Saturday, July 25, 2020

Learning activities mix



This post is week 6 of 8 in the #8WeeksofSummer Blog Challenge for educators

As I always say in these posts, it has been a very challenging year for all of us. Although I am not new to online teaching, I had to adapt my face to face lessons to their online version, so this meant a lot of work behind the scenes.

Teaching online has to sides: Sychronous and asynchronous teaching / learning or a combination of both. 

What is this you might ask, if you are not familiar with the terms:

According to wikipedia:
Synchronous learning refers to a learning event in which a group of students are engaging in learning at the same time. Before learning technology allowed for synchronous learning environments, most online education took place through asynchronous learning methods.

According to edglossary:
Asynchronous learning is a general term used to describe forms of education, instruction, and learning that do not occur in the same place or at the same time. ... When teachers instruct students who are in the same classroom or learningenvironment, the term “in-person learning” may be applied.

In my country schools have used both methods. Especially with smaller ages, asynchronous learning was more common, while high school students had their clsses online with their teacher and their fellow students.

I have used various platforms and sites to help me with this difficult task. 

My synchronous teaching

First of all, as I have mentioned in my previous posts, I used Skype, Zoom, Webex, Viber and Facebook messenger for my online classes, whatever suited my students the most. 
Since my classes are usually one on one or a small group of 2-3 people, I have hot met a lot of challenges.

Speaking activities were not a problem since we could still see each other and talk to each other. As far as writing is concerned, Google docs was a tremendous help, since we could simultaneously write  - I uploaded and shared my worksheets with my activities / theory / texts etc. and students could work while we were having a lesson or even afterwards as homework. 

If the task was on the book, students took pictures with their smart phones and sent the activities to me, so I could check them out.

Another site / app that has helped me a lot, especially with my groups, was  Kahoot.



In a very simple way, students could choose the correct answer to a task and we could meke it like a competition or a quiz game, which was really fun for them and participated gladly. It has both free and paid versions, the paid version has more features and it is definitely worth it.

My asynchronous teaching:

Of course I could not leave my students withoout activities. 
First of all, I should say that most publishers as well as British council / Goethe Institut (and I am sure the official institutes for other languages) offer their own platforms with online exercises, videos and worksheets for the students, which was a big help, because students could revise according to what chapters we had worked during our lessons.

YouTube was a great help, since is familiar to everybody, and students could watch a video clip or a song and complete a task on Google Docs or they could use one of the following sites:

edmodo : This reminds me of Facebook, it is actually like a student / class facebook. You create your account and you can do the tasks the teacher has assigned. There is a variety of tasks, like multiple choice questions, matching, open end questions and lots more. The easy part for the teacher is that you can post the videos, texts or even audio to the class profile and all students can see them and do the tasks. Of course there is extra work for creating the activities, but this is part of all apps / platforms.




quizlet was my students favourite. I created lists of vocabulary and my students could learn them with flashcards, matching exercises, spelling exercises, games and lots more. There are also audio exercises in many languages and I could use this for all the languages I teach or learn. Students can also create their own lists (which can be fun!)



educandy : my personal favourite. This has to do with vocabulary as well. You write your lists and it automatically creates games like hangman, matching, memory etc.  You can also use this for other languages! It is easy to use, you just sent your students the link, they don't have to create an account! Especially my children students loved it.



As I have menioned above, all these activities need a lot preparation form the teacher and most of the time this is not appreciated, but I believe that it's worth it, when you see the joy in your students' eyes and the fact that all these activities actually help them learn.

I don't know if we will go back to class this year of if there's gonna be a new lockdown. What I know is that I am keeping these tools for me face to face classes as well!

Looking forward to read your posts on this!

Sunday, July 19, 2020

Professional goals?



This post is week 6 of 8 in the #8WeeksofSummer Blog Challenge for educators

Professional goals? There was a time that Imade lists with things I want to achieve professionally.
Now? Now anymore!
And I'll tell you why.
In order to make things happen, you need:

  • Time
  • Money
  • Ambition
  • Luck
Ambition was the only thing I had in the past few years.  Unfortunatelly in my field of work, employers prefer yoounger individuals, who are cheaper and have less responsibilities.
Money is never enough, since I have to support my family, whose expenses are really high, lately. So, this has automatically said goodbye to further studies. 
Time is also something I don't have since I have to work all the time. So again, There is no time to devote to further studies or even to myself sometimes.
Luck, well, let's say is a word that does not exist in my vocabulary anymore.
Dreams, well, I have a lot of those, but, my feet are on the ground.

So, I guess, the only professional goals I have for this year is to keep / find a good number of students,  maybe try to work a bit more online (you never know what will happen with the pandemic), keep being creative and keep healthy (this is a professional goal as well, since being on your feet means being able to work)
That's it for today, a bit short, I know. 

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

Technology and effectiveness



This post is week 5 of 8 in the #8WeeksofSummer Blog Challenge for educators.
This year has been a very difficult one. Everybody had to change their ways. Even teacher who were against technology, were forced to use it.
To my luck, I was familiar with online teaching and I have been practising it for years now.
So, I didn't have to adjust my teaching, but some of my students and their parents had to adjust their ways to this situation.
What really helped me was Google Drive. I could upload everything - all my material, exercises, texts, audio, video and this was made available to my students. We even used it as a whiteboard during our sessions. It is very easy to use and it literaly "untied my hands"
On the other hand, technology did not always work. Bad internet connections of my students made my teaching life very hard, since we had a lot of interruptions, or audio problems and sometimes we couldn't have the class at all.
Also some students refused to use any kind of technology, sending their handwritten homework in photos, demanding I correct it, which was not always easy.
Some students even stopped having classes, since they or their parents did not accept teaching with the help of technology.
All in all it was and still is a difficult year. I have one more week to go until my students' final exams and then I will try to relax and find solutions to the technical problems to be ready for next year!

Monday, July 6, 2020

Summer Staycation, Part 2, Courses

Of course I cannot just stay home doing nothing now that my workload has been reduced.
Language learning is a great activity, but being myself, I need more. More learning...
What's more?
Well, I have enrolled myself in 3 very interesting courses in Future learn and I am going to describe them and why I chose them

First of all:

Why do we suffer when we don't sleep enough? What's happening in our body? What is our personal story and how can we overcome this problem? All this sounded very interesting, since I do nor sleep lately. I do not sleep not because I don't want it, but because of the new addition in our family, our cat. So finding ways how to sleep better can be very beneficial for me right now. I'll right about the results when I finish this course.

Sexond choice:

What are the different types of learning? As a teacher, I have always found facinating the way psychology is explaining our behaviour and how our students (and ourselves) learn! Hopefully I will apply this knowledge to my future students and we will all benefit from this,

Last one:


According to Wikipedia:
Imposter syndrome  is a psychological pattern in which one doubts one's accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a "fraud". Despite external evidence of their competence, those experiencing this phenomenon remain convinced that they are frauds, and do not deserve all they have achieved. Individuals with impostorism incorrectly attribute their success to luck, or interpret it as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent than they perceive themselves to be. While early research focused on the prevalence among high-achieving women, impostor syndrome has been recognized to affect both men and women equally.

How do we overcome this? Can't wait to find out!

Sunday, July 5, 2020

Implicit bias



This post is week 4 of 8 in the #8WeeksofSummer Blog Challenge for educators.
This year has been tough. Not only because of the corona virus but also because of the continuous violence, protests, inequality that we are witnessing with our own eyes.
Although I am in a different country, racial inequality and bias, does exist but in a different form.
In our times, I don't believe that you will be able to find an homogenous nation anymore. And I don't even know if it is good to have only one race in a place. There is no diversity, no difference.
Still, people who are different than us, mostly immigrants face a lot of trouble. Not the same rights, terrible living conditions, poverty, no or little access to health facilities, criminality, racism. Only a few people try to help.
A lot of problems have arised at schools, especially when groups of parents go not want immigrant children to attend their children's schools and have even protested against it.
So, it is not always implicit bias, most of the time it is pure racism.
The bad thing is that this "feeling" is transfered to the native children by their parents.
So, as a teacher, it is pretty difficult to take drastic measures against it.
I would suggest parent -teacher gatherings and talks with experts about equality, racism, violence and equal rights.
As a second step, the school could organize multi national-events with food and art from different countries in order to bring people together and make them realize that the differences are not so big after all.
With children, we can do projects about different countries and traditions, role-play (and make them understand how uncomfortable it is to be judged by your race or color)

Hoping for a better future!

Thursday, July 2, 2020

Summer Staycation,Part 1, Languages,

Summer is here, but vaccation isn't! So, even the made up world "staycation" does not apply here, because I am still working!
To tell you the truth, I have never stopped working, lockdown or not, Easter, weekends... all the same to me... just in front of a screen working and studying.
I am not complaining, since it'w one of the few summers that I can actually afford to live, but still, sometimes I want to leave everything behind and just do nothing.
I just thought I should post an update on that I am up to these days, except work that is...
So I have started learning new languages since March, and I thought I could post an update on my progress.

Let's start with French

As I have mentioned before, I am not especially fond of the specific language. I hate the accent and I am even worse when I am traying to pronounce all the e's, I can't understand the grammar and it is a language that I generally don't like. My exchange teacher was focusing on pronunciation too much, and she also needed a more intensive English language course in return, this meant at least 2-3 times a week and hours that did not suit me at all. Ok, it was the language, not the teacher... I have to resign to the fact that I honestly detest this language and I am NEVER going to learn it....



My Bulgarian lessons are going great! I love this language, I love the accent, it's fascinationg how to "decode" the new letters and actually read and understand. It is going slow, mostly because I have to get used to the alphabet and learn more vocabulary, but it's going! I hope that by next year, I will be able to communicate, at least the basic things if I ever visit the country!

I've had 10 lessons (weeks) of Russian lessons. Again, I find the cyrillic script fascinating and Russian is much more difficult than Bulgarian, but I love the accent and the language structure. Unfortubatelly my teacher suddenly stopped. Was it health problems? Was it that she desparately needed a holiday? I don't know! I tried to find another teacher for exchange lessons but no luck, unfortunately. Let's hope she'll be back in the beginning of the school year or that I'll find someone else by then!


Spanish is going great! I feel more confident in speaking , but I still don't remember grammar and I can't express myself the way I wan to, but we're getting there.


Some years ago I had started learning Dutch. It's pretty similar to German and I can understand a lot. I found a wonderful introductory course with the basics in Future Learn and I thought I should give it a try to remember it! It's going great!!


And yes, yesterday was my very first Portuguese lesson! Yes, I can understand a lot when reading, but the accent is soooo difficult!!! I love the sound of it, but I still have trouble reading correctly. Also, I don't know why, but I expressed myself in every other language I know... I spoke Greek, German, Spanish.... my poor teacher what is she going to think about me???

Language learning is a lot of fun and I wish I had more time for that...

Staycation posts will continue...

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