Lesson Plan Glasgow Grade 9

Time – 5 min.

Phase/Content – opening of the lesson

Activity – brain-storming

Media/Material – blackboard

Objectives – activation of previous knowledge

Time – 10 min.

Phase/Content – introduction to new media

Activity – listening to mp3 file Glasgow

Media/Material – notebook/PC or CD-Player

Objectives – listening comprehension, answering vocabulary questions

Time – 15 min.

Phase/Content – Activity 1 -  answering questions specific to sportive aspects

Activity 2 – answering questions specific to the history of Glasgow

Media/Material – worksheets

Objectives – listening comprehension, answering vocab questions

Time – 15 min.

Phase/Content – Activity 3 – listening to the mp3-file and working on a gap text

Media/Material – Worksheet/notebook/CD/Player

Objectives – listening comprehension

The last Blog Task

The topic of my "dream project" is "Australia", which is in the curriculum for grade nine.  Ido not want to start it with a "brainstorming" or another rather "normal" way of of introduction, I would like to take my lessons in our new "Multimedia Room". Every student has a computer here with an internet connection and a connection to the computers of their classmates. As a result, every student has the possibility to look individually for information and to share it with the others. Because of that, the teacher takes a backseat during this project, he only gives instructions at the very beginning of the project lasting 20 lessons. 

At the very beginning he asks his students to find general information about Australia creating a digital mindmap with the help of "bubbl" and sending it to their classmates. Every student can have a look on the work of their classmates and can compare it with their own mindmaps. After that, they have to focus on one aspect of Australia and prepare a presentation about it. Every student can decide independently which particular topic he wants to chooses. I could be "Aborigines", "Surfing" or presentation about the Australian rock band "Jet" for example. The only restriction is that the students are only allowed to use English-language websites. Here the availability of internet during every lesson is an advantage because it can provide the students with a much broader range of information than a school book, especially with topics that are new and modern and therefore arouse the students interests.

Most of the project time the students create their presentation with the help of the internet and their classmates, the teacher only offers advice to students who don`t have any ideas what to do. Furthermore, he explains which presentation tools might be useful for them and explains to them where they can find them. (Of course every student knows how to work with the internet, they already had an introduction to wit in this "Multimedia Room".)

At the end of the project every student should have created an individual presentation. After that, every student has to present it to the class and to send it to their classmates. This presentation can be a normal powerpoint-visualization, it can be a kind of slideshow, or it can be a short film or piece of music accentuating their presentations. the sudents should use their imagination!

(I know that this is not a "revolutionary" method to involve new media in the classroom, but I think that it is an effective one which additionally gives the students immense pleasure resulting in presentations being valuable in form and content.)

Answers

Due to the fact that I could not participate on the field trip to the "Alfred Wegener Schule, I asked my cousin, who is in form ten in a "Gymnasium", to answer my prepared questions. (I had to modify my original first question, because he is not attending the " Alfred Wegener Schule").

In what way do the teachers at your school include new media in their lessons?

My cousin reacted quite amused to this question, because he had the feeling that most of his teachers only use the blackboard or copied worksheets in their lessons. Even a teacher using an Overhead Projector would be something special. After this statement, he admitted that there were certain teachers, who were mostly younger than the major part of the staff, actually use new media techniques in their classes or encourage their students to make use of them. He added that this had to be limited on two teachers, both teaching the subjects of Politics and History. Therefore, he gathered a little bit of experience of learning with new media techniques in these two subjects. Additionally, the framework conditions were insufficient, there was only one small room with four outdated computers which the students were allowed to use.  He had regrets that he could not tell me more about this topic, but he concluded that new media techniques played a minor part during most of the lessons he attended.

What kind of new media techniques do you (your teachers)  use at your school?

As my cousin mentioned in the first answer, he knew of only two teachers who used new media techniques at all.  One of these teachers used new media qite often, for example he prompted his students to use the internet to find information about the project they were working at. Moreover, it was normal for him that he gave homework which was based on an internet research, for example, "Collect information about Aristoteles in the internet! Please focus on his biography!" In my cousin`s view,the other teacher used new media techniques in quite a similar way. He laid emphasis on the fact that the teachers themselves did not make use of new media on their own. They were only encouraging their students to use it. He added that this could be accounted for by the fact that the equipping of the classrooms were inadequately.

Blog Task Nr 5

In what way do the teachers at the `Alfred-Wegener-Schule` include new media in their lessons

What kind of different new media-techniques do you use at your school

Blog Task IV

I would like to focus on a teaching project called "Project USA – Finding out about historical, natural and current topics".  It was conceived by the English teacher A. Düpmeier for his eight – graders at the "von – Zumbusch Hauptschule" in Herzebrock – Clarholz. In my opinion, his project is particularly interesting because it was really broad in scope: It lasted the whole school year 1999 / 2000. The teacher subdivided his project in three different items. At first, every pupil had to get information about two of the fifty states  of the USA. They had free choice how they got the necessary information, they only obligated to post their results on the homepage of their school. In the second part, the students had to prepare an interview and a quiz about the topics "school" and "free time" for students of a partner school in New Jersey. They were in contact with them via email-communication. With the help of the responses the pupils had to create a fictive interview. At the end of the project, the pupils focused on a particular aspect of the information they got and created in group work a website where they placed their work results.

The teacher inteended to train his students` New Media skills in three different ways:

Firstly, the computer was used by the students as a tool helping them to summarize their group work results. Additionally, they used the internet for publishing and exchanging information. Secondly, the computer was used as a medium for communication. The email – exchange with the American students confronted the German pupils with an authentic speaking situation helping them to improve their speaking skills. Thirdly, the students had to use the computer and the internet for researching authentic information and working with multimedia encyclopedias.

To my mind, such a teaching project can be an immense success because the students can improve their New Media skills over  a longer period (a whole school year!) in many different ways (as you can see above).

But what do you think? Can you imagine to run such a large-scaled project in your English class?

Evaluation of learning software

To my mind, the evaluation sheet for analyzing learning software was very helpful for our group helping us to examine the learning programmes. A first, I thought that such an evaluation sheet would be unconvenient and inappropriate for the scrutiny of softwares made for children., but I changed my mind rapidly. To be honest, I never worked with such learning programmes in during my schooltime and therefore only had a vague idea of them: Ithought that they were simply structured "question – answer – games". This turned out to be completely wrong. Both programmes were really complex software programmes differentiaating from each other in many points. Confronted with such a media source, such a sheet was very adjuvant for an orientation.

Additionally,  it had another important advantage: the evaluation sheet makes it possible to compare various programmes even if they have completely different structures. So we could compare "Englisch kinderleicht mit Julius und Calico" which hass the particular feature  of a cartoon in which the learner can participate and try to improve his English skills " and the learning programme "Teen Talk" which doesn`t focus on such playful approach. This is only one of numerous differences which was salient for every user. On the sheet were items like "Programme – Tranparency" or "Multimedia – Balance" being supportive for an objective analysis.

In my opinion, both of the  programmes mentioned above can be recommended, but I think that "Englisch kinderleicht mit Julius und Calico" would be more advisable for smaller children (Grade four/five) because it helps kids to establish basic vocabulary skills. in contrast to that, "Teen Talk" focuses on listening comprehension. and therefore would be valuable for older students (Grade seven / eight) using it to train communicative skills. That`s why I am a bit irritated because both programmes are made for a similar field of age (9 – 12 vs. 10 – 11).

On the basis of fact that the two programmes put emphasis on completely different items, I think that they are only partly comparable but I would like to mention that the "Englisch kinderleicht…" software has one disadvantage which can be quite annoying for pupils who aren`t versed in using computer programmes: It can be hard for them to get the software started and therefore could lead to frustration, particularly smaller kids could quickly lose patience (even the patience of our "analysis group" was tried…:))

I think that such learning programmes are appliable in many ways but I hold the view that it has to be a kind of supplement to the "normal" lessons of the teacher. For example he could draw the aattention of his students to certain issue – areas of a particular software programme.In such a way he could try to make sure that the students use it effectively.

Blog Task Number Two

I would like to focus on the poster created by group two. To my mind this one is interesting for a variety of reasons. At first, I want to make clear that this decicion has nothing to do with the fact that I was a member of this team. No, I would like to concentrate on this poster, because it points out the biggest advantage of the World Wide Web in a vivid way. It offers an infinite number of possibilities for a teacher using it to improve the skills of his pupils. He or she might has a teaching unit focussing on "British culture". One effective way for the pupils to find out more about this topic would be that they start a research based on the internet. One strategy could be that the students start to inquire for information at the British governmental department via e-mail. This approach would have the positive side effect that the students would be confronted with an authentic speaking situation. Another possibility could be, that the students start to make contact to British teachers or students via "ICQ" or other forms of communication. These are only two possible suggestions leaping in my mind at the moment.. there are boundless possibilities to look for information in the World Wide Web.

These boundless possibilities I mentioned above can also have negative side effects, of course: The internet also offers many ways to restrain oneself from doing effective rersearch. This could be a problem for students in particular. If this problem arises, the teacher is in charge: He has the difficult task to guide the students. this is a rather tricky business because on the one hand, the teacher should direct the students that they focus themselves on their research, on the other hand, he should leave a margin for them, so that they still have the chance and the liberty to find an individual and creative way to find information.

In my opinion, that every teacher who wants his pupils to use the internet in his lessons, has to  find a way to motivate the students to do an intensive and effective research on the internet. I think one way to achieve that could be that the teacher shows his studentts that he is a kind of partner who wants to help and to support them. Forcing his students to click on websites he already checked out before, would for one thing make it boring for the students and for another thing it wouldn`t  lead to a variety of results making it exciting to compare them thereafter.

 

New Media

One could say that it is a very difficult question to which extend a teacher should use new media during his or her lessons but to my mind, there is no doubt that a teacher should at least acquaint his pupils with new media techniques.  I hold this opinion in a very vehement way because I only had teachers who were a bit "out of fashion". During my time in the "Mittelstufe", the only media they worked with were shappy old school books, in whose the German "Mauer" still existed, and the good old "workbook" even less new media. At the "Oberstufe", we worked with plays by William Shakespeare and poems by Robert Frost but no sign of introducing us, the pupils, to using powerpoint or "e – learning platforms". To be honest, during that time I was not desolated about that because for one thing, I grew up in a very, very small village, were an internet connection via "DSL" was impossible (there simply didn`t exist a wire to connect us to it)   and for another thing, it was  very convenient for a lazy student (who I had been) to use second hand "Reclams" were the interpretations already were scribbled in.

After my A – levels, my point of view changed rapidly when I saw how bad my skills in using new media were: I could not use powerpoint, I did not know how I could use the internet as a source for preparing presentations or written assignments. This was a very serious problem when I started studying at the university in Marburg!

 

That`s why I think that it is obligatory to introduce students to new media techniques and to make sure that students are competent in using new media. Especially for a teacher teaching a foreign language such as English, I think that there is no way around introducing children to the websites by the "Guardian" or the "Times", for example. here student can learn to use there English skills in a very authentic environment and additionally, they can inform themselves  with brandnew events in the field of politics. This is only one way, to use new media to improve the language skills of your student. There are loads of other possibilities of using new media in school. To be honest, I don`t think that there are real disadvantages, except of two points: At first, not every student has the chance to use a computer or the internet at home, annother point is that it is a very high financial claim for  schools to make sure that students have access to new media… a very difficult task for the ministry for education and cultural affairs…

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