Carol+Currie

Guten Tag allerseits!

Just getting started on the e-learning project. With Sarah's help at the PD workshop I have set up a wikispace for my Year 9 German class with a few activities the students can experiment with: quizlet, quia and glogster. This year Languages are compulsory and so we have a very mixed bag of students in front of us. This Year 9 class has a total of 23 students (5 girls and 18 boys) which is an interesting gender balance! This term some students are finding it more challenging now that we have covered the basics. I guess that motivation is one thing I would like to look at and providing extension activities for those who are keen to extend themselves and work at higher levels. Jo came to facilitate the project a week ago and asked some questions to see where the students are at. The skills they most want to improve are speaking and writing. Most of the class thought the pace of teaching and learning was about right to a bit too slow. The students were given about 20 minutes to try out some of the activities on the wikispace. We are supposed to be focussing on differentiated learning at Burnside so these activities provide various learning paces and levels. We are currently looking at the topic of Schule. The rags to riches game proved to be popular. I would like to know how to get the students to make their own rags to riches questions and answers. I would like to get the students to write conversations, record themselves and make movie strips. An English colleague has told me to look at "xtranormal". Just spent frustrating hours with xtranormal creating a video strip to discover that the German and French voice recognition is terrible. Does anyone know how to fix this? In principle making a movie is a great idea.

I need to make up a pre-test to check their knowledge and a test for the end of the project to provide evidence of their improvement.

My focus question is: How can I improve motivation and provide extension activities for students to improve their writing and speaking skills, working at their own pace and level?

So that's where I'm at so far...