Isn't it always nice when somebody is interested in knowing what actually happens in your classroom? Yesterday our principal came to observe my lessons as
part of her own studies. This is the report she wrote about what happened in
the classroom. The link is in Finnish: Tvt tiedonhaussa ja soveltamisessa
Thursday 20 November 2014
Monday 17 November 2014
Word Clouds
For the
past week or so, our theme has been home. Today the students collected the key vocabulary under titles such as Home, Rooms, Furniture, Household appliances
and Decoration (they are learning these in Finnish) and created word clouds. Students then made a
poster where they put their work to be seen every day.
They used three word cloud generations:
WordMosaic: The site offers some free features such as heart, clover, smileys,
arrows, etc, a variety of fonts as well as background and text colours. You can also create your own feature which some of my students
did.
WordPack and Tag Cloud (IPad apps): Both have a
selection of styles or features, see the photos below.
Word clouds
are handy tools for practising vocabulary. What we did today was pretty simple but, nevertheless, it helped the students to revise the vocabulary and they learned how to create word clouds which make nice adds to presentations and draw focus to particular words.
Instead of listing separate words, the students can also make word clouds of
the websites they are studying and use it as a starting point for reading comprehension and vocabulary expansion.
Koti - Home |
Sisustus - Decoration |
Tag Cloud style selection (part of it) |
WordPack feature selection (part of it) |
Tunnisteet:
21st century skills,
authentic material,
educational technology,
iPad,
language learning,
school,
self-directed learning,
Tag Cloud,
word cloud,
word mosaic,
WordPack
Tuesday 4 November 2014
Three iPad apps for language learning classroom
It's been a busy autumn with my new group. The students have already improved their Finnish skills quite a bit and they have also
started a course in mathematics. There will be more school subjects coming as their
language skills develop.
This time I'm going to present a few more iPad apps that I have used with my students to encourage them to practise their pronunciation, speaking and listening skills:
This time I'm going to present a few more iPad apps that I have used with my students to encourage them to practise their pronunciation, speaking and listening skills:
The app is designed for
decision making but it turns out there are so many other ways to use it. My
students, who are presently at beginners’ level in their language studies, have
been using it for practising question formation, followed by discussion: Just
add question words in the wheel and voilà, you’ll have a wheel that can be used
in various contexts. Decide Now! is also a handy tool for practising vocabulary:
Write the words in the wheel, students can then form sentences using them, define them or create a dialogue around them. Fun and effective, and when students work in pairs each one of them gets a lot of practice!
Pronunciation can be tricky. I am a
supporter of each student’s own personal accent but I also encourage them to
learn pronunciation to avoid misunderstandings simply because in the real
world they need to be understood. I listen to my students speaking a lot, they
also read aloud to me from time to time. I encourage them to use online
dictionaries with audio as well as listen to the language around them. Yet
another way to practise pronunciation is with Dragon Dictation. It is a voice
recognition application. My students have used it, for example, for reading
aloud short dialogues. Then they check the writing and see if there’s something
to be corrected. In this way they also practise reading and spelling. The app can also
be used for reading out easily confused words. For example, many Finnish
language learners find it challenging to recognize between long and short
vowels (tuli – tuuli) and double consonants
(kuka – kukka).
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