In this article, the author combined the course topic as “advanced listening” and “contemporary lifestyles and issues in the United Kingdom and the United States”. I think it is a right choice because they are linked to Japanese students' reality and needs.
The author preferred a more interactive teaching style than in a language lab (LL). The author thought the key to the success of the course seemed to be finding the right materials, such as good textbooks, songs, movies, animated cartoons, news programs, TV programs, and so on. For the supplementary materials the author got the idea from one of the student essay and also from her colleagues that students would select listening materials and teach them to the other students. As the author admired herself, I think this is a brilliant idea. I remember that when I was a college student in Japan I was very interested in learning English conversation through romantic American movies. And it worked very well to practice English hearing.
I could find the importance of students’ autonomy of learning not only in this article but also all of the other articles in this ED661 textbook. I realized the importance of the learners’ autonomy in course designing.
The author’s next task was to write start of the year letter to students, describing the course and the author’s expectations. In this letter the author mentioned that the author will act as a resource person and guide in the class and gave four requirements for satisfactorily completing the course.
1. Attendance and punctuality.
2. Completing the homework assignments.
3. Keeping a daily listening diary.
4. Complete a group project.
For the group project, each group would select a listening material related to one topic area of course and design a listening task for that material and teach them to the other students. Thus the author designed the group project to obtain input from the students, offering them choices, and having them take the teacher’s role.
I agree the idea of the group work, however, as the instructor the author should lead the students who take the teacher’s role. Otherwise the students will confuse whether they are learning right or not learning appropriately.
Throughout the practice, the author experienced and found that some change is required for her course. The author expected many things in her course design, however, through the practice the author found how a choice made on principle can fail to work.
When I read about the author’s final course evaluation, I remembered the last article “6 Designing a writing component for teen courses at a Brazilian language institute by Maria Estela Pinheiro Franco”. The author mentioned that how much the students learned from each other, not only from the group projects but just from the stimulation of being with a motivated and active group of learners. Because the same thing was mentioned in the last article 6 that the author cited in this textbook as “Many linguists and psychologists agree that interaction is crucial as a means of exchanging knowledge that would engender both development and learning”. I agree that the students act as “worthy rivals” for one another and will interact to share students’ ideas and build their knowledge.
In this article, the author expected that the students will meet the goal, however, because of a variety of interests, background knowledge, experience, language skills, and so on, the author must alter some aspects of her course. I think this is quite common and those try and error experiences will help the author to improve course design.

It was interesting to know how the author developed an ESL social studies course for seventh graders. The author wanted to teach a course that would bridge the gap between what her students could do and what they needed to do. To design a course the author brainstormed and decided that the document should be as explicit as the author could make it. And the author made the syllabus graphically and organized the goals and objectives.
The author’s idea for success of this course design was the students’ autonomy as well as competence. The author decided to transfer the responsibility for learning from the teacher to the students themselves. One of the ideas was a “contract”. Teacher would give each student a “contract”. The contract itself enabled students to develop and schedule their own study plan, thus transferring learning responsibility to the students.
The author had been considering the course, she had been thinking about the relationship between language and content. Then she decided to use “CALLA” as a textbook. I read “CALLA” handbook before for the other ESL class. “CALLA” is an instructional model that develops to meet the academic needs of ESL students. I think the author’s choice is right.
In this article, the author’s main goal is for students to be able to function competently and autonomously in the mainstream classroom smoothly. This goal encompasses the three areas of language, content, and strategies. I think this course design is quite well designed. I understand that the students in a content-ESL program are faced with a formidable task: learning academic content and learning academic language at the same time. I think the author’s idea and efforts of this course design will work well with careful execution (teaching) to ease the ESL students’ heavy burden.
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In this article, the author emphasizes the importance of reading and writing skills for her teen students. Through my experience I agree with the author. I had English education in Japan through 7th grade up to sophomore of university. Most of my English lessons in my schools were reading and writing. And this makes me feel more confidence about English.
When the author design a writing supplement, the topics are of interest to the students and something new. I really agree about the way of choice of topics.
In the writing supplement the author thought quite important for the engagement of her students in the writing process was interaction or collaboration.
“Writing Folder” of Appendix A, shows the writing process of three drafts. The first draft is written by the writer then the students exchange their draft and the writer make the necessary change based on the peers’ comments, this is the second draft, then the third draft is reviewed by the teacher and rewrite by the writer again. This writing process makes the students develop new ideas about a certain topic and learn new vocabulary.
I agree that this writing process will interact to share students’ ideas and build their knowledge, and through the successive drafts the writers refine their thoughts, structures, and grammar.
I am also interested in Appendix B: Symbols for Error Correction and Checklist for Peer Feedback. I may use “Symbols for Error Correction” when I teach in future. This article is instructive as the other five articles in the textbook. I could get new idea for designing syllabus.

Attention: Bloggers

Fujiwara's article focuses on providing student perceptions on work done in class. In other words, her consideration was geared toward keeping students interested and motivated by having them submit reflections so that the instructor can make adjustments to the curriculum. So where is everyone's input? We should be taking advantage of this element of communication in the form of this blog so that we learn from each other and provide considerable feedback. Remember, our input is valuable to our learning process.

Article 7 - Planning an advanced listening comprehension elective for Japanese college students

As I was reading this article, Barbara Fujiwara stated that this was going to be hard to do because she would have to design a whole years course in abstract. He planning process would have to come from layers and layers of assumptions, experiences, and knowledge.
Barbara's aim was for her students to leave the course with an interest in and ideas for using English-language listening materials to maintain and improve their language skills. She also considered providing a rich and deep context for language learning. Another consideration was to keep students in the course.
She did a mindmap with four objectives: increasing students' listening comprehension, increasing learner responsibility for understanding, learning the language through listening, and learning about contemporary lifestyles and issues in the United Kingdom and the United States. Some other topic areas which she felt were important were multicultural society, female and male roles and relationships, education, changes in family structure, and social problems.
Two Goals:

• Learning how to learn through listening
  
• Increasing understanding of life in the English-speaking countries.

Four requirements:

• Attendance and punctuality
• completing the homework assignments
• keeping a daily listening diary
• doing a group project each semester

All-in-all, Barbara had learned that five topics were too much and had cut it down to three. One was boring, the talk radio show was good because it discussed real conversations on topics her students' were interested in and in return, had two callers for each topic which provided more context.
I think a lot of how she did her planning of her courses came from the feed back of her students. This I feel was a way for her to add, delete or adjust her courses.

Reflection on article 6

As I was reading this chapter, it dawned on me that I kind of started out this year in my new class room, almost the same way. It's my first year to teach SPED. I teach second and third graders English and language, and fourth and fifth graders, math. In the beginning of the year, I was given the lesson the my students were suppose to start with, but I had to do my own assessment to find out how much they knew and and where they were at. I tried to follow what was given to me but I had to test each student individually to see exactly where they were at. As Maria did with her students, I did the something similar to what she did. For example, I started my reading students on reading mastery level two, lesson one. As I was moving on to the next chapter, I noticed that out of my 5 students, two were on task, one did not comprehend, one was autistic and couldn't read, and the other one has ADHD and wasn't paying attention. That was a mistake when the D.I. coordinators expected me to start everyone on the same lesson at the same time. Well, as time progressed, I separated my students into two groups. I wish I could have done a "mind mapping" with my students. It would have made things go a little smoother in my class. Now that I have finally separated my students into two groups, I'm able to progress faster with the one group that can do more than one lesson a day. My student that has ADHD is not in a group anymore and has a one to one who focuses on life skills. If I am given the chance to work with SPED students next year, I will tell the coordinators of D.I. that I will do my own assessment and do my own "mind mapping" before I start them on any program. As Maria had done with her students, I would like to do the same strategy.

Reflect the UnReflected

As I was writing my Reaction Paper #1, I had this sudden realization that I could be in a situation like one of our course developers in which I will pilot a course of my own. My initial reaction was fear. Will I be ready for this leap into space? Will my experiences hold me down and keep me sane? Shortly after all the questions and "what if's" I realized something. I am not alone. Most of the developmental successes and blunders sit here in front of me, embedded in this book I am reading. These pioneers have run their ideas and concepts through the ringer of course development and have provided a path - what to do and what not to do. I believe that the more we, as a class, immerse ourselves in the idea of piloting a course, similar to these articles, then we will be more prepared when the time comes. We are the predecessors, let us take advantage of the road already taken.

A Friendly Reminder

Image source: http://ftcneiu1.tripod.com/

Dear ED661 Students,

I hope all is well. I am pleased with the article postings you've submitted in our ED661 Moodleroom, as well as as the entries in our ED661 Blog. As a reminder, blog entries must be grammatically correct. Refrain from any slang messages, as this online journal is further reinforcement for you to practice your writing skills, and essentially reflect on the ED661 assignments you've engaged in. As a result, this further enhances your learning experience.

Keep in mind that you must also respond to at least a couple of your classmates' entries by simply clicking on "comments" and then the "publish your comment" button. If you haven't posted a comment yet, be sure to revisit our ED661 Blog and post your entries. Due to copyright issues, don't forget to also include the source of the images you upload.

Our next face-to-face class session will be held Saturday, Sept. 29, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m., at the UOG Computer Center Lab, Rm. 107B. Refer to our revised Calendar of Events for further details. Keep up the good work, and feel free to contact me anytime.

Best Regards,
Dr. Rivera

Reflection on Article 4 Designing a seventh-grade...

As I stated in my response earlier, I practice many of the ideas/methodologies, and other skills related to my teaching practices-both at the elementary and post-secondary levels. I have found that many of the ideas mirror my own practices. I've realized that I "do" have some pretty sound practices established especially for the EN085 classes. I like to think that these ideas are shared universally. However, in the wonderful world of education, many of us seem to have missed the boat (myself included) at the most crucial times. I speak of our human nature and how we get self-absorbed in our neat and tidy little classrooms...and we tend to get wrapped up with the day-to-day stresses. As a result, we are too tired to continue out "professional growth" work. Thus, we miss the boat on great new and refreshing idea, methods, strategies and as Fisher so perfectly stated when referencing her goals for the pilot program, "they didn't say anything" about what or how to teach... I think I have been down that lane too. I, on many occasions, have created something so broad or inexact that even I had a hard time figuring out what to do. So, what did I gain from this activity? Pay attention! Listen (actively), become more aware of what others are doing...who knows maybe (we) can pick up a few new ideas!

as always...
I remain
Si' Maria

"Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow; Don't walk behind me, I may not lead; Walk beside me, and just be my friend."--Albert Camus,Nobel Prize-winning French writer

Reflection ED 661

My reflection on Fisher's chapter of designing a seventh-grade social studies course for ESL students at an international school was interesting. She had to create a course from classes that she was already teaching. By keeping in contact with her students, she would identify skills they were lacking and what their needs were to meet the demands of other classes in the curriculum. She needed to know her students very well in order for her to design a curriculum and know how to go about implementing them in order for her students to be successful. I believe that her pinwheel image was what helped her tremendously to achieve her goals.
Fisher also had to raise the performance level of students so they could function successfully in the mainstream academic social studies course, to orient students to the particular skills, vocabulary, and rhetorical styles of the social sciences. She also had to elevate general language skills in both academic and social settings, and to use the course as much as possible for future development work of content teaching.
Fisher had gone through quite a few obstacles but had successfully created a design to fit her students needs.

New View

I have been thinking a lot more about my course outlines, activities and evaluation methods in a more culturally sensitive perspective. The literature we have covered and the comments each of us have contributed to the forum on the MOODLE has really made me see teaching and course planning differently. I know that the research methods conducted by each author will be extremely valuable for my future as an ESL teacher in a foreign country. There is much to learn from the mistakes made by our pioneers.

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Article 4-Designing a Seventh-grade social studies course for ESL students at an international school

As I was reading this article, I could relate to what Fisher was trying to put together. I too, had learned a lot from the chapters of Chamot and O'Malley's CALLA book. This strategy of brainstorming and using a web graph is one of the best ways to compile ideas on a special topic and gather whatever resources you need to create a lesson and make sure that you are looking out for the ESLer's interest. It will be hard but if you have your main topic, in this case, social studies, you can web this type of strategy for any subject. So long as you always keep in mind of your ESLer's, their need (individually), and work out your web, it can be done. This technique can also be used technology. For example, you want to do social studies on the Micronesian culture. I found that PREL is very resourceful in that subject. PREL even goes as far as giving you common every day words or phrases in the different Micronesian languages. I might use language as part of one of the student's assignment, they would exchange phrases and words in their language and give it to a classmate who is from a different island. I could also have them share their culture, different kinds of food, clothing, religion, and what they like to do in their spare time for enjoyment. The students would learn a little more about their peers to where they won't feel too uncomfortable or too shy to share with each other.
Many students feel that because their are of a minority group, that they don't want to speak out in fear that they might be ridiculed or be intimidated. We as teachers would all learn by this experience. We are all learners too!