Dare to Differ?

Refer to http://www.readingrockets.org/article/what-differentiated-instruction

What Is Differentiated Instruction?

By: Carol Ann Tomlinson

Teachers can differentiate at least four classroom elements based on student readiness, interest, or learning profile:

• Content – what the student needs to learn or how the student will get access to the information;
• Process – activities in which the student engages in order to make sense of or master the content;
• Products – culminating projects that ask the student to rehearse, apply, and extend what he or she has learned in a unit; and
• Learning environment – the way the classroom works and feels.

 At the elementary level, teachers may:

1. Use reading materials at varying levels according to student proficiency levels;
2. Using audio and written texts;
3. Using spelling or vocabulary lists at readiness levels of students;
4. Presenting ideas through both auditory and visual means;
5. Using reading buddies; and
6. Meeting with small groups to re-teach an idea or skill for struggling learners, or to extend the thinking or skills of advanced learners

Excerpted from: Tomlinson, C. A. (August, 2000). Differentiation of Instruction in the Elementary Grades. ERIC Digest. ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education.

WALKING WITH MOWGLI

A diorama prepared in less than an hour. Get pupils working in groups or pairs. Let them play with the positions of the character. All I used were the following:

1. a shoe box

2. print-outs (animals and Mowgli, the trees)

3. coloured paper (3 shades of green)

4. Glue & double-sided tape

5. scissors 

Have fun!

i-ELT CONFERENCE 2015

http://eltcon.webs.com/

The theme of iELT-Con 2015 is Enhancing ELT Professional Practice: From Current Questions To Future Action. This theme aims to encourage discussion and presentations about how the practice of ELT professionals can be enhanced by building bridges from the present to the future. It is hoped that the issues and questions raised by current practices in ELT arena can be translated into action in the future.   

Travelling with Gulliver (Year 5 KSSR Literature)

1. Get your students working on book cover illustrations. Let them draw, colour or even do collages.
2. Role-play. You be Gulliver and your students can be Lilliputians. Have fun outside the classroom.
3. Get students talking about what they would do if stranded on an island of little people/giants.
4. Watch the many movie adaptations (be sure to cut and censor bits not suitable for the children) or cartoon versions.
5. Create a song together about Gulliver.

Have fun! It is a great imaginative, creative story with good values.

ZPD and Scaffolding

Scaffolding through story and drama

REFLECTIONS ON MULTIMODALITY

Being literate in this age requires an educator to being adept in using technological 

devices and digital communication practices. However, does this mean teachers can now abandon traditional forms and modes of instruction? I doubt that as our schools are pretty much non-compatible to such advanced facilities. In my read-ups, I came across Jewitt (2008) who talks about ‘modal affordance’ which he says is queries on how a mode is used, what it has been used to do, and the conventions that inform its use. More often than not, teachers use such a mode to diversify instruction without real thought on its effectiveness as a learning tool. After doing some extended reading and online browsing, I see that multimodality comes with the 21^st century learning, bringing with it variety in pedagogical approaches, techniques, strategies, and pedagogical tools; concepts such as multiliteracies, 

diversification, authenticity, and connection-making.

However, I do need to caution myself and the teachers I coach that however advanced the 
modal they use in classrooms, children are still in need of the teacher. Making sense and meaning of learning has to be supported, facilitated and extended with the human touch that only the teacher and parent can provide. On the other hand, there are still a few teachers who are digital-phobic and refuse to part with the chalk and talk method. I believe these teachers are quickly losing relevance (some may have lost that already) in the system and with their students. A teacher has to compete with social networking sites, blogs, and whatever else is accessible online and on mobile phones to stay relevant. Teachers, no matter what age, must strive to stay ahead of their students and if technology is moving ahead too fast to catch up with, become humble enough to learn from the young ones.

MULTIMODALITY - LITERACY DEVELOPMENT

Poetry in the classroom

Why bother using poetry?

- For sheer enjoyment

- It is after all, a intergral aspect of almost every culture i know of...it is in the songs!

- It evokes feelings ... The imagery appeals to all our senses

- It encourages imagination, allowing us to draw and paint images, even those we have not experienced.

- It is prove that language is thought...thought expressed in beautiful and meaningful choice of words

- It is about life...its joys, sorrows, love, hate, war, peace, beauty, ugliness, etc

- it teaches values and develops and promotes expression of thought

Activities...activities...activities

1. Illustrate a poem...get students drawing, painting.

2. Move to the poem...get students stamping, jumping, dancing, tapping, struting....

3. Predict missing words with a cloze poem

4. Do jazz chants

5. Substituting words in the poem with words of opposite meaning and discuss the change in meaning

6. Do creative recitals...strategies like ' I read to you, You read to me', paired and reciprocal reading.

Use the poems in the literature component in creative ways....your students will adore you for it and most importantly...they will be actively using the language.

ELT METHODS AND APPROACHES - A WORKSHOP

Trainers and module writers: 

SHARMINI SIVAVIKARAMAN

VILOSHINI BASKARAN

(ELTC)

Venue: Bilik Merpati, Cinta Sayang Resort, Sungai Petani

Date: 23 - 25 November 2014

Content:

Introduction and Principles to ELT Methodology

Skills-based Projects

Speaking Skills

Multiliteracies

Listening Skills

Writing Skills

Developing Integrated Skills through Projects

Developing Reading Skills