Monday, August 11, 2014

Hello everyone!

I just uploaded a set of slides on SlideShare.

http://www.slideshare.net/MamoruTakahashi

You'll find the questions I used to promote extensive reading in my class. It is mostly written in Japanese. It took the whole last semester to ask these questions. The most time-consuming part was that I had to write a comment on the students' answers, but that was also fun.

How did I ask questions to students every week? How did I collect the answers?
Good question. I used the News Forum function of our Moodle. I asked a couple of questions on every Tuesday morning and wrote my feedback in the afternoon.

Moodle is a free CMS (course management system). Once it is installed in the server of your school, you can use it as if you're using Facebook or Twitter. You can easily use it. I'm not exaggerating.

If you are interested in ER (Extensive Reading) and you'd like to stimulate your students with questions, you can use my questions. These questions mostly come from mostly Donalyn Miller's Reading in the Wild and Teri Lesene's Naked Reading.

All right. Happy Obon!

Bobby





Thursday, August 07, 2014

Hello everybody. Long time, no see!

Hi!

It's been quite a while since I wrote my message to you in this blog last time. Lots of things happened during the past three years since the Great Earthquake. Well, I'm still alive and actively living in the middle of nowhere. Some of you might be studying in Honolulu now.....

One thing I wanted to let you know today is about Twitter. I started tweeting a few years ago and now tweeting became a part of my life. I have some JALT friends who are also tweeters and also got acquainted with many other writers, teachers, and other sorts of professional people all over the world.

So, this is my invitation to Twitter.  I would appreciate it if you could make your own Twitter account and follow me (@BobbyTakahashi1). If you already have a Twitter account, you just have to find me and follow me. Then I will follow you back, so we'll be able to communicate more frequently. Let's start communicating in English again!

Best regards,

Bobby