ILL

Evaluation:

Let me start by saying, that most of my expectations and thoughts on ILL have been covered during the course of the semester. Of course, my picture on ILL has not been as detailed and complex as it is now. No matter what age, level or group you are teaching, it is very important to identify the students’ individual differences and learning styles . What is crucial in effective language teaching is planning the lessons considering all these factors and preparing a variety of different activities which will appeal to these different learning styles in a learning process.

With regard to my expectations I had hoped for a great mix of theory and practice. As we were supposed to observe ILL in the classroom, this combination was given and successfully done. 

So what I really liked during this class was writing my own blog. I have not done that before and at the beginning I was rather sceptical than optimistic about that. Now,  from my latest point of view I would like to say that writing blog entries can be a good possibility to capture ideas and thoughts on certain topics as well as bring in suggestions or recommendations  for class. Probably this course ist not as suitable as other courses, like literature courses for example, however, to me it was more  a further method about what can be done in the English classroom.

What I did not like about the class was the never-ending group work. To my mind the course was slanted towards group work and since I really prefer and I am much more used to  front teaching and individual work this was too much for me. Therefore I would suggest a more balanced relation between group and individual work. Nonetheless, getting to know some of those methods (placemat, pair share activities etc.) can be fundamental for my teaching repertoire.  

All in all, I would really recommend the cours to my fellow students since I have learnt a lot about ILL and the great variety of methods.

So first of all I want to say that it is always a challenge to do the entries before Thursday, since my tickler is always very busy during the week and my time management allows me to do it directly before class begins. Hope that’s alright with you?

Now let’s come to the 8th blog entry concerning how to deal with mixed-level classes. In the following paragraphs I am trying to elaborate on the “Jigsaw Pictures”.

Jigsaw Picture

The “Jigsaw Activity” can be done at almost every level at school and takes up to 20 minutes in duration, although I think the task is most suitable for younger students (grades 5 to 7) The basic aim of this method ist to develop listening skills, activate visual intelligence and moreover, language skills suchs as prepositions of places. What you need is insignificant: a picture, a pencil and a sheet of paper. The teacher has to find a suitable picture, make two photocopies and erase certain details from the original (first copy: erase only few details; second copy: erase more details). Then there is s specific procedures that can be followed:

• Give each student one of the two versions 
• Choose a good student to describe the original picture
• the weaker students draw the details into their erased copy
• after that the students compare their findings in pairs

Benefits and Disadvantages

Of course, there are some benefits to that method. The use of visuals in the classroom always help to reach a greaternumber of students. Alongside this method there are more tasks that refer to sisual learning skills. A problem might be that only one better student can be supported by describing the picture. The picture must be chosen according to the students’ perceived ablity, otherwise they are either underchallenged or overchallenged.

Hi everybody,

I have just come back from my second and third observation at Lessing Schule in Bochum-Langendreer. I know the class very well because of a preceeding internship in PE.  

Since I am doing that field trip alone, and I have definetly underestimated the observation tasks, I have a lot to observe and note down during the lesson. Anyway, I am almost done with most of the work load and I hope I can give a stimulating presentation in January.

There’s not much to say at this point about the class and ILL. You will hear about that later.

The placemat activity is a type of cooperative learning , the class is divided into different groups consisting of 4 participants. Each group gets a placemat, like the one I inserted on this blog earlier.  Then, each of the student gets a task which must be the same for everyone. Now everyone thinks about this task and writes his ideas to that question individually into his or her field on the placemat (Think). After having completed this, the students read through their partners’ collection of ideas and compare their solutions to their own. This step is called “Pair”. The following step is the “Share” part. The group thinks about a common concept and the five most frequent ideas might be written in the middle of the placemat. Afterwards the results are presented in class.

This activity includes a good combination of individual and group work. Those are supposed to achieve some of the following aims:

• advancement of indivuality
• advancement of cooperative action and activity
• advancement of communicative competence
• advancement of social learning strategies
• advancement of performance

Cooperative Learning enhances and supports direct communication and interaction under students. The common achievement can be reached more easily. Nonetheless, learning has to be planned and shared and teachers have to watch out that weaker students are also involved in the communicative part.

1. What I liked about this method was … 

- this method breaks open the lesson and gets away from teacher oriented lessons

- activates the student’s creativity

- the climax from individual, partner and group work is always a good way to keep the flow of lessons running

2. When working on the task, my problem was …

- no problem at all

-space could be a problem for some students

 3. I could imagine using this method in/for …

-any type of collecting ideas, opinions on a certain topic, summarizing texts, articles etc.

The third assignement deals with the movie on “Individuelle Förderung” by the Schulministerium NRW. What aspects do we think can be regarded as relevant for our course on ILL and why do we think that?

To my mind the aspect of team-teaching seems to be rather new and of great importance. Team-teaching focusses on a communicative and cooperative combination of teaching and learning. The core of this method is about classroom instructions in which several teachers combine their individual subjects into one course which they teach as a team to a single group of students.

In practice this means that teachers have to work together hard –> teamwork and team-learning. The motivation has also to be very high so that the children feel aspired towards learning.  Besides all that teachers must have a diverse knowledge of teaching mehtods.

This method ought to include the teaching team as well as the learners and is perfectly suitable to bring several perspectives of lessons to the surface due to the fact that the learners do no have to focus on one single teacher.

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The bus stop method is a really excellent one and has got a lot of advantages. As we have already learnt about the different types of learners, motivations etc., this method allows the learner to learn as quick as he or she affords. The factor of time pressure fades away and need not to be taken into consideration. Besides all that, the bus method concentrates on the heart of ILL (Individualized Language Learning), so that each learner can decide in which way he or she wants to solve the problem at hand. Moreover, the learner’s social skills are improved by the variation of individual, pair or group work as well as front teaching.

However,  some disadvantages are remaining. Let me list some of those:

This first blog entry will take into consideration the following three tasks:

1) What do I associate with individualized language learning now, at the beginning of the seminar?
2) What are some topics and words we should discuss in this seminar?
3) What do I expect from this seminar?

With regard to question number 1, which we have already discussed in class, I am of the opinion that different types of learners with different motivation, social status, personalities etc. require different (individualized) types of learning strategies and learning materials.

Additionally, there is problem facing teachers who try to insert individualized language learning in the classroom -> it’s hard to organize for teachers (because of the size of the learning group, material etc.)

Moreover, pupils start from different starting points, but will fortunately end up with the same outcome or vice versa. Those two theories  (converging vs. diverging differentiation) aslo play a striking role.

To my mind, it might be essential to focus on those two theories on the one hand, but on the other hand theory has aslo to be put into practice all the time. This very last point is one of my major expectations from the seminar. I’d like to see how theories can be realised.

In my second subject I have come across some nice cartoons depicting the problem and chances of ILL. Hope you enjoy it. I’d call it: Differentiation and PE.

Finally I’ve made it.