Teaching in a time of COVID-19

ChrisTex

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We 'use' the Unlocked books for 7-19, but next year for 7-9, we will use Pearson and Cambridge Unlock for Reading and Writing.

Just a heads up, but Cambridge is canceling their exams for the year.
 
We 'use' the Unlocked books for 7-19, but next year for 7-9, we will use Pearson and Cambridge Unlock for Reading and Writing.

Just a heads up, but Cambridge is canceling their exams for the year.

Yes, the IB has cancelled their exams too. I teach grades 8-9. I was wondering if any of you has had any success diversifying tasks to fit an online format. I've had mixed success using Flip Grid to supplement my teaching getting the kids to make short videos for opinion tasks. A colleague uses Padlet for discussion boards. Quizlet is quite good for vocabulary quizzes if you teach from novels. We use Google Classroom and Google Meet. I have had some success putting discussion questions in the class stream for asynchronous discussion and tasking kids to write emails to each other while CCing me in so that I can monitor their work. This all has a lot of potential but it could be good to share task ideas?...
 
We have been told the assignments should take 30-90 minutes. Here is what I am doing with my students.

For 11th grade speaking and listening:
-The last unit we had covered was on tourism so I had them make a poster promoting a city or country of their choice. At some point I will have them do a presentation on it.

-Corona virus: create a 2-3 minute video presentation on the Corona Virus.
Some questions to answer
-How is it affecting your life?
-What are your thoughts on the government's reaction and response? Too slow, just right?
-What could have been done differently?

10th Grade(Speaking, Listening, reading, and writing)
-Find some motivational videos on YouTube and then have them write an essay on it while answering a few questions based on the video.

-Reading a short short that already has some questions attached. Here I am nice and not making them write essays, but a couple sentences to answer the question.

I also teach Jr. High, but in speaking and listening, but since that is more practical, the reading and writing teacher is doing the assignments for them.
 
We have been told the assignments should take 30-90 minutes. Here is what I am doing with my students.

For 11th grade speaking and listening:
-The last unit we had covered was on tourism so I had them make a poster promoting a city or country of their choice. At some point I will have them do a presentation on it.

-Corona virus: create a 2-3 minute video presentation on the Corona Virus.
Some questions to answer
-How is it affecting your life?
-What are your thoughts on the government's reaction and response? Too slow, just right?
-What could have been done differently?

10th Grade(Speaking, Listening, reading, and writing)
-Find some motivational videos on YouTube and then have them write an essay on it while answering a few questions based on the video.

-Reading a short short that already has some questions attached. Here I am nice and not making them write essays, but a couple sentences to answer the question.

I also teach Jr. High, but in speaking and listening, but since that is more practical, the reading and writing teacher is doing the assignments for them.

Thanks for this. What I did find interesting was that your school seems to arrange classes around those two clusters of macro skills. Is that a productive approach for you? It's interesting to see how different schools do things. Our school doesn't use textbooks, that was a bit odd to me at first but I'm getting used to it...

Your activities seem to offer a lot of choice and I imagine that they are quite motivating for the kids. I've found task-design to be fun but quite time-consuming. Trying a structured discussion with my grade 8s this week on the new Burger King 'Rebel Whopper'. We're a veggie school but the kids aren't necessarily that way inclined outside of school. Hopefully it keeps their attention.
 
Thanks for this. What I did find interesting was that your school seems to arrange classes around those two clusters of macro skills. Is that a productive approach for you? It's interesting to see how different schools do things. Our school doesn't use textbooks, that was a bit odd to me at first but I'm getting used to it...

Your activities seem to offer a lot of choice and I imagine that they are quite motivating for the kids. I've found task-design to be fun but quite time-consuming. Trying a structured discussion with my grade 8s this week on the new Burger King 'Rebel Whopper'. We're a veggie school but the kids aren't necessarily that way inclined outside of school. Hopefully it keeps their attention.

We are a national plus school(a Christen school too) and I'm the only native teacher, but we have two teachers from the Philipines(one for math and the other jr. high English). They do give me lots of flexiablity on how I present things. I prefer this over some of the material EF has and what EF has taken away.

For Listening and speaking, they only meet once a week where reading and writing meet twice a week.

I try to get them to use critical thinking and explaining their answer and 10th grade hates me when it comes to essays. I also have the mindset of not just getting them to pass the class now, but prepare for the next level.


Some of the tasks I give them, I want it to be time-consuming. I want to give them the time to think and process their thoughts. I had high hopes for some of my 10th graders for the Cambridge Exam and almost all of 11th grade in the IELTS. :cry:
 
We are a national plus school(a Christen school too) and I'm the only native teacher, but we have two teachers from the Philipines(one for math and the other jr. high English). They do give me lots of flexiablity on how I present things. I prefer this over some of the material EF has and what EF has taken away.

For Listening and speaking, they only meet once a week where reading and writing meet twice a week.

I try to get them to use critical thinking and explaining their answer and 10th grade hates me when it comes to essays. I also have the mindset of not just getting them to pass the class now, but prepare for the next level.


Some of the tasks I give them, I want it to be time-consuming. I want to give them the time to think and process their thoughts. I had high hopes for some of my 10th graders for the Cambridge Exam and almost all of 11th grade in the IELTS. :cry:

I worked for EF Swara down in Puri Indah many moons ago. Looking back, their materials weren't the greatest. I was fine with them at the time, all the High Flyers, Trailblazers and Real English stuff back then. I moved to Thailand for quite a while after that and mainly taught using the YLE course books in a private school there. That was quite a lot of fun. The MYP here takes a bit of getting used to but gets the creative energy working. The materials are kinda secondary to a caring teacher and positive atmosphere anyway, and you clearly have that down.

Critical and creative thinking is essential to try and instill. Shame about the exams. Luckily for me, my kids don't do the exams yet and the personal project girl in grade ten that I'm supervising has had an extension, the assessment is done in house luckily. Sucks for the grade twelve kids that have been applying for university abroad though. Hope they find some middle ground and don't have their applications binned for a year. One of my grade eight classes hate me when I try and make them work hard too. I just tell myself that it's in their best interests so try and fight through it. I kinda miss the classroom though. Teaching all my classes from the sofa and coffee table is a bit stale now.
 
The teachers on this thread may find this facebook group helpful.


120K+ members in a matter of a few weeks from opening.
 
Some excellent info here guys! Thanks and keep em coming! (y)
 
This is one of my student's presentations.

 
Agree that group on facebook has given me lots of ideas of online platforms to use.
The teachers on this thread may find this facebook group helpful.


120K+ members in a matter of a few weeks from opening.
 
The Oak National Academy, backed by the UK govt, is excellent. You need to use a VPN because it runs on Vimeo which is banned in Indonesia for some reason. I'm actually quite pleased to find the standard is about equivalent to the school here, which is something I'd never been sure of before. I hope they keep it online (and free) after this ends, it's a very useful resource and quite creative. For Primary school it also covers some things like History which don't seem to get covered here. https://www.thenational.academy/
 

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