This book begins with simple activities which enhance students' writing such as connecting activities developed in different ways either using Moodle or any other free and open source software available in the Web 2.0.
Next, it moves into matching images and different pieces of writing, it shows how to import different pictures to the Moodle course in different ways. It caters for a great variety of images which will enlighten the creativity of students.
Then, reading comprehension is explored from the characters' point of view. Students should explore reading in such a way as to become a part of it and write as if they were part of the story.
Twitter and Facebook social networks are embedded in the Moodle course so as to invent stories, create group works, and create social and popular interaction with the virtual classroom. There are step-by-step activities involving these websites, inserting Ishikawa's management technique in order to enhance group writing.
Once you have reached this point of the book, there are other writing techniques explored such as mathematical association to writing, cube technique, discussion clock, mind mapping, tree diagrams, among others. A step-by-step guide is provided for creating these techniques, uploading it into the Moodle course, and creating the writing activity.
The book covers writing sentences, poems, songs, descriptions, compositions, essays, articles, cartoons, Ads, creating superheroes and their descriptions.
This book was written with Moodle version 1.9.5 in mind. But the examples of this book are compatible with all the versions of Moodle 1.9 series.
Chapter 1, Connecting Ideas covers how to design several types of exercises so that students can enrich the use of connectors. Guided writing activities are also carried out such as answering a quiz, connecting stairs, writing a story out of pictures and completing a chart.
Chapter 2, Matching Pictures and Text covers how to work with reading comprehension, not only in the classical way, but also adding pictures so as to explore another side to it. After matching activities the writing part is a must.
Chapter 3, Looking at Things from Different Perspectives covers how to develop an interest in reading for our students. After reading comprehension activities, students are to write several pieces considering the fact that they are inside what they have already read.
Chapter 4, Defining Types of Sentences covers how to insert several types of activities concerning three types of sentences within a paragraph. The last recipe includes a structure on how to write a composition using the three types of sentences so as to do a coherent piece of writing.
Chapter 5, Creating Stories Using Twitter and Facebook covers how to embed both social networks in our Moodle course, and develop writing activities exploiting the resources of both of them. Apart from that we will use management technique and upload it into the social network.
Chapter 6, Improving Your Students' Writing covers cubing technique, showing how it works, exploring each side of the cube through interesting activities, after using all the sides of the cube in one recipe.
Chapter 7, Comparing Using Venn Diagram covers how to organize writing using Venn diagrams, which are drawn using different software, commercial and open source, and resources from the Web 2.0.
Chapter 8, Composing New Sceneries covers a wide range of colorful and interesting activities presenting students with well known items which they have to change or twist so as to create something different. Several resources from the Web 2.0 can be inserted in the Moodle course.
Chapter 9, Working with Mind Maps and Tree Diagrams covers how to design Mind Maps and Tree diagrams in different ways and upload or link them into our Moodle course. After that students create different pieces of writing.
Chapter 10, Preparing a Discussion Clock covers how to examine various viewpoints (12) after a given topic. Designing and uploading of different discussion clocks is covered in this chapter.
Open source software, social networks, and commercial software.
Moodle, English grammar, Reading comprehension, writing, composing, connectors, Hot potatoes, Quandary 2, Web 2.0, embedding Twitter in Moodle, embedding Facebook in Moodle, Uploading images to Moodle, writing activities in Moodle, Venn diagrams in Moodle, Mind mapping in Moodle, embedding YouTube videos in Moodle, embedding TeacherTube in Moodle, creating cartoons, heroes, and tree diagrams in Moodle, and Ishikawa in Moodle. Basic experience with Moodle 1.9 or 1.9.5, as well as installation and configuration procedures is expected.
If you are an English teacher who wants to find out practical, funny, and engaging activities to insert in your course, this is a perfectly designed book for you. It will help you use different techniques in the teaching of reading comprehension, writing, and composing using a great variety of resources of free and open source software available in the Web and interesting websites as well as social networks.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in our text like this: "clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen".
Note
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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