternity leave, enjoying every little second of the gift I have received. This time has flown by, and has been a much-needed break from the hustle and bustle of work. However, I sometimes use some of my “free” time to read about educational technology (a passion) and many times ideas bloom in my mind.

Last September I received an email announcing a contest for CTJ teachers, where we should think of innovative ways to teach using iPads. As I read the email, I knew I wanted to participate, not only because of the chance of winning a really nice prize, but also as a chance to put into practice new ideas. Since I have no books at home at this moment, I had the idea to plan a lesson for my kid’s class (so I could refer to his book to plan the lesson). I called dear colleague Carol Godoy (my kid’s teacher) and proposed her to pair up with me in this journey, so she would be the one to test the ideas with her students.

It all worked out really fine. The students were engaged, motivated and most importantly, learning in different and meaningful ways!

So, here’s what we’ve done:

Students were studying about animals and superlatives and then we used the app Tiny Tap where it is possible to create personalized games. It is indeed a chance to spot students difficulties with the content they have been exposed to while they are having fun. I created the slides on a PowerPoint slideshow and imported them into the app, where I recorded my voice and set up the tasks.

As a follow up, students were supposed to use their knowledge to create a collaborative poster using the app Popplet, a well-known educational tool. So, students paired up and wrote sentences using the superlatives and images to come up with a beautiful poster. The final product could also be printed and become part of the students’ portfolios to be sent to parents by the end of the semester.

This was a nice and rewarding experience. Looking forward to test more apps and contribute to students learning next semester! 

Tiny Tap and Popplet - slideshows


-------> Now read Carol's version of this tech journey! :)


My name is Carolina Godoy and I'm a teacher at CTJ. Last semester I had two TPK classes and Lilian's son, Gabriel, was one of my TPK students. For this reason, Lilian invited me to participate in this project, and I'm really glad I accepted her invitation. To take part in this project wasn't a last minute decision, but we certainly did not have a lot of time to plan its execution. As Lilian previously explained, the project required us to use iPads in the classroom, so it was necessary to book them in advance. Since other teachers were also engaged in the project, it wasn't easy to have the number of iPads we needed when we needed them. However, I'm glad to report that everything went really well. 

Lilian did all the planning, whereas I was responsible for putting her ideas into practice. She designed two activities for the children. The first one was a multiple-choice exercise that included interesting and motivating pictures and sounds. The second activity required the students to take a more active role in the learning process and was, therefore, a bit more challenging. 

The students responded very well to both activities and seemed extremely engaged and motivated. When I told them that we were going to use iPads in the classroom, they got really excited and literally couldn't wait to touch the screens with their little fingers.
I believe that the use of technology in this particular class enhanced their ability to learn and boosted their confidence as students in this new technological era. In addition, students at this age are used to following a routine in the classroom, and this project was a very creative and useful way for us to take a break from more ordinary activities.  
I would like to thank Lilian for this great opportunity. It was a pleasure to work with her and to be her son's teacher this semester. I really hope we can develop more projects like this in the near future and learn a lot from each other while having lots of fun.

Pairwork Activities - If Students Aren´t Sharing, They are Not Pairing

What is a “pair”? The American Heritage dictionary begins its definition of this word by calling it “Two corresponding persons or items similar in form or function”. 

For the purpose of language teaching or any other kind of teaching, for that matter, the “corresponding” aspect is of the greatest pertinence. A moment comes in a great many lesson plans when the teacher thinks, for example, “OK, we’ve gotten through inductively figuring out how the present perfect is different from the past tense. Check. We’ve engaged in a spate of mental gymnastics filling in blanks in a series of PPT sentences. Aha! Used a technological resource. Check. Looked at lines of prose and eliciting individually in a crisscross pattern among students sitting in a U-shape that facilitates eye contact and intelligible oral exchanges…. decided which sentences contain the present perfect tense and why that tense was used in those situations. Check. Now it must be time for pairwork. Right. So the students are given the assignment to work in pairs on exercise B on page 46 of their textbook. Right timing; ineffective strategy. If the students are naturally gregarious, they will do the exercise collaboratively, or at least verify whether their responses match. But, was there anything about the exercise which necessitated a joint exchange, mutual input, utterance and response? If the answer is “no”, then you don’t have pairwork; you have two individuals sitting side by side engaged in a similar task which can be carried out without the “correspondence” of two people who depend on each other’s contributions to achieve a requested result. 

The following are a few examples of textbook-type set-ups that result in genuine pairwork.

Two students have cue cards which indicate the direction a question & answer exchange might take:  Policeman vs person suspected of automobile theft.   

              P:    for the past three hours

              T:    shopping mall

              P:    own the car you are driving

             T:    two years                                     

Students receive A & B dialog cards to practice role-play situations which include the structure or vocabulary in focus and which can be sequentially shared whole-class; these varied dialogs can also be rotated from pair to pair in closely timed progression.

Two students exchange comments on the ways in which a city has changed in the past few years, the ways in which parental rules have been modified, the changes that have taken place in common domestic technology.

Students pair up to ask and answer questions which will result in the creation of an ID profile card which can then be shared with the rest of the group. Ex: Where have you lived, worked, studied, traveled – etc – in the last two years?

 Variations of these possibilities are as infinite as our general inclination to communicate, and can be found by way of multiple resources, including – most probably – the textbooks you are currently using. But awareness is key in your inclusion of pairwork in your lesson plan:  as regards your students, if they’re not sharing, they’re not pairing. 

Katy Cox