Hope is the Light

Hope is a light that never fades

No matter how dark is night;

Always show your trust in God

If your path is true and right.

Even in the stormy seas

Hope floats like a strong ship

Do your best and then wait

You will be helped in every trip.

Many a great aimed and tried

Though they lost time and again

In the end they reached their goal

Cause’ it was the hope they all contain

Suhail Bin Aziz

Free Interactive Whiteboard Resources for Teachers

Interactive whiteboard resources are a great way for teachers to engage classrooms in learning. While many teachers are spending hours a day creating their own activities for their interactive whiteboards, there are tons of free sources to help teachers learn about and use IWBs with students to further their use of technology in the classroom.

Here is a list of some great interactive whiteboard resources and activities guaranteed to stimulate learning:

TeacherLED – TeacherLED is a site dedicated to making the use of Interactive Whiteboards (IWB) easier and more productive. This comprehensive site features resources to use with IWBs in math, English, and geometry.

SMART Exchange – This SMART Board interactive whiteboard site provides several lesson plans and activities for teachers to use in the classroom. SMART lessons are available for a variety of ages and subjects.

Topmarks – With some of the best free educational materials for IWBs, Topmarks is a great resource for finding IWB lesson plans and activities. This educational site also features teacher resources, educational sites for classroom, and homework help.

Eduscapes – This guide to interactive whiteboards explains different activities and resources that can be used with IWBs. Eduscapes is a good starting place for teachers who are just beginning to use this technology in the classroom.

Promethean Planet Teaching Resources – Promethean also invites members of their community to share their lessons and activities for their whiteboards.

Mimio Connect Lesson Plans – If your classroom has a Mimio system, find lessons by searching keywords, sorting by grade or choosing your preferred subject.

Interactive Whiteboard Games & Activities

PBS – PBS provides a collection of fun, interactive SMART Board games. All of the games featured on this site are age appropriate and screened by educators.

MathFrame.co.uk – This site, created by a school teacher, houses several interactive math games specifically designed for IWBs. All activities are aimed at reinforcing mathematical concepts and skills.

BBC History Game – BBC offers several interactive activities that can be used with interactive whiteboards. This Famous People history game is a great way to teach elementary children about historical figures.

Scholastic – Scholastic provides interactive whiteboard lessons for phonics, math, science, and history. This site also features a search engine for finding more lessons across North America.

Crickweb.co.uk – Crickweb.co.uk provides 15 free resources for use with interactive whiteboards to demonstrate technology in the classroom.  These math activities are designed to teach elementary students the basics of math.

Math Playground – The Math Playground offers interactive math activities for middle schoolers. These games and activities work well for teachers who want to engage the entire class.

Classbrain – This game site features several interactive math games that work with IWBs. A fun game worth trying with students is Regrouping.

Funbrain – Funbrain offers several interactive educational games for use with IWBs. These fun games cover a range of subjects and grades.

Kerpoof – Kerpoof is an educational interactive website from the Walt Disney Company that can be used with IWBs. This site is a great way for children to create, discover and learn.

Xpeditions – Xpeditions from National Geographic provides an atlas that can be used on interactive whiteboards. This atlas explores every region of the world.

Periodic Table – This interactive periodic table site was designed for educational use by elementary to high school students. The site works with interactive whiteboards to introduce and engage children in learning the element table.

Archiving Early America – Archiving Early America features a range of short videos on American history that are perfect for use on IWBs.

 Memorial Hall Museum – This free online museum features a complete interactive website for teachers. IWB teachers can view collections, online exhibits, and games.

Place the State – Place the State is an interactive geography game from Bensguide.gpo.gov. This resource can be used with IWBs to teach students about U.S. states.

More Unique, Cool Whiteboard Resources Students Love

Engaging students in some classroom topics can be difficult. But with the help of your interactive whiteboard you can get and keep your students interested in what you are trying to teach them. These activities are all especially cool.

Scale of the Universe  – This cool update to an old tool lets you scroll from the size of a person and head out into space – viewing the solar system, galaxy and eventually the entire universe. Or zoom smaller and smaller down to sub atomic particles. This new version is clickable – and tells you a litle more about the different planets and objects you can see as you drag the slider to view bigger or smaller objects.

Stellarium – This free planetarium software is perfect for astronomy lessons. Stellarium displays a realistic 3D sky, complete with planets, major moons, more than 600,000 stars, and constellations from 10 cultures.

Illuminations – Created by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Illumination provides more than 100 interactive math games and activities for students in grades pre-K through 12.

FreeRice – FreeRice is an amazing trivia game from the United Nations World Food Program. Rice is donated to hungry people every time visitors answer trivia questions correctly. Trivia categories include art, chemistry, math, English vocabulary and grammar, geography, and language learning.

Signed Stories – Signed Stories features videos of stories being told with sign language and subtitles. Although the site is designed primarily for deaf children it would be useful to any classroom interested in learning more about sign language.

Sheppard Software – Sheppard Software provides a wide range of free educational web games for students. Covered topics include animals, science, chemistry, health, history, math, and vocabulary.

Fit Brains – Designed by a clinical neuropsychologist and brain health expert, Fit Brains is an online gaming platform with puzzles and other “brain games.” Players can track their progress and win trophies and achievements when they do well.

Spelling City – Spelling City is a free online learning platform with 10 learning games and more than 40,000 spelling words. The site also offers how-to videos to help teachers integrate Spelling City into the curriculum.

The Eco Zoo – The Eco Zoo is a 3D environment that can be used to teach students about environment, ecology, and eco-friendly living. Content can be viewed in Japanese or English.

NASA Space Place – This award-winning NASA website is a good place to find videos, animations, and games that teach kids about space science and technology. Nearly all of the materials on this site would work well with an interactive whiteboard.

Science Websites for Your Interactive Whiteboard

Google Body Browser – This is Google Maps for the human body! Google Body is a detailed 3D model of the body. You can peel back anatomical layers, zoom in, click to identify anatomy, or search for muscles, organs, bones and more. At the moment this won’t work in most web browsers, you will need to get the beta of the new Firefox or Chrome, but keep an eye out later this year for an update.

The Children’s University of Manchester – This excellent resource is aimed at KS2 and covers subjects such as electricity, health and space. There are a number of interactive Flash games that you can use, and even better they come with a “full screen” option which makes then much easier to display and use on your board. There is also information about real scientists working at the university and what research they do.

Succeeding with Science – Created by Sellafield Nuclear Power Station, this website contains many different interactive activities and downloadable resources. There are resources here for both primary and secondary teachers on a number of different topics. There’s also information about the power station itself.

National STEM Centre – This site contains a wealth of resources to support the teaching of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths in Key stages 1 – 5. There are interactive resources, which demonstrate technology in the classroom, but also downloadable PowerPoint presentations. There are some excellent resources produced by the Association for Science Education (ASE) as part of Science year which are now archived on the site. You need to register to download all the resources, but it is free to do so.

ChemCollective Virtual Lab – The ChemCollective is a digital library of online activities for KS3/KS4 chemistry teachers which aims to engage students in more authentic problem-solving activities than those found in most textbooks.
Their virtual lab will look slightly familiar to anyone who has ever used Crocodile Chemistry. It’s a free simulation which allows mixing of different chemicals and provides information such as pH and temperature as the chemical reaction takes place. Comprehensive guides are available on the site which explains what to do.

As always, virtual simulations should not replace actually doing the experiments for real. But sometimes, for revision purposes, or for times when a lab is not available, being able to access these kind of online simulations can be very useful.

O2 Learn – O2 is building a video library of great revision lessons, from teachers across the country. Teachers can submit videos of themselves delivering short guides to different topics. Students can also request help on difficult areas. Would be good for revision.

Interactive Whiteboard Activities to Teach Music

MoodStream – Moodstream is a really interesting tool. It combines images (from Getty Images) and audio tracks to suit your mood. Would be good to investigate how different sounds and tunes affect our how we feel. Choose from combinations of happy/sad, calm/lively, warm/cool etc. Is really interesting to leave running for a while and see what it does.

Making Music from Help Kidz Learn – Simply press a piano key or run your finger down the keys on a touch screen, to play the notes. Mouse users can click on the keys. The keys are in different bright colours and marked with the note they play.

Virtual Drum Kit – Ken Brashear has made a giant drum kit that you play simply by hitting the different hotspots on the image. Very therapeutic.

Music Match Game – This game helps you learn how to play the piano and read music. You can learn the notes, learn the keys or both.

Drum Machine – An interactive drum machine that lets you build up different beats to create your own drum track which you can then export as a swf file.

Poisson Rouge Piano – A simple interactive piano that lets you produce a tune and then play it back. Will show the musical notation at the same time.

Muxicall – A collaborative “wall of music” Click on the notes to play a track, but other people can also be using it at the same time and play music between you!

Toy Theatre Music – 4 different games here. Compose your own music, create drum beats, music maker and piano puppet. Try them out!

Basic Reading & Modern Foreign Language IWB Resources

Pic-Lits – Drag words onto photographs to describe the scene or mood. The default language is english, but could be used in other languages in freestyle mode.

Word Magnets – This resource from Triptico could again have uses in many different subjects since it is quite open-ended. Use it to create drag and drop sentences in your chosen language.

Ashcombe School – GCSE French Videos – Some very useful videos here for french teaching from Ashcombe School in Surrey. Also check out their Primary MFL resources. Videos are a little small, but come with a quiz. May be better for self-study rather than IWB use. Right click on the video to play it full-screen.

CrickWeb Spanish / French – Crickweb has a wealth of great resources for all subjects, and that includes languages.  Check out their KS2 Spanish and French resources.

BBC Learning Zone clips – The BBC is always a good place to look for video resources for classroom teaching. They have videos on all subjects, including French, German and Spanish at both Primary and Seconday level.

Bleu, Blanc, Rouge… –  Bleu, Blanc, Rouge is a website for teachers wishing to access resources for teaching French in the Primary School. The site contains songs & rhymes, language games, art & seasonal ideas, tongue twisters, recipes & links to French stories on the net.

World of Teaching – Lots of powerpoints to adapt and adopt for language teaching (and other subjects) and demonstrate technology in the classroom.

Share your favorite IWB resources in the comments section!

Microphone and Me

Throughout my school career, I used to be a shy and quiet boy. It was till class 9, I never spoke through a microphone. I can still remember that it was a declamation contest at school for which I had no interest but my class teacher and my mother were too much eager. 

She wrote the speech and Sir Saleem (my class teacher) did everything to buck me up. AT last the day came when I participated in the declamation contest. The results were astonishing, as I had won the first prize. 

Break time came on that day but it was altogether a different experience that day. I was feeling like a celebrity, as almost all the boys seemed to be pointing towards me and talking about my victory that morning. 

After few days, I was called by the principal to inform me that I was chosen to represent the school in an inter-school declamation contest and then the very next month I was traveling to the capital city to represent my province in National Declamation Contest.

It was my first love with microphone. Then I used to perform as anchor person in almost all the programs at College and University level. In my practical life , once again this microphone was after me and I hosted all types of ceremonies, from graduation evenings to annual nights, from sports contests to prize distributions and from conferences to seminars and poetry recitation programs.

Radio was another experience. Earlier with traditional AM and later as a DJ in FM radio gave me another taste of microphone. 

I have no idea, when will my last program be, but one thing is for sure that the 25 years old love with microphone is still fresh as it was on the first day. I still feel the same fear in the first few seconds of start of any program.  

     

GOLD MEDAL FOR PAKISTAN IN INTERNATIONAL TEACHING KNOWLEDGE COMPETITION

International Teaching Knowledge Competition titled, “Teachers are Competing” was organized by a Turkey-based Educational Consultancy. For this competition, the teachers were required to record their lesson of 40-45 minutes and send the same to the contest organizers. From Pakistan the teachers from different subjects participated in the contest.

In English Language Teaching category, Head of English Department PakTurk International Schools & Colleges, Mr. Suhail Aziz  (That's me) got worldwide 1st Position. He received a Gold Medal and cash prize of USD 2000. It is yet another feather in the cap for PakTurk family.

Chairman and Directors of PakTurk Educational Foundation congratulated Mr. Suhail Aziz for his worldwide success and other winners for their performance and expressed hope that the teachers will continue working with same devotion and dedication.

 International level teaching competition results:

Branch	Gold Medal	Silver Medal	Bronze Medal	Mention
Turkish	Yücel ÖZYAŞAR Tajikistan	Aida ŞAMENOVA Kyrgyzstan	Semih KAYA Ukraine	Ayhan DEMİREL Kazakhstan
English	Suhail AZİZ Pakistan	Mehmet AKDOĞAN Bosnia	Aliya AMİRBEKOVA  Mongolia	Derya ÇETİN Tajikistan
Mathematics	Ali LAFÇIOĞLU Bosnia	Abdulğani YAVUZ Mauritania	Kuat KOJAHMETOV Kazakhstan	Ochilbek RAKHMANOV Nigeria
Physics	Sinan KOŞAK Romania	Zokir ABDURRAHMANOV Tajikistan	Jasur DOMULLOJONOV Tajikistan	Daniyar İZMAİLOV Kazakhstan
Chemistry	Fatih ELİBOL Tajikistan	Saya JAPAROVA Kazakhstan	Arif KOMİŞ Tajikistan	Faridun RADJABOYEV Tajikistan
Biology	Fatih Mehmet GÜRLEK Tajikistan	Feyzullah KÖKSAL Albania	Muhammed Ali ÇAM Macedonia	Ömürbek TOKTOBAEV Kyrgyzstan
Computer	Yerkhan MİNDETBAY Kazakhstan	Adem KARADAĞ Bosnia	Salih ÖZSOY Iraq	Assylbek BORANBAY Kazakhstan

My CELTA Experience; Episode-5

First Assignment
As if the pressure of Teaching Practice was not enough to kill us, another tension came. It was first of the four assignments that we had to finish during our four weeks long CELTA course. First Assignment title was, "Know your learners". As for as myself is concerned, I always had a trouble of not remembering the names of my students. I always believed that it was enough to point to some student if you want to ask or tell something. After all teacher is the central figure in the class and everyone should fix eyes towards them.

Here we learned the golden point, "NOMINATE". Each individual has their own personality and they like to be called by their name and not with you or boy etc. In order to learn the name of the students, we learned the technique of pasting the names of the students on their desks in the beginning and after a few days of nominating them one can learn all the names.

While asking something call the students with their names. 

For the assignment, we interviewed the students. I still feel for those poor guys. During summer holidays when their other friends were enjoying their lives, these people were asked to come and take some lessons. Anyhow, we started interviews and found some interesting facts about our students.

I found that most of them were shy, having problems like pronunciation, fluency and spellings. This is mainly because of their L1 (in this case Turkish) influence. Halit, Sana, Yasemin and Beyza Nur were few of the students in our group. Later on as the course progressed, they opened up a little and by the end of 1st part of our CELTA, the time when the group was to be handed over others, these students were not ready to leave us at all. I believe that it was mainly because of our efforts to make lessons according to their interest and taste. How could we come to know about their liking was only due to the assignment, "Know your learners".  I advise every teacher to know their learners and design the plans according to strengths, grey areas, likings and dis likings of the students.

Receptive Skills:

On fourth day of CELTA we attended an input session on receptive skills. Caroline gave us a wonderful model of reading strategies. In order to check our students performance we check their written and spoken skills. For these productive skills, we need to focus on strong receptive skills. Reading and listening are the two receptive skills which need more systematic teaching. Most of us teach in the same way as we were taught. Unfortunately some bad teaching practices of few of our teachers stick to our minds and then it is very difficult to throw them away. We all must understand that reading is not a passive activity and in order to make it more fruitful, our lessons must be equipped with some basic techniques.

Pictures could be useful to activate background schema

• Activate students' background Schema. (Check students prior knowledge about the topic)
• Use pictures to arouse interest. (Make the students guess for the information they are going to get)
• Pre-teach important vocabulary (the words which may be necessary for the task)
• Always task before teach.
• First task should be a gist task. (A question or couple of them to make sure quick reading/skimming)
• Detailed task (To make sure that students can find some specific information; scanning)
• Peer checking (Students can check each other's work)
• Answer key: Instead of wasting time on discussing each question, you may paste your answer key on a wall where the students may go and check their answers)
• Feedback: (Some delayed error correction could be done, without pointing out the students.

It was nice to see that the text that seemed to be a bit complicated in the beginning, could be exploited to suit the needs and level of our students. The key is how to ask appropriate questions.
We teachers need to make our students realize that they are not required to read each and every word of a text. It is enough to focus on the answers of the questions and at the same time they may get gist and deeper comprehension of the passage.   

Lead-in stage of the lesson is the most important part of lesson, since it sets the tone. Laura Greenwood, in her article writes about this fact. She says:

"When doing receptive skills work (listening and readings) with your students, it is important to take time at the very beginning of the lesson to activate your students’ experiences with and knowledge of the topic of the listening/reading. In TEFL this is called activating background schema. Doing this immediately engages your Ss, gets them using English, and sets them up for more successful listening/reading comprehension. Read more about Schema Theory to understand why this approach is successful.

• This component of a receptive skills lesson is called a ‘Lead In.’

• Include visuals, realia, discussion, and personalization – a broad look at the topic/subject/content area of the listening or reading.

• Ask some general questions and have your Ss brainstorm ideas/knowledge of the listening/reading topic or ‘What I want to Know’ (about the topic).

• Read a background text, watch a video clip, listen to others discuss the topic of the listening/reading, etc. to stimulate discussion.

• Make an explicit link between the topic of the text and students’ own lives and experiences in order to prepare them for successful listening/reading.

If you don’t activate your Ss background schema when teaching English as a foreign language, your Ss might not be interested in listening/reading, have a purpose for listening/reading, or even be ready to successfully listen/read.

Beyond all of the above excellent reasons for activating background schema when teaching English as a foreign language, is the fact that you will learn a lot of interesting and remarkable facts about your Ss. 

The lesson of the day is "An English Language Teacher is a magician who could turn a simple piece of realia into a wonderful learning opportunity."

By the way today is my birthday and I am going to celebrate it with my family.  See you next time with another episode of my CELTA experience. 

         

My CELTA Experience; Episode-4

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross said, "There are no mistakes, no coincidences. All events are blessings given to us to learn from." So no worries about first TP. Anyhow I learnt that I was not playing in my home ground in front of my home crowd. Third day started with a lesson given by Dorothy. MFP was discussed where special focus was on pronunciation. I realised that back in my country we are missing or at least not giving proper attention to this very important aspect of language. The input session was a perfect example of situational presentation. Some pictures were used for lead-in. The sequence of the lesson was:

• Warmer
• Set context
• illustrate meaning
• Elicit
• check meaning
• drill
• focus on form
• written consolidation

For pronunciation and specially for the stress patterns, Dorothy taught us that teacher should model it. It may be done through clap while drilling a sentence or even whistling could be used. We also learned that while using a situational presentation, that situation should be chosen which may generate other examples.

He's been to Turkey.

Now it can be varied as

He's been to Ireland. OR He's been to South Korea. 

LA sheet or Language Analysis Sheet ( an extension of lesson plan) was also introduced that day. On LA sheet we were required to write certain details of language to be taught.

 

While focussing on 'Meaning' in language we should remember three things:

i) Analyse: The language to be taught.

ii) Convey: Context and how to transfer meaning

iii) Check: CCQ's (Concept Checking Questions), which should be short and easy

On LA sheet we need to mention anticipated problems and their solutions too. In fact it is very important to remember that even the best plans can face failure because of not anticipating potential problems. In order to do that perfectly, the main thing is to know the learners. If we know them, hopefully we would overcome all the problems.

Lessons from the third day:

• Keep a plan B before entering the class.
• The more detailed a lesson plan is, the more successful the lesson would be.
• Language can't be taught in chunks. It should be taught with some context.
• With a 100 % ready lesson plan a teacher should be 200 % ready.   
• In classroom management, one of the most important aspect to remember is variety. Change groups, pairs, seating plans, teaching style, assessment and your jokes too.

In the afternoon session we had two lessons, one by Seyfullah and the other by Muhamad. SOme lessons learned from those two TPs were:

• Maintain your pace (Neither too slow nor too stormy)
• TTT should be minimized. ( I kept learning the lesson but couldn't control myself) 
• Correction work should be there, may that be at once or delayed one. 

With dreams of my next day lesson (though there was almost no sleep that night) I finished the day. See you next time with my next endeavours. Till then bye bye... ( Oh! thanks for your comments on my email. By the way you may send them on this page too)    

      

 

MY CELTA Experience; Episode-3

Second morning in CELTA was better because by then we had got answers to many of our questions. Our group of trainees, schedule and many other things. First session was about lesson planning. The main points to consider were:

Aims, aims and aims.

• While making a lesson plan, the first thing to focus is Aims.
• Keep anticipate problems in your mind and also mention them on your lesson plan.
• Skills and language frameworks are different and they should be kept in mind.

    The second input session of the day was about Needs analysis. The main points to consider was to keep in mind the VAK (Visual, auditory and Kinesthetic learning styles of our learners. While planning and designing our activities, we should keep in mind the needs of these three types. Running dictation is an example of these kinds of activities which fulfills needs of all three types of learners.

  

The First Encounter:

On first day of CELTA, we were told that unlike many other courses, CELTA is going to be more practical. Whatever we are learning and discussing in the morning input sessions, we were required to show its evidence in the afternoon output session. In fact that excited me a lot. I love to deal with the students but here I was going to face a completely new group of students, about whom my knowledge was limited to their nationality and financial background.     

On second day of the course I, along with my two other colleagues, was to teach those students. I was last of the three to enter the class and by then the students were completely drained away. These students were a bunch of youngsters that was brought forcefully to join these classes, while their class-fellows were enjoying their holidays during this unusually hot summer of Istanbul this year. The venue is very close to the airport and sound of big planes on busy Ataturk Airport compelled us to keep the windows closed. Without any air-conditioners, working in 38+ Celsius was indeed a nightmare. 

Every one looks happy; Yes, it's the final day.

Like a referee in boxing ring, Caroline called start and I came in the ring (my class that was like an oven then). Just like my normal classes I started with enthusiasm and energy but my opponents were not ready to fight. Yes, it was a speaking lesson and despite my all efforts the students were not ready to speak at all. They just wanted to run away. It was indeed one of my worst experiences in any classroom. I continued trying but forgot golden principle of CELTA,  

"These are students who need to speak, you already know English"  

My trainer, Caroline was as cool as ice. No expressions whatsoever. My group mates, Isak, Hasan, Muhamad and Seyf were trying to keep their calm but tiredness and fatigue was eminent on their faces too. Anyhow I finished the lesson somehow and the time came for feedback session. The trainer and my group-mates were present in the room and ready to discuss all the shortcomings of the lesson. 

 Lessons from TP1 (Teaching Practice No.1): 

• Reduce TTT and try to increase STT.
• More S-S interaction than T-S interaction.
• Stay back and never enter into students' comfort zone.
• Getting feedback from every single student is not necessary.
• Answers could be given as handout or could be shown through power point slide.
• Key is in planning.

This TP gave me many lessons and I decided to show my real talent in the next lesson. I realized that unlike my country where English is second language, here students feel hesitation while speaking. Even the best students in written expression will feel it difficult to speak and that too in front of a foreigner. It gave the best lesson so far,

"KNOW YOUR LEARNERS"

See you next time with another episode. Till then BYE. (Your comments are welcome)