A reviewed, revised version of my presentation on Barefoot Teaching together with explanatory notes

1. barefoot teaching

2. happy motivated

3. creative empowered connected knowledgeable involved

4. Slide 1, 2, 4 Think about the things that make you happy & motivated. Apart from the usual things, which of the feelings in slide 4 would motivate you and make you happy? Why?

5. creative empowered connected knowledgeable Potential to be: involved

6. Slide 5 Look at the images in slide 5 and the words next to them. How would associate these words with the technology you can see in the images? How would you associate your experience of using technology with these words? Do you agree with what is written below? Learners are more connected to the world and have access to almost-limitless information. They are able to grab that information when its needed or wanted without having to always defer to a ‘higher authority’ Connecting through Social media, they are more able to create content that expresses who they are, what they think and how they they feel. They know what they like and what they don’t like, and their ideas are justified by what they can see around them. Teachers are more aware of the possibilities and opportunities for learning and teaching in a way that incorporates tools and ideas that will be relevant and interesting to his/her students. This has happened because the staffroom as we know it has changed and has expanded beyond the four walls of the school. Ideas and discussions are shared 24 hours a day. Conferences and training workshops or courses are no longer paid events that you need to ask permission to attend – they can be attended from home, for free. Teachers are as empowered as their learners.

9. static institution-generated top-down, hierarchical information-heavy

10. dynamic user-generated bottom-up, flat structure people/community-based

11. Slides 7, 8, 9, 10 Given the widely accepted fact that creating the right motivational conditions allows for meaningful learning to take place, it’s worth looking at the situation described in slide 6, or at least the potential for this situation to be true (which I believe it is) and question whether the learning happening in our classrooms responds to this. Are our students feeling empowered? Do they have opportunities to be involved and creative? Do we take into account that they already have knowledge? Who decides what you teach? Is it you, or do you follow a pre-designed syllabus? Who is involved in the creation of the syllabus you use? How do you know what your students need to learn? How do you know that what you teach them will engage them, motivate them and meet their needs or wants?

12. so what is barefoot teaching? Barefoot teaching is teaching without a prescribed coursebook. Barefoot teaching promotes student involvement in what happens in the classroom. Barefoot teaching encourages the teaching grammar & vocabulary from emergent language. Barefoot teaching provides opportunities to integrate the use of web 2.0 tools.

13. famous people relationships crime stories clothes & fashion travel & holidays music & festivals science & inventions money food and drink cities around the world technology & computers games art books & reading lifestyle

15. Slides 12 & 13 Slide 12 show a very simple way to involve students in the decision-making process at the start of the course by asking them to identify topics they are interested in. This is best done outside of class time to give students the opportunity to think about the topics and make choices individually rather than in an environment where they may be influenced by their peers. Slide 13 highlights the need to collate this information and refer to / revisit it throughout the duration of the course. In many ways, it is possible to form an initial basic topic-based syllabus with the students that can be used to map out a course.

17. Slide 16 This slide shows another way in which students can become involved in their learning using a site called ‘twtpoll’. What you are doing here is offering choice and responding to that choice. Students respond in plenty of time to give the teacher a chance to think about what each group can do during class time. Similarly it is possible to give students pre-lesson tasks so that they come into class having done some preparation. If students are choosing the skills area they will study in a particular class, they are more likely to be motivated to ‘perform’ better. The examples of activities you can see listed in the slide are designed to allow for maximum creativiy on the part of the student as well as the chance to produce their own. The huge advantage to having engaged students is that more language is likely to emerge, which means that, as a teacher, you have far more language to examine and are better able to identify what skills areas, or areas of lexis or grammar need to be focused on in subsequent tasks.

19. Slide 18 Urtak is a site that allows you to create polls & surveys that your students can access online. It is completely anonymous and involves asking yes / no questions. As students answer the questions, a pie-chart is produced representing the answers. It can be used at different times. At the beginning of a course : Encourage students to reflect on their previous learning in order to identify possible perceived weaknesses & strengths. For example, “ Did you study past tenses in your last course?” and a follow-up question: “ Was talking about the past easy for you?” In this way, it is possible to build up a list of potential skills & language areas to focus on at various times during the course. After a particular task or series of activities : Use questions that allow students to reflect on their performance: “Did you do well during these activities? (write about them in your notebook / on your wiki-page” Or questions that focus on students level of enjoyment or motivation: “Did you enjoy activity ‘X’? (write about this in your notebook / on your wiki-page)

20. This holidays I enjoyed a lot being at home with my friends, watching TV, listening hardcore music, sleeping very much

21. Slide 20 This slide represents writing done by ‘J’, a student in my class. It was done after the Christmas holidays and the task was for each student to write 5 words to represent what they did during the holidays. Students then passed their words to a classmate, who had to produce a short composition using the words. This series of activities was done entirely during class time. Students wrote on a piece of paper, which I then scanned in to the computer for my own records. The students were not involved in deciding any of the activities, nor were they given the chance to choose whose words they received. In short, it was a class prepared exclusively by me and the students were given no choices or options during the activities. The final compositions remained on my computer only. The following slides (22, 23, 24, 25) represent a different approach and the writing produced by ‘J’ in the final task.

23. Slide 22 We first established the theme we wanted to focus on in the class and agreed on technology and computers. Next, students identified some possible activities we could do around the topic and I added a few. We agreed that we would have a ‘for & against’ debate (an idea suggested by one of the students), so the class split into 2. One group brainstormed on the IWB all the good things about the internet and another group brainstormed all the bad things on the other whiteboard. After about 5-10 minutes, the groups swapped boards and added to them. Once they had finished, we looked at the vocabulary together and made corrections. Each student then had to decide whether they would be ‘for’ or ‘against’ technology & computers. As all of them wanted to be on the ‘for’ side, we had pull out pieces of paper from a hat. They had time to prepare their arguments and then began the debate. During the planning & debating, I listened, helped where necessary and made notes of the gaps in their language (lexis & grammar).

25. Slide 24 As a follow-up, I wrote up all the ‘for’ and ‘against’ points as a list on the IWB. We did an error-correction slot, with students looking at sentences on the board and trying to correct them. The final task involved the students writing a for & against composition. They had a choice whether to write their composition on the class wiki (which is viewable by members only), or on the class blog (viewable by anyone). Initially, most of the students opted to write their compositions on the wiki. However, we agreed that at some point they would post their writing onto the blog (when they were happy with it. Once they had written their compositions and posted them, I gave them feedback using ‘Jing’, a screencasting tool that allows you to record voice while looking at the compositions. What students ultimately receive is a short video of their work with the teacher speaking about and responding to the content, organisation and use of English. What happens in this case is that the writing activity becomes a listening task, with students invited to respond to the feedback by reviewing and changing their work based on the teacher’s comments.

27. Slide 26 Throughout the activities, I keep a record of the gaps in the students’ language. This gives me insight into what they need in order to become better communicators and informs any expicit follow-up language work that we need to do in class.

28. I’m going to write about the good and bad things that the internet has, also I’m going to tell my opinion and why I have it.

29. Slide 28 This slide shows a sample of the work ‘J’ produced and posted on the class blog (available for anyone to read remember!). Although not perfect, there is a huge difference in the quality of his writing between the ‘christmas’ task and this one. Why? Firstly, choice. As part of the group, he was given joint-responsibilty for the topic and for the activities that we would do in the class. He was involved and his input was respected and valued. Second was the ‘connection’. The beauty of using a screencasting tool to comment on someone’s work is that it becomes personal because he can hear me talking about HIS work to HIM. It is a far more engaging and personalized way to communicate with a student about their work than the usual red / green / black pen or pencil approach and he responded to that by reviewing and eventually producing a better-quality piece of writing. Finally is the idea of ‘published work’. He knew that there was a strong possibility that someone he didn’t know may read his composition, so he was more inclined to ‘perform’ well.

30. thank you For more ideas about barefoot teaching go to http://bcnpaul1.blogspot.com