Action Plan Project for “Shaping the Way We Teach English”

In this online course, we are focusing on new teaching techniques and resources. Choose one technique or classroom
innovation that you would like to incorporate into your class, and develop an action plan (below) for accomplishing this.

Date Created: July 10th 2008 Class: Any topic

Name of Action Plan Creator: Paola Andrea Cardona Number of Students: 5-10
Márquez
Language Level: Beginners - Preintermediate
New teaching techniques or ideas I plan to use:
Contextualizing language through media resources

My Class Now My Class in the Future (My Vision)

What this aspect of my course looks like now:
Sometimes the students do not feel related enough with
the topics and since they don’t have a context they plenty
know about, it is difficult to associate what they are
learning with something they live in their daily life.
What this aspect of my class will look like in the future after
I have made the change(s):
The incorporation of media resources would make the
students not only enjoy the class but take what they learn
personally, providing this way a whole understanding of the
subject matter, locating them in a real circumstance and
facing them with the correct use of what they’ve learn.

©2007 L. Opp-Beckman & K. Westerfield. University of Oregon.

Additional Explanation from Action Plan Creator

In “My Class in the Future (My Vision)” above, you described a change you would like to see happen in your class.
Provide additional information for the following related items. Write as though you are informing a person who knows
nothing about your educational setting.

1. The benefits I predict from this change:

• Nowadays kids are extremely involved with technology, my project is designed to take advantage of this tool to
increase student’s language learning. They will understand easily, and sometimes more questions will appear.
This contributes to their learning process because they’ll have to integrate the background knowledge to the
activity they’re developing and seek for the answers immediately; this will build self-security and accuracy.

2. Challenges I expect:

• Obviously there will appear a sort of questions that are not only related to the topic but to the use of the media
resource itself.

3. How I will address those challenges:

• In order to deal with those challenges, it is important that the teacher had previously test the games that are going
to be used, to be able to answer the questions correctly without taking too much time from the activity.

4. Steps and timeline (schedule) for completing the change:

• Pre: At this stage the teacher has to let the students know that is going to be actively involved in the activity as a
tutor, providing the explanations needed; but will simply focus on the set of the game and how is it related with
the student’s life.
• While: At some point in this stage the students will go to http://www.english-online.org.uk/games/gamezone2.htm
a webpage full of games. Some of them involve grammar and vocabulary. They are going to choose the one that
they like the most and try it for a while, checking the unknown things and writing questions about them.

©2007 L. Opp-Beckman & K. Westerfield. University of Oregon.

 • Post: In this final stage, the teacher will intervene, gathering the students to show a specific game that deals with
listening skills. Students will help him/her answering in the right time with the correct word. After this exercise the
teacher will explain the meaning of the words and/or verbs that appeared so the students can go to that game
again and try to locate the words in the right place according to the context the website game provides.

These activities are designed for a small group of students. To develop this activity it is
necessary the access to a computer room. The estimated time is about 2 classes, in which
the students are going to be able to locate the topic in a specific context.

5. How I will assess the degree of success of the change:

• The assessment will be the development of the activities. If the students do not understand they won’t be able to
continue with the activity. After the teacher finished the activity previously mentioned, students will go to
http://www.britishcouncil.org/kids-games-gapfill-superman.htm. There, they’ll find a game related to “Superman”,
since that is a superhero everybody knows, the reply of this exercise will prove if the change in the class is
successful or not.

©2007 L. Opp-Beckman & K. Westerfield. University of Oregon.