CALL Lessons 2005-2007

Sunday, 29 October 2006

CALL lesson 2 (Oct 30-31)

It's Halloween. Boooo!!! Boooo!! Are there any ghosts, vampires or witches here?!

There's only this cute (= engraçada) little witch that I met in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, on 31st Oct. 2000. Yes, six years ago I was in the States at this time.

Well, it's time to do some fun activities to celebrate Halloween, so... enjoy CALL lesson 2!!!

Objectives

Students will:

-- learn about the origins of Halloween,

-- develop their reading, listening and speaking skills,

-- learn and/or revise parts of the body.

Activities / Procedures

-- read a short text about the origins of Halloween

"October 31st is Halloween. Where does Halloween come from? The Celts lived in Britain, Ireland and parts of France over 2,000 years ago, and October 31st was the end of their year. The Celts believed that ghosts came back to earth on this day. Today many people around the world celebrate this old festival - but today people usually have parties, dress up, and tell spooky stories about witches, skeletons, bats and ghosts. Have some Halloween fun!" (British Council)

-- do a fun quiz about Halloween to see how much you know and/or learned,

-- listen to Ramona's voice message and answer her question in your notebook and then in a class voice message (go to the voice board),

-- listen to The Scary Skeleton song, learn it and sing along with the skeleton (record with Audacity),

-- do a matching quiz on parts of the body (that I created for you) to see how many body parts you learned today.

Help line

-- double-click on Ramona's name to listen to her message,

-- click on the Leave me a message button to send Ramona a message,

-- go to The Scary Skeleton song page to read the words; if you don't understand a word, double-click on it and you get a definition in another window,

-- the quiz is only open for 5 minutes at a time (= de cada vez).

More activities / Follow-up

-- review the parts of the body with a cloze exercise (that I created for you) based on "The Scary Skeleton" song

-- listen to the story about The Magic Spell (= O Feitiço Mágico).

* * * * * *

Report on CALL lesson 2

This report is in Have Fun with English! 2. Click here.

posted by: teresadeca at 12:05 | link | comments (22) |

Monday, 23 October 2006

CALL lesson 1 (23-24 Oct)

Objectives

Students will:

-- see an animated intro to CALL lessons to get into the spirit of these lessons once again,

-- listen to audio messages to develop their understanding of spoken English,

-- record an audio message to develop their speaking skills and interpersonal competences.

Activities / Procedures

1. watch the "surprise" and comment orally on it

2. listen twice to different messages from teacher-friends: Isabel, Dafne, Cristina and Dennis Oliver (bottom of the voiceboard)

3. do a post-listening exercise

4. write and then record an audio message with the blog Voice board to "thank" all the teachers

More activities / Follow-up

-- send comments on the lesson through the blog

http://call05-06.motime.com/

* * * * * * * * * *

Text of students' messages

Hi, teachers!
We like your messages!!! :-)
We enjoy this CALL lesson, because we watch a movie by our teacher and we do an exercise about your messages.
We love our teacher!!!
Kisses and hugs 6C

Hi, teachers!
Thank you for the messages for us.
We like the first CALL lesson, because we listen to your messages and we see a movie about CALL lessons.Some don't like the quiz.
Bye! See you! 6.D

Hello, teachers!
How are you?
We like your messages. Thank you!! :-)
This is our first CALL lesson this year. We see the teacher's first movie and it was very fun, because it is animated. We have a quiz about you and we like it.
Bye! Nice week! Hugs!!! 6E
P.S. - Give good grades! ;-)

* * * * * * * * * *

Report on CALL lesson 1

I always start setting things up at least 15 minutes before class: connecting my laptop to the school LAN (which worked well and fast), the video projector and the speakers. And then trying things out before the kids come in.

The speakers with a USB connection that I bought and those I borrowed from school didn't work. I'm sure I did something wrong. I'll have to double-check at home. And I did.

Lessons learned: (1) When problems started, I should have remembered to restart/reboot the computer. That's a 'golden rule' in such situations, because there must have been some internal incompatibility somewhere that would surely have been eliminated, as happened at home. (2) One of my USB connections doesn't work with the speakers. No sound comes out, but the other does. However, both work with the mouse. Go figure! In class I must remember that I can't turn the volume up or down with the laptop button. I must open the Sound window (icon in the Status bar).

6C and 6D (23Oct)

Class went on as planned and there was enthusiasm with the ZimmerTwins movie and the messages. Both classes showed interest in making a movie. So I told them to get in groups and create a 6-8 line dialog and next lesson I'll show them "how to" do it and... they can make their own movies!

I had to repeat the content of two messages (Daf's and Dennis') sentence by sentence, because they were recorded a bit low for a big classroom with no speaker amplification. Most students were attentive and did well on the post-listening exercise, which we corrected orally in class. I wrote down their scores.

We had time to do everything, but the recording was done on top of the bell ringing in both cases. However, the students had time to see their class message show up on the voice board. They were amazed at the speed of the upload!!! Frederico recorded the message for 6C and Marta recorded for 6D.

It's a demanding plan and I need to keep a fast pace to complete everything.

Sadly, there are always a couple of students who, no matter what we do, seem to be bored by anything and everything, and don't care much. And it showed on their exercise results.

6E (24Oct)

Everything went on, as yesterday, with the BIG difference that the speakers worked. :-)

However, when messages are recorded low, as is the case with Daf and Dennis, the sound doesn't amplify enough (it's a big classroom) and I had to repeat them sentence by sentence. Once again, they were impressed by the fact that Dennis is older and was my student. I find this very cute!!!

Diogo R. does the first recording. Though all students had repeated the content of the message written on the board (and copied to their exercise book), he was very nervous, so I had to help him a couple of times. I said the P.S., because he forgot. It was suggested by a new student in class and I thought it revealed great sense of humor. I noticed that Daniela, a new student this year recently arrived from Moldova, showed great interest in recording the message. After all her colleagues left for the break, I let her do it. She's very expressive!

The lesson was a hit and 6.C sent three messages at lunchtime today. I'm very happy!

posted by: teresadeca at 06:59 | link | comments (19) |

Friday, 20 October 2006

2006 - 2007

A new school year began (= começou) a little more than a month ago. You have revised many things from last year in these five weeks. Now it's time to start our CALL lessons again.

They will be (= serão) every two or three weeks. We will see (= veremos). We will do (= faremos) more fun and interesting things. I'm sure that you will enjoy them and learn a lot of English.

General objectives of CALL lessons

Students will practice the target language in different ways and with access to different Web tools for learning in order to:

-- improve their basic skills in English,

-- work collaboratively to carry out the tasks,

-- become more autonomous to be able to work better online on their own with the resources provided for extra practice outside of class by the teacher,

-- acquire and/or develop computer skills and e-literacy.

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