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Blog Entry #1

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Reflection on improving my student’s performance while working from distance.

On March 17th, 2020, in the Dominican Republic the government announced what they called “state of emergency”, this activates a quarantine for 15 days (it will be prolonged to over 90 days though). This canceled all grouping activities including school, church, and many jobs because of the pandemic covid19. So, we found ourselves transitioning from completely face-to-face instruction to online education.

Finding myself with many questions already (even before the switch to e-learning) about why my students perform so poorly in English, I had as many doubts as my students to start distance instruction without any previous training. But it was the call of duty, here I wrote some of my observation on the first week of unexpected online classes:

· High absenteeism (about 20-30% of students)

· We were all lost because our planning was not adapted to online education

· Not able to work synchronically because the tools were not available (back then) so we used to upload assignments to google classroom in normal class schedule.

My students are in 10th and 11th grade, they under-perform in English as a foreign language even though they have been receiving English classes since 7th grade. All this makes me reflect on my teaching practice and how a change of strategy could improve my student’s performance.

So, my initial wondering was: In what ways will audiovisual materials increase my student’s performance?

 ( Mike, May 28th, 2020 )

Comments

  1. Lisset Perez7/29/2020 9:29 AM

    In my opinion, audiovisual materials can increase our student’s performance because is the best way to find resources to learn and improve a language. The problem is that our educational system is not prepared for online teaching. Most of our students don't own a laptop, computer, or do not have the internet at home. So, I think that if they have the resources needed, the knowledge of how to use technological devices, and the motivation to learn their performance will increase.

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  2. Mike's Blog8/08/2020 5:25 PM

    Hello Lisset.

    Thanks for the reply, you are right the fact that in our public education system many students do not have the access ( devices/internet) creates a real issue now that we are in time of social distancing. I have already share in entry 2 the sources I have considered for the project. When possible review it and give me your feedback. Project is over 60% though, I am organizing the analysis to share it next week.

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