Week 4: Reading/ Writing websites and technology-enhanced lesson plan:

This week flies so fast with lots of readings, discussions, writing lesson plans, and reflections.

As usual, I started with reading the three articles assigned for this week and exploring the recommended websites. I enjoyed reading these articles and found them very useful as each one of them has a different focus (i.e. writing, extensive reading & internet-based children's literature). Teaching writing is difficult and students find it very boring; however, I've learned from the readings new ideas and possible ways to make writing classes more appealing, exciting and unpredictable for my students. As this is the era of technology, we (teachers) should exploit it to fit into our teaching goals.

As for the websites, I recommend ESL Independent Study Lab, URL: http://www.lclark.edu/  and Many Interesting Things for ESL Students, URL: http://www.manythings.org/

 My students can benefit a lot from these two websites and use them independently outside the classrooms to practice their language skills and improve their vocabulary.

Another new thing I've learned from this week is how to write a technology-enhanced lesson plans. The readings for this task provide clear guiding into how to write these types of lesson plans. Technology here is ''an aid'' to serve our objectives and teaching goals. 

Added to that, while doing this task, I learned how to create a google doc. This is my first time to create one and I hope it can be reached by Sean and my course colleagues. 

Finally, for the project step, I brainstormed different ideas and decided that the main issue within my teaching context is how to motivate students to read for pleasure outside the classrooms and how to encourage them to use the internet independently to develop their English language competence. 

Looking forwards to learning more exciting things in the coming weeks

Cheers,  

                               

Houda Al-Ruheili