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Note that the posts you find herein need edition. They are not finalized. They do still need some correction. I am more concered with doing the tasks for the moment being. These should be finalized soon. Thank you for understanding.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

Class Website & Creating Exercises Using Webtools

Hello,

I created a class website of which I have tried some features. Here is the link: http://sites.google.com/site/mernaoui/
I also added two documents that I had added to the wiki. The first is "spelling and reading worksheet" and the second is "Word Bank Worksheet_clothes". These are worksheet that could be used with my elementary students. I used Tools for Educators website to create them. The first activity is about spelling and reading daily activities. The students need to read a simple sentence and circle the picture that matches with the sentence. The second exercise is about vocabulary of clothes. The learners are to take words from a word bank and write it down the appropriate picture.

I would use the two exercises to teach mainly vocabulary related to daily activities and clothes. This would help the students enrich their vocabulary and enable them to talk and write about clothes and daily activities later on.

On the class website, I posted a project that I created while studying WebQuests. I tried the activity there using links to other resources. The project is about English speaking countries around the world. The students will need to visit certain websites and some research to do the project. I have gone through all the class website’s feature and I found them really interesting and easy to use. It could be easily customized and the content you put there determines the effectiveness of the tool. Google sites are free and offer a variety of facilities. It depends on how we use them to achieve our goals.

All the activities are designed for elementary students. The tasks are simple but aim at prompting the students to learn English while doing something different from what they usually do in class.

Learners autonomy is well encouraged because to do the tasks, they have either to make searches, read, classify, observe, compare… by their own. These are a kind of training to their brains, critical thinking. Instead of leading them step by step to perform the tasks, they are to use technology and resources to perform the tasks.

Yours,

Hamid

2 comments:

  1. Dear Hamid,

    congrats for creating the class web. I know it's time consuming and demanding, but it's something new which certainly will motivate our students more.

    Don't worry about the simplicity of your tasks: simple is better all the time and in this way, you make sure they learn something!

    Cheers,
    Nadina

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  2. Dear Nadinna,
    Thank you once agin for visiting my blog and leaving your comments.
    "The simpler the better" is true especially with young leaners. Moreover, It is also advantageous to work with simple things while trying something new. The focus now,for me, is on how rather than what; how we can do things and create others more than the content of the activities.
    Yours,
    Hamid

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