ARTICLE 1 :

Theme : The Significance of a lesson plan

Title of article : The Importance of lesson planning

Source : Internet

The Importance of lesson planning

With two years of EFL teaching, and a TEFL certificate, under my belt, I feel like I

am finally moving from “amateur” to “novice” in my ranking as a teacher. One of the

things about developing new skills is that you will occasionally have huge insights that

put a whole bunch of different experiences and lessons into context. Something will

click and then everything will make a lot more sense than it did before.

The insight I’ve had most recently – and the one I want to share with you today –

is the importance of really good lesson planning. I have a lot to say on the subject of

lesson planning – probably several posts’ worth – but I think the first priority is

convincing you, the reader, that planning a lesson is not only worth doing, but worth

doing well.

First of all, a planned lesson is just better. Not all planned lessons are fabulous

and not all unplanned lessons are a disaster, but even a bad lesson will be less bad

planned, and even a great lesson can be greater with a plan. If you are good at teaching

unplanned lessons, you will be even better at teaching with a plan.

There are several reasons why a planned lesson is better. One of them is that

having a lesson plan helps you maintain focus. With a classroom full of children, with

their short attention spans and their natural desire to disrupt anything and everything, it

is very easy for a lesson to be sidetracked or derailed completely, and the best way for

you, the teacher, to steer the lesson back on course is if you happened to have brought

your map along with you. Sorry about mixing the train and car metaphors there.

Kids also notice when a teacher doesn’t really know what to do. If you show one

sign of weakness, they will pounce. A primary school lesson is a battle of wills, and if

you blink you lose. A lesson plan is your best weapon in that battle. Kids respond

extraordinarily well to structure and regularity, and planning out your lessons gives them

that structure. Kids respond to dead air in a lesson – to moments of uncertainty – by

creating chaos. If you flounder at all in thinking about what to do, the kids will fill that

time by escaping from the mentality of the lesson and into the mentality of play – from

which it is often impossible to recover.

A lesson plan keeps you on track and keeps the kids on track, but it also helps

outside the context of the lesson itself. Lesson planning lets you track progress and

problems. With planned lessons, you have actual paperwork of everything you’ve

taught, so you can refer back to it later. If kids aren’t learning a particular point, you

know which lesson plan to amend, which helps you learn from your own mistakes and

missteps. If kids learn something really well, you can look at that lesson and figure out

what about it really worked. You can start to learn to be a better teacher overall and for

each particular class, and you don’t have to do it via memory.

Lesson plans let you show off what you’ve taught. They’re good for your teaching

portfolio, they make great blog posts, they’re great for showing other teachers, your

director, other TLGVs, your parents, etc. what you do with your time. If you have a really

great one, you can share it and others can benefit. People will think you are magically

organized.

But perhaps even more important than showing off to others is showing off to

yourself. Lesson plans give you not just a sense of accomplishment, but something

tangible that reflects that accomplishment. A lesson plan from a lesson that went really

well is like a personal award certificate. And since lesson planning helps you keep track

of what works and what doesn’t work, your lesson plans will get better and better,

feeding into and renewing that sense of success and accomplishment.

Research shows that these kinds of small accomplishments “can increase your

motivation, your productivity, and your work engagement and satisfaction“. So many

teachers struggle with motivation – with not having real feedback from the kids or the

tests, it’s incredibly hard for us to know how we are doing – but creating lesson plans

and then assessing how the lesson went – not just the doing, but the documentation –

are surprisingly powerful motivators.

Each lesson plan sets a discrete, achievable goal – teaching the “target

language” for the lesson – that you can aim for during the “presentation” phases and

judge the success of during the “production” phases of the lesson. This fits in perfectly

with the framework of creating discrete tasks, tracking accomplishments, and

celebrating small wins outlined in the article above.

I can tell you from experience that planning a lesson, having it go well, and then

feeling like I’ve learned something in addition to teaching something is the biggest

source of my happiness and motivation as a teacher. When I don’t plan lessons that

motivation drains away very, very quickly. Yes, there’s a certain nebulous satisfaction

from having students greet you enthusiastically in the halls, or from sensing a general

overall improvement in English – but that stuff is so subjective and hard to quantify that

it doesn’t do much for you in the long months of the spring semester when you’re

wondering why you ever decided to teach in the first place. If you need that daily boost

– and I think we all do – planning and assessing your lessons is the way to go.

And then, at the end of the year, instead of asking yourself if you’ve made a

difference, you can point to a big, giant stack of papers – your year’s lessons – that

show exactly the difference you’ve made.

Plan your lessons. It will do wonders for your students, and it will do wonders for

you – both in and out of the classroom.

Source:

https://teachandlearnwithgeorgia.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/the-importance-of-

lesson-planning/

ARTICLE 3 :

Theme : Enrichment and remedial reading

activities

Title of article : Teaching Ideas for Remedial Reading

and Highly Able Readers

Source : Internet

Teaching Ideas for Remedial Reading

Teaching remedial reading can be a repetitive process, which can be frustrating for both

the student and the teacher. Luckily, there are many resources such as free remedial

reading activities out that are both effective and provide variety.

Show That Everything Has a Name

Make sure that children understand that everything in the classroom has a name, and

that they understand what these things do. A good activity is to create labels for

everything in the classroom. This will help students to associate the written word with an

object, and encourage them to vocalize what it is they are wanting. If you avoid referring

to things as "this" or "that," then the students will begin to as well. This can lead to

different activities for different age groups and reading levels.

Younger students will appreciate the alphabet in their classroom, as it increases

familiarity and can also be used as a teaching tool. Capital letters work best, as they are

easier for students to recognize. Pictures that students create can also be labeled, or

students can work on a scrapbook activity. This can also lead to small field trips where

any written words are pointed out. For example, the word stop across a stop sign.

Older students can incorporate this into other activities. For example, in planning to

prepare something in the kitchen, students can work to create a grocery list and then

read the products to find what they are looking for at the grocery store.

Encourage Daily Reading

It's very important for children to be interested in reading, but this is often difficult when

children's reading levels and interest levels differ. A high-low reading list is a very good

resource to help find books that students will be interested in. Reading magazines and

newspapers are also great as they have many short articles, but make students feel

grown-up. Reading aloud is a great thing to do, though students will usually come

across words they don't know. A few tips for dealing with this are:

Encourage them to sound the word out completely, rather than guessing after the

first letter or syllable.

Have them read the entire sentence with the unknown word omitted. Then ask them

what word would fit in the blank.

Once they have figured out the correct word, have them read the entire sentence

again so they finish without struggling.

If students have particular trouble with sounding words out and resort to guessing, a

good activity is to write a list of nonsense words, and have them sound them out. This

teaches students to sound the entire word out, without guessing.

Focus on Comprehension

Comprehension is a major part of reading, and is an important thing to develop in

remedial readers. It is usually easier to start with a TV show or sports program before

introducing comprehension exercises to short stories. Comprehension should include

how to summarize, predict, context and monitor. Summarizing can be done by asking

students to retell a story in just a few sentences, predicting can be started by asking the

student what they think might happen next. Context is especially useful for students who

often find words they don't know. Teaching students how to use context clues (words

and pictures) is a great skill. Monitoring stops the problem of reading a whole story and

not knowing what happened. Students can learn to stop reading and check to make

sure they understand what they just read. If not, it is a good time to re-read the

sentence or passage.

Fun and Games

There are quite a few good websites that have free remedial reading activities. The only

caution is that some of these games are designed for younger children, so it is

important to encourage students who won't feel offended to use these resources.

Starfall is an excellent website. Their games progress from pre-reading, learning to

read, enjoying to read, and becoming confident in reading ability. There is also a

teacher's section which includes supplementary printable materials.

Scholastic has an incredibly comprehensive game section, and even has games

extending further into language arts, math, science and social studies. They have

games for all age levels, include pre-k to grade 12. I found that these games were

designed for a wide range of abilities and ages, which is great!

PBS Kids has some great games for younger children. Their games progress from

learning about letters, to learning about synonyms. All directions are spoken out loud.

FreeReading.net is a great resource for reading intervention for pre k to grade 6. The

website has a number activities, as well as resources for teachers. A further review of

freereading.net is also available.

Highly Able Readers

Storia is an excellent tool for differentiating instruction and creating challenges for the

highly able readers in your class. The range of extension opportunities with Storia is

considerable, and you can encourage your self-motivated, passionate readers to

construct their own projects.

 Tips for Using Storia With Highly Able Readers

 Encourage highly able readers who can infer the meaning of books that are beyond

their independent reading level to read e-books that are above their “accuracy” reading

level, but that match their “comprehension” level. Highly able students can access e-

books that are above their independent level, but on their instructional level, because

the Storia tools and features supply the instructional scaffolding. The combination of the

Storia read-to-me feature and the Storia dictionary will allow these students to focus on

the story while more easily accessing challenging words. 

 

Highly able readers should not be expected to read challenging books all the

time. Support your students’ choices, and let them know that it is okay to read “easy"

books, too. Storia bookshelves that are organized by genre and topic, rather than by

level, encourage students to read for enjoyment, rather than limiting them to books

available at a certain level. Students should also be encouraged to include "easier" e-

books in their personal bookshelves.

 

Some of your most advanced students may have a strong emotional attachment to

reading “traditional” (paper) books. A student may be resistant to reading an e-book due

to his allegiance to and connection to print. Assure these students that they do not have

to abandon traditional books. At the same time, encourage them to broaden their

reading diet by at least trying e-books.

 

Keep in mind that just because students read quickly or at a high level, they shouldn't

be required to do reports, extension activities, or written responses about every

book. Such a requirement is likely to turn off even the most enthusiastic reader. 

 

4 Extension Activities You Can Assign

Provide your advanced students with time to explore the enriched features in Storia.

Have them interact with the enrichment activities, listen to the read-to-me feature, and

use the notes and highlighting tools for instructional purposes. Suggest that they mentor

others in the use of these tools. 

You can also assign one of these four extension activities.

Design an Activity

Challenge your students to create an activity for a Storia e-book. They can create this

activity in a Storia note that they leave on a page of a shared e-book.

Remind them about the range of possible extension activities they can create and about

the different activities appropriate for fiction and nonfiction.

“Blurb” an E-book

First, ask the student to read, review, and analyze the information and writing style of

the blurbs found on the back cover or inside flap of traditional (paper) books. Have them

think about what they liked or did not like about these blurbs, what information they

found most useful, and what styles worked best.

Have them use this analysis to write their own blurbs for Storia e-books. Encourage

them to make the blurbs professional by writing, revising, and editing the blurbs in a

word processing program. Ask them to cut and paste their final blurb into a note in a

Storia e-book that is part of a shared classroom bookshelf.

This will enable other students to benefit from the information — and provide an

authentic audience for the writer.

Become a Book Expert and Annotate

Many excellent annotated children’s books are now available that have juicy tidbits

tucked into the margins. Before a student attempts to annotate e-books (or more likely,

short sections of e-books), make sure he has read a least one annotated book and he

understands the range of information annotations may include. 

Have the student choose a favorite e-book and research the book extensively. He

should become an expert on the author’s life, the story of the book's writing and

publication, the book's language features and allusions, critical opinions about the book,

and more.

Now encourage him to find appropriate places within the text to add, using the notes

feature, his researched information as annotations.

Make Your Own Audiobook

Show students how to record themselves reading a Storia e-book (or a short selection

of an e-book) using the recording feature on your Storia device or a separate digital

recorder. Students should practice reading the books aloud first, taking into

consideration pacing, expression, and how to make the reading sound as professional

as possible. 

Save successful recordings onto your Storia device so other students can listen to the

“homemade” audiobook while reading the e-book.

This activity can be beneficial for all your students for fluency and oral language practice

Source:

http://www.brighthubeducation.com/special-ed-learning-disorders/103576-four-remedial-

reading-teaching-strategies/

http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/differentiated-instruction-highly-able-readers

ARTICLE 2 :

Theme : Teaching and assessing language skill

Title of article : Goals and Techniques for Teaching

Reading

Source : Internet

Teaching Reading

Goals and Techniques for Teaching Reading

Instructors want to produce students who, even if they do not have complete control of

the grammar or an extensive lexicon, can fend for themselves in communication

situations. In the case of reading, this means producing students who can use reading

strategies to maximize their comprehension of text, identify relevant and non-relevant

information, and tolerate less than word-by-word comprehension.

Focus: The Reading Process

To accomplish this goal, instructors focus on the process of reading rather than on its

product.

They develop students' awareness of the reading process and reading strategies

by asking students to think and talk about how they read in their native language.

They allow students to practice the full repertoire of reading strategies by using

authentic reading tasks. They encourage students to read to learn (and have an

authentic purpose for reading) by giving students some choice of reading

material.

When working with reading tasks in class, they show students the strategies that

will work best for the reading purpose and the type of text. They explain how and

why students should use the strategies.

They have students practice reading strategies in class and ask them to practice

outside of class in their reading assignments. They encourage students to be

conscious of what they're doing while they complete reading assignments.

They encourage students to evaluate their comprehension and self-report their

use of strategies. They build comprehension checks into in-class and out-of-class

reading assignments, and periodically review how and when to use particular

strategies.

They encourage the development of reading skills and the use of reading

strategies by using the target language to convey instructions and course-related

information in written form: office hours, homework assignments, test content.

They do not assume that students will transfer strategy use from one task to

another. They explicitly mention how a particular strategy can be used in a

different type of reading task or with another skill.

By raising students' awareness of reading as a skill that requires active engagement,

and by explicitly teaching reading strategies, instructors help their students develop both

the ability and the   confidence to handle communication situations they may encounter

beyond the classroom. In this way they give their students the foundation for

communicative competence in the new language.

Integrating Reading Strategies

Instruction in reading strategies is not an add-on, but rather an integral part of the use of

reading activities in the language classroom. Instructors can help their students become

effective readers by teaching them how to use strategies before, during, and after

reading.

Before reading: Plan for the reading task

Set a purpose or decide in advance what to read for

Decide if more linguistic or background knowledge is needed

Determine whether to enter the text from the top down (attend to the overall

meaning) or from the bottom up (focus on the words and phrases)

During and after reading: Monitor comprehension

Verify predictions and check for inaccurate guesses

Decide what is and is not important to understand

Reread to check comprehension

Ask for help

After reading: Evaluate comprehension and strategy use

Evaluate comprehension in a particular task or area

Evaluate overall progress in reading and in particular types of reading tasks

Decide if the strategies used were appropriate for the purpose and for the task

Modify strategies if necessary

Using Authentic Materials and Approaches

For students to develop communicative competence in reading, classroom and

homework reading activities must resemble (or be) real-life reading tasks that involve

meaningful communication. They must therefore be authentic in three ways.

1. The reading material must be authentic: It must be the kind of material that students

will need and want to be able to read when traveling, studying abroad, or using the

language in other contexts outside the classroom.

When selecting texts for student assignments, remember that the difficulty of a reading

text is less a function of the language, and more a function of the conceptual difficulty

and the task(s) that students are expected to complete. Simplifying a text by changing

the language often removes natural redundancy and makes the organization somewhat

difficult for students to predict. This actually makes a text more difficult to read than if

the original were used.

Rather than simplifying a text by changing its language, make it more approachable by

eliciting students' existing knowledge in pre-reading discussion, reviewing new

vocabulary before reading, and asking students to perform tasks that are within their

competence, such as skimming to get the main idea or scanning for specific

information, before they begin intensive reading.

2. The reading purpose must be authentic: Students must be reading for reasons that

make sense and have relevance to them. "Because the teacher assigned it" is not an

authentic reason for reading a text.

To identify relevant reading purposes, ask students how they plan to use the language

they are learning and what topics they are interested in reading and learning about.

Give them opportunities to choose their reading assignments, and encourage them to

use the library, the Internet, and foreign language newsstands and bookstores to find

other things they would like to read.

3. The reading approach must be authentic: Students should read the text in a way that

matches the reading purpose, the type of text, and the way people normally read. This

means that reading aloud will take place only in situations where it would take place

outside the classroom, such as reading for pleasure. The majority of students' reading

should be done silently.

Reading Aloud in the Classroom

Students do not learn to read by reading aloud. A person who reads aloud and

comprehends the meaning of the text is coordinating word recognition with

comprehension and speaking and pronunciation ability in highly complex ways.

Students whose language skills are limited are not able to process at this level, and end

up having to drop one or more of the elements. Usually the dropped element is

comprehension, and reading aloud becomes word calling: simply pronouncing a series

of words without regard for the meaning they carry individually and together. Word

calling is not productive for the student who is doing it, and it is boring for other students

to listen to.

There are two ways to use reading aloud productively in the language classroom.

Read aloud to your students as they follow along silently. You have the ability to

use inflection and tone to help them hear what the text is saying. Following along

as you read will help students move from word-by-word reading to reading in

phrases and thought units, as they do in their first language.

Use the "read and look up" technique. With this technique, a student reads a

phrase or sentence silently as many times as necessary, then looks up (away

from the text) and tells you what the phrase or sentence says. This encourages

students to read for ideas, rather than for word recognition.

Source:

http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/reading/goalsread.htm