Week 6 Sunday

Finally I'm out of bed!

Today is my first real day out of bed after more than a week. Almost the whole day I have been reading your so interesting postings on Nicenet, dear international friends and colleagues! 

All the talking of the ‘wow’ factor provoked the hoarding theme into my mind. I haven’t been medically diagnosed of having a disease called ‘hoardering’, yet. But during the past five-six weeks, I’m becoming more and more convinced that I really might have it – the symptoms are obvious. I am a collector of many different things: I have a lot of books – most of which I have read; I have movies-most of which I have recorded and digitalized and moved to CD/DVDs – saved for possible later watching. Some months ago I made a list on Excel and it showed I have about 450 CD/DVDs with 3-5 movies on each. I also collect recipes/instructions for needle works. Moreover I take millions of pictures with my digital camera (still or video). Not mention everything else women tend to collect shoes, scarves etc. Well, I can watch all my movies when I’m retired and some nurse at the old people’s home kindly turns them on. I am also a housewife and I have use for my recipes regularly. 

The challenge for this ‘hoarder’ is to take in practice, at least, a part of all these wonderful, useful, new teaching methods and for new, all free web tools.  And the time is now with the students of today! They know the train is on the go it won’t stop to wait for too long. The choice from which to choose is immense but the most important choice is to start with something or else I’ll be left on the station.

Ricard, I can almost see the same picture as you. Our students joining an international project. Far from all of them have shown excellent skills in English class but when they actually see each other, they instantly know how to communicate. They use their bigger or smaller amount of vocabulary/grammar/sign language in order to get their message through. And to use some grand words: Isn’t this peace education at its best? Who wants to fight with a country where we have such good friends?

I have been involved in quite a few Comenius projects and it always surprises me how well our students from different countries actually get along. There is no compulsory oral course in our system and it was only a couple of years ago that it became compulsory for schools to arrange oral language courses which are not compulsory for students to take, though. This doesn’t mean we don’t practice oral skills in classes, though :-)

Yuliya, thanks for sharing the ‘Sitdownif…’-game. I really liked it. I remembered an activity I’ve used for many years in groups with shy and quiet students. They were prepared to give a presentation on some English story they have read. When the lesson started I divided them in two groups and asked them to form two circles, an inner and an outer one. They sit face-to-face. In ten-15 minutes they explain each other the story they have read and make questions to each other. Then I ring my bell and ask them to take 2 steps clockwise and do the same to a new partner. I do the same 3-5 times depending on their activity and they don’t know beforehand how many steps I ask to take so the partner is always a surprise. The students seemed to like this little game and they were surprised how much it actually made them talk, even the shy ones liked it.

There are still many articles to read and many websites to explore for this week. But I have to skip them for this moment and continue next week. And I also have some adjustments of my plan to do, I hope I can do them in the beginning of next week, as well.

Thank you for this week and all your support, dear friends!