Flipped Classroom: Party Time Vocabulary for 5th Graders

 Hello my future colleagues, today I am going to tell you about my flipped classroom experience.

Have you ever heard of flipped classroom approach? In a flipped classroom, students learn at home through videos or readings, and class time is reserved for discussions and activities, emphasizing active learning. It allows personalized learning pace, enhances student-teacher engagement, and provides active learning. It has disadvantages, too. Flipped classroom approach depends on student tech availability. It may face resistance from students and teachers. Some students may not complete pre-class work. 

My friend Ayşe Rümeysa Şahin and I had to prepare a vocabulary teaching video for 5th graders about the unit Party Time. We used Animaker to prepare an animation video. It was reall hard for us to work with Animaker, because we haven't prepared an animation video before. First, we chose the vocabulary we were going to teach. Then we prepared the animation and added audio to it. We also prepared a worksheet for the students. I prepared the video and my pair prepared the worksheet. We used Canva to prepare it. 

Although it was a bit hard for us at the beginning, we had so much fun while doing this activity. We also think the animation we prepared is pretty fun. Hope our future students will like it too.

Here is my friend Ayşe's blog.

Here is our vocabulary teaching video and worksheet, if you want to have a look at them.

See you later!

Creating a Corpus-Based Teaching Material: Using Canva

Hello my future colleagues, today I am going to tell you about creating a corpus-based teaching material.

Creating a teaching material and worksheets for middle school students using a corpus-based approach has been an exciting experience for me. We started by putting together a mix of real-world examples to make the material more authentic and relatable. To bring everything to life, we used Canva. Canva made it easy to turn our teaching ideas into visually appealing and easy-to-follow materials. Its simple and user-friendly features allowed me to add colors, visuals, and interactive elements, making the learning experience more engaging for students. The combination of using a diverse language collection and Canva's design flexibility not only made the material look good but also helped students understand English in a more practical way. This experience taught me the importance of corpus-based teaching materials and blending creative content with design tools to make learning enjoyable and effective for middle schoolers.

Our target audience was 6th grade middle schoolers. Our focus was generally on vocabulary. The first activity was constructing sentences with the given words. With this activity, students will be able to construct sentences related to context. We also wanted students to do this activity with a friend, so that they will be able to learn working together and practice cooperative learning. For the last activity we made students prepare an invitation card. Students will be able to make an invitation and organize an event with this activity.

Besides the problems that may occur because of the lack of technology access, there are some other problems that may occur while using this material. Some students may struggle with generating creative ideas for their invitation cards. They may have different proficiency levels so we have to choose the vocabulary that will be suitable for all the students. Students might find it challenging to construct grammatically correct and varied sentences. Lastly, preparing an invitation card may take longer than expected, so that may lead to time constraints. 

It was a great experience for me, and working with my friend Şevval Yılmaz was also fun. Here is our corpus-based teaching material if you want to have a look, and here is my friend Şevval’s blog. See you all!

Digital Storytelling: Public Service Announcement

Hello my future colleagues, today I am going to tell you about one of my most extraordinary ELT experiences: Digital storytelling!

Digital storytelling can be simply described as “a short form of digital media production that allows everyday people to create and share their stories online.” I have surely experienced something like this for the first time and I had so much fun. We had three options: Public service announcement (PSA), “how to” project and a fictional story. We chose creating a PSA with two of my group members Ayşe Rümeysa Şahin and Mehmet Furkan Tekeş. It was about timber mining, which means ruthless cutting of timber with complete disregard for the future of the forests.

One of the most significant advantages of creating a digital story in a language classroom is the use of second language for sure. It is very useful for students to improve their speaking skills. Another advantage is that students can speak English without hesitation and present their projects in front of their classmates. I have experienced a personal disadvantage of storytelling, I was shy about acting while shooting and speaking on the camera because I have never done something like this before and I think also some of my classmates could not show their full potential because they were shy, especially if they have chosen a fictional story to create.

You can watch our PSA here, and can also visit Ayşe’s and Furkan’s blog.

What do you think about digital storytelling and our PSA project? Please let me know your comments. See you all!

Closing The Term!

 

Hello my future colleagues, we are at the end of the term and today’s post is going to be about my experiences briefly, and my thoughts and learning process about technology & language integration as we are mainly focusing on that while taking the Educational Technologies course.

I would not say that technology was one of the most important features while learning a new language, but my thoughts have changed positively after taking this course. Of course I was saying that technology can be useful for language learners because of the technological sources, but I wouldn’t say more. As I am going to be a teacher and planning on working with children and teenagers, briefly 21^st century learners, they are too integrated with technology and using technological methods while teaching them a new language will draw their attention to the lesson for sure. Besides using the technological sources, we can not see technology as a distant part of anything else as everything is integrated with technology, it is a huge part of our lives and it is everywhere, especially for the 21^st century learners.

We have learned so many things and have done many tasks while taking this course. I think my favorite ones were creating a podcast and digital storytelling. I had so much fun doing them together with my friends, and I enjoyed talking with other people and hearing their answers while creating a podcast.

I would definitely say that this course was very useful for me, I learned using many digital programs that I have never used before and I think I will use them more effectively when I become a teacher in the future. It was so useful for us that our teacher provided us with many examples while giving the tasks. My advice for the course would having more tasks that require communication with other people such as podcasting, because that one was my favorite.

Sharing my experiences with you all was so much fun, take care and see you soon! 😊

Creating A Movie Poster: Using Canva

Hello my future colleagues, today I am going to tell you about my Canva experience. I have created a movie poster for one of my favourite books Twilight which is written by Stephenie Meyer. It already has a movie poster so this my alternative poster for Twilight: Breaking Dawn.

Our assignment was creating a digital poster and we had two options: Creating a movie poster for a book or creating a magazine cover. I have decided working on a movie poster and I choose Twilight. At first, I was working with Picsart and I created the background myself, but it was so unprofessional because of my weak photoshop skills, so I decided to take a screenshot from the film. After I got a photo of Bella and her daughter, I continued working on my project with Canva as our teacher suggested. I have used Canva for the first time and I really liked it, it has aesthetic templates and it is so easy to use. You can see my poster here and also I am adding the photo of it as well:

I would definitely use a similar task with my future students, I had got so much fun and I am sure that they will too. I created my poster than I have seen my friends’ posters, all of them were very creative.

Have you ever used Canva? You can share your projects with me, I would definitely want to see them. See you all!

Creating A Podcast: Experiencing A Vox-Pop For The First Time!

Hello my future colleagues, today I am going to share my podcast experience with you.

We have a created a Vox-Pop with my friend. It is a filmed, intercept interview with members of the public. We asked 10 people the question if they had a chance to switch their lives with a celebrity, who would that person be and why. We got the same two answers from the people we have interviewed and all of the answers were creative. We also got a funny answer saying that the reason is that her husband is very handsome. The answers were related with the interviewers’ dreams, for example, one of the interviewers said that he wants to switch his life with a singer and the reason was him being a good musician, the interviewer’s goal is to become a musician in the future too.

pic from: https://www.wired.com/story/best-podcast-and-livestream-gear/

Creating a podcast was a fun task, especially hearing the answers and discussing them with our friends. I had some difficulties while I was putting together the voice records because I haven’t created a podcast before. But it got easier as I got used to the app.

I would give the same task to my students in the future because it was fun creating a podcast and it was a whole new experience for me. Also students can integrate with technology more which is important for 21st century learners.

Here is our podcast and you can visit my friend’s blog from here. See you all!

Creating A KWL Chart: Using Padlet For The First Time

Hello my future colleagues, today I am going to tell you about my Padlet experience.

We made a group of four with our friends and chose a topic together. We discussed and analyzed the problem using a KWL Chart. We chose “bullying at schools” as our topic. All the members of the group what they know, what they want to know, and what they learned about the topic one by one. We all mentioned three ideas at least.

I used Padlet for the first time. It was a fun experience for me to have it together with my friends. I had a hard time understanding how the website works at first, but then I saw that it is an easy Website to use and it was customizable, which I like the most.

pic from: https://www.uio.no/english/services/it/news/2021/padlet-terminated.html

Websites like Padlet are the mostly used websites in the 21st century and since we are the Gen Z Teachers, we are going to use them a lot too. Teaching and education strongly connect with each other in the 21st century as we all know. Using Padlet helped me a lot to develop my 21st century teaching skills and I am sure that it is going to be helpful for me when I become a teacher.

Our group’s other members were Doğa Şarlayan, Şevval Yılmaz and Ayşe Rümeysa Şahin. You can visit our Padlet here if you want, and you can also visit Ayşe’s, Şevval’s and Doğa’s blogs.

Have you ever used Padlet before? I am curious about your experiences as well. See you all!