Tweet Your Class

The Idea

Students need to be reminded about home work or a quiz? Do you ever find a great website or something that is a bit of a tangent? Do you feel like if you students just focused on making one or two sentences correct they could benefit? Try tweeting!

Come On, Just Try

I took some selling for the concept. Now I'm a convert. Try it for a month. Make your students participate. See what they have to say. They are using social media to improve their English, not distract from it.

Tweet Once or Twice a Day

I think it works well to send out one tweet a day about what you did in class or the homework. Put "#Name of your class" at the end so then everyone can see what everyone is saying if they search "#Name of your class"! It's really neat to see the discussion evolve and you are the architect.

Some things to Tweet

• Homework
• Extra credit 
• Questions for discussion
• Topic preview
• Blog posts that may be helpful
• Websites to supplement what we did in class
• Discussion questions
• Vocabulary practice tweets
• Test taking strategies
• Learning strategies
• Student Interest based tweets- music, soccer, University

Example Tweets

http://goo.gl/S9IFU Leadership styles of famous leaders. What kind do you admire? Post your thoughts. #MastersLS

HW: Write a paragraph about General Sherman's transformation as a leader. #mastersls

Extra credit tweet: Whose speech today do you remember the most and why (not your own) #MastersLS

#MastersLS Take this leadership quiz. Tweet your style and why you are that leader. http://goo.gl/eb1I9

Rules

• Don't respond too much. It'll seem like you are controlling the conversation.
• Don't go more than a few days without tweeting or people will think you gave up.
• If students make a mistake, privately send them a message with the correction; I made this mistake and the person never tweeted again.
• Make a policy- Be nice, be helpful, etc.
• Make tweeting mandatory if you are going to do it.
• Use goog.l, bit.ly, or tinyurl to save characters

The Future

How would you use this? Think of the possibilities! Succinct discussion about class, outside of class. Follow me and Tweet your thoughts, or comment on the blog.
Twitter: drnagy86

Web Quest

The Idea

Ever have students have problems finding proper resources? Are you worried that they are just reading it in their first language and not in English?  These problems could be solved with a thing called a WebQuest.

What is a WebQuest

A WebQuest has a task, a procedure to complete it, and a final production goal at the end. You write goal for them, walk through the steps giving websites to scaffold and research. In the end, they have a paper, presentation, poster, or project of some kind. It can be individual or group.

Where?

There are a lot of things labeled "WebQuest" out there. A good place to start is Quest Garden. It has a variety of types and resources. While the ESL specific content is a little low, it is an interesting way to get students to work with area specific items and practice their English. They can kind of follow your or their interests.  You can always just Google Web quest and maybe get lucky. People post them all over.

Example

Try doing this WebQuest I found on the quest garden. It is an interesting one about the English language and it is geared towards linguists called "Whose English is it, Anyway?". Here is another about the history of English as well.

Try this one I made for a class. I hope to use it many times in different forms because it is a general "argumentative" speech topic, of which it seems like my syllabii call for frequently.

Expansion

On the WebQuest website, you can make your own. It costs a fee though after the first month. What is really nice about it though is that it comes with procedural checkpoints so you can insure that the quality is high. If you are going to make one for the first time, I'd start there and move it somewhere else after you make it.

You can make this on any free website program such as GoogleSites, Weebly, or others if you have the patience to make it. If you are using GoogleSites, there are some templates out there if you search for them while you are making it. It makes the design process really slick.

Have a Webquest you like? Post it and share!

Three Indispensible Teacher Tools

What do you think that you can't live without in your classroom? I've become so relent on using technology to not only make classes more interesting, but also to increase my productivity. So here is a list of things that make you more interesting, but make life easier.

Google Drive

I use this everyday, for everything. If you are not using Google Drive, you are doing a disservice to yourself. Reasons for using Google Drive:

Organize

Organize all the things that you would use in your class in one spot. Make a folder for each class, just like you would on your own computer. The difference? Now you can access it everywhere!

Edit

It can edit any Google documents on the fly. I can edit something on my iPad or smart phone before I send it away to be printed on a cloud printer. Great!

Make Documents

Make word processing, spread sheet, and presentation documents. It isn't super fancy but it works great for simple things, things you would use everyday in class. You can also make forms which can become questionnaires  quizzes, or grammar exercises.

Upload

Upload everything to your drive so you can look at it later. This includes not only documents, but also videos, pdfs, or pictures.

Share

Share it! I took all our materials that the teachers had shared on our computer and collected it on one drive. Now, anyone who wants to access this material can do so at home. Not only that, but it is super easy for them to add their work anytime, anywhere.

Delicious

Do your bookmarks explode out of your bookmarks bar? Mine do. So, give some love to this bookmark site.

Collect

Collect your websites all in one place. Now you don't have to email yourself links, only have them on one computer, etc. It's all in one place where you can access anywhere.

Tags

What would this website be good for? Hmm, maybe vocabulary, or an interesting reading. So I tag it as vocabulary, reading. Write a little blurb about what is on it. And do this for every new website that you find useful. Works great because when I am then looking for something, I just look for the proper tag.

Search

You can then search what other people have tagged as well. If you are looking for anything at all, you then have a website with a short description of what that site is all about. It's a great tool for finding resources.

Share

Share your bookmarks. Everything that has the same tag GETS ITS OWN WEBSITE! I don't capitalize often, but that is awesome. I like it for letting students research pre-selected websites. It works well for finding speech or writing topics. It's also good for those students who say, "Hey, I would like some TOEFL information, can you help me?" Sure.

Evernote

Where do you keep all your lesson plans and lectures? In your head? What about notes about a class? Consider using Evernote as a way to organize your paperwork.

Organize

Make folders and "tag" your materials as topics. For instance, everything you have to say about "topic sentences" could easily be kept in one spot.

Immortal

Make your lectures immortal. You will never lose any information again. Get an idea? Write it down. Think you said a good lecture? Why not record it? Ever come up with something on the fly that worked really well in that moment? Take a picture of the white board and upload it to your notes straight from your smart phone!

Share

You can send these documents to anyone. Send your lecture to your class to help them review. Share with other teachers some interesting ways that you explain things. It is truly endless.

LOL Cat Grammar

The Problem

Do you ever have problems getting your students to want to find mistakes? In a lot of cases, students don't know what to look for or what to do with it. And after you teach it, they make the same mistakes over and over.

So how to you improve grammatical awareness in a memorable way? LOL Cats!

The Idea

Have students look at LOL cats for specific grammar and vocabulary errors. This could be a topic you are studying or a general trend that you find your students making.

What to do

For instance, notice the following LOL cat:

You can start by asking your students "What is wrong with this?" They can then find what is wrong and correct it. Next we look at the following:

Again, what is wrong with this and how to fix it. And finally:

Again, what is wrong with this one and fix it.

The lesson can then be what...? Subject-verb agreement! An interesting way to introduce the rules of subject-verb agreement in a memorable way.

Expansion

Other areas you can add that work will with LOL cats:

• Spelling
• Pronunciation of high frequency words and spelling
• Word endings
• Attention grabber for class
• Conversation starters

What is also nice is that you can easily create your own with your pictures or other peoples on the site. Write your own lesson in a LOL cat way.

Any ideas? Please post some other ways you think you could use LOL cats in a class.

Writing Macros to Aid Written Feedback

The Problem

I was running into problems with printers and students. For some reason, students keep thinking that it was okay to not turn in their work on time giving the excuse that they don't have a printer, or the school printer was down. This would lead to getting the writing emailed to me. It was then on me to print out the essay. I got a little upset about it.

This lead to using a site like Edmodo so collect student essays. They send it to you this way and you don't have to get your personal email involved.  Plus, it is just really nice to have it all organized for you. This worked well but I kept running into the time issue: too much feedback. I was writing endless comments and a lot of them ended up being similar, or the same idea.

So I started making comment macros for Microsoft word. 

The Idea

So the idea is a make a comment that you use often, highlight the problem, and click a button; BAM! There is your comment already written out. 

Comments vary from "Can you think of another example?" to "Make sure the subject agrees with the verb. Example:They is...->They are...". Students are questioned about there work, mistakes pointed out, and good work is praised. This saves time as well as makes your comments consistent. Students can become more aware of the types of mistakes they make and how to fix it.

It is a little work to set up, but here is how. This set up is for Microsoft 2007 or later, though it may be easier with earlier versions.

Cheat!

If you want to download my macro script with what I already set up, here it is. Though you need to troubleshoot it and set it up. Ignore this if you don't know what I'm talking about.

What to do

1. Write your comments

It works best to get all your comments written out first so that you can just work on making the macro later. I have my comments go into two groups, content and grammar.  I also tend to have the students write two drafts of essays. I give the content feedback first and after they correct it, I give grammar feedback. I find it works well.

Here is a list of my comments (The grammar ones are mine, the content ones are borrowed/adapted from this excellent article on feedback). It may be easier to do this with this information directly in a word document.

2. Make a Macro

First, you need to "Record" a macro. What this does is save all the subsequent things you do (clicking, typing, backspaces, forward spaces, everything) until you hit the stop recording button. So first, highlight something (it can be anything, but for me, it will be the comment I want to make).

Next, you need to name your macro. Use something you will remember, otherwise you won't know what it does until you click it. Click okay.

Now you click "New Comment" and type, don't copy and paste, your comment.

When finished, go back and stop recording your macro.
Now go through and do this for each comment.

*Complicated Time Saver

If you don't want to retype each comment, you can go through and edit each comment after words. Just Name all your macros without highlighting anything. When you finished just naming macros, click "View Macros" and then Click "Edit". You then have the macro editor. Under the title of your macro copy this script:


Selection.Comments.Add Range:=Selection.Range
    Selection.TypeText Text:="The comment you wish to make."

In the macro editor then, you can actually go through and copy and paste what you want to say.

3. Create Buttons

Now right click anywhere on the top part of Word, the thing called the "ribbon". Click "Customize the Ribbon" (Or go to File, Options, Customize Ribbon).

It brings you to this window where you can then make a new "Ribbon". Call it whatever you want, but this is where you customize how you want it to work.

Create a "New Tab" by clicking on the bottom. This will be your work space for making comments.

Right Click to edit the name of the tab. I like "Proof Reading. Edit the group for the type of comments you want, e.g. "Comments", "Content Comments" and "Grammar Comments". Add new group under your tab to get these groups. This starts to get messy, you may want a separate tab for different types of comments.

Start to add your macros by:

1. Select "Macros" from the "Choose commands from"
2. Select the macro you want to add
3. Select the group you want it in
4. Click Add

I now looks a little messy and hard to pick the one you want. At this point you can rename the macro from something like "Normal.NewMacros.clear_thesis" to "Clear Thesis". When you rename something, you also can change the icon the macro is associated with. This makes it easier to use later on.

You may also like to have a command to just make a regular comment on this tab, so go back to "Choose Commands from" and click "popular" then find the comment button.

Now you have a customized tab that looks something like this:

4. Profit!

If you did all this work, all you have to do now is highlight the student work, click the button, there is your comment. Happy grading!

Improvements

What would be great would be websites with grammar lessons and exercises that students could follow up with either linked into the comments, or as a comment sheet added to it. Same thing with the content. A real example to go along with it would be great. Any thoughts? I'd love to hear.