How do we take our coursebook activities online?
Hi everyone
Rationale for the blog
I was recently asked to give a webinar on teaching online. With so much information out there in the form of blogs, webinars and articles I wanted to keep it very practical so thought of ideas of how I could take our existing materials and make these accessible and interactive both online and offline. I decided on the title of the webinar to be ‘Advancing Learning – How do we take our coursebook activities online?’ I’ve written this blog as another avenue to share my ideas and reflection from the webinar. I will focus in this blog mainly on areas of brainstorming vocabulary and presenting and practising vocabulary items. I hope you enjoy it and get some inspiration to take your coursebook activities on and offline.
We will cover the following areas:
Current situation
Being reflective
Discussion Points
Tech check
Adapting course books for online teaching
brainstorms
flashcards
checking understanding
Current situation
Before we begin I’d like to let you know a bit about my situation since this COVID 19 world event took place. I work in Thailand in an office in central Bangkok. Once schools were closed and I realized I couldn't travel I applied to work from home as I needed to look after my daughter and my wife doesn’t have the luxury of being able to work from home.
At the start, working from home took some getting used to as I am sure you have found for yourself. I’m lucky, as even though I have a family, my daughter is 13, she requires very little in terms of looking after but I needed to establish rules and times to work and time to relax. I found that separating work from home was difficult and to be honest I was working far too many hours, rather than what you would imagine would be the opposite. I think this may be down to the fact that I feel very lucky to have a supportive company to work for, and unlike many in our profession I still have work to do. So, I decided then to create ‘an office’ in a spare bedroom and only work from there. This has really helped me establish boundaries and I feel much more comfortable now. I also have everything in one place and my daughter knows not to bother me if the door is closed. I would encourage you all, if you already haven’t, to start from here by creating a space that clearly defines where you work. If you are using a laptop that you use for work and pleasure then fine but make sure you have a that comfortable environment where you can sit down and only work. This is your base and where you work. Separate as much as possible your work and your home.
Being reflective with online teaching
My own experience of teaching and training online is founded in research, trial and error and also from feedback. I’ve taken courses online, that I will provide links to at the end of the article, and have received feedback from sessions I’ve delivered. More importantly I’ve also been asked to reflect on these sessions myself. These are all good ways to get better and I encourage you to do the same.
Way back in the early 2000s I participated as a teacher on a distance learning project founded by the late King Rama 9 of Thailand. I went to a studio in the seaside town of Hua Hin with some of my students at the time and we delivered a class which was televised and then shown across Thailand. This form of distance learning was obviously quite primitive by today’s standards but it did show how a large number of people can have access to education through technology. Now with the tools we have digitally we are even better able to reach people personally. I still remember being terrified by the prospect of being on TV and even managed to spell dessert as desert which a student pointed out to me during a break. You may feel the same trepidation teaching online for the first time and I would say not to worry as this will pass with time and experience.
In the last couple of months, I have delivered online session to participants across Asia and in particular Vietnam and Thailand. I have done this both synchronously (face to face online) and asynchronously (self-study) and I, like you am still learning, and also hopefully like you, enjoying the challenge and the new skills I am developing.
Discussion points
Before I go into my presentations, I always like to have some form of discussion to stimulate interest and provide some interaction. For this blog I’d like to share a very popular quote but one that resonated with me. The quote was from Donna Abernethy and it must be one of the most popular quotes in webinars and blogs on online teaching. If you search Google for quotes and online learning this will come up. The quote is
“Online learning is not the next big thing, it is the now big thing.”
For me the real talking point here is when the quote was made. Most people believed it was from COVID 19 times but it’s actually from 1999! Over 20 years ago. What I got from this quote is that online learning isn’t new as a concept, and delivering lessons that match the needs of today and our students now, is also not a modern concept. But for most of us it is likely to be new and something that has rushed up incredibly quickly to push us in a way we should be going but might be reluctant to go. Even some of the most experienced teachers are finding it a challenge to adjust. What I also reflected on was today’s students. In my opinion, they are well equipped to learn online and adapt to this new environment. They are more suitable to change than we are as teachers as they are ‘digital natives’ where some of us, may be more like ‘digital immigrants’. We can be comforted that for the most part they will be able to pick up this new way of learning very quickly. We needn’t be too afraid that they won’t ‘get it’. My daughter has recently started learning online and while my reflections from watching her seems that her lessons are very teacher centered, she is enjoying the learning and happy to see her friends and teachers again. She is also aware that it may be difficult for teachers to adjust and is therefore willing to try harder and accommodate this. This is a very nice side effect of this whole pandemic. I also believe we are seeing people, especially parents, realize how difficult it is to teach and look after children so hopefully there will be more love for teachers when we do return to teaching in schools again.
Tech Check
At the start of each online session you need to conduct quick tech check to make sure everyone can hear and communicate. Most people will ask participants to type a simple yes or no in the chat box and this is obviously effective but why not build some rapport here with your audience. For example, you could ask them a meaningful question to respond to such as ‘Can you let me know where you are and in which room are you in?’ Do this verbally of course to check the tech and then type your own answer into the chat box to provide a model i.e. I’m in my bedroom in Bangkok. You can then comment on the answers and build some rapport.
Adapting Coursebooks for online teaching
So, let’s look at adapting our coursebooks for online teaching.
In this blog we look exclusively at Primary students, however I would say that these activities can be adapted for any level you are teaching so please don’t stop reading if you are not a primary level teacher. What I have done is looked at a page of a primary coursebook and the activities in the book. I have then tried to see how these can be adapted and used in an online teaching context. I will show you one or two free online tools that are easy to use for synchronous ‘live’ teaching. In addition, we will look at activities that lend themselves to asynchronous learning (learning at home in your own time) and tools that can be used to enhance this type of learning.
As it’s not possible to meet the needs of every situation, for the purpose of the blog, I am also assuming that students have decent internet connections and a laptop or computer. I will also be assuming we have fairly manageable class sizes.
So here we have a page from a coursebook from Macmillan Education called Give Me Five.
This is a Primary Level 4 coursebook and the topic of the unit is called ‘What are you like?’ First of all, let’s look at the key learning outcomes at the bottom of the page.
Identify and say adjectives of character
Sing a song about what people are like
We will try to address these outcomes before looking at a reading task later on in the unit.
The first thing we are going to do is introduce the topic and activate schemata to find out what the students already know.
Brainstorms
Brainstorming is very easy to complete synchronously and can be great fun to complete even with large classes. The first easy to use tool is the chat box located in your teaching platform software. This is fine with small groups but can get a bit messy with larger groups. It also allows strong students to dominate and weaker students to sit back more. My recommendation is to use this with small groups only.
Google Docs is better as you can put participants into groups easily and colour code. This breaks up the task and requires more input. Let’s have a go together. The first thing I have to do is to put you into groups. We will do this by birthdate. If your birthdate is from the 1st to the 8th, you are in group one. If your birthdate is from the 9th to the 16th, you are in group two. If your birthdate is from the 17th to the 24th, you are in group three and if your birthdate is from the 25th to the 31st, you are in group four. So, my birthday is the 27th, therefore my group is group 4. If you break up the class into groups like this, it’s a good idea to check understanding and have participants type their date of birth and group number in the chat box before sharing the link.
Click on the link here to find a google doc. You will need to add your link to the chat box when you are ready for the students to complete the activity. Now you can watch in real time while your students add words. Depending on your class you could create and share 1 document per group to avoid any copying.
Google documents are easy to produce but you will need a google account of course. Sharing is easy by creating a link for students to access and the document can be left for as long as you like in order to use asynchronously as well.
Another way of doing a synchronous brainstorm is to use www.mentimeter.com and create live real time word clouds. You will need to sign up but once you do you can create questions (called presentations) for students to answer.
Once you have created a question and opened a ‘presentation’, You can then share with your students by giving them a code generated by the website.
They need to access www.menti.com and then type in the code. Once they do this they can then add words and the live word cloud will be created. You would share your screen at this point to show the students their work. The cloud will look something like this (below) with students seeing words added in real time. There is a real ‘wow factor’ here as students see it grow and develop in front of their eyes.
To follow up we can use the word cloud and ask students to write in the chat box who in their family matches the most popular words mentioned in the cloud.
Flashcards
Flashcards are easy to use online. You can do this as you would do in the class using physical cards and showing them to the class, but the only problem with this is the drilling element and checking of pronunciation. Problems occur when you want students to speak on mass as the microphone can be distorted and chaotic. You could single out participants but this can take time and be difficult to manage with holding up flashcards or using ppts or interactive software. You just have to assume students are repeating the words by themselves. To check pronunciation asynchronously is very easy to do though using a message app such as WhatsApp or Line. If they have the audio, students can listen first and then record themselves saying the list of words and send it to the teacher. You will then check and select difficult words to feedback upon at the start of the next lesson. Remember here your time and while this is useful receiving and listening to 25 sets of 12 words is going to become very time consuming so you need to make judgments here on how often you use this method. Give it a go and see.
Another even better way of checking pronunciation is to use a website called padlet. www.padlet.com is a platform where students can share pretty much anything. Again, you need to register but this took me about 30 seconds. You can then make a padlet by clicking in the link illustrated below.
Here I’ve called my Padlet ‘Adjectives of character’ and I have listed the vocabulary I would like my students to say. They can also see these words in their books
Once I have created my Padlet I need to share it. I can do this by clicking the hare button and selecting the best way to share this.
I would copy to clipboard and then paste this in the chat box, WhatsApp group or email to students directly. If you want to have a go please click the link here https://padlet.com/derekspafford/7659tfw30syvp2za and add your recording.
To add a recording, students click on the plus button
And then they will see the following
All students have to do is give a name to their recording and then click on the three dots which will allow them to record their voices directly. They can listen before saving and discard if they need to record again. They finish by saving their recording and if they want to, they can listen to other students and add comments. It really is very simple to use and easy to monitor as a teacher.
Checking understanding
To check understanding synchronously you can write the words on the screen and then give each word a number. You can then show the image and in the chat box students will write the number. Another adaptation is to dictate the words to the students and they write them on 10 strips of paper. Remember instructions will need to be very clear here and you will need to get the students to hold up and check after each word. This may be time consuming so you could think about sending a cut-up document with the words on before the lesson for them to prepare asynchronously. You can then swap this with the pictures next to number and you flash the word and in the chat box students write the number that corresponds to the picture matching the word.
I hope this has helped in some way with brainstorming and presenting vocabulary and I hope you are developing skills to make you better at online teaching. For more information have a look at this Google sheet I created with information for teachers on free courses and online resources you can do and read in order to develop your online teaching skills. Also visit the Macmillan Distance teaching and learning hub here https://www.macmillanenglish.com/th/distance-teaching-and-learning-hub/home for free resources and resources.
