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Week 4: Skill-building Websites for Reading/Writing Skills and Technology-enhanced Lesson Plans

 

After exploring websites that help build oral/ aural skills, this week our class continued to learn about useful tools for reading/ writing skills as well as how to design technology-enhanced lesson plans. 

Like previous modules, we participated in another online discussion on Canvas. This time the focus was on sharing resources to bolster reading and writing skills, and my classmates offered a wealth of suggestions, with the British Council’s LearnEnglish website being the one that received the most recommendations. This comprehensive platform offers a diverse range of self-study lessons tailored to different English proficiency levels (from A1 to C1) based on the Common European Framework of References for languages (CEFR). Its integrated interactive activities, from vocabulary and grammar quizzes to skill-building practices like writing prompts and reading comprehension exercises, serve as invaluable tools for reinforcing the concepts covered in the lessons. Besides, the discussion also broadened my horizons with a plethora of enriching resources, such as ReadWriteThink, Purdue OWL, and Quill, each of which offers unique features and tools to support learners in their language learning journey. In the forthcoming lessons, I will try out these recommended websites to identify which ones work best for my students so that I can adapt my teaching strategies to maximize their engagement and mastery of language skills.

In the remainder of this module, we were instructed on how to write a technology-enhanced lesson plan. Robert Elliott, a renowned expert in educational technology, has outlined six concrete steps to approach developing such a plan. First and foremost, we as teachers should think about our students’ learning needs and preferences as well as the technologies that are appropriate for our own classroom context. Second, we need to make technology choices that support achieving our original language goals. It is important to bear it in mind that technology itself is not the goal and therefore should not be allowed to drive the lesson. Third, we can think of areas that might be enhanced through the use of technology. The suggestion here is to try out several tools, including new ones, to evaluate and make an informed choice about which one to adopt. The next step is to develop a lesson plan incorporating technology to enhance what we are doing. A backup plan (called “Plan B”) is essential in case something goes wrong with the technology. Last but not least, we need to find ways to evaluate whether we have reached our language goals, thereby improving the effectiveness of integrating technology into our teaching. 

In conclusion, Module 4 has provided me with many useful sites to improve reading and writing skills, which are of great significance to my teaching. I was also introduced to the concept of technology-enhanced lesson plans. After doing the required reading suggested by the lecturer, I understood the nature of such a plan and was able to create one myself (see here). In the future, I will try to incorporate more technology into my classroom and prepare contingency plans to make my lessons become more engaging and interesting for the students.
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