İrem's ELT Journal

 Hey everyone, welcome to my blog.  The term "flipped classroom" refers to an educational approach in which conventional teaching techniques are inverted or "flipped". In this method the students get prior knowledge about the topic in their regular classes. After that they engage with instructional content such as video lectures. Classroom time is used for interactive discussions and activities. With this method teachers can focus on students’ individual needs without taking too much of the classroom time. Flipped classrooms also make it possible for students to enhance their self-learning skills. In my opinion, this method is very beneficial for both the students and the teachers.  For this week, we were assigned to create a flipped teaching material for an EFL classroom. Our target audience was 5th grade students. My partner Defne Baskan and I looked at MEB’s coursebook very thoroughly and we picked “Animal Shelter'' vocabulary teaching as our topic. Firs...

 Hey everyone, welcome to my blog.  For this week, we were assigned to create a corpus-based material. I’ve partnered up with my friend Nursena Cakir for the assignment. Firstly we discussed which tool we can use to create the material and we decided to go with Canva. Using Canva as our tool was easy because we were already familiar with it from last year's classes. After picking our tool we talked about what we should focus on for our material and we decided to focus on grammar. After putting a lot of thought into it we picked the use of Be Going To/Will as our subject. For our target audience we picked high school students and the material that we prepared serves as a practice sheet for them. We picked a colorful and visually engaging template for our material. By using our material the students will be able to differentiate the use of “be going to” and “will”. The students will be able to use “be going to” and “will” correctly in the sentences and they will be able to under...

  Hey everyone, welcome to my blog.  I can’t believe this is my final post on this blog! Before this class I had never written a blog before and honestly I was pretty uninterested at first, but now that I think about it I had a lot of fun while posting on this blog.   We had a lot of assignments and each assignment was something that I had never done before. I found this class more beneficial than almost all our theoretical classes because each week we created something new. While learning English, almost none of my teachers used technology in our classes and there was no creativity in our classes. I didn’t want to be like my old teachers and I had a few ideas where I could use technology in my classes but the ideas that I had lacked any creativity.  This year I have encountered so many tools that I could use in my future classes that I had never heard of before. My thoughts on technology integration didn’t change very much because I already thought that techno...

Hey everyone , welcome to my blog. For this week’s class, we were assigned to create a digital story. I partnered up with my friends Defne and Nehir. We were given 3 options and we decided to create a PSA. First we talked about the topics we could raise awareness about. After some discussion we decided to make a video about animal cruelty. We shared what we already know with each other and then watched a few example videos to get an idea. We did some research and put together what we know and what we learned in a shared google document. Then we looked up some animal photos that we could use for our video and made sure that they were copyright free. After that we recorded ourselves and Defne edited our voices and the photos that we chose. I had never created a digital story before so it was a fun and beneficial experience for me.   Digital storytelling allows students to be creative while learning, improves their technological skills, helps them with their collaboration skills,...

  Hey everybody, welcome to my blog.  For this week's class, we were assigned to create a digital poster. We were given two options: creating a movie poster of a book or creating a magazine cover. I thought a movie poster would be more difficult so I decided to go with a magazine cover. First I checked some covers from popular magazines such as Vogue and Cosmo. Then I decided to do a magazine about tv shows. After some research I decided to use Canva as my tool. Using Canva was pretty easy and most of the things were free.  I decided to make a magazine cover of something that I was passionate about, and because my favorite magazine is Tv Guide I decided to do something similar to it. The thing that challenged me the most about this assignment was finding a name for my magazine. After putting a lot of thought into it, I decided to go with Pop-Culture.  I had a lot of fun while creating my poster. I think assigning students to create a digital poster would help with th...

  Hey everyone, welcome to my blog. For this week’s class, we were assigned to create a podcast. we were given 4 options and me and my friend Nehir Akgün decided to create a vox-pop. I usually listen to podcasts but I have never created one myself. I was very anxious because I don’t like recording myself and I didn’t know how to create a podcast. First we started by choosing a question. We choose “which fictional character would you spend your day with if you could?” as our question. After that we wrote down what we were going to talk about on a shared google document. Then we asked 10 people our question. They sent it to us and after recording ourselves we combined the recordings through an audio joiner app. We had some problems while adding background music so we used a different app for that part. It was very fun creating a podcast and my partner and I had a lot of fun. I think using podcasts for educational purposes is really beneficial and I would consider using podcasts in m...

  Hey everybody, welcome to my blog. For this week's assignment, we were asked to create a wall on Padlet and work on a problem with our group. I partnered up with my friends Defne Baskan, Nehir Akgün, and Okan Şıvgın. We chose gender inequality for our topic. We chose this topic because it is something that we know and discuss a lot. We individually did our research, then Defne created a wall and we added what we wrote on our wall. We made sure that the topics we discussed were different.  I used reliable sources such as BBC or UNICEF for my research and I made sure the data I used was up to date.  We all used Padlet for the first time. It was easy to use and I think it is a good collaboration tool. It was also nice to see what my friends wrote and by doing this assignment we learned from each  other. In my opinion, assigning students to work on platforms like Padlet is very beneficial in order to be a successful 21st-century learner. You can click this link to see...