Speaking Club on American Culture

So I've been progressing with my Speaking Club project. Thanks to my methodists' support, we are going to have the first and second meetings repeated and I'm also about to start writing the third plan. At this point I want to share with you the second meeting plan which was devoted to American culture! We had a native speaker joining us, thanks to one of my colleagues, and were able to make it even more fun for the kids. Here is the link to the plan, I uploaded it to busyteacher.org, which I use myself very often - http://busyteacher.org/22514-speaking-club-on-american-culture-lesson-plan.html. I would love to get your feedback in the form of comments or a heart (on busyteacher) or like through any other social media.

I also want to share with you one of the ways wee used to divide students into groups.This cute cards with pizza slices on them will help you to divide your class into three (or two if you eliminate one of the pizza types) groups quickly and in a fun way. Afterwards you can also ask to create a name for their pizzas and add some extra and unique ingredient to it - http://busyteacher.org/22515-devide-into-three-groups-cards.html

How to motivate your students to do homework

Here is a tip I came across in the net I don't remember how long ago. And this semester I decided to try it out with my 5-6 graders. And as you can see from the photo, the thing is working! All the exercises for homework (including written assignments such as essays) are handed in in time and always! Now, the price I'll have to pay is the following :) - when the number hits ten, I'm gonna throw a pizza party for them. And since I'm a bit too soft teacher sometimes, there is gonna be ice-cream too :D Kids love it! Every lesson, in the very beginning, I hang this poster on the board and after I'm done walking from student to student to check if the homework is done, we all count the numbers together and then I write it in the square.

Hmmmm....an idea just stroke me..I should let kids do that! Why am I writing the number? Really! I should have students - each week a new one - write the number on the board! It will make them feel more responsible for the whole process of getting scores for homework + the feeling of achievement.

Great! I'll definitely ask one of the students to write number 7 this Sunday ;)

Long Time No Write; Teacher's 8th of March

It's been a while since I wrote last, and well mainly it's connected with the beginning of a new semester both at Uni and at work :) so here I am again, swapping my teacher-student roles everyday which is fun and makes me believe The Desk Theory. Or The Desk Effect to be more accurate. It's about changing your behaviour once you are sitting at a student's desk. Like from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. I'm a teacher - a responsible person, joyfully carrying out my duty. And once my lessons (where I'm a student) start at 2 p.m. I turn into a usual student, who talks with fellows, chats in the Internet, doesn't want to do the tasks, yaws, looks at the wrist watch every 10 minutes to check if the lesson is over (depends on the lesson, of course), talks off topic and so on, Love it! :D

Anyway, the post is not about that at all. I'll try to be concise

Big Event Number One. The finale of the Teacher of The Year competition at Unium has taken place! It was great! It was just awesome!! And despite the fact that I didn't even get to the second part of the final contests, I'm happy. Truly happy for having taken part in all this at all. It's been great experience, it gave me so much.. I already see myself next year talking my colleagues into taking part in it and saying how cool and beneficial it is :)) I really want to congratulate Taira, the winner of the contest. I'm sincerely glad that she who won the competition and believe that she deserved it more then everyone else. That makes me love my company even more - the fact that well it was a competition and I'm so happy for my "rival's" victory. It just shows what kind of people work at Unium. Professional, awesome and united.

And of course I congratulate beautiful Ksenia (http://p0-lubvi.livejournal.com/) on winning the Audience Award! One more person who I'm truly glad for! Thanks to her idea, now I have this cool chart at my YL lessons. Each kid made his/her own hero and now they move up the "ladder" for the correct answers at the lesson.

I love my job, I love my Unium and I'm proud to work there. Well, after all I did become the best teacher of the year, as you may see :D I'm lost in thoughts about the special effort that I've been awarded for though =)

Big Event Number Two. We held a Speaking Club meeting hurraaaaaay!! =)))

It was legen... wait for it... dary! Legendary! And I'm not kidding. Well...I knew I wrote a cool plan of course.. :D But the children! It were the children who made that evening special. And of course my fellow teacher Yana, who assisted me in holding the event as a second teacher. We made projects, videos, had 3 different discussions, presented our ideas, watched Obama's campaign commercial...and all that in 2,5 hours! + about 20 minutes of taking pictures, giving and receiving feedback, hugging with students, Yana and my best ever methodist Genya after that.

I'll provide a short plan for the meeting in the next post, I hope it will help or at least just inspire you :)

I'm planning the second meeting now. It's gonna be in the beginning of April. And having chosen the topic I foresee it to be a success again, with Genya's help we'll make it a piece of cake.

Big Event Number Three. I've got a new job! It's in a bilingual kindergarten. So now my blog is going to be full of pre-school stuff as well. I'll write about it in detail a bit later. For now I'm just trying to figure out the approach, techniques, just run around without full understanding of what I'm doing and why :)))

That's probably it about the big events.. I only want to add a few things

First of all, it was one of the best 8th of March. My ODI and Int kids brought me flowers, sweets and handmade presents, drew pictures on the board and said wonderful things. I think if I write one more time words awesome, cool, great or legendary you'll start thinking that I'm crazy or just out of normal words. But it was really awesome! That's how I felt those Saturday and Sunday - working all days long but very happy. Nastya gave me loom bracelets, Veronika drew a beautiful rose, Dasha brought sweets and a greeting card with very warm words inside, Erlan brought yellow tulips, Luiza - sweets, Alena - tulips, Gleb - a gorgeous rose, Julia - three bright pink roses...and Alina - sweets...Michael brought daffodils in a pot....and Nastya - more sweets..and a candle..

And with every piece of each present I felt like the happiest person. We shared sweets and sniffed the flowers, sang songs, jumped, danced...and studied English through all that of course! With every piece of those gestures, courtesies my heart filled with deep appreciation for what I have in my life and for all the people I meet (especially those under aged pieces of joy:D)

The Power of Yet by Carol Dweck

So here is a short but very informative video on a Not Yet strategy worth watching. Not only it suggests some practical tips, but also inspires.

As I've been trying to derive more from what I read and what I watch, I decided to use techniques of wise reading (which can be transformed into wise watching I guess). In attempt to get as much as possible from this video I created a short summary of the video while listening to it for the second time. So now I'm going to write it down here, trying not to look at the notes I took but rather by remembering stuff.

I hope it will also be useful for you and will save your time as the sketch I made includes all the main ideas, so if you don't have 10 mins to watch the video, you can just spend 2 mins looking through the sketch.

The Power of Yet

• There are children with fixed mind set and growth mind set:

- GROWTH mind set children 1) like challenge and 2) understand that their abilities can be developed

- FIXED mind set children are scared of hard tasks and when having failed at their first attempt (according to the study) next time are likely to 1) cheat 2) look for someone who did worse than them in order to feel better 3) run from difficulties

• Fixed and growth mind set children treat errors differently:

- GROWTH mind set children process the error, learn from it and correct it

- FIXED mind set children run from error and don't engage with it

• To build the bridge to Not Yet set of mind we can:

1. Grade "Not there yet" instead of "Failed"
2. Praise wisely: do not praise for intelligence and talent, but praise for process, strategy and effort
3. Reward students for progress, not for the results right now
4. Teach students about the growth mindset, i.e. provide them with info that every time they push out of the comfort zone to learn something new, neurons in their brain form new stronger connections. And, as a result, they get smarter 
5. Consiquently transform the meaning of effort and challenge into the right and more positive one

All the info and steps mentioned above need to be kept in mind and put into practice in order to build self-confident personalities who are not afraid of learning and making mistakes.

Box of random fun

Today I had a pleasure to read several articles, like this one, for example, that suggests running a Box of Random Fun in your classroom, which is a splendid idea.


As for other ideas that I gleaned today:

1) One-word-inspired essay. As it occurs, at All Saints' College in Oxford used to have a one word entrance exam. All students would turn their exam papers at the same time and see some word. Only one. For example, innocence or tenderness or friendship. So they had then some limited amount of time to write an essay inspired only by that word.

2) Role-writing. When setting up a wiritng (or speaking activity) you can inspire and spur your students by assigning them some special role. That is, you give the same essay topic to everybody but they all have different perspectives to discuss this toipc from. It is better and more vivid to use some realia while doing this activity - that is to use hats or maybe some other attributes. There is a whole 6 thinking hats method developed by Edward de Bono, by the way. You can use it or assign your own roles: e.g., green hat is for writing from a point of view of a nature-lover, white hat is for writing from a highly moral person and so on.