Motivating and Challenging Young Learners

Dear All,

In the light of the class discussions, I believe that it'd be very useful for everyone if you posted the techniques and straetegies you observed in your classrooms at the practice school over here.

So, what are some of the effective and useful techniques and strategies to motivate and challenge young learners and maintain the discipline at the same time ?

Let's share all we have observed and liked so far.

Nurdan Gurbuz

"If These Classroom Walls Could Talk?"

Students - "Who are they? What do they need? What do they need to know? What are their goals, hopes or dreams? What are they interested in nowadays? What will their lives be like? Or what kind of changes will they go through in their life time?"

I save the most important question for last: “Do we really need to care about the answers?” If we are teachers, the answer will absolutely be a big “YES”.

This is a video created by Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University. The video, called “A Vision of Students Today” summarizes some of the important characteristics of the today’s students.

Having watched the video, please share your reflections and comments about the characteristics of today’s students with the group. In your comment, please reflect on any or some of the following questions:

• If your classroom walls could talk, what would they say? Do you feel in the same way? What is it like to be a student in Turkey? What are your hopes, goals or fears? To what extent do you think they affect your performance as a student?
• As a student teacher, to what extent do you think these facts would change your teaching? (your view of teaching and learning, your method, your understanding of tasks, assessments or etc.)
• Just imagine that 30 years later in 2038, you will be still teaching English either to young learners or teenagers whom have years to be born. How do you think you will keep up with the changing conditions especially as far as the characteristics of the students are concerned?

These are the questions that came to my mind. Please do not hesitate to add any more dimensions or thought-provoking questions to our discussion either leaving a comment here or posting on your own blog.

Keep sharing :))

42nd International Annual IATEFL Conference! Exeter, UK 7-11 April 2008

Sorry for cross-posting but I think you might find this
information useful:

"The Exeter Online website gives you an opportunity to share ideas with teachers all around the world and get a taste of one of the world's biggest ELT conferences through a variety of resources including:

video and audio recordings of selected sessions

live streamed plenaries and events

moderated discussion forums

chat sessions, interviews, reports, photo albums and a lot more!

Join us and fellow ELT professionals from around the world to discuss, reflect on and develop ideas."

To know more about it and register for the event, please visit The Exeter Online website.

First Impressions!

Let's talk about your first impressions at school. How did you feel? What expectations you had before going to school? Were you frustrated or impressed by the atmosphere? What about the teacher and the students? Looking forward to hearing what impressions you got out of this first meeting!!!!

5 Things that Your Friends Don't Know About You!

I know that you are classmates and you may have known each other for about four years but there are still many things that your friends don't know about you. Do you cry at Turkish films? You love painting, dancing or acting? or are you afraid of dogs?....Let's share 5 things that your friends don't know about you...(Access edtechpost for an example)

(REMEMBER to tag your posts with our unique tag "begin2blog".)

Learning about Blogging Jargon

Here's another useful resource for you. It'd be a good idea for you to learn about blogging jargon since you are new bloggers in the blogosphere :))

Take a Look at What Others Are Doing!

I know collaborative tools are new to you and you may have many questions as to blogging. Here's a resource with links to other student and teacher blogs. Just click around and see what they are doing. This is the power of blogging, I mean, getting to know each other and enrich ourselves through sharing.