Overcoming End of Term Chaos with Gimkit

26 Sep 202130 Mar 2024Leave a comment

Do you also find term 10 incredibly challenging as a specialist teacher? For the past two terms, Gimkit has saved my sanity. By week 10, students are just so tired, most can do nothing beyond collapsing on a chair which is why online games work so well at this time. For the rest of the term, I believe their value is limited and a poor use of precious lesson time. Also, I have found, in saving them purely for week 10, their appeal snowballs, leading to increased engagement and motivation at a time of the year when both are rare.

At my current site, students began in term 1, begging for Kahoot. I have to admit (eek – sorry), I am not a Kahoot fan. While I have used it a lot in the past, there are much better games available now that do not rely on students being the fastest to choose the correct answer. This can be highly demoralising and demotivating for struggling students. My go to online game now for students in week 10 is hands down Gimkit. For a specialist teacher though, you will probably need a subscription to play this with all classes, but if you were going to invest in just one game, this one is well worth it and will not break the bank. (2024 edit: subscription rates for Gimkit have changed – it is currentluy free)

I introduced classes to Gimkit last term in week 10. They had begged for Kahoot, so I prepared both a Kahoot and a Gimkit game based on the language from their class created text. I then made a deal with them. They had to play a game of each but could choose which one they’d play first. Naturally, they grumbled when it came time to play the Gimkit game and afterwards when I asked which they prefered, most loyally elected Kahoot. However this term, right from the start, even before I had mentioned my plans for week 10, they were begging for Gimkit! Students before, during and after school came up to me begging for it!! When I suggested also playing Kahoot, they scoffed!

I recommend when using Gimkit for the first time, start with the classic mode where students compete independently. This gives them the opportunity to explore the way the game works and introduce them to some game features, particularly upgrade/sabotage options in the shop.

Depending on the age of the class, for middle primary, I recommend trying next the Humans V Zombies where students are randomly assigned to the team Humans or the team Zombies and them work together to outlast the opposition. My older classes also enjoyed this mode but it was not their first choice!

For upper primary and secondary classes, their first choice is the Trust No-one mode. As this is based on ‘Among Us’ (however it is a much more appropriate version), it was very popular. It can invite very loud discussions throughout the game with chatty classes and insisting on silence for the follow up game works well too. My major gripe about Trust No-one is that students can misuse the voting aspect to target less popular students. If this is also a problem with your students, I recommend a whole class discussion before playing another round.

Reflections

A huge plus for Gimkit over Kahoot is that Kahoot rewards the fastest students and everyone is answering the same question at the same time increasing the chances of cheating and invalidating the data collected; with Gimkit, each student works at their own pace and the questions appear randomly with answers rarely in the same order from student to student.

However, the downside of this means that struggling readers do not gain any benefit at all if working independently with Gimkit. If there is just one struggling student, it helps to sit alongside them to read the questions. Otherwise, pairing students up may work. This also means that Gimkit is unsuitable for preliterate learners. Sad face (Edit :See Postscript # 2 below for an update to this observation) .

I highly recommend keeping questions simple at this time of the year. I prefer simply to ask the meaning of structures used during the term and try to include one ridiculous answer to make them smile!!

POSTSCRIPT

Senora Ana and I were chatting yesterday about Gimkit & Charlala and it suddenly occured to me that I forgot to mention this important hack. At least one student per class will inevitably accidently sign out of the game mid way through. All they need to do when this happens is to press the refresh key once and they will be returned immediately right back where they left off!

POSTSCRIPT # 2

I’ve learned (Terima kasih banyak to Pak Tim) that there is an option within Gimkit for questions to be read to players. Unfortunately, if you leave the pronunciation to Gimkit, the Indonesian pronunciation is so inaccurate, it is mostly incomprehensible.

Here are the instructions for turning on the read to me option:

2. Open the cog.

3. Switch on read to me.

Rather than leave the pronunciation to Gimkit, an easy option when creating questions, is to record the audio for each question word and then it will play automatically for each player. Thus as Pak Tim recommends, players requiring audio will need to play with headphones.

To add audio to your questions, click edit ,add audio and then save:

Snap Camera Magic

4 Sep 20204 Sep 20201 Comment

Thanks to Senora Anna (aka Ibu Anne ), I recently discovered the lure of Snap Camera. I absolutely love it. Not only is this a platform that has enormous potential for creating quirky videos and images; it is also the perfect place to visit if you need a laugh. I challenge you to check out a few of the unusual ways you can alter your face and not crack a smile!

I whole heartedly believe in the potential benefits of flipped learning; where student learning continues out of the classroom. Flipped learning offers bonus input for language learners as it can be accessed whenever the learner chooses and in ways that best suits their own learning. For my students, I prefer to create videos and upload them to my YouTube channel for students to watch either with their class teacher or by themselves after school. I like that videos can be stopped, replayed or slowed down by the learners. Videos also give the opportunity for input to be delivered both aurally and visually.

Creating videos is fun but also confronting for me because while I love creating videos, I find it challenging speaking facing into a camera! I understand that for my students, my familiar face and voice lowers their affective filter, however up until discovering Snap Camera, my inner critical voice generally found a reason to avoid this. If you look through my videos, you’ll quickly see that my older videos have me firmly behind the camera!

However, Snap Camera is so quirky that being in front of the camera is no longer a major hurdle. How can something so quirky and appealing to learners, not be maximised? Just opening Snap Camera and exploring some of the options will consistently put a smile on your face as it does for me because it is a platform that has many options to ‘enhance’ or totally alter our appearance and/or background. These options range from the sublime to the ridiculous and it is the latter which are the most entertaining.

If I have tempted you to experiment with Snap Camera, the first thing to do is download and install it.

Once installed, either type something into the search bar that could be either easily recognised by your learners &/or is a cognate. I have discovered all sorts of quirky characters ranging from biscuits to Spiderman!

Or choose an option from one of the following categories:

This will certainly put a smile on your dial!

An added bonus is when you have snap camera and Zoom open at the same time, your Snap Camera image will carry through to your Zoom meeting! I’ve gathered from facebook posts that Zoom isn’t the only platform that supports Snap Camera, so experiment with which ever platforms you are using. Share the quirkiness and help distract others momentarily from the craziness of 2020.

Below are two videos I made recently for my junior primary students. Both target TPR recent structures including melompat (jump), cepat (fast) and pelan (slow). They were recorded directly into Snap Camera which is super easy to access (see red box below).

I really like that you can delete or save immediately after recording as can be seen above.

Ide bagus – ICT

30 Sep 201930 Sep 2019Leave a comment

Watching presentations given on the World Language Teacher Summit, I have come across two ideas that have heaps of potential.

The first one was in Noah Geisel & Joe Dales presentation:
Screen Shot 2019-09-30 at 10.13.20 am.png

They demonstrated a web page where the background is effortlessly removed from a picture and can then be added to a variety of different backgrounds which would then lead to great discussions based around ‘dimana’ (where). The page is remove bg and it is incredibly intuitive.

upload a pic

2. Click edit and then choose background

Screen Shot 2019-09-30 at 10.21.23 am

3. make a slideshow of the various ones that could be appealing to students:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

4. There are several backgrounds available or you can add your own:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The second idea is a website that Valentina shared during her presentation: Screen Shot 2019-09-30 at 10.13.40 am.png

Have a look at this link and think about how we could all create our own pictures using either real animals or animal props familiar to our students: http://www.letsfindmomo.com

Enjoy…….

Year 1/2 Retells – Belle Mau Punya Teman

26 Oct 20176 Comments

This week Vicki, one of my awesome colleagues and the one who owns beautiful Belle, decided to show her class my video about her animals. Soooo clever. Vicki has spoken constantly about her animals to her students throughout this year and therefore was delighted when I created a video about them.

Before Vicki began playing the video to her class, she explained where the video was shot and then said added that there was just one problem; the video is all in Indonesian and Vicki doesn’t speak enough Indonesian to understand it! Vicki then played the video and afterwards asked her students to write a retell to explain to her what the video was about.

Most wrote in English but a few chose to write their retells in Indonesian!! For most students, this was the first time they had seen the video and their retells demonstrate high levels of comprehension. Those who chose to write in Indonesian also did an excellent job. One of Vicki’s students, Taylah, follows my channel and had watched the Belle video several times during the holidays. I bet you can pick which of the following is hers without even needing to read her name!

Making TCI Videos

26 Oct 201726 Oct 20172 Comments

I have had so much fun making i+1 (at my students level with just 1-2 unfamiliar words) videos for my students. I was inspired to do this after watching Bu Anne’s videos on her YouTube channel Indonesian Fun For Juniors. Most of my videos on my YouTube channel were created pre-TCI and the language used is either English or incomprehensible (for my students) Indonesian. The final catalyst that resulted in me creating TCI videos was my 2017 trip to Agen when I backed myself into a corner by telling my TRT (substitute) that I would be posting videos for students to watch and Listen & Draw while I was away.

Before I left Australia, I asked a couple of classes what they’d like me to include in my videos and that really helped me include topics of student interest. Student requests ranged from pigeons to the Eiffel Tower! Taking the video was the easy part surprisingly; the most time consuming and challenging aspect is the narration. Sometimes I really needed a word yet to be acquired by students, so I added it as a subtitle with its English translation.

I’ve since returned to Australia and have had fun exploring how to make videos from PowerPoints which are considerably easier to narrate but harder to locate appropriate visuals. My latest idea (which I will work on soon) is to use student illustrations instead, however this can only be done towards the end of a story. Then the next challenge will be to take a ‘leaf’ (cut?) from Alice Ayel’s YouTube videos and draw the pictures myself! For some reason, this is extremely challenging for me because I am the world’s worst drawer. In Indonesia, on our way home from the 2017 Agen conference, Annie & I spent a day with Ibu Mia at her school. In one class, I drew a camel – we were talking about speed humps (polisi tidur) – and my camel picture had the entire class in puzzled laughter! I had to ask for a volunteer to draw one for me!!

My latest video is called Belle Mau Punya Teman (Belle Wants a Friend). Belle is a gorgeous pup who belongs to a colleague and the idea of creating this video came to me while I was house sitting during the last holidays. Vicki lives in such a beautiful spot and has a variety of animals that it was a no brainer to collect video on my phone while I was there. Once I had the footage, I opened iMovie and started making the project. I had no idea of the video title while videoing; that came to me when going through the footage. When I make videos this way, I don’t have a script; I simply reduce the volume of the footage and narrate straight into the project and the storyline develops as I go. Consequently, the dialogue takes a lot of editing in order to keep inbounds (using only language my students know), staying SLOW and fitting the dialogue to the footage clip. Quite a tricky balance.

Have a watch and see how it turned out:

Agen – Using Films in CI with Judith Dubois

25 Aug 20172 Comments

Agen has been absolutely amazing! In 15 minutes, an evening coaching session is starting downstairs in our hotel which I’d really love to get to, so hopefully I can quickly squeeze this in before heading off!

I would like to blog about the sessions I’ve attended here at the TPRS Conference in Agen, both to clarify my own personal understanding and also share what I gleaned. I hope I can do them all justice and explain them clearly.

At today’s workshop titled Using Films With CI, Judy Dubois had us all sitting in a circle in one of the rooms at the school situated behind the gorgeous Cathedral de Caprais. Pic

Behind Judy, through the window, was the back of the cathedral; so gorgeous.

Judy began by asking us who has ever used film with their classes and several people raised their hand. She next asked all those who have, to share their ideas. Here is the collection I noted that I believe would be successful with primary aged students:

Students need to earn points in language classes to watch a film in the target language – thus being rewarded with input – and set the subtitles to Indonesian! Written and aural input.
Movietalks – watch before stopping at significant places to PQA. You can then create an embedded reading from this conversation.
Judy shared how she also used the dialogue from a scene discussed in class by typing out the significant sentences, printing them off and then cutting each sentence in half. Students work in pairs to match up the halves and then put them into the correct order! The completed text becomes a synopsis of the scene which is by now fully comprehensible!
Diane Neubauer recommended Simons Cat clips with their repetitive actions.
Carrie had a great idea for preparing for a relief teacher. Before the absence, show students a trailer for a film and discuss with students their ideas about what the film could be about. With the TRT, students watched the movie and then upon return, the language teacher again shows the trailer and pretends they want to know more about the movie – thus having the students do a group retell of the story!!
Great idea to show familiar movies to students dubbed in the target language! e.g. Harry Potter, Lord of The Rings, Disney
Very important to remember that the films shown in class must be enjoyable for several reasons but most importantly; you, the teacher, will not want to plan a unit around a film you detest watching!
Take a screen shot of a movie scene (preferably one with action) before showing students the film and have them predict what the movie might be about.
Judy only uses films in her classes that use the language that she is teaching. Students don’t hear the language if they are reading English subtitles.
Diane recommends having (Target Language) subtitles on while watching a film because it allows you to stop a film and discuss/PQA/comprehension check/read the language at the bottom of the screen. A good way to explain common Indonesian phrases that are unfamiliar to non Indonesian people. The focus of the film is what is needed for comprehension and whatever is not important is simply translated.
Judith’s goal with using films in her classes is to motivate her students to continue watching the films independently in their own time for pleasure!
Judy recommends ‘The Mighty’ as a film to watch with students as there isn’t that much conversation. The Black Stallion is another film with minimal talking.
Great to use a film that was made from a book because of the discussion created when comparing the 2. e.g. Hunger Games.
Quirky commercials would be perfect for movie talks.
Stop the film when there is a close up of a character not speaking – maybe listening to someone else or thinking – and PQA what is he thinking?
How cool would it be to study a film in fourth term and then finish the year by showing the full film to the students?
Plan movie talks for tricky/tiring times of the year and minimise the workload where possible to do exactly the same film with all year levels!
Have a text for students taken from the film with a sentence missing from it. Give the sentence to students and they have to listen to the dialogue of the movie again and again to see where it fits in.
Hand out to students the dialogue between the characters from the film and students have to add in the names of the characters speaking.
Very important to come up with ways for the students to listen (willingly) to the dialogue in the films repeatedly in compelling ways.
Students have to create the script for a scene. Requires listen repeatedly to the scene to get it!
The background context of the story is ongoing and as students move through the film, it becomes very familiar and contributes to comprehension – setting, characters, storyline.
Take a screen shot of a character. Ask a student actor to become that character and then the teacher interviews them with scripted questions that help students gain a deeper understanding of the character.
One day someone will make a better film of the wonderful book Holes!

One Off Reduced Class Lesson Ideas- Silent Movies

12 Mar 2017Leave a comment

Anne Cedeno shared this on the CI Liftoff Facebook page today for those days when class sizes are drastically reduced due to inexplicable school events:

This idea came from Sr. Wooly’s workshop at NTPRS last summer, and might be fun and better managed with the reduced group size: Each team of 3 kids needs one video recording device (smart phone or iPad will work well); one student will film and the other two will be actors. Focus on basic verbs (super 7, sweet 16, etc.) student plan a simple, school appropriate plot for a SILENT MOVIE they can film at school during your class, using features of the school (stairway, cafeteria, window, etc) and simple props that you might provide or they can bring in if they plan one day and film the next. Filming happens in short (max 6-10 second) clips (using iMovie or AdobeClip). plot needs to focus on simple things like where the actor is, what they have, what they want (the problem) and where they go (to try to solve the problem). Since no voices are recorded, it totally eliminates bad pronunciation, and puts the emphasis on the kids to show emotion and plot through facial expression and gestures. Then the video clips need to get shortened down to the essence of what shows the essential plot and the product is a 1-2 minute silent movie for you use for movie talk, staring your own students – My kids recently got iPads, so I’m planning on doing this soon. School-appropriate humor, unexpected surprises/plot twists will be encouraged:) In years past, when my students filmed each other acting out scenes from a novel, etc. the downside was always the pressure they felt about their pronunciation in L2, which lead to many many retakes – but Sr. Wooly’s idea to make it a silent movie eliminates that pressure and lets the kids focus on the fun/teamwork to create the movie and then as a whole class we can Movie Talk 🙂

Our Week In Sydney with The Bridge Project

28 Feb 20156 Mar 20154 Comments

What an amazing week we’ve just had here in Sydney for the Bridge Project. While we sit at the airport waiting for our flight, doing a last minute catch up with Erin and Mel who are also hosting 2 partner teachers from Medan, I’ll try to give you a brief picture of our full on 4 day training and development.
Marg & I first met our partner teachers, Pak Pahot & Bu Elizawati, in the breakfast queue at the Novatel. Pak Pahot is a year 2 teacher and Bu Elizawati is a year 6 teacher at a school called SDN 025443 Medan Barat which apparently is rated number 1 in Medan. Of the 400 odd students who apply to enrol each year, only 100 are selected!

Over the past 4 days there has been a strong emphasis on collaboration, planning and communication. Presenters recommended a variety of ways in which we can achieve all 3 successfully with our partner schools and time was provided to not only make a start on them but also so that we could familiarise each other with our school calendars, so that any planned projects avoid school holidays, religious festivals and national exams.

We also spent time discussing cultural differences. Our partner teachers have already noticed differences with punctuality, environmental pride, traffic and the differences between Indonesia and Australia with the use of right hands to pass items.

Thursday afternoon, we were given a challenge:

This was a brilliant and fun way for all of us to explore Sydney. The resulting photos on Twitter were varied and the shared experiences were vast. Check out #bridgeproject!!

Another fun outing was lunch at the local Giants stadium.

After lunch, 2 of the stalwarts (proud muslims) explained about the various programs they run which target disengaged youth and promote education. Very impressive. Afterwards, we enjoyed a tour through the facilities:

Presenters over the 4 days included Mike Bartlett & Danielle Leggo, education officers from from Sydney Olympic Park (SOP). The program they run there is truly amazing and caters towards both local and distance students. It largely focuses on sport, agriculture & sustainability and can be accessed either face to face or by video conferencing. Thirty thousand students annually access the ranger led Australian curriculum aligned activities learning about the local wetlands and other local habitats and there is also an online Koori classroom! One great suggestion from Michael was to set up a collaborative project to study the migratory birds that fly from Siberia to Australia, transiting Indonesia! For further information about SOP, regardless where you are globally, check out their website and youtube channel. They are currently searching for non Australian classrooms interested in an international 2015 netball challenge.

Joedy Wallis from AEF, divided the group so that the Australian teachers and the Indonesian teachers could each focus on their own curriculums to identify areas compatible for collaboration as well as identifying goals and outcomes for student learning. She pointed out the areas of the curriculum covered by the bridge project include:
literacy
numeracy
ict capability
critical and creative thinking
personal and social capability
ethical understanding
ICL (Intercultural Understanding)
which together create successful learners, confident and creative individuals and active informed citizens.
Joedy outlined some history behind the inclusion of the ‘Asia and Australia’s Engagement with Asia’ priority in the new Australian curriculum. The global shift which has lead to policy changes and the Melbourne Declaration, first signed in 2008 (changes advocated by AEF) provided the impetuous behind our Bridge partnership meeting this week. This promotes student acquisition of 21st century skills. all beneficial for Australia; socially, culturally and economically.

Joedy promoted twitter to all, encouraging all teachers to sign up and discover just how amazing it is for professional learning and sharing. She also promoted the AEF website (which is currently undergoing a huge update to become even bigger and better), the AEF newsletter and #AEFchat on twitter (details on the website) which currently run monthly but will happen more frequently if the number of teachers on twitter increases.

Julie Lindsay from Flat Connections presented on Thursday for 2/3 of our day focusing on the challenges connected with our partnership schools beyond face to face and how to sustain global connections and collaborations. She raised an important point about the need for deep global learning and the importance of constructing a legacy. Encouraging teachers to think deeply and creatively so that whatever project our students create, it will be their legacy.
Julie suggested a variety of online tools through which this could be achieved:
1. Ning.com (not free) which is a multimedia networking tool was recommended highly by Julie for asynchronis communication if both schools can not be online at the same time.
2. voicethread.com – highly recommended. students can record their voices along a given video/photo
3. Wikispacess – where students and teachers can collaborate on projects
4. blackboard collaborate – students present for 1-2 minutes about their learning to an international audience.
5. globalyouthdebates.com asynchronous global debates between classrooms
6. wevideo
7. Animoto
8. Edmodo – private; great tool for creating discussions)
9. Hangouts
10. Skype
11. Padlet – a private forum for groups to share

Before any actual planning, it is critical all teachers agree on a cyber safety policy and have in place an agreement to monitor all students.
Projects could be based on a range of activities:
interpersonal
research (joint?)
problem solving – kerja sama tentang kebanjiran?? find something in common and explore issues!! eg rivers, sea,
artifact and co-creating (eg making video alone or by collaborating with partner students)
connect
communicate
collaborate
create

Most of the suggested project ideas would be entirely undertaken in English which would create opportunities for deep ICL for classroom teachers. Julie suggested students take the learning home (al la flipped classroom style although she didn’t name it!) which gave me the idea of tasking students to record themselves teaching their parents ‘siapa nama’ & ‘nama saya”. Could create a funny yet educations video about specific target language!
Other flipped ideas that arose over the 4 days included a flat Stanley project whereby students make a puppet of themselves and then send it to their partner school who then takes it with them in their every day life photographing everything and creating a journal which is then returned to their partner school either digitally or by snail mail. Another idea I really love which would be perfect for a look and discuss activity is called, A View From Your Window. Tasking students to take a photo from a window at home and then writing a caption about it.
Julie’s presentation was chocker block full of suggestions with little time to fully explore and trouble shoot. Most teachers felt totally overwhelmed and this confirmed for me just how fortunate we are at PEPS to not only have had a ICT Coordinator for the past 3 years but to have someone of Kathy’s high expertise and dedication in the position. Teachers were also concerned about poor tech support on return to their schools, which again for Marg & I, is rarely an issue!! Our highly capable tech team of Darryn & Kathy is second to none! What they don’t know isn’t worth knowing!! One principal told us about a class set of computers still in boxes at their school because they only get 2 hours of tech support per week!!
The second part of Julie’s time with us was task based. We had to create a digital story with our partner teachers. I quickly wrote a script which I then typed up in Pages and emailed to Marg, Pak Pahot & Bu Eliza. Using Puppet Pals, we quickly made a film entirely in Indonesian about the transport we used in Sydney yesterday which Pak spiced up with some evil laughs!! We uploaded it to Youtube and then pasted the link on the Bridge Padlet to share with everyone.

Pak Donny, the Indonesian translator and coordinator, constantly stressed in his translations, that the partnership is all about our students and should benefit them not the teachers and that all projects must keep that in mind! There was also a huge push to encourage Indonesian teachers to review their learning style (methodology) so as to adopt more western aspects. I can see that encouraging students to ask questions, to be more confident in exchanging opinions has benefits but it is a huge cultural shift and with it comes other aspects of western culture. Other factors which must be considered is that class sizes at our partner school are enormous. Classes range from 34 to 46, Class rooms too are not large and school furniture is also not conducive to more ‘creative’ styles of learning. I can see benefits in encouraging a methodology shift but would like to explore ways in which it can be done that are more sympathetic culturally. It makes me feel like a missionary rather than an educator.
It had been an amazing week, meeting teachers from almost every state. We have swapped email addresses and Skype handles as well as following each other on twitter so that we can keep in contact and help each other with any upcoming challenges this year as well as sharing our successes. Marg in particular was brilliant with this. She has already arranged a Skype call with Mel & Erin this coming Friday!! Another teacher has offered to set up a Facebook page for us all and Aaron will create another Padlet too. The September study tour will be a reunion for those of us who sign up for it!

Goodbye Sydney!

Thank You so much to everyone involved for such a memorable week and in particular to Pak Aaron, Ibu Bonnie & Pak Donni.

WordPress Statistics for 2014

31 Dec 20143 Comments

Yesterday, it seems, all WordPress bloggers received their statistics for 2014 for each of their blogs. As I have 3 blogs, I received 3 reports and all were just as I would have expected.

My 3 blogs are:
1. Indonesian Teacher Reflections – my professional journal
2. PEPS Indonesian Allstars – My class blog
3. Jalan Jalan With Bu Cathy – My 2013 Indonesian travel journal

Of my 3 blogs, the one I posted to most often this year was without doubt my professional blog. I thoroughly enjoy writing about what I have been doing in my classroom and hope that other Indonesian teachers will also be inspired to blog their teaching journeys. It’s the perfect way to keep a digital portfolio.
Here are the posts which received the most views:

Great to see that 2 of my posts about TPRS pedagogy made the top 5!!
The traffic for my professional blog comes largely from Australia, USA and Indonesia

which is exactly the same as my travel blog, however in reverse order. With my professional blog, I experimented with one of the ‘publicize’ (sic) options to utilise Twitter, so look out for that if you too are on Twitter!

Needless to say, my third and final blog was one I didn’t post to at all this year, yet it still received a steady stream of traffic in 2014. Interesting to see which posts are still popular 12 months on:

It was while scrolling through this report that I first saw the option to ‘publicize’, so I curiously followed it and this is where it took me:

I am pretty sure at this point, I stopped. I am confident that I didn’t tap any buttons. So, I have no idea why suddenly my stats last night skyrocketed. It was so extraordinary that WordPress sent me a congratulatory notification! Have a look at yesterdays activity:

The following is the data outlining the origin of the traffic:

I am still puzzled and look forward to learning about why my views spiked so dramatically yesterday. Did anyone else experience anything odd after viewing their statistical data?

Class Dojo in The Indonesian Classroom

22 Dec 201426 Dec 20143 Comments

I have been using Class Dojo in my room for about 2 years now and while the program has had some bad press lately ( see here) I have loved it.
If you are not familiar with Class Dojo, here is a brief outline:
1. It is an online behaviour management tool which can be either accessed through your pc or by tablet/phone through an app. The app syncs constantly with the pc, so it is cool walking around with your ipad giving verbal feedback while simultaneously giving points. The points immediately are added or subtracted to the students score with an audible noise and are visible when projected up onto the smart board. The noise isn’t intrusive, just enough to prod those students who need that gentle reminder to return to task!
2. The student point tallies can either displayed with the positive tallies separate from the negative tallies or both can be combined. I prefer the latter, to reinforce that behaviour can be turned around.

3. Each student has an avatar which previously could tweaked (to change the colour, body features etc) but now the only option available is a completely new avatar. Still, this feature is incredibly popular with all ages.
4. Access codes are available for parents so that they can access their childs data if they wish and just as importantly, all behaviour data is stored and would be useful data for parent interviews.
5. The teacher decides on the behaviours to be included (how great would that fit in with discussions about class rules at the beginning of each school year). I love this feature because I can use either Indonesian or English!
6. Class Dojo is completely free!

There, I think that is a basic explanation. More details can be found on their website https://www.classdojo.com
At first, I found using class dojo time distracting; familiarising oneself with anything new is incredibly time consuming! It was clunky and seemed at first to distract both students and myself from our focus, but as we all got used to it, the benefits far outweighed the negatives. It is particularly useful for the really young students as it is a short sweet behaviour management tool. In the past, I would have to stop and address the negative behaviour, now I just give that student a negative and keep going. The ding/dong sound generally is enough to put a hasty stop to the behaviour especially considering it is usually accompanied by disapproving looks from peers!
One of the best features of class dojo for me is that it helps me focus on the ‘good’ behaviour instead of the negative. I give points for participating, using Indonesian, helping others etc, and for some students this really gives them the opportunity to shine. One quiet student loves asking, “Boleh saya pinjam pensil/penyerut/penghapus?” and at times she must have up to a dozen pencils on her table!! Usually this use of Indonesian is unrecorded. The result has been a huge increase in students using these phrases repeatedly and appropriately in the Indonesian classroom!
At the start of term 4, 2014, I began using class dojo for students to call the roll. In the past, I have called the roll at the beginning of each class to instill “Apa kabar?” (How are you?), a phrase I believe every student learning Indonesian needs to know and be able to respond to automatically. However, I realised recently that I needed to hand over this routine to students (middle and upper primary) if they are to successfully and completely internalise this specific phrase. Being able to answer “Apa kabar?” is only half of the interaction.
To ensure this part of the lesson did not go any longer than it absolutely needed to and also to really push for an automatic response, I added the complexity of a timer. Students would call the roll very quickly and the rest of the class would be encouraged to answer instantly. I recorded the scores for each student and then dangled the best scores in front of other classes to encourage them to achieve an even faster result. The record score by week 8 was 27 seconds! Not bad considering initial scores were well over a minute! Out of all the MP & UP students, I only had 2 students who flatly refused to call the roll! Both had very good reasons, so I didn’t push them. One of my other students, a real struggler in Indonesian, dug deeply and gave it her best shot and was the first student in the school to get a score in the 20’s!! That result gave her such a huge boost that her confidence in all other aspects of language learning totally backflipped for the rest of the year. It was awesome!
Towards the end of the year, I gave roll caller the option of being timed and what I really enjoyed seeing was that responses remained short and sweet even when the timer wasn’t being used. It will be interesting to see if that continues after the summer holidays!
With my use of TPRS/CI in the classroom, I want to encourage students to stay in Indonesian as much as possible, I am planning to investigate using the timer on Class Dojo to again harness the competitive nature of my students in 2015. Senor Howard’s blog and video (see here) shows how this is done and I am looking forward to investigating this using the class dojo timer this way.
Telling stories and using class dojo, for me, are tricky to combine, so now in each lesson, I have a designated helper. Whoever called the roll is asked first and to be honest, this person has yet to refuse! Their task is to record any positive behaviour (i.e. participation). (I record negative behaviour separately with the warning that 3 strikes and that student is ‘out’ – off to buddy class.) The best thing about having a recorder is that it ensures I SLOW down so they can keep up and it also tells me at a glance who I need to do a comprehension check on. Students love having their input recorded and at times it can be a bit hectic if someone’s input was over looked. Hey wouldn’t that be a perfect mini story to start with next year to ensure students can fix this without lapsing into English.
Have you discovered Class Dojo yet and if so, how do you use it in the Languages classroom?

Indonesian Teacher Reflections

Belajar Mengajar

Category: ICT