My First Course!

 Hi folks 🙋

I have finally finished working on my course💪it took my mental arm and a leg to produce it, and I am aware it's not perfect, still I am very proud of my creation. I have tried to implement all gained knowledge I have had over these years working with different level and proficiency students. As the majority of my students mostly struggled with speaking, which I consider to be the hardest in any language, I decided to create a course that would focus on boosting speaking skills.

Aaand ta-da💣! Here is my course!

Before creating the course I have asked myself a question: what motivates people to learn languages, especially in this digital era when you can speak any language of the world with one click of a Google Translate button. And somehow I recalled my uni days when we had exchange students from Turkiye, who obviously were male and gorgeous, a classic of the genre, I remember fancying one of them so much, that it motivated me to learn the language. I wanted to understand what he said without making a stupid face😁 and ruining the whole communication by waiting for Google to translate😓. Unfortunately we didn't have our "happily ever after", but I was left with an experience that now helps me to answer the above-mentioned question. Obviously, all people have their intrinsic motivations, however the extrinsic one, I believe, is more or less the same: everyone wants to communicate better in a comfortable, natural way without delays. What is the best way to communicate? The best and most convenient one is to speak. Therefore, I wanted to create a course that would help people master their English speaking skills and eventually contribute to to the development of graduate attributes that would lead to a better communication, which is the core of the soft skills required in any social, educational and working environment.

My course "ReTell", is aimed for any age elementary, pre-intermediate level students. It is focused on developing Speaking Skills via reading and retelling the stories, not too long ones, as I am aware of the "swipe" culture of the modern times. 

Content

The stories I have chosen for the course are interesting, contemporary, easy to digest, and have a lots of every day (not limited though) vocabulary. Pondering on what I want my students to learn I referred to the Graduate Attributes that are at the core of learning design and that "involve thinking about the type of people that emerge from our educational programs". I wanted the students to collect everyday language, master their grammar, and to be able to present the learned material in oral form.  Based on natural observation of speech origin, where children after going through the process of acquiring of new vocabulary, by repeating after an adult, they go to a process of repeating the sentences and ideas grown-ups express and only after mastering this particular skill they are able to construct and express their own ones, therefore, I truly believe and have applied the same method in my teaching: 1. Students acquire new vocabulary and grammar rules, 2. They read and see the vocabulary and rules "in action", 3. They "replicate" the author's speech by the means of retell and ultimately they (should be able to) create their own ideas and thoughts based on the experience. 

Thinking of the duration of each lesson of the course I was a little puzzled: how long should my lesson last to keep the students engaged and motivated to continue practicing this difficult skill? I, obviously, appealed to Google which kindly provided me with several thousands of possible time frames of the lesson. So, I ended up planning 4 an old-school one-hour-long lessons, with 2 (or may be more) hours of homework. Moreover, students may take the course online or offline (blended learning), since it's easy(🙏) to navigate through and allows to do the tasks at their own pace. All the retells must be posted on Padlet by the assigned time.

Activities

I have created four, in my own opinion, amazingly interesting lessons, which have encompassed a number of aspects that boost up/provoke speaking, such as:

• Vocabulary work, that was created on different vocabulary building platforms to offer the students informal diversity in each lesson, as well as a choice to learn in their own pace. As it was stated by George Siemens in his article "Connectivism: A learning Theory for the Digital Age" about "some significant trends in learning" that "informal learning is a significant aspect of our learning experience...Learning now occurs in a variety of ways [...] and through completion of work-related tasks". Besides, "technology is altering (rewiring) our brains. The tools we use define and shape our thinking". Therefore, having options is crucial 🙇
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Vocabulary Work
  
  
• "Read and Understand" rubric where the students can read the story along with me or just listen to me (the teacher) reading (inclusivity)  and do simple reading comprehension activities by answering multiple choice questions, as well as develop their critical thinking by answering open-ended questions, which according to SAMR use of digital technology model falls into Enhancement Substitution Level and makes the lesson more efficient.

  

  
  

  Read and Understand rubric

  
  
• Activities to invoke critical thinking like Debate section, created on KaloEdu, where the students can vote for or against some the characters of the stories and should also reason their opinion, which according to a Bloom's Taxonomy evokes high order thinking skills, and simultaneously falls into Enhancement Augmentation Level of SAMR model, where "unique features of collaborative document provides some functional improvement" like sharing and commenting on others' opinions. 

  
  
  

  
  
• Practice Grammar. I am not a big fan of teaching English Grammar, though it has been admitted to be one of my strongest skills😎 , still, at elementary, pre-intermediate levels of English, I perceive  it as an example of Cognitivism, where "learning is a process of inputs, managed in short-term memory, and coded for long-term recall"; or even in some ways of Behaviorism learning theory, since I see learning grammar as a "specific stimuli and responses" (Gredler, 2001) and something that is "external to the learner and the learning process as the act of internalizing knowledge", which do not evoke high order thinking skills according to Bloom's Taxonomy, which is not satisfying for a teacher as we all want "our students to create and synthesize". However, in my experience I have had a lot of students who ask for grammar support, therefore I decided grammar lessons must me included as an option. Besides, mastering Low-order thinking skills is not bad per se: those foundational skills help to move to HOTS.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• "Post Your Retell", the most crucial part of the course, as it requires to implement all previously gathered knowledge and produce a coherent, clear story. The task requires the students to record themselves (video or audio) retelling the story, which according to Bloom's Taxonomy would fall into Comprehension, Application and Analysis levels, and by answering to an open-ended question: what is the social message of the story? what does the story teach us?, which ideally should provoke HOTS, and fall into Synthesis Level of Taxonomy where "thinking involves combining different ideas or elements to create new structures or ideas" and perhaps furthermore lead to Evaluation Level "the highest level of thinking and is thought to require the most complex mental processes. At this level, learners are expected to make judgments about the value of the methods or materials presented to them".
  By posting their videos/audio files on Padlet students, apart from learning to speak and present information in English, also should be able to analyze what and how they present the information, as well as learn how to present themselves, and that should motivate them to want to master (mastery: the desire to get better and better) the skill and ideally to learn more, as it was mentioned by Dan Pink in "the Puzzle of Motivation".
  
  
  
  

I have been practicing storytelling for many years, I take pride seeing my students in various international universities and their acknowledgement of that the method actually works. 

Platform I chose

Why did I chose Tilda website builder over any other LMS? I have chosen the webpage format because I personally believe it to be the most appealing one with simple navigation and eye-catching pictures. Moreover, as the majority of Learning Management Systems (LMS) look professional and academic, they convey the "vibe" of rigour, I wanted the interface look more informal, so the students would feel the interest of exploration rather than the modality of going through something challenging.

Conclusion

Overall, my course is purely based on my personal observations, preferences, experience and believes, therefore it includes the activities, that in my vision are the most productive, move the students to high-order thinking and make the students synthesize and create (their own sentences, ideas, stories, reasoning, judgment, you name it). I have tried to create a course that would follow Connectivism Learning Theory, which heavily relies on technology, by introducing more opportunities for digital learning—like gamification of vocabulary on Wordwall, simulation of their own speeech by retelling the stories on Padlet, socialization by creating discussions and debates on Kaloedu. 

If I have achieved my target or not is you to judge, but, no matter how many flaws and omissions you may find in my work, I still would like to share it with you, so check it out! Please, follow the link below.

http://retellwithkamila.tilda.ws

P.S. I also wanted to implement a comment section presented like a Jamboard, but unfortunately owing to my lack of  IT skills I could not figure out how to embed it into my website. But, feel free to drop any comment here. Thanks💖

References:

Buell, C. (undated). Cognitivism. Retrieved December 10, 2004 from http://web.cocc.edu/cbuell /theories/cognitivism.htm. 

Brown, J. S., (2002). Growing Up Digital: How the Web Changes Work, Education, and the Ways People Learn. United States Distance Learning Association. Retrieved on December 10, 2004from http://www.usdla.org/html/journal/FEB02_Issue/article01.html 

Driscoll, M. (2000). Psychology of Learning for Instruction. Needham Heights, MA, Allyn & Bacon.

 Gleick, J., (1987). Chaos: The Making of a New Science. New York, NY, Penguin Books.

Gonzalez, C., (2004). The Role of Blended Learning in the World of Technology. Retrieved December 10, 2004 from http://www.unt.edu/benchmarks/archives/2004/september04/eis.htm. 

Gredler, M. E., (2005) Learning and Instruction: Theory into Practice – 5th Edition, Upper Saddle River, NJ, Pearson Education. 

Siemens, G., (2005)  Connectivism: A learning Theory of the Digital Age Jan05_index (itdl.org)

Landauer, T. K., Dumais, S. T. (1997). A Solution to Plato’s Problem: The Latent Semantic Analysis Theory of Acquisition, Induction and Representation of Knowledge. Retrieved December 10, 2004 from http://lsa.colorado.edu/papers/plato/plato.annote.html.

Rocha, L. M. (1998). Selected Self-Organization and the Semiotics of Evolutionary Systems. Retrieved December 10, 2004 from http://informatics.indiana.edu/rocha/ises.html

Stephenson, K., (Internal Communication, no. 36) What Knowledge Tears Apart, Networks Make Whole. Retrieved December 10, 2004 from http://www.netform.com/html/icf.pdf

Vaill, P. B., (1996). Learning as a Way of Being. San Francisco, CA, Jossey-Blass Inc.

TeachThought Staff / February 12, 2016 / Technology / Apps, Bloom's Taxonomy, Mobile Learning, Tools The Padagogy Wheel: It’s Not About The Apps, It’s About The Pedagogy