Week 5 - Create. Connect. Learn.

Gary ANDERSON, Cambridge’s Senior International Teacher                                 Trainer, interacting with an English teacher from Romania         

Gary:       Which are the most difficult skills to practice?

Teacher: The productive ones, of course!

Gary:       Why?

Teacher:  Because cooking is more difficult than eating...

This week I paid close attention to a lot of compelling, both new and old teaching aspects, i.e. the roles of assessment, methods of effectively incorporating alternative assessment, based on checklists and rubrics, into the classroom activities, as well as developing inquiring-oriented activities through webquests and project-based ones.
I have deepened my understanding of measuring the quality of students' performance on the basis of established criteria by exploring various rubric generators, such as Rubistar, Digital Media Scoring Guides, Matrix Rubric with Points, PBL Checklists, Scholastic’s Rubric Maker, and Common Core Rubric Creator. 
The Blogging rubric I have found this week will serve as a good reference for my future posts.

Blogging rubric

Yet not enough explored in the classroom, PBL offers the means to help our students work collaboratively for an extended period of time to respond to set challenges  on their road to learning.

Source: © 2012 Buck Institute for Education

The 10-steps process to maximizing the benefits of project work have been particularly interesting and I am eager to apply it in the near future:

Step 1: Students and instructor agree on a theme for the project.
Step 2: Students and instructor determine the final outcome of the project.
Step3: Students and instructor structure the project.
Step 4: Instructor prepares students for the demands of information gathering.
Step 5: Students gather information.
Step 6: Instructor prepares students to compile and analyze data.
Step 7: Students compile and analyze information.
Step 8: Instructor prepares students for the language demands of the final activity.
Step 9: Students present the final product.
Step 10: Students evaluate the project.

Our course guide this week, Thalia Hadzigiannoglou, has provided us with insightful and inspiring teaching ideas  that encourage us, the English teachers, accept the challenge of shifting from typical teachers to the 21st century edutechteachers.

Diagram created by Alec Couros from the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina
as part of his doctoral thesis pucturing the ways teachers network in the 21st century.

Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/courosa/344832659/in/photostream/

Diagram created by Alec Couros from the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina 
as part of his doctoral thesis pucturing the ways teachers network in the 21st century.
Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/courosa/354444154/in/photostream/

Good bye WEEK 5, welcome WEEK 6!

Rolanda
Romania