MASTERY MAKES THE DIFFERENCE!!!!

GP #4 - Teaching Innovations

Recent Action Research

Current Intervention - Improving Reading in the Online Classroom

Technology-Based Lesson Plans

Professional Enhancement - Courses & Workshops

Contributions to Education

Curriculum Implementation

Training Materials Design

Instructional Improvement Projects

Record Keeping

In addition to a focus on technology-based lesson plans, this section of the portfolio presents different types of research in which I have been engaged over the last two to three years. I am keen on highlighting an action research that I conducted in 2018, and presented the findings at the British High Commission in Kingston, as part of the British Council's mandate to promote 21st century core skills. Additionally , there is a reading action plan that I designed recently, based on the requirements of an EFL course I took. At present , I am implementing a number of strategies to help colleagues to find innovative ways to approach reading in an online learning environment. The data is presented below.

Recent Action Research

In 2018, I participated in the British Council's Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Core Skills Training Programme (click to view)

As part of the University of London's EFL Reading Course, on Coursera, programme participants had to devise an action plan with a 4-point strategy to promote whole school reading. I surveyed the learning environment at Glenmuir and recorded these strategies

(click here to view)

Current Intervention - Improving Reading in the Online Classroom

Before the Covid-19 pandemic students across all grade levels at Glenmuir, had been displaying a lack of interest in reading and this became one of my concern as I am aware that content area reading is extremely important to learner autonomy; as such one of the CIT newsletter that I circulate, focused on reading strategies. However, those strategies were derived from observations of teaching in the physical space. With the shift toward online learning, the complaints about students' refusal to read increased. As such, I am using student performance on reading tasks to share ideas on ways teachers can use online technologies to promote and increasing reading in the content area. I will present brief analyses of screenshots from my reading lessons in Google classroom to illustrate a key point that reading in the content area is a multifaceted task which requires skill in lesson execution.

In my 4th form English class, I found that use of a video presentation by the teacher motivates students to do their own research and post it on padlet.com so that their peers can read their work.

Since this group of 4th form language students are in the lower end of the year group stream, and there are many non-linguistic learners here, teacher provision of reading materials can save instructional time; so a screen shared website allows students to do live reading, without the teacher having to decode information, since this is a good time to use online dictionaries and other comprehension tools.

I have a co-teacher in this class, and so we are able to collaborate on tasks including selecting reading assignments for students; this glossary preparation task involves much reading and requires skills in the selection of appropriate definitions form a variety of sources.

The teacher has to bear in mind that when a research assignment is given, the possibility exists that students may simply copy and paste information, so I use this journaling task in Google Forms to foster independent reading in my fourth form literature class, as well as to help students to reflect on their own levels of competence or grasp of a particular topic.

In this sample taken from the journaling task, there is evidence of good self assessment; the student is able to search for information independently, rather than looking to the teacher as a repository of information.

This reading activity was done in my 5th form language class at the start of the academic term; again student dynamics is crucial in choosing reading activities; at Glenmuir the LR streams are at the lower end of the academic spectrum so the teacher must effectively apportion roles during reading instruction. For example, we were exploring sentence use as the basis for effective writing, so I uploaded YouTube videos to supplement the printed worksheet attached.

In the same 5th form class, the flipped classroom model was used; a letter writing assignment was posted online and students completed the task at school; given that they alternate with the 6th formers in attending school, ungraded samples of their classmates' work are posted online; so the work of their peers becomes the reading materials for the class, rather than always using external texts; this provides students with the opportunity to develop higher order taxonomies, since they justify the grade they assign to each sample.

Selecting appropriate reading tasks at the 6th form level is extremely important in order to effect successful academic transition from 5th form; from early in the academic term, they have to be immersed in content uptake so that they can meet the challenges of the content load at this level; this student presentation was part of an authentic assessment task in which they design content materials for a group of learners.

Follow up assessments after some reading tasks are indispensable to maximizing grasp of a particular topic or concept; the assessment does not always have to involve grading; posting responses to post-reading questions in Google classroom is an effective tool that I have used; students may also reply to posts of their classmates using this medium.

The phrasing of post-reading questions is important in order for those questions to not simply be a repetition of the reading assignment task; rather questions should be phrased in such a way, that the learner is helped to develop critical thinking skills.

This highlights another way in which reading assignments can vary at the 6th form level. In my Communication Studies class, I source reading materials and students have the task of summarizing and decoding materials that I have posted.

This quiz assessed students' understanding of the materials that I posted as a reading assignment; having used the post-reading questions in an earlier lesson, I now used this Google form quiz as another type of formative assessment to determine how well students meet lesson objectives.

Another effective reading strategy that I have discovered from this intervention is that varying the nature of reading tasks during instruction is key to effective reading outcomes; as indicated from the image above, we read and discuss poetry analysis strategies from a worksheet uploaded, then there are dramatic readings of a poem by the students; then, I become a participant with the students in the annotation exercise; I help colleagues to see how these tasks can be replicated in their subject areas.

This is the annotation to which I refer at left; at this introductory reading phase of the poetry lesson, students engage in 'free commentary', that is make comments that are not constrained by the requirements of a set question; this phase provides initiation into deeper lever levels of analysis.

Even though each student possess a copy of the text, the online environment lacks the cohesion of the physical space, and given the issues that may arise from internet connectivity, screen sharing of the text is extremely useful. When I share my annotations as seen above, I tend to demonstrate concepts; when students share their texts on screen, it can function as an assessment / performance task.

The 'digital' component of online reading could be easily ignored if we simply replicate Q & A tasks from the physical environment; to augment the performance aspect of drama in my Unit 2 Literature class, video adaptations are a crucial component of textual analysis.

Technology-Based Lesson Plans

In GP #1 , sub-page entitled, The Exhibition - #2 the lessons presented showed what planning in the physical classroom was like; one of the key aspects of the online classroom, however, is the digitization of procedures and tasks. Lesson content remains the same and so in our latest school newsletter in GP #2, I noted that merely placing instruction online does not simply equate to a focus on digital literacy. From the samples presented here, it is noted how tasks and procedures reflect the online component. Click each icon below to see the samples which include screenshots of the stimulus given as well as samples of students' work.