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Online Class Design

School of Education (EDX):

English Language Teaching
Group Members:
 Aleanny Martinez 16-0505
 Dioni Paredes 16-1459
 Roberto Martinez 16-7036
Facilitators:
Deyvis Sanchez & Claudia Medrano
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Index

I. Project Motivation.

II. Class Proposal.

III. Class Organization.

IV. Expected learnings.

V. How did you do it?

VI. Why is this project feasible?

VII. What do you need to start this project?

VIII. Why did you choose this LMS?

IX. What learnings do you take from this experience?

X. Final remarks and words of gratitude.

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Online Class Design: Life and Health

Why did you create this project?

The Dominican Republic has implemented face-to-face English as a foreign language

teaching for over forty years already. In 2020, due to the pandemic of Covid-19,

teaching has shifted and taken beyond the classroom boundaries. We have been forced

to use online teaching in order to handle the need of education in our country.

Due to the health difficulties caused by the pandemic, teachers have been forced to

change our workplaces, teaching materials and, of course, adapt our classes to a virtual

mode.

That is why today we will be presenting the design of our online unit: Life and Health.

This is a sample unit where students will have the opportunity to continue with their

learning process, shifting paradigms, from traditional teaching to a more student-

centered methodology where learners take more responsibility and learn at their

rhythm.
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Class proposal

This course is aimed for 13-14 year-old students of 2nd grade of Secondary School. By

the end of the unit, students will be able to talk about health problems and give advice

to their friends or relatives.

During the unit, students will learn new vocabulary related to illnesses, they will use

should or shouldn`t for advice, they will also read different texts about illnesses and

describe ailments, comprehend dialogs about sicknesses. We will use a student-

centered and communicative approach to meet our students` learning needs and

connect previous knowledge. We will use the Learning Management System (LMS)

Google Classroom for asynchronous learning and the application Google Meet for

synchronous classes with our learners. We will have diverse sources, such as videos,

dialogs, recordings, interactive activities, group activities, readings, quizzes and audios.
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Specific competences to develop in this unit

According to the standards of the curriculum of the Dominican Republic:

 Oral comprehension:

Understands short and simple oral speeches, referring to specific needs and everyday

topics, as long as it is spoken slowly and clearly, and repeated if required.

 Oral production:

Orally produce a series of basic phrases and sentences linked by simple connectors,

referring to specific needs and everyday topics, although with pauses and

reformulations.

 Written comprehension:

Understands short and simple written texts, referring to specific needs and everyday

topics, whose vocabulary is very frequently used, as long as it is allowed to reread

when necessary.

 Written production:

Write a series of simple phrases and sentences, linked with connectors, referring to

specific needs and everyday topics, although with some basic errors.
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Goal achievements to develop in this unit

 Oral Comprehension:

Responds appropriately to questions and directions, from listening to short and simple

speeches asking for and giving advice and suggestions.

 Oral Production:

Ask for and give advice and suggestions, using short, simple phrases and sentences.

 Written comprehension:

Responds appropriately to questions and directions, from reading short, simple texts

that ask for and give advice and suggestions.

 Written production:

Asks for and gives advice and suggestions, using short, simple written sentences and

phrases.
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Expected learnings

General Objectives:
By the end of this unit students will be able to:

Reading  Read and comprehend written texts

about illnesses.

 Identify and learn new words about

illnesses.
Writing  Write a composition/conversation

giving advice to a friend or a

relative to be healthier and

overcome an illness.
Listening  Listen and demonstrate

comprehension on the dialog about

illnesses.
Speaking  Participate in a role play between

the ill person and the loyal friend

Pronunciation  Pronounce the “ache” sound

How will you do that?

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We organized our unit in Google Classroom to follow a coherent order where students

will self-study material (input) and practice what they have seen in order to reinforce

their learning and produce language through the speaking and writing sections. We will

use Google meet for our synchronic classes to follow up our learners needs to develop

the expected competences. During our synchronic classes we will emphasize speaking

and writing activities, as well as group work and interaction.

Google Classroom Google meet

 Watch videos about the vocabulary  Doubts clarifications.

and grammar.  Role play games.

 Complete the activities.  Read dialogs.

 Delivery their written and oral  Read texts.

compositions.  Express their opinions.

 Fill the reading and listening  Work in groups.

activities, etc…

Why is this project achievable?

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This project is achievable because the students have prior knowledge of the language,

and the activities have been developed according to their proficiency level and

language skills. These digital tools will provide both safety and encourage our students

to develop their speaking, writing, listening and reading skills at our learner`s own

pace. Students will also be able to revisit activities and take the time they need to

comply with their learning needs.

What do we need to start?

Students need:

 PC, laptop or smartphone.

 Internet Connection.

 A good, positive attitude for learning.

Course organization on Google Classroom

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We organized the course as we regularly do it in a face- to face class, so we started

introducing the vocabulary, then a short video depicting the grammar of the lesson in

context and then practice activities. Afterwards, we had the reading comprehension and

listening comprehending activities, where we focused on developing reading skills and

listening skills through a number of activities for skimming and scanning and getting

the gist or main ideas. Finally, after bombarding our students with scaffold activities

where they received the necessary input, they are ready for the written and oral

production.

By providing input first, students get the information they need to produce the language

step by step. Students build their own patterns and associate ideas to create original

posts, dialogues, and other productive skills activities. Readings and audios are used

prior to the productive skills activities as they serve as model for students.

What lessons have been learned from this project?

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After studying different Learning Management System (LMS) we decided to use

Google Classroom because it integrates with Google’s other tools like Docs, Drive, and

Calendar, so there are lots of built-in "shortcuts" for classroom-management tasks.

Also we chose it because we can plan, organize, adapt, modify, reuse, grade and

feedback our student’s classes in a user-friendly way. Another strong point of using

Google classroom is related to be in constant communication with our learners. That

way there is no need of any other external digital tool.

On the other hand, we chose Google Meet because of the limitless time of the

meetings, we can share our screen, the whiteboard, documents and we just need

internet connection, besides we can record our meetings and it is very user friendly in

terms of sharing the recorded video conference.

This experience has been very rewarding for us, because as we developed our project,

we learned new ways and means to reach our achievement descriptors, as well as we

could develop technological skills learned in the past, and at the same time we learned

many more.

Words of gratitude
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Last but not least, we want to thank our facilitators, they have been exactly that for all

of us, they have been there at all times, breaking the barriers of distance and generously

giving their off-work time to clarify doubts and guide us throughout this process, which

goes way beyond these four months.

Thank you for opening your heart and also opening our minds to new knowledge and

delivering this final course in a masterful way.

Thanks a lot