21st Century Pedagogy

"How we teach must reflect how our students learn, it must also reflect the world they will emerge into", Educational Origami, ICT and Education.

Known to all, even to laymen, is that teaching should be reflective to how learning is happening. Active learning requires active teaching, and thus goes and knowledge taught should be reflective, drawn from the world being taught to. In a changing context, as ours, knowledge should be changing and coping with that change, in itself and in the way (s) it's being handed down or scaffolded.
Being a teacher of the 21st century, teaching 21st century students is not an easy task. It requires a pedagogy that could be else qualified but as a 21st century teaching pedagogy. A pedagogy that would fit students world's and qualify them through a better preparation before the biggest jump.
............................ to be continued

Drama In The Classroom

Drama In The Classroom

An Afterthought

By: Nouamane ERRIFKI

A: Well?
B: Well what?
A: where is it?
B: where’s what?
A: You know.
B: I know?
A: Yes, you do.
B: No, I don’t.
A: You do!
B: I don’t!
A: Do!
B: Don’t!
A: Just tell me.
B: Tell you what?
A: WHERE IT IS?
B: I can’t.
A: You can’t?
B: No.
A: Well, why not?
B: Because I don’t know!


Well, if anyone of you were asked what is that text that has been written just above probably your first answer would have been: “It’s a dialog” And if you were a teacher and asked the most famous question that all teachers are obsessed with which is how to teach it your first and impromptu answer would have been something like, if I’m not mistaken, “I’ll use that dialog to introduce or teach WH-questions, short answers with ‘Do’, and the use of the modal ‘Can’ for inability. Or I’ll use it, thrice, to introduce one of the elements mentioned before at a time. Then, after introducing those language points, I would assign the dialog for rehearsal in the following way: students in twos try to perform the given dialog before their classmates.”

For sure the one who would have answered in this way or any other similar ways has got no idea of Drama use in-class and Dramatization at all.

“Drama in the Classroom” is how Caroline Nugent, a teacher at the British Council, choose to entitle her one-workshop at MATE’s Middle School Seminar that took place in Ben Slimane. It was a workshop that raised all participants’ awareness over the importance of Drama use in our classrooms.

Drama is that elusive, missing link in our teens’ classes. If we just think for a moment about its benefits one would come to the inextricable conclusion that it should be designated the most important slot in our teaching sessions. Drama’s most immediate benefit is that it could teach and provide practice for new vocabulary and grammatical structures. The manner in which it serves to provide practice for newly taught language points is more important a feature than that of introducing or presenting. (This will of course be discovered later in this article.) Of equal importance is that trough Drama activities students get more and more self-confident as their pronunciation (especially, Intonation and stress) and fluency develops. Drama boosts self-esteem and that’s what is needed to develop students’ communicative competency. Another benefit is that it yields risk takers and a sense of group belonging that generates good language learners. And to top all of those benefits, Drama is a lot of fun and quite enjoyable for parties, teacher and students.

Drama makes use of the mind, voice and body. And, thus, fits in the “Active Learning” frame that was Joan Kang Shin’ subject of her Keynote speech. Active, both physically and cognitively, is how a student becomes through Drama.

Free your students minds, voices and bodies. let them speak out!

Nugent’s workshop focused our attention on the way drama can be used to practice pronunciation and grammatical structures. Her focus was much more on performance. I mean the ways dialogs, otherwise drama pieces, can be performed. She suggested different scenarios or ways of performance of which I cite here a few if not all.

The first dialog that has been named as an “Energizer” (see above) was performed in twos with the words in bold stressed. The performance was on stage and supplemented with a variation in which the participants (A and B) made it funnier by performing it in a western’s style or wearing different faces/ moods (sad/ happy/ sleepy/ angry).


The second type of dialogs, the grammar-loaded dialogs, was performed in groups. Example: the first group (A) performing the dialog in a whispering tone and the second (B) in a normal tone. Other variations were explored and others suggested like:

A: Confident.
B: Afraid or crying.

A: In an old’s tone/ voice.
B: In a baby’s tone/ voice.

A: In a western’s style.
B: In a western’s style.

And the examples went on and on.


There was another type of dialogs that has been discovered and which was named, the Missing Lines Dialogs, where the (A) part of the dialog was provided and the (B) part was missing.


On the whole, the workshop was quite practical and delightful, enjoyable and inspiring to the extent that I decided to explore it in my next class, right after the holidays finishes. It was not enough, but it was at least awareness raising and a lot of fun.

That’s all folks for the time being. Expect more in no time!

Reference: Drama In The Classroom. a workshop by: Caroline Nugent. MATE's Middle School Seminar. 2008

Nouamane ERRIFKI

A Whole Listening Activity Worksheet

A
Whole
Listening
Worksheet

SILENT WATCH/BEFORE LISTENING

1- Who is singing? Can you guess?
2- Where and when is she singing?
3- What do you think the subject of the song is?
Here is the URL link for the Video clip:
http://rapidshare.com/files/41591471/alcomplicated.rar
Or
http://rs98.rapidshare.com/files/41591471/alcomplicated.rar

WHILE LISTENING
1- Listen to the song. What is the song’s subject? Check the right answer and justify it.
a- LIFE
b- LOVE
c- DEATH
d- FUN/ ENTERTAINMENT

2- Listen to the opening of the clip and write what they say?
3- What do we mean by these words? Translate if necessary!

Life
………………………………………………………
Cause
………………………………………………………
Chill out
………………………………………………………
Frustrated
………………………………………………………
Preppy
………………………………………………………
Crawl
………………………………………………………
Break
………………………………………………………
Faked
………………………………………………………
Act
………………………………………………………

4- Read the lyrics silently. Then, click on play and write the missing words or sentences.

Uh huh, life's like this
Uh huh, uh huh, that's the way it is
Cause life's like this
Uh huh, uh huh that's the way it is

Chill out whatcha 1-................... for?
2-................it's all been done before
And if you could only let it be
You will see

I like you the way you are
When we're drivin' in your car
And you're talking to me one on one but you've become
Somebody else like everyone else
You're watching your back like you can't relax
You're tryin' to be cool you look like a fool to me

Tell me
Why do you have to go and make things so 3-.................?
I see the way you're acting like you're somebody else gets me
4-..................
Life's like this you
And you fall and you crawl and you break
And you take what you get and you turn it into honestly
And promise me I'm never gonna find you fake it
no no no

You come over unannounced
Dressed up like you're somethin' else
Where you are and where it's at you see
You're making me
Laugh out when you strike your pose
5-.................all your preppy[NE1] clothes
You know you're not fooling anyone
When you've become
Somebody else like everyone else
Watching your back, like you can't relax
Trying to be cool you look like a fool to me

Tell me
Why do you have to go and make things so complicated?
I see the way you're acting like you're somebody else gets me
Frustrated
Life's like this you
And you fall and you crawl and you break
And you take what you get and you turn it into
Honestly
You promise me I'm never gonna find you faked
No no no

Chill out [NE2] whatcha 6-.................. for?
Lay back, it's all been done before
And if you could only let it be
You will see
Somebody else like everyone else
You're watching your back, like you can't relax
You're trying to be cool; you look like a fool to me
Tell me
Why do you have to go and make things so complicated?
I see the way you're acting like you're somebody else gets me
7-...................
Life's like this you
And you fall and you crawl and you break
And you take what you get and you turn it into
Honestly
You promise me I'm never gonna find you faked
No no

Why do you have to go and make things so complicated?
I see the way you're acting like you’re somebody else gets me frustrated
Life's like this you
You fall and you crawl and you break
And you take what you get and you turn it into honestly
8-.................................................................................
no no no
AVRIL AVIGNE


POST-LISTENING
1- What do you think of the whole clip?
2- Write a ten lines paragraph describing what you think of your friends?

Here is the URL link to the Video Clip:
http://rapidshare.com/files/41591471/alcomplicated.rar
Or
http://rs98.rapidshare.com/files/41591471/alcomplicated.rar




Footnotes:
[NE1]A YOUNG PERSON WHO GOES OR WENT TO AN EXPENSIVE PRIVATE SCHOOL AND WHO DRESSES AND ACTS INA WAY THAT IS THOUGHT TO BE TYPICAL OF SUCH A SCHOOL (AMER ENG , INFORMAL)

[NE2]TO RELAX AND STOP FEELING ANGRY OR NERUS ABOUT SOMETHING

THE METHOGOLOGY SERIES

"ALM"
stands for
THE AUDIO-LINGUAL METHOD -2- PENULTIMATE

A cut-in

The first part of this article did not please one of my friends. Well, that’s pretty natural to disagree on certain points. After all we are not of the same knowledge. We haven’t read the same books, the same articles, the same literature and that’s what makes each of us so unique and individual. Every one of us got his own stream of thinking and analysis and that’s something again that can be only qualified as pretty normal and natural. What is not natural nor normal is to try to thrust one’s own way of seeing things on another person. I mean trying to impose one’s believes and perceptions on another free, individual person.

As I said before and to put it succinctly this time, to disagree is quite natural but to be fanatic to one’s own believes is what is not at all natural. Our disagreements and differences should be, on the contrary, taken as a source of more knowledge and enrichment to whatever field.

My first article, ALM stands for the Audio-Lingual Method, is not at all misleading or mistaken in its points. When I described the aforementioned method as a fiasco, I was voicing the thoughts of the references I based the article on and on which side I stand as a supporter. It’s just undeniable that the ALM did not achieve so much to impress us with and all that is limited in such a way I personally judge it as a fiasco.

As for the part in which I was lampooned on the errors of others, I here stand completely blameless. Normally, a researcher should understand, check and especially be selective to what he is collecting of data that is of viable importance to the development of his own research. I am not to blame if somebody decides one day to cut and paste and then present my article to an audience, in my way or another.

Last but not the least, isn’t this a blog? A personal journal where one can voice whatever he thinks of, be it right or not.

All that aside, here is the second and penultimate part of our article:

"ALM" STANDS FOR
THE AUDIO-LINGUAL METHOD
-2- PENULTIMATE

Role of Ss. Native tongue

An ALM-led classroom does not allow any other language inside but the target language. That is a belief that goes back to and inherited from the previous method, I mean the Direct Method, which came with the idea of monolingual teaching/ learning in an attempt to further enhance students’ learning through much exposure to the target language. Interfering is the native tongue for those believing in the ALM and a contrastive analysis between both languages is usually conducted to identify where mostly the native tongue would interfere. The results of which analysis are exploited to anticipate learning problems and their viable solutions.

Errors/ mistakes

These are not tolerated. A teacher in their implementation of the ALM might get angry and fussy at any mistake or error produced by students. To that, contrastive analysis and over learning are deployed to shun over mistakes and errors.

Evaluation. How is it achieved?

Mostly discrete-items based. Every question in a test would focus on one point of the language learnt at a time. E.g. supply the appropriate verb form in these sentences.

Typical techniques of the Audio-Lingual Method

A technique is, by definition, any exercise, activity or device that has been or is being used in-class to realize lesson objective or (s). The AL method, as any one of its sisters, made a call to a wide collection of techniques/ activities to achieve its teaching/ learning objectives, a collection of which here is an account:

a- Dialog Memorization:

Traditionally, an ALM lesson begins in a dialog or short conversation which is later memorized either through mimicry or applied role playing. To this latter, there are three ways:
1- Students take the role of one character of a dialog and the teacher takes the other with roles switching after a while.
2- One half of the class plays the role of one character from the dialog and the other half plays the other with roles switching after a while.
3- Or else, pair-work in which two students perform the dialog before their classmates.

b- Backward Build-up Drill:

A drill used to teach bugging lines. It consists of breaking up any student frustrating line into small units and then repeating it backward, one unit at a time. E.g. how are you? You take “you” as a first unit, “are you” as the second unit, and “how are you” as the last unit. Every unit should be repeated/ drilled a sufficient number of times, especially the last unit.

c- Transformation Drill:

A grammatical tool, as a matter of fact, in which students are asked to transform sentences of one form into another form. As, for example, transforming an affirmative sentence into a negative-affirmative one, a passive sentence into an active one or a simple statement into a question.

d- Question and Answer Drill:

Students are required, in such a drill, to answer questions and ask others as accurately and quickly as possible.

e- Complete the Dialog:

It simply consists of a dialog of which some linguistic items, grammatical or lexical, are dropped and which students should supply on their own or from a suggested box of possible answers.

f- Single-Slot Substitution Drill:

It goes in this way: The teacher states a line from the dialog, then uses a word or a phrase as a cue that students, when repeating the line, in the sentence in the correct place. E.g. “how old are you?” (Cues are: she/ he/ they), and the answer would be: “how old is he?”; “how old is she?”; “how old are they?”

g- Multiple-Slot Substitution Drill:

Akin to the previous drill with the exception that instead of providing one single cue to substitute, here the teacher provides a multiplicity of cues (two or more) that Ss. Should substitute and make any changes, as needed, to the structure of the sentence like subject-verb agreement.
E.g. She is playing in the school yard (cues: they/ go/ the park)

h- Repetition drill:

It is used to teach conversations/ dialogs. It simply consists of Ss. repeating lines of a given dialog as accurately as possible.

References:
* Diane-Larsen, Freeman. Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. England: Oxford University Press, 1990.
* H. Douglas Brown. Principles of Language learning and Teaching. US: Prentice-Hall, 1987.

Prepared By: Nouamane ERRIFKI

P.S: to be continued

THE METHODOLOGY SERIES

"ALM" STANDS FORTHE AUDIO-LINGUAL METHOD

-1-

Chronologically, the Audio-Lingual method comes right after the "failure", not blithering, of course, of the Direct Method. It was a fiasco in public schools, a thing that limited its use and triggered another quest for just another and more suitable method. As any other method that has underlying approach and theory, the ALM (Audio-Lingual Method) has got its goals, Views, Techniques and, for sure, Shortcomings. There is no perfect method. That goes without saying to become a common sense, a fact that urges us to be eclectic in approaching our teaching practices. It is not unbeknownst to all that the history of science is a history of mistakes.

Keeping all that aside, let's dig this method up and discover what does the ALM advocate and how does it account for its goals, techniques and views.

Goals of teachers using the Audio-lingual Method:The ultimate goal is teaching students how to use the target language COMMUNICATIVELY. How that? Simply by thrusting students into over learning the language to learn to use it with autmaticity and without stopping even to think or reformulate or use any other hesitation processes. Such an automacity, that yields fluency on the long run, is attained through forming new habits in the target lge. and stepping over the old habits that are connected with the primary code/ tongue.

Teacher's Role (s):
An ALM teacher Provides, Controls and Directs. They (Teachers) are akin to Orchestra-conductors; they direct and control students' linguistic behaviors (e.g. by stiff errors/ mistakes correction) and provide good models for imitation. These models are stressed, if not instilled by rote learning/ drilling.

Student's Role (s):
Mere imitators are these students (sorry for the insinuation!). I mean Parrots! They imitate and respond to the teacher's commands and instructions as quickly as possible and as accurately as they could. Aside, it does not take a professional's eye to diagnose the practice as unhealthy and barren and to prescribe injections of “creativity" to develop a sane lge. learning.

Interaction Pattern (s):
* T. / Ss.: A hectored pattern of interaction in the sense that the T. hectors their students into learning the lge. as they, Teachers, are the Ps Cs Ds.
* Ss. / T.: This pattern can not even be qualified as an interaction. It is based in imitations to the Teacher's Models and Modeling.
* Ss. / Ss.: It is clearly seen in Chain Drills and Dialog performance, though this is till directed by the Teacher.

What about the Affective Domain:Talks on the Students' Affective side and its relevance to the Learing-Teaching process did not exist at the time. Ostensibly, it did not exist or it existed but did not come to the surface till recently, especially With Stephen Krashen who assigned it much more stake than others.

Language and Culture:Language is speech and to that everyday speech is highlighted and graded, while teaching, from simple to complex a thing that has been labeled the "Hierarchy of Complexity. Culture (la cultura), on another hand, is the target language speakers' everyday behaviors and lifestyle. Here, we note a step beyond the Language that reaches a study of what is typically Cultural.

Language Skills and Areas Emphasized:The four Skills are organized and presented in a linear way that starts from: Listening to Speaking, and Reading to end in Writing. Vocabulary study is kept to a minimum to set the stage free for the mastery of the Sound System (Pronunciation) and Structural Patterns.

References:
Diane-Larsen, Freeman. Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. England: Oxford University Press, 1990.
H. Douglas Brown. Principles of Language learning and Teaching. US: Prentice-Hall, 1987.

PREPARED BY: Nouamane ERRIFKI

nouamane.errifki@gmail.com

P.S.: To be continued

Teachers and Lesson Planning

Teachers and Lesson Planning
-A SAMPLE LESSON PLAN TEMPLATE-

As a road map for car travelers in a long trip, a lesson plan is, for teachers, by all means, a must-have and a must-prepare. A lesson plan is that little helper for Santa Claus, but this one is the teacher’s instead. It consists mainly of aims that a teacher should achieve and that are knowledge not known to their students before and hoped to be known at the end of a session or a multiplicity of sessions.

A lesson plan specifies the where, when, what to do, how to do it and who does it. It is about the where to start and end, the when to start and end an activity or a lesson. It is, by far, specific as far as the question of what to do, how to do it and who does it (Teacher or students) is raised.

A professional, well-structured, confident is that teacher who gets his lesson plans into their class.

The following URL link gets you a sample lesson plan template:

http://www.box.net/shared/3krqtrzsdx

p.s. Next lesson plan template will be competency-approach based

By: Nouamane ERRIFKI

Interactive WhiteBoards

Interactive WhiteBoards
(IWBs)
Or the ‘Smart Boards’

Once and when I was all in the process of checking my inbox, I stumbled over an e-mail of which title goes as: ‘IWB’. Well, as a matter of fact, there wasn’t only one e-mail of such a title, there were plenty others a thing that triggered my curiosity. I tried to guess its meaning and I failed. I read the e-mail and I didn’t get it. Desperate, brain frozen and frustrated even, I tried to personally decipher the meaning of that acronym by digging it. And you know what did I find? It simply stands for ‘Interactive White Board’.

Caption: An Interactive Whiteboard

In fact that finding still didn’t quench my desire for knowing at the time. So I decided to go on through another research on Google to further understand what they mean by that ‘IWBs’ of theirs. The first things I knew is that it is a new technology exploited in classrooms and the interactive whiteboards are also named ‘Smart Boards’, things I didn’t know before.

In one of the recordings related to our subject, Sara Walker, 7 years of experience in ICT, defined the ‘IWBs’ in simple terms: ‘(the interactive whiteboard) looks like a huge computer screen on your wall. It’s slightly bigger than a normal whiteboard that you would write on, but it just looks like a flat computer screen stuck to the wall. The screen is top sensitive.’

Technically speaking, ‘An interactive whiteboard is a device that interprets a projected two-dimensional surface that interacts with a computer's desktop. A typical use is as an electronic whiteboard but it is generally an interactive type of computer screen.’
(Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)


Dazzling, isn’t it? Let me succinctly rephrase all of this for you!
An interactive whiteboard consists of two items: a computer and a top-sensitive whiteboard (that’s why it is called ‘interactive’ for its being sensitive to touch). Interaction, here, is three dimensional in the sense that the whiteboard interacts with the user and then with the computer’s hard disk. In other words, whatever you have got in your computer can be manipulated by you using your fingers or a special pen on the interactive whiteboard. Thus, your digital teaching resources, activities, videos, songs, graphics, drawings, even dictionaries that are stored in your hard disk are made available for your in-class teaching purposes. Even other facilities like the Internet are accessible. The News, TV shows also can be used as authentic materials. In brief, it is the world outside getting inside your classrooms ladies and gentlemen!!

To conclude it, watch this video and you get everything you need to know about these ‘Smarties ‘.

Remember that there must be a pedagogy behind everything we do in class; even when using a fine technology as fine as the Interactive Whiteboards.


By: Nouamane ERRIFKI