Professor CCAA

Although I’ve been working for CCAA in Brazil since I arrived here, I have never really found a good site for teachers from this franchise. The main CCAA website is really only for franchisers and not teachers or students.  Recently though I have been really interested in a site created by a teacher called Zailda who created an excellent Google Group for CCAA teachers. It’s ran by CCAA teachers for CCAA teachers and provides a lot of support, information, files and material that other teachers have created specifically for lessons, etc. It’s free to join and helps out a lot. I mainly work with advanced or MEC students but also teach EPG and I like having a look to see what extra materials are on in the group. I like posting my own stuff there too, mainly extra activities or conversation materials. Our Spanish teachers were asking me about it and I gave them the links to go look see as I saw quite a few people posting there about Spanish materials. The site provides links to other sites of interest and hosts discussions to help teachers try to solve and problems or queries they have. I really like this site a lot, I just need to try to find a little more time to post things there

1st day back

Today is the first day of the the new semester, well for the students, that is. I have been back since last week. I have two classes today, TN9 & EPG but only the TN group will go as the others are still traveling as part of their job. They work for Syngenta and are here one day and then I don’t see them for a while. Usually the first class half the class comes so today we might play a game instead of having class and start lessons only on Wednesday night. I have a Taboo game to play with them, advanced groups like this kind of stuff It’ll be my first time of giving these guys class, they were my wife’s group last semester though so I know them all quite well. I think it’ll be a lot of fun, the group is 99% girls. I gave oral tests to some of them and they speak well so we should get along fine.

I wanted to spend the weekend preparing some stuff online for my groups but the radio internet in our city wasn’t working and they only solved the problem this morning. A bit annoying but nothing could be done about it until today. Roberta has a lot of stuff already prepared from last semester so I’ll have a look see whats in her files before I start making any more. She has a knack for worksheets. She loves making them, I like to make them too but she just has the flair for them   I’d really like to try using Yacapaca with my TN6 group, I must try to find the time to get around to setting up some stuff on it. This semester I have more group and less free time at home, plus I’ll try to give some private classes too. I already have material for these classes, both methodology and conversation classes. I’ll try getting students for these at the local uni because a lot of students are taking English letras courses and can’t speak a word of English. It sounds wierd but it is true, they devide the course into people who speak and don’t speak English. They all get the same degree whether they speak or not too, it really is a strange thing :-S  A lot of my old students are studying there so I like going there to catch up with them. Hopefully, I’ll get a group or two from there..

Playing

This afternoon I have been playing with Edmodo, I signed up for it the day it went live but I haven’t really had the time to look at til properly until today. At first I was a little lost with it, not getting into it but really what i could do with it as far as my English students were concerned. Everything became clearer as soon as I created a group   I have some ideas for using it with my groups and I’ll talk with them about it next week to see if they want to give it a try. I have already spoken with my TN9 students about microblogging and I think this might just be exactly what I’m looking for with them. They liked the idea of blogging online but didn’t like the idea of anyone else try into read their postings and Edmodo looks like it’ll solve this problem for them. I’ll chat with my MEC groups about it too as well as my EPG business English group to see if they want to try it out as well. Hopefully it’ll be a lot of fun

EPG

I spent most of my day today giving three-hour classes to my MEC students. These once a week three-hour classes are because my students study all day in their high schools instead of the usual half a day in Brasil and don’t have time for the normal two ninety minute classes.  The little time I had I spent looking for materials I could use with my business English students next week. Although they are beginners they have a small amount of vocabulary and I wanted to give them some worksheets, etc. for them to look over. A quick visit to Eslprintables soon gave me quite a pile of sheets full of vocabulary. I think these guys will really like them   I have also been trying to find some beginner stuff related to agronomy, I have some fruit and veg charts and wanted some others to go along with them. Over the weekend I’ll try to find some other stuff. There are only two of them in the class as their factory isn’t built yet and they are just here for Research and Development and Tech Sales but they are really enthusiastic about their course   They told me that they really like this studying with a native speaker hehehehe!! It’s nice when I get told this but for me if they do well in their exams and get good grades then I really feel satisfied.

Also over the weekend I’ll have a good look at Edmodo. I have registered but haven’t really had the time to have a good look and play with it. I’ve been trying to think about ways I could use it with my students. I’ll look in the forums to see what ideas others are having to see if it inspires me too. Most of my students have net at home and so the only real problem I have is getting them to stay out of sites like Orkut long enough to use the web for something more constructive hahaha!! I’ll see what I can come up with and maybe ask a few of my MEC students to see how they feel about trying it out as well as giving me some ideas as to how it can be used to help them with their courses.

Business English

I have some new students who work for Syngenta and they are in the beginning of learning Business English with me. The course we teach them is EPG (English for Professionals in General) and as a course its really nice. Full of video and multimedia stuff. I like this course a lot and the students that have studied this all seem to like it a lot too. One real problem with it is a lack of any dedicated online resources, the CCAA homepage is really only there to promote the schools to franchisers and has really very little to offer the students with regards to their courses. While i have a lot of sites online with stuff I’ve created myself for the TN and MEC courses, I have more or less nothing for EPG. I have been looking online to see what I can use with them while I work on getting something set up and running. I love the BBC Wordservice site because it has a Learning Business English section that has a lot of stuff on it but not really anything for total beginners. I was playing with Yacapaca too before the other school crashed out and I’m hoping to try to get some stuff into this for them too. They seem very enthusiastic and I’m sure that anything I create there with this they will defiinately try out. My main problem is really time at the moment, I need 30 hours in a 24 hour day hehehe!! I will try to get some free time online tomorrow in the afternoon and see what I can come up with. I was thinking abouyt maybe getting them to use something simple like Twitter with its very short message system as soon as we have a few lessons under their belts, just so they could try simple messages to each other. I’ll talk with them about this and see how they feel about experimenting with it later on in the semester. I have some sheets that I got from Eslprintables too, man that site is excellent for worksheets and stuff. Roberta loves posting stuff she has ran up on the pc there. Hopefully by the end of the week I’ll have some ideas for stuff for them. Also my web host has a lot of space left where I can upload some stuff for them too. Maybe it’s time to dust off Hot Potatoes again

Busy Busy!!

I haven’t really had a lot of time to post here, even though I’m only working in one school now I’ve got quite a few things to do. I’ve been showing my students some Web 2.0 sites they can use as part of their English courses and looking for some other stuff that looks fun and interesting for them to use too. Mainly the last week or so I’ve been trying to get my students interested in using Quizlet more. I really like this site a lot, it fits in just fine with my ESL classes. Some of the students have already started using it and like it a lot. Others I haven’t really had the time to sit in front of the pc with yet and demonstrate it but I’m slowly getting around to it. Roberta’s students also seemed interested in using it too so I added the vocabulary for her to try with them and next week we’ll see what they think of it and try to encourage them to use it more as part of their home learning. I also chatted with my students about things like blogging. I’d already tried to get some EPG student’s involved in this but although we got their WordPress accounts all set up, they moved to another part of Brasil and I have lost contact with them   Some of my advanced students liked the idea a lot but their time is limited as they are studying at uni at night and working in the day. I chatted with the about maybe using something like Twitter. I like this site a lot too and the idea of small text message like postings might be easier and more appealing to them. I have extra class with them over the weekend so I’ll demonstrate it to them in the break. It would be better if the other teachers were also more interested in using Web 2.0 more in their classes but generally they haven’t really shown much interest in it. I have quite a bit of stuff online for my students in wiki’s, blogs, etc. Most of it is for advanced or MEC groups but it could be easily added to for beginners if they tried it out. Sometimes I get the ‘If you do it for me I’ll use it’ impression from people but I don’t really have a lot of time for the things I have online for my own students and Roberta’s too. I’ll have to see about getting some of them to spend some time looking at what is already there so they can see how much it would help them out. I think for the beginner teachers they really need to look and see what else is out there because we seem to lose quite a few students after the 1st semester whereas I haven’t lost any of mine and I think this extra online stuff shows that the teacher is interested in help ing them to get as much of of their classes as they can. Hopefully as my students start to use the online sites more and more, the word will get around and the students might ask their teachers for more online resources for them to use too.

Rushing

This morning was a bit of a rush from the moment I woke up. As soon as the coffee was made and the computer booted up and online I started correcting some small spelling mistakes I had made in the Quizlet vocab sets I have been adding over the last week or so. It only took a few minutes and everything is all shipshape again. I created some that my EPG students can use while they are on vacation for the next three weeks so they can play with the activities in the Quizlet site and practice a little even though they won’t be coming to the school. I find more uses for this site every day, it really is quite handy. I’ll spend some time Wednesday night with my students to get the up to speed with it so they’ll know what is what as we’ll be out of touch during the vacation. I added some sets from the next book too, it’ll give them a chance to familiarize themselves with some of the situations and vocabulary before we get started when they both return.

This week is full of reviews for the upcoming midterm exams all the students have to take. All the teachers were required to create some review exercises for the students – some teachers a lot less than others – and I used Quizlet as the workhorse to do 95% of the work as my groups mainly needed vocabulary reviews. My MEC groups will probably do two classes of review as they have so much new vocabulary to remember, I don’t know if they will use the online stuff I’ve been posting to my site to help with their review and studying too. Hopefully they will as it has a lot of exercises that I created just for their books, etc. I spent an hour yesterday creating an answer key for these reviews and finding any typos I had made so that I could just sit around and read a book during the review class hahahaha!! Should be quite an easy week with a bit of luck