Magazine 2018 by L. A.

This magazine aims at offering the reader a glimpse into ‘innovative’ projects implemented by Tunisian teachers and educational practitioners in public schools all over the country. Even though we may not all agree about the meaning of innovation, we all concur that change starts from daily classroom practices and that real learning happens within the context of well-planned projects. Whether recycled or crafted from scratch, using ICT or relying on traditional tools, the Ariadne’s thread that ties the presented projects in this magazine is the desire to make a change and breathe in new life into education. So, here is the fruit of authentic projects undertaken by people who believe in the noble calling of teaching differently … From them to you, in the hope that you might find some inspiration and regain faith in the power of small acts that dream of a brighter tomorrow.

Contents EDITORS’ NOTE ............................................................................................................................................ 1

PROMOTING STUDENTS 21ST CENTURY SKILLS THROUGH PROJECT WORK | BY HAYFA MAJDOUB .................. 4

CONNECTING CLASSROOMS THROUGH LETTERS | BY THOURAYA GUERMASSI............................................. 14

BE MY PEN PAL | BY SANA ZENATI .............................................................................................................. 21

PROJECT WORK REIMAGINED | BY SHAYMA JAFELLI ................................................................................... 24

TEACHING ABOUT SUSTAINABILITY THROUGH AN INTERDISCIPLINARY ONLINE PROJECT | BY IMEN TAKTAK MARZOUK .................................................................................................................................................. 35

THE WRITER’S WORKSHOP: REVISITING THE WRITING PROCESS | BY BOUTHAINA TARKHANI, SARAH SOUISSI AND SAMIA BEN HAMMOUDA ................................................................................................................... 44

ENGLISH CLUBS: AN OLD APPROACH TO PROJECT WORK MADE NEW | BY NAJOUA FATHALLAH .................. 52

A WIDE RANGE OF LEARNING STYLES: PROJECT WORK WITH AN EYE ON INCLUSIVE PRACTICE | BY ZOUHAIRA BOUKHARI ................................................................................................................................................. 59

MINDMAPPING FOR BETTER LEARNING: INTEGRATING MINDMAPS IN TEACHING HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY | BY HANA JEGUIL ...................................................................................................................................... 65

Promoting Students 21st Century Skills Through Project Work

Hayfa Majdoub, EFL teacher | Ben Arous

• Abstract The project described in this article is one of the awarded projects in the Forum of Innovative Educators (organised by CNIPRE, Microsoft and YSF). It aims at developing 21 st century skills while extending learning beyond the walls of the classroom. It relies on the principles of project-based learning and is inspired by a socio-constructivist approach. It adopts a blended learning framework in order to lead the students to produce various artefacts.

Le projet décrit dans cet article est l’un des projets récompensés lors du Forum des enseignants innovants (organisé par le CNIPRE, Microsoft et YFS). Il vise à développer des compétences du 21ème siècle tout en veillant à ce que l’apprentissage s’étende au-delà des murs de la classe. Il s’appuie sur des principes de la pédagogie du projet et est inspiré d’une approche socioconstructiviste. Il adopte un cadre d’apprentissage mixte afin d’amener les élèves à produire divers artefacts.

• Introduction The world is changing rapidly; yet, we continue to prepare our students for the future with the tools of the past. Though we all agree that education aims to prepare young people to become active citizens in a changing society (UNESCO 2011), our schools are still evolving at a slow pace that is modelled on a system moulded by industrial revolution (Sir Ken Robinson 2010). Our students, citizens of the information society, feel alienated at school. They are surrounded more than ever by stimuli such as smartphones, tablets, computers, the Internet, etc. that are either shunned by their schools or – when allowed – not used adequately. This partly explains the high rates of school failure and lack of motivation on the students’ part. In order to meet these challenges, educators and education science experts need to improve their methods so as to ensure that the learning experience meets the expectations of a digital native student (Prensky 2001) and develops his/her skills in the 21st century. By doing so, this student will be prepared for a job market with new jobs that have not existed yet (Sir Ken Robinson, 2010). With this in mind, the present article will offer the reader some insights into a success story of a group of Tunisian High School EFL students working for a cause through project work. The project was ranked in the top five projects in the Forum of Innovative Educators organized in Tunisia in partnership with the Center of Pedagogical Innovation and Research in Education (CNIPRE), Microsoft, and Youth for Science Foundation (Y.S.F.). It also got the prize of Innovative Pedagogy awarded by Y.S.F. for the year 20151.

The prize was awarded to my colleague Jihene Damerji and myself as the creators of the project.

• The educational context of the project Students rarely use English outside the classroom because they live in a country where English is taught as a foreign language. Similarly, our students have little or no opportunity to practise what they learn in their daily lives, which hampers the role that 21st century schools can play in the preparation of the 21st century citizen. The project is an attempt to address these two issues. In this article, I will share with you how project work could be a means to use English in the classroom and beyond it as well as how it could develop students’ 21st century skills. The project is entitled "Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century Through Project Work". It was implemented by first-form secondary education students of Bachir Nabheni High School – in the governorate of Ben Arous – in the discipline of English, but it also touches on other disciplines, including computer science.

• Objectives of the project ➔ The project aims to:

✓ develop the students’ 21st century skills, ✓ motivate students to learn and use English with varied methods in and beyond the classroom and school, ✓ engage students through the activities of this project in their school community and the community at large. ➔ The project’s general objectives:

At the end of the project, the students will be able to: ✓ use English to communicate verbally and in writing in different situations,

✓ make use of ICT to learn, collaborate and communicate, ✓ work with peers, associations, and other institutions to create change in their community, ✓ create blogs and / or podcasts, invitations, videos, and presentations.

• Modality and organization of work In terms of the modality of work, a blended learning approach was elected. In fact, this is one of the facets of Edtech innovation that characterises our project. It is worth noting at the beginning that the students who participated were not all enrolled in the same class and were, hence, compelled to work and collaborate outside school. So, it was necessary to think of a method that was easy, technically accessible to students and inexpensive for them in order to meet, communicate, and be supervised and guided. We opted, therefore, for the use of the social network platform Facebook. The latter is widely used by adolescents for various purposes, but rarely for education. The Facebook group was used as a complement to, and extension of, face-to-face meetings. It constituted the online part of our hybrid model. Actually, creating closed Facebook groups with clear netiquette and online safety rules is an efficient means that can be used by teachers to track the progress of their students' work, give instructions, announce meetings, and guide the learners. Besides, it enables teachers and students to communicate their ideas, provide and/or receive feedback, share locally-created files, and publish resources such as links to access, videos and tutorials to watch and articles to read. The kick-off of the project took place during a face-to-face class session. The teachers met with the students to explain the idea of the project:

it consisted in students realizing their dreams of a better country through a number of activities that they had to decide on. Four groups were formed: -

a radio group,

a group for the preparation of the campaign to be organized (they called themselves “the Party Group”),

a group for fieldwork, and

a 3D modelling group.

Under the guidance of their teachers, the students decided which group they wanted to join. As a second step, they were asked to search the internet for the "Magna Carta"2. The purpose behind this was to get the students to grasp the meaning and functions of a charter. Later, each

Magna Carta, meaning ‘The Great Charter’[was originally] issued by King John of England (r.1199-1216) as a practical solution to the political crisis he faced in 1215 (https://www.bl.uk/magna-carta/articles/magna-carta-an-introduction, last consulted on 13-9-2017)

group devised a tentative charter and presented it to the rest of the class. After discussing and analysing the proposals of the different groups, the pupils categorized the recommendations into three main foci: environmental, social, and educational focus. In the third meeting, the students decided on the activities that would let them achieve the goals negotiated beforehand. Each group chose a set of tasks in accordance with the desired outcome for their project: ➢ the final products of “the radio group” were podcasts, ➢ "the party group" had the mission of organizing a campaign to collect an amount of plastic bottles’ caps, give them to the Emel Tounes Association so that they could get a wheelchair for an underprivileged disabled schoolboy/schoolgirl, ➢ “the 3D group” were entrusted with designing a model of a dream city using a 3D modelling software. The individual groups were required to work on the three axes – social, ecological/environmental and educational – established during the presentation session of the charter. The teachers provided students with the resources to use. Then, the learners planned their tasks and shared the roles. Bearing in mind that there were individual tasks and tasks specific to each group, all group work tasks were interdependent in such a fashion that the project would be incomplete if any one of them was overlooked. It should be pointed out that other face-to-face sessions – apart from the already mentioned ones – were necessary. They took place in a computer lab and served to introduce the students to software programmes that they would be using in their projects, such as Sketch Up, Audacity, and Publisher. Prior to each of these sessions, tutorials about the software had been shared on

the Facebook group. Still other additional sessions were planned to check progress and assist the students in overcoming encountered challenges.

• Theoretical underpinnings It goes without saying that the realization of a project aims at the attainment of well-identified learning objectives. However, it should be underscored that added to the development of knowledge and practical know-how, ‘good’ projects are those that equip students with pertinent social skills. Inspired by the principles of project-based learning, we adopted a socio-constructivist approach which markedly highlighted collaboration and learning from peers and community while allowing for concrete action through palpable production. By way of illustration, the students collaborated with a non-governmental organisation (Emel Tounes Association). They first sent a request to interview the head of this NGO. Then, they prepared and carried out an asynchronous online interview with her and invited her to participate in their campaigns. Another positive aspect of the project resides in the importance it lent to authenticity as an essential component of meaningful learning and an undeniable trigger of motivation. In fact, it addressed authentic problems and audiences. The students identified tangible problems in their community during the charter session, and then brainstormed possible solutions to those problems. The radio group created podcasts that they broadcast on the local school radio. These podcasts served to encourage people to protect the environment, interview the head of a real Tunisian NGO, and advertise for the students’ campaigns among the wider school community. Following the analysis of data collected through questionnaires filled by 100 people, the students decided that the best move would be to knock on the doors of kindergartens to

raise awareness about the issue of protecting the environment and recycling among the future citizens, i.e. kids. Furthermore, the students were agents of their learning. Unlike in traditional methods, they actively participated in making decisions concerning the learning objectives and collaboratively planned the path that would lead them to their fulfilment. Each learner negotiated the choice of the activities and employed problem-solving skills in order to regulate and adjust his/her approach on the basis of his/her interaction with his/her environment and teammates. An instance of this adjustment is when the students belonging to the fieldwork group changed their work strategy following the municipalityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s refusal of their request to obtain containers in which they could collect used batteries within their school. By adopting a project-based approach as a pedagogic design model we allowed room for other approaches, most importantly, a socio-constructivist approach in which learners were encouraged to explore real-world problems and challenges in an active and engaged learning mode. The chief aim remains gaining a deeper insight about the topics studied in many disciplines and a better retention of the knowledge acquired in different subjects by relating the learning to the studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; life context. The students reported their activities in their blogs using English. It enabled them to reflect on the process, and to develop a myriad of skills: cognitive, linguistic and critical thinking skills. The integration of technology contributed to achieving these goals. Indeed, the "hybrid" character of the learning scenario was reinforced by the use of different devices (telephone, tablet, computer, etc.) as well as the combination of different modes of communication and work (synchronous / asynchronous online interaction, individual / collaborative work). We set up the

Facebook group to communicate in real time via private chat or even Facebook video. It also enabled the students to work remotely, consult resources, ask for help, collaborate with peers synchronously and asynchronously conferring, thus, a social dimension on learning, which is one of the characteristics of socio-constructivism. The project also allowed for differentiating instruction in terms of process and product. The students had the chance to choose their own activities. They could access the shared resources posted on the Facebook group and select what they deemed necessary in the process of building their knowledge. Shy students were given the opportunity to gain confidence, contribute to group work, and interact on Facebook. As for the teachers, we played the roles of guides and monitors by accompanying the students in the different stages of the project. The project was finalized by the presentation of the studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; products in front of an audience of teachers, students, guests, and the school principal.

â&#x20AC;˘ Conclusion By working on this innovative project my students developed skills that they will certainly need in their future career and professional life. These skills are part and parcel of the 21st century skills that modern education should focus on in order to confer efficacy and efficiency on teaching and learning. As explained throughout this article, the project put the issue of schoolsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; share in enhancing innovation and citizen responsibility under the spotlight and managed to provide a genuine example of effective concretization of this share. It also succeeded in highlighting the role of project-based learning in fostering collaboration, knowledge building, self-regulation, problemsolving, creativity, the use of ICT to learn, and communication skills.

Actually, project-based pedagogy seems to be the most appropriate approach for teaching English as a foreign language and simultaneously developing much-needed employability skills. Talking from the perspective of our own experience, we can confidently argue that it offers a flexible framework for the teachers: in our case, we were able to set various activities in an adaptable process that resulted in several products created by our students, allowing them meanwhile to use the language beyond the classroom and consequently gain in self-confidence. Students’ ‘voice and choice’ were equally boosted. The role of the teachers was a key factor in the implementation of this project – and any other project, for that matter. Indeed, its success depended on their attitudes, beliefs and attachment to practice-based professional development. It seems to us that it is a duty for teachers to work seriously on mastering project-based pedagogy and the integration of educational technology so as to become able to construct learning environments that are congenial to deep learning.

• References Prensky, Marc. "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants". MCB University Press, Vol. 9 No. 5, October 2001. http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf. Accessed on 3 Sept., 2017. Robinson, Ken. “Changing Education Paradigms”. RSA Animate, October 2010. https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms. Accessed on 29 August 2017.

UNESCO ICT: Competency Framework For Teachers. UNESCO, 2011. http://www.unesco.org/new/fr/unesco/themes/icts/teacher-education/unesco-ictcompetency-framework-for-teachers/. Accessed on Sept. 3, 2017.

Connecting Classrooms Through Letters

Thouraya Guermassi, EFL teacher | Djerba

❖ Abstract The present project is an attempt by Tunisian EFL teachers to address the issue of students’ reluctance to write in English. It consists in exchanging snail mail between schools from different regions. Le présent projet est une tentative entreprise par des enseignant.e.s tunisien.ne.s d’anglais en tant que langue étrangère afin de traiter le problème de la réticence des élèves au niveau de la production écrite. Il consiste à échanger des lettres entre des établissements scolaires dans différentes régions.

❖ Overview of the project Pupils’ letters around Tunisia is a pen-pal project launched on the social network Facebook. It aims at connecting classrooms across the country by allowing EFL teachers to coordinate the exchange of their pupils’ letters and postcards via snail mail. The closed Facebook group of the project – which serves for communication among partner teachers – was created on the 15th of December, 2016 and is composed of 356 members (as of September, 2017).

Samples of sent and received packages containing students’ letters and postcards written in English

The project’s objectives The project has got many objectives. The chief ones are listed below: o connecting pupils around Tunisia through letters and postcards, o putting a foreign language they are learning into practice,

o building confidence in students and boosting their self-esteem – by offering them an opportunity to grasp the usefulness of their writings once read by others, o making real pen-friends, o publishing pupils’ writings – the final but frequently overlooked step of the writing process, o infusing joy and enthusiasm into the learning process, o enhancing students’ writing skills, o motivating pupils and helping struggling writers, o assisting teachers in solving the dilemma of students’ reluctance to write.

❖ Where did the idea of the project stem from?

I am a member of a group called Around the World with Postcards which is interested – as its name indicates – in exchanging postcards worldwide. My membership in this group inspired me to implement a similar concept at the local level.

❖ How the project works One of the assets of the project is the simplicity of its procedures. Indeed, the adopted framework encouraged fellow teachers to ‘give it a try’. The process is as follows: Any colleague who wants to take part in the project is asked to post his / her name, school address, and the levels he/she is teaching. Then, he/she needs to post some photos of his/her pupils’ pieces of writing as a way to request collaboration. What I have noticed over the past few months – as the creator and one of the two adminstrators of the Facebook group – is that any request receives at least one invitation for partnership and that, overall, teachers have always the possibility to choose among an array of invitations. Once the teacher receives the package of letters, he/she acknowledges its receipt by posting some photos of the letters.

❖ Evaluation of the project The project found a positive echo and many teachers hailed the concept as doubly beneficial in that it was at the same time innovative and practical – even though the very idea of correspondence for educational purposes is not particularly new. The main remarks made by colleagues were related to motivation, interactive class atmosphere, development of writing skills, authenticity of task and audience, cost-effectiveness, and ability to overcome the dilemma of low-tech classrooms.

The informal feedback provided by the participants prompted me to seek a way to evaluate the project in a more ‘scientific’ manner. In order to get a better view of the actual impact of the project, I asked the group members to fill in a questionnaire:

Teacher’s questionnaire •

I would be very grateful if you could answer the following questionnaire and send it back : 1- Please tick the right option to determine your opinion about the impact of the pen pal project “Pupils’ letters around Tunisia” on your classroom. Statements 1- My pupils feel so happy once they receive new letters. 2- My pupils are eager to write letters to their pen friends. 3- My pupils are becoming more motivated by the letter exchange. 4- I have no longer problems in assigning a writing activity for my pupils. 5- The pen pal project added a new spice to the classroom atmosphere .

Agree

Disagree

Neutral

2- Please answer the following questions : **What has the project brought

to your classroom?

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

** Do you think that the pen pal project has contributed to the improvement of your pupils’ writing skills ? Yes / No . How ? …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… .

The analysis of the collected questionnaires showed that the majority of the respondents thought the project had improved the quality of class atmosphere, facilitated the learning process, and enhanced the pupils’ writing skills. It succeeded in livening up writing tasks and helped the students give free rein to their creativity. Below are some samples of the teachers’ answers3 to the second part of the questionnaire that confirm the already mentioned observations:

“Well, I really think that the experience led to some improvement of my pupils’ writing skills. Here, mainly low-achievers made clear progress.”

The reader will find at the end of this article an enclosed testimonial from a teacher who participated in the project.

“It has created a kind of competition among the pupils within the same class and even between classes: Whose letters are going to be sent? Besides, when writing their letters, the pupils tried to do their best to make fewer mistakes. I think that peer correction has effectively contributed to the improvement of their writing skills.”

“My pupils keep writing and proofreading their work, which has significantly improved their writing skills. They also proofread other pupils’ work, which helps them get more conscious about their work.”

“It has helped many of my students improve their writing skills. Well, they know that their work will be sent to their friends, so they do their best to write correctly and neatly. They enjoy the idea that their pieces of writing have real receivers and readers. I hope that this pen-pal project will continue.”

It is worth noting at the end of this article that had it not been for the spirit of sharing displayed by the participants, the project’s objectives would not have been reached. Indeed, all teachers who were active members in this project expressed their readiness from the outset to share their pupils’ writings, provide feedback, and learn from each other’s experience.

Be my Pen-pal: A Testimonial on the “Pupils’ Letters Around Tunisia” Project

Sana Zenati, EFL teacher | Le Kef

Amid all the technology pervading the world nowadays, one can be tempted to think that pupils prefer texting and chatting over sending letters. Yet, as we embarked on a pen-pal project this year, I realized that the magic of tearing envelopes to discover the treasures of friendships enclosed inside them could have a mesmerizing impact on my students. The day I suggested to my class that we start writing letters was a special and hectic day. I received an envelope full of letters from another governorate and gave it to the pupils so that they would discover its contents. Beside the excitement of receiving real letters, they were so eager to write back. I cannot deny the fact that some were usually reluctant when it came to reading and writing. However, ‘real’ mail motivated them and ignited their enthusiasm. Every student – with no exception – wrote his/her letter in reply to the one he/she received. This experience was of paramount importance to my pupils. They had a genuine purpose and an authentic audience to write to. Though the benefits of this project are innumerable, I will try to list but some in this article.

The most obvious benefit of having pen-friends is improving reading and writing skills. Some students sometimes find reading boring and writing challenging. Their beliefs and misconceptions about reading and writing as well as about their abilities keep hindering their attempts and desire to read and write. However, the curiosity that overwhelms a pupil when opening an envelope to learn about another eighth or ninth formerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life and interests eliminates the aforementioned obstacles. My students avidly enjoyed reading every word and asked for the explanation of some details, which was beneficial for building up their vocabulary and widening its range. When it came to writing, my students did not think twice to start writing their replies. They wanted to speak about themselves, their town, their school, their likes and dislikes, and the list was so long that some of them asked to bring their letters the day after. They learnt how to organize their thoughts, to pay attention to grammar, spelling and punctuation in order to make their letters comprehensible. They also made use of recently-learned material, to invite their pen pals to a party, speak about oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s spare time activities or raise awareness to the dangers of pollution; the tackled topics and the assigned tasks proved effective in encouraging the pupils to consolidate acquisitions and recycle previous lessons in a meaningful way.

Writing letters does not only revolve around reading and writing, it promotes tolerance and compassion as well. Learning about other pupils from other regions teaches the students to accept differences and welcome diversity. They might have been different from their pen-

friends in many aspects of their lives; yet, this very difference enriched and added value to their letters. Some rejoiced over knowing that their pen pals and they shared the same interests. Others felt a great delight to write about the snowy weather in Le Kef to pen pals living in a coastal area, who were not accustomed to the fall of snow. Last but not least, this pen pal project aroused pupilsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; curiosity. They started discovering their country through the lines of teenagers of the same age. They wanted to know about distant places, how others lived, how they spent their days, and what was special about them. On the other hand, my students happily rushed to write about their own town or village. They even asked me to help them with some historical details. All in all, I came to the conclusion that this wealthy experience successfully connected classrooms all over the country. Nonetheless, it would have never been successful without the collaboration of other teachers throughout Tunisia. Pupilsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; letters traveled from North to South and from East to West while carrying within them treasures of teen life written in a foreign language. The joy and satisfaction that came along with this project, for both my pupils and me were truly unmatched. If we were to do it again, we would not hesitate a split second.

Reimagining Project Work Shayma Jafelli, EFL teacher | Jendouba

• Abstract This article sheds light on a project undertaken as part of the Connecting Classrooms Programme organized by the British Council in collaboration with the Tunisian Ministry of Education. It incorporates theatre and educational technology and aims at developing different skills such as speaking skills, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication. Cet article met en lumière un projet entrepris dans le cadre du programme Connecting Classrooms qui est organisé par le British Council en collaboration avec le Ministère de l’éducation en Tunisie. Il inclut le théâtre et les nouvelles technologies éducatives et vise à développer diverses compétences, telles que les compétences de production orale, l’esprit critique, la collaboration et la communication.

• Introduction Undertaking projects with my students has undeniably constituted for both of us a firsthand experience that has had the merit of deepening our apprehension of its momentousness in teaching and learning English as a foreign language (EFL). It has enabled me as a novice teacher to discover the great potential students possess and are susceptible of translating into

concrete and creative action once given the right opportunities. Besides, it has enlightened me about the analogy between projects and novels made by Ribé and Vidal in their book entitled Project Work: “Like a novel, which consists of chapters and episodes, a project is a large task (macro-task) composed of smaller steps (micro-tasks) […]. Each step is a task in its own right and, as such, can be expanded or reduced” (Ribé and Vidal 5). Indeed, the above-mentioned analogy eloquently portrays the process of the project my 4th arts students and I decided to realize during the school year 2016-2017 in Abdelhamid Ghazouani Secondary School in Fernana, Jendouba. In this article, I will talk about this process, its benefits as well as some of the shortcomings to be avoided by any teacher who might be inspired by the project and might, consequently, consider adapting it to his/her educational context. The project consists in its first part of a performance of Shakespeare’s play The Winter’s Tale. Though the idea might not be considered innovative, especially in other disciplines, I think that it is still insufficiently exploited in teaching English in Tunisia. Moreover, I believe that the flexibility of the adopted framework and the incorporation of ICT and online collaboration confer on it a facet of creativity that is both purposive and efficient as will be demonstrated in subsequent sections of this article.

A shot from the play

Theoretical background The rationale behind this project is three-fold. In fact, by virtue of its very nature and its tight relation to some lessons in the official textbook, the present project aims at fostering various macro-skills chief among which is speaking. Additionally, it targets the development of some twenty-first century skills like critical thinking, collaboration and communication along with extending learning outside the walls of the classroom. It also aspires to redefine the function of project work as an authentic form of alternative assessment whereby students become empowered, responsible for their own learning, and creators of resources4 that integrate among others information and communication technology (ICT). In terms of procedure, I elected the framework proposed by Ribé and Vidal for use. This consists of the following steps: ✓ creating a good class atmosphere, ✓ getting the class interested, ✓ selecting the topic, ✓ creating a general outline of the project, ✓ doing basic research around the topic, ✓ reporting to the class, ✓ processing feedback, ✓ putting it all together,

After getting the required permissions, students’ performances could be recorded and possibly shared as authentic educational resources to be used by other teachers.

✓ presenting the project, and ✓ assessing and evaluating it. Nonetheless, I did not follow this framework rigidly. Instead, I adapted it in light of my own classroom reality and the flexible status that project work enjoys in teaching English in the Tunisian context. Though some do consider that we are not abiding by the tenets of project-based learning5, I still believe that we can turn project work into a meaningful learning opportunity through the students and teachers’ creativity. As for my understanding of project work, it is informed by my conception of the educational setting I am working in as one in which project work can be defined as “elaborate sets of tasks [which] establish the process for completing the project and span an entire instructional unit” (Alan and Stoller 10). My intention was to help my students take full advantage of the plethora of assets generated by the implementation of project work in such settings: “the benefits of project work are maximized [in these settings] because students are actively engaged in information gathering, processing, and reporting over a period of time, and the outcome is increased content knowledge and language mastery” (ibid).

• Description of the project’s procedures It is worth noting that the project on which this article seeks to shed some light had been preceded by an interrelated one wherein the students had been asked to prepare a presentation about a famous cultural festival of their own choice. Group formation for that project had been

Diane Ravitch defines project-based learning as follows: “A teaching technique in which students learn by doing, engaging in activities that lead to the creation of products based on their own experiences. The project method was first described in 1918 by William Heard Kilpatrick of Teachers College, Columbia University, who hoped to replace subject-matter teaching with real-life projects chosen by students” (174).

based on principles informed by differentiated instruction in terms of mixing students according to abilities and multiple intelligences. By having done so, I had ensured that the groups would be balanced and that their members would complement each other. That first project had spanned over one month with three class sessions devoted to decision making, planning and presentation of the work. Most importantly, it had served as a foretaste of the project that succeeded it since it had set the scene for the latter by giving the students an overview of the various activities included in festivals 6. In this vein, there was continuity not only between the official programmes and the projects but also between the projects themselves, so much so that the students did not feel any split between them. Another element that helped me foster that continuity was that I always shared the objectives of the projects with the learners and encouraged discussions and negotiations about the procedures to be followed. I led them to uncover the links between the projects and ponder over their relation to the lessons in the textbook. We also brainstormed the benefits to be derived from the projects on the short and long run so that their usefulness became obvious to them. We did not forget to think about the potential obstacles that we might encounter and how to overcome them. I managed, thus, to involve the students and develop their sense of responsibility towards their learning. By seeing the meaningfulness of the macro and micro-tasks â&#x20AC;&#x201C; as explained by RibĂŠ and Vidal â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the learners were ready to engage in deep learning and invest sustained effort towards the achievement of the set objectives.

6 The purpose of this project could be inscribed within a broad, though not yet fully shaped idea, of organizing an allEnglish festival in the region. This can be extended to have an online festival that connects classrooms in Tunisia and abroad.

Shifting attention to the procedures of the main project, I will now outline the journey of its accomplishment from its beginning to its culmination. First of all, the students were familiar with the plotline of the play as they had already dealt with an abridged form of it through narrative texts in unit one of the official textbook. After sharing the aim and desired outcomes of the project with them and discussing the aforementioned factors – benefits, procedures, obstacles – the next step was to come up with an edited version of the play. In other words, the students had the mission of rendering the texts shorter, readily understandable by a non-native audience with an English language level equivalent to theirs, and fit to be performed. Afterwards, the students cast roles based on the characters’ profiles. It was a long and challenging process for the students as well as for me in my quality of mentor and facilitator of learning; yet, it was equally fruitful and enjoyable. Still, there were some hardships that we had to face. These included considerable decision-taking and choice-making in terms of casting roles, editing the play, choosing the setting and costumes, coordinating rehearsal sessions to fit students’ timetables, deciding on stage-direction, and mostly respecting deadlines. The process was all the more demanding for the students because it was the first time they performed a play in English, let alone one written by Shakespeare. For these reasons, the gist of the ‘practical’ process – if one can call it so – started with an introduction to some theatrical performances in English. I prepared some videos showing some staged Shakespearean plays: this aimed both at familiarizing students with the British accent as well as acting itself. After the projection of the videos, we debated them, focusing all the way on the elements of theatrical performance necessary for the realization of our project. The rehearsal

sessions following the writing process allowed us first to give shape to the play on the ground and later to fine tune performance on the level of pronunciation and staging. In addition, I devoted a class session to training on public speaking in order to prepare my students for the online interaction within the scope of the project. I invited a guest speaker who offered the students some insights about public speaking techniques. The project was two-pronged. It assuredly functioned as an endeavour on my part to redefine the role of project work as authentic and alternative assessment and, hence, regain students’ confidence in it as a powerful learning tool. However, it also made part of a partnership with another Tunisian school in the context of the “Connecting Classrooms Programme” organised by the British Council in collaboration with the Tunisian Ministry of Education. The idea was to connect students from different schools – whether locally or internationally – by exchanging and evaluating projects revolving around the same topic. So, after mastering their roles, my students had first to perform the play in our school for an audience they were more or less familiar with, then for an audience from another school. Our partners were a teacher and her fourth arts students from a secondary school in Jérissa, Le Kef. I would like to mention here that some technical problems prevented us from conducting the Skype session on the agreed date; as a solution, we opted for recording the performance and sent it to our partners and viceversa.

• The evaluation of the project Once our respective classes watched each other’s performances, the partner teacher and I coordinated a peer-evaluation session via Skype. My students listened to their peers’ feedback and responded by thanking the latter for their praise and clarifying the points raised by them.

Jérissa school students commended my students’ performance and asked a few questions such as: “How long did the shooting last? What were the difficulties encountered along the way? etc.” My students felt a great sense of pride for getting recognition for their efforts – stemming from what Ribé and Vidal call ‘sense of achievement’. The feedback I got from them concerning the whole process – while implementing the project as well as at its end – was overall positive.

• Reflection on the Benefits of the project a/Benefits perceived on speaking skills: The project undertaken with 4th formers proved beneficial for the development of their speaking skills. Their English became more fluent than it had initially been. Thanks to comprehensible language input, they acquired new vocabulary that they used in their speech more readily than the vocabulary taught in ordinary sessions – which I had to consolidate time and again. Equally important, they learnt many colloquial expressions that were useful for engaging in conversations: opening and closing speeches, turn-taking, asking for clarification, giving compliments and responding to them, etc. To cut a long story short, I deeply believe that had it not been for this project, the improvement of my students’ oral accuracy and fluency would not have taken place with such momentum within few months. Besides, the project’s positive impact on their communication skills is of particular note. It is true that some students had already a satisfactory level of English, but most of them were shy to speak in class for fear of making mistakes or due to their limited vocabulary range. By performing for an authentic audience, they gradually learned how to overcome stage-fright and gained a lot in self-confidence. Through rehearsal, training in public speaking and acting, and

feedback throughout the whole process, my students became skilled at sustaining a speech within a specific time-limit. Among the other aspects that witnessed betterment I can cite body-language and appropriate use of eye-contact and tone to grab the audienceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s attention. Improvisation and reaction to unexpected occurrences are yet other skills the students learned during the projects. I refer you back to the project work on festivals. There was a group that prepared data show for the presentation, but when due to some technical problems the presentation did not work as planned, the group members resorted to plan B: writing bulleted notes of their presentation on the back of each picture in such a way that each one of them could explain his/her part while showing the pictures to the rest of the class. b/ Benefits perceived on writing skills: Studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; writing skills have equally improved. Their pieces of writing became more structured and organized. Through discussing the writing process and implementing it in a project for whose success they felt responsible, they acquired new know-how that they subsequently transferred into writing in other genres. Moreover, I noticed that the complaints they used to mutter whenever they had to write in ordinary sessions lessened and that they no longer dived headfirst into writing without planning. To my great satisfaction, one of my students developed a passion for free writing. She scribbled her thoughts into Facebook posts that she shared with her friends.

• Limitations This is not to say that all the mentioned benefits were perceived on all students to the same degree, nor do I intimate that project work does not pose any problems. Below are some of the challenges that my students and I faced when implementing our project: ➢ respecting tight deadlines, ➢ coordinating project work sessions while struggling to finish ‘the programme’, ➢ maintaining the same level of motivation – for all students – throughout the entire process, ➢ ensuring that the high-achievers do not dominate, and ➢ dealing with unexpected occurrences like sickness leave and technical problems. Even the framework which I tried to emulate proved at times exacting and too theoretical, which made it hard to reproduce in practice. This is why, as Ribé and Vidal suggest in their book, it rests with the teacher to decide on the best way to implement the steps on the basis of the real conditions of their classrooms. •

Conclusion

Language is not bound by limits; sometimes, learning it may even feel like a frustrating task and a never-ending journey. This is why motivation plays an instrumental role here. Project work – when implemented correctly – can constitute in this respect an invaluable source for such motivation both for the students and their teachers. In fact, it has the ability of infusing in the students a sense of achievement and providing a necessary measure of learner autonomy through its creation of a harmonious flow of comprehensible input and output. Furthermore, its

positive impact on the development of different skills has been clearly showcased in this article. It is useful and efficient because of its openness to flexible implementation on the basis of one’s classroom reality. It also offers much room for integrating educational technology that appeals to the digital natives that our students are, while being at the same time well-targeted and purposeful. Besides, it allows us to extend learning outside the walls of the classroom, broaden its scope from a locally-confined context to a wider one, and ground it in authenticity. Maybe what I have particularly noticed in this experience with project work is the joy of learning and teaching evinced during all the process. I now see meaning in the analogy made between novels and projects: we enjoy reading an interesting story, we learn from it, we are absorbed in it, we react to it and we are motivated to finish it; yet, when it is over, we feel the urge to continue the journey of learning by reading more and more.

• References Alan, Bülent, and Fredericka L. Stoller. “Maximizing the Benefits of Project Work in Foreign Language Classrooms”. https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/0543-4-c.pdf. Accessed 2 Sept. 2017. Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2007. Ribé, Ramon, and Nuria Vidal. Project Work. Macmillan Heinemann English Language Teaching, 1993.

Teaching About Sustainability Through an Interdisciplinary Online Project Imen Taktak Marzouk, Computer sciences teacher | Sfax •

Project’s title

• Project Description Our project aimed, through various activities, at heightening students’ awareness about the nutritional benefits of pulses as part of sustainable food production. It was undertaken in the context of the celebration of the United Nations’ International Year of Pulses, 2016. The chosen theme had as objective raising public awareness of the nutritional benefits of legumes. In this eTwinning project we also addressed the experimental aspect of the cultivation of these

legumes in the school environment, as well as the cultural dimension through the collaboration of different institutions from 4 continents. •

Project’s Members

58 members from different countries took part in this project: Tunisia, Greece, France, Croatia, Macedonia, Spain, Armenia, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Romania, Italy, Latvia, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Ireland, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Serbia. •

Pedagogical INNOVATION and the share of creativity in the project

The activities were organized in such a way that the students could work individually, in subgroups or within international teams in order to collect information (growing pulses, nutrition, etc.), produce collaborative documents (collaborative writing, collaborative ebooks about beans varieties) and interact with their partners (jingle beans, bean market, fun in Bean’s family, live events).

• Procedure First of all, students discovered the meaning of pulses by sorting plants according to their nutritional value and creating a class display. After that, they learned about how to grow these plants by studying the nutrients’ cycle from the soil to the plant through its root system as well as the concept of nitrogen-fixing and the role of rhizobia – bacteria found in the soil – in symbiosis. Then, we tackled the topic of the importance of nutrition for health by focusing on the role that different kinds of food play in a balanced diet and the negative effects of an unbalanced one. In addition, we tried to make some meals with pulses by planning the steps required to create a pulse-based meal or snack, following these steps to prepare one, and then

promoting the benefits of the chosen meal. Finally, we compared diets around the world and throughout history and gained better understanding of how different pulses were used in different dishes around the world. We did not forget to consider how different countries/cultures used pulses to meet their dietary needs. In our endeavour to achieve the aims of this project with our school students, we opted for project-based learning so as to render the project more authentic. The adopted approach centered upon in-depth investigation of a real-world topic worthy of children's attention and effort. Through this method, we could not only improve studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; knowledge about the importance of beans but also enhance collaboration and communication among them. O

Communication among partner institutions

The organization of the project started in July 2017 with the presentation of the IYP2016 aims and the Bean market activity to the participating teachers. It was then that we decided which common varieties of beans our schools would plant and exchange.

Exchanges between partners took place via postal mail and products were later published: art creations, travelling beans, Jingle beans activities.

All year long, partners could follow the activity in the Twinspace journal. They reviewed the projectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s progress during the four live events for teachers.

o The process of collaboration Activities were organized to facilitate interaction and collaboration among the 309 participating students. The latter were able to elaborate common productions: 1 For the four seasons that the activity of growing beans lasted, they were sowing common varieties of beans, and comparing their growth in the beansâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; diaries they held. Finally the results were published in 9 productions. 2 According to the IYP2016, the students became aware of the nutritional benefits of pulses, using the 2 sets of nutritional cards, specially created for this eTwinning project and following the 2 steps composing the common work process. 3 A collaborative work process was set to produce a document on proverbs about pulses in popular culture.

4 Two collaborative stories were written in English and in French: “A Fistful of Pulses” (travelling around the world with a legume seed) and “Le mystère des haricots rouillés” (a police investigation). 5 A final photo album with the growing activities of the 38 schools was published in June 2017. All the work processes of those productions are detailed in the Twinspace pages of the related activities.7 •

Integrating technology in project work

For this project that involved 32 eTwinning schools, we decided to share our documents on Google Drive. A Google account named “Mr Bean’s Pulses” was created for this purpose. This account was also used to create a “Blogspot” to facilitate communication among the participating teachers before the beginning of the project. This blog involved 37 contributors of a Google group (eTwinners and non-European teachers): it was a fair solution for teachers who were not members of eTwinning. Other creative and communicational tools used by the students in this project are listed below (web 2.0 tools): ✓ Powtoon, Prezi, Thinglink, Padlet, ✓ Web2 image editors: Changefaces, PicMonkey, befunky, pizap, pixlr, canvas, freepik, kizoa, glitterfy , glitx, postermywall, funphotobox,

smilebox, gifmaker.me, Pixton,

Animoto,

See end of article for links to the twinspaces of the different activities

✓ Ebooks : Issuu, StoryJumper , ✓ Video conferences: Adobe connect, Jigsaw puzzle creator, Scratch.mit.edu (editor), ✓ Polls: Tricider , ✓ Word clouds generator: tagxedo ✓ Mindmaps: Creately, coggle.it ➔ Some concrete examples of ICT use:

To organize the project into clear steps, I chose a mindmapping tool called Creately. You can have an idea about the different activities and ICT tools that we used by following the link below: https://creately.com/diagram/iz38bfxe1/tZXRafXbSbRdl9Yfj6MbAR4VYU%3D You can also get a glimpse of some of the implemented steps and the project’s process from the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMOia6ii1eU&t=150s We used other tools offered by the eTwinning platform to facilitate communication. We, furthermore, resorted to a plethora of online software. My students, for instance, used web 2.0 tools to produce the final work: ➢ PREZI: to produce online presentations, ➢ POWTOON for online tutorials, ➢ STORYJUMPER for online stories, ➢ Kizoa to process films.

They presented their projects to our partners through a live event.

•

Project’s outcomes

As the aim of the International Year of Pulses 2016 was to heighten students’ awareness of the nutritional benefits of pulses as part of sustainable food, we deem that the final outcome proved that we achieved our objectives: -

86% of the students understood that pulses were an alternative source of proteins;

57% learnt that these plants were able to create their own fertilizer.

All the students’ productions were in a foreign language (English and/or French). Our learners improved their oral and written communication in a foreign language although only 14% of them considered it as the most important gain. The 3 activities (growing, diaries and harvest) were presented in the form of scientific reports, thus increasing students’ skills of observation, scientific rigour, research and communication of information. As for assessment, students were evaluated both individually and in small groups on the curricular topics related not only to the different disciplines but also to trans-curricular skills. The results and impact of the project are presented in the dissemination activity illustrated by the following Prezi: https://prezi.com/gyef4lfboc6q/innovation/ More about the results: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1sa0mCkdCRYH2TJZrz5M2aPGflrSrvlS9bymLLsaM5 yA/edit?usp=sharing

The final result consisted in creating a collaborative wall containing 13 e-magazines talking about all the aforementioned activities. You can visit it by following this link: https://twinspace.etwinning.net/21987/pages/page/243834 •

Awards

So far, our project has obtained 19 National Quality labels for meeting the 21st century skills and we are waiting for the European quality labels. https://padlet.com/Perbosc/8cq2gw8fogws

Links to the twinspaces of the activities: ➢ Teachers sharing their opinions about the collaborative activities (Brainstorming) https://padlet.com/petroupoli4/teachers ➢ Creating Holidays cards and Christmas Cards : https://twinspace.etwinning.net/21987/pages/page/187337 ➢ Beans’ prices and exchange of seeds using a table of exchange (Google sheet) containing the schools addresses https://twinspace.etwinning.net/21987/pages/page/143015 ➢ Sharing our joy when practising the activity of Beans’ growing https://twinspace.etwinning.net/21987/pages/page/214396 ➢ Creating a balanced nutrition according to the steps mentioned on the page https://twinspace.etwinning.net/21987/pages/page/214396

➢ Nutrition magazine: https://twinspace.etwinning.net/21987/pages/page/243958 ➢ Sharing our “Cooking pulses” activity : https://twinspace.etwinning.net/21987/pages/page/223895 ➢ In the Art section, all the partners did their best to participate by suggesting many creative ideas; ➢ We also participated in writing Acrostics: https://twinspace.etwinning.net/21987/pages/page/147506 ➢ As a collaborative activity, we created an imaginary story https://twinspace.etwinning.net/21987/pages/page/211275 ➢ Proverbs about Beans in the different languages of the partner countries: https://twinspace.etwinning.net/21987/pages/page/199462 ➢ ”Fun in Mr. Bean’s family" is an activity in which we created many collaborative ideas like scratch games, puzzles, Mr. Bean family, inspiration and smiles. ➢ Tricider used in brainstorming for the partners and their students to vote on the motto inspired by Mr. Bean’s family. ➢ Video conferences to exchange ideas between partners, to better understand the project

schedule

and

discuss

about

the

collaborative

activities

https://twinspace.etwinning.net/21987/pages/page/151241 ➢ Evaluation of the project: https://twinspace.etwinning.net/21987/pages/page/231991 (Student evaluation, Teacher Evaluation and key competences)

The Writer’s Workshop: Revisiting the Writing Process Bouthaina Tarkhani Sarah Souissi Samia Ben Hammouda EFL teachers | Béja

We undertook the project described in the present report under the supervision of our inspector Mrs. Lama Atoui during the second semester of the school year 2016-2017. The project had stemmed from observations based on the analysis of test results as well as the feedback we had collected through students’ productions and their remarks about the difficulty of writing. We opted for a well-known method for teaching writing – which is nevertheless not widely spread in the Tunisian context; it seems to us – i.e. the writer’s workshop. We implemented the steps of the writing process throughout the framework of this model as we aimed at taking full advantage of the power of explicit teaching and modeling that this model relied on. We, indeed, had noticed that teaching the writing process implicitly had not been enough to equip our students with the necessary tools and strategies. We will not dwell long on the explanation of the writer’s workshop as there are plenty of resources on the internet detailing it, but we will rather give the reader an overview of how we

managed to implement it in a personalized way in order to cater for the actual needs of our students. We hope that by doing so we might offer teachers whose students are struggling writers an authentic picture of a simple yet highly effective method to help the latter overcome their difficulties. •

The project’s objectives

*Enable learners to remove frustration concerning writing and consequently respond positively to the writing skill. *Enable learners to identify and practise the steps of the writing process. *Promote learners’ cooperation and mutual help. •

What did sessions consist of?

The project spanned a period of 2 months with six sessions devoted to the different steps. Most of the sessions consisted of: A – Mini-lesson: designed to teach a particular skill or concept. (15mns) B – Writing time during which students put into practice the skill and/or concept they had learnt through writing. (30 mns) C – Conferring with students: the teacher conferred with students individually to discuss details/aspects of their productions. (during the writing time) D – Sharing time: to allow learners to share their ideas, work, opinions, etc. with their classmates. (10 mns)

•

The project’s plan

Session 1: A – Explaining the project’s principle. B – Eliciting the 6+1-trait rubric in order to explain the characteristics of good writing. C – Deciding about the topic (related to the modules they were studying), genre and audience. Session 2: Part 1: Brainstorming ideas in relation with the topic. Part 2: Organizing ideas and outlining the writing. Session 3: Developing ideas into sentences (rough draft) Session 4: Revising first draft Session 5: Peer revision and evaluation. Session 6: Getting revised copies + feedback Editing revised copies /Finalizing Final session: Evaluating the whole experience: administering a questionnaire + class discussion

During the mini lessons, we explained the strategies / concepts related to the sessionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

topic before moving on to deal with activities aimed at practising and discussing these strategies

/ concepts. After that, students had to demonstrate their understanding of the taught strategies

/ concepts by using them in their productions. Meanwhile, the teacher had to monitor and check

that the students were on task. She conferred with individual students to help them and give

them feedback on their work. Students had the opportunity to help each other, too. At the end

of the session, one or two students presented their work and a class discussion ensued. After

some sessions as well as at the end of the project, remedial activities were devised.

It is to be mentioned that teamwork was the pillar of success for this experience: we

collaborated on devising all the activities, we attended some sessions as observers to give each

other feedback on the process of implementing the project and held regular face-to-face and

online meetings to reflect on its progress. We also got feedback from our inspector who attended

some of the teaching sessions.

•

Benefits of the experience

1.For the learners

2. For the learning environment

*It is a good opportunity for the learners to reinvest their previously acquired knowledge in a constructive way.

*It is an environment in which the learning opportunity is maximized as the activities challenge the learners to “wrestle” with the material at hand to pour out their ideas on papers.

*It helps them reflect on their learning. *The learners personalize their writing experiences because they choose their own topics, target audiences and purposes. Therefore, they become more involved and more interested in the task. The outcome is motivation! *The writing workshop promotes cooperation and mutual help among the learners. *Differentiated instruction puts the learners on the right track towards progress.

3. For the teacher

*This experience has brought us together since we have “wrestled” with time and - thank God - we defeated it. We held regular meetings to think together, *It is a highly-competitive atmosphere reflect, exchange opinions in which even the unmotivated and share suggestions. learners are pushed to do equally well as their peers. *Collaboration is one of the greatest achievements for *The tiered activities engage all the us. learners and encourage them to write. *Rediscovering our pupils *It is an atmosphere where the and their genius as well as perseverance is learners not only learn to write but also their another one. love their learning experience. *It created an environment of cooperation, motivation, devotion, encouragement and support not only among us English teachers, but also inside the staff room in general.

• Obstacles, difficulties and potential solutions: 1. For the learners: ➢ Difficulties The hardest parts of the writer’s workshop are sessions # 1 and # 6. Session # 1: The learners were confused when the writing project was introduced. In fact, it was a new concept for them. They felt insecure and challenged because they had to choose their own topic, their target audience and their purpose for writing. Nevertheless, when they were encouraged to think and put their ideas on paper they accepted the challenge and started brainstorming ideas about what, why and to whom to write. Eventually, things became clearer in their minds and they were ready for the following steps of the writing process - defining the task, generating ideas and organizing them into an outline. Session # 6: It was too challenging for learners to correct their own mistakes since it was a hard task to do due to the difficulties they had in using grammar and mechanics appropriately.

➢ Potential solutions During session # 1, the teacher should encourage the learner to find their way out of confusion by asking them guiding questions and giving them enough time to think, pair and share. During session # 6, it is probably better to revise and edit each part of the piece of writing separately. Teacher’s guidance is paramount. Further remedial sessions should be planned during the rest of the year to put them on the right track.

2. For the teachers: ➢ Difficulties: A - Time: The most challenging obstacles were time constraints. This project is indeed time-consuming. The students took a long time to get familiar with the process. 6 sessions were not enough for them to accomplish the task.

B - Lack of learners’ Motivation: Learners generally hate writing because they find it boring since it is challenging for them. They find it difficult because of their weaknesses in grammar and vocabulary, so it is hard for the teacher to motivate them.

C - Different levels: Teaching mixed-ability classes makes it almost impossible to find a task that suits all the learners. If the task is challenging, the low- achievers will feel frustrated. However, the highachievers will feel bored if the task is easy.

➢ Potential solutions: A - Time: To solve this problem, cooperative work was a great solution. We sat together and exchanged our findings. This helped us a lot even though we were rushing to complete the process. That’s why, it is highly recommended to devote a whole semester for this project.

B - Learners’ Motivation: We had to motivate them by making them choose the topic so that it could be interesting and relevant to them. Making them work in differentiated groups helped remove their frustration. Another way to grab their attention is to use ICT, which makes the lesson enjoyable.

C - Different levels: The best solution for this problem is to divide the class into groups according to the learnersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; abilities. Then, the teacher has to differentiate the instructions. Give the high-achievers more challenging activities to prevent them from getting bored.

English Clubs: An old Approach to Project Work Made New Najoua Fathallah, EFL teacher | Tunis

The idea of launching an English club able to stand the test of time in the preparatory school where I teach started four years ago. The event that sparked up the idea consisted in painting the classroom walls in different colours - with both the teacher and the pupils’ proper means. The aim was to create a cheerful and motivating learning environment within a prep. school in a more or less low-resourced area. Then, the club members started to think about a uniform to create a sense of belonging to this new ‘community’. The Students who were fond of painting helped their schoolmates with some cloth painting tips and, all together, they produced their masterpiece of uniform. It was a white tee-shirt on which they painted the club name and slogan.

At first, the club focused on language activities inside school, but a year later this experience started to have some shortcomings. Consequently, we adopted a new strategy: carrying out project work through activities outside school under the name of “Riadh Prep. School Talents (RPS Talents)”. ✓ How the club works It is based on the official program instructions concerning project work. It also tries to be up to date with the national and international holidays, events, celebrations, and campaigns focusing on raising awareness about authentic issues. The students try not to miss any kind of celebration or event. Guided by their English teacher, they: ✓ prepare the activity themselves; ✓ take part in activities with students from other schools ; ✓ join associations (e.g. : The Red Crescent – the local fire fire brigade – the Seeds of Success Association – as well as environmental associations in the suburbs); ✓ work with state institutions (e.g.: SOS Gammarth, La Marsa and la Goulette youth centers , Gammarth Cultural Center, La Marsa Elderly House, Mongi Slim Hospital); ✓ donate equipment, clothes, stationery, etc. (whenever possible).

First aid training with the medical staff of Mongi Slim Hospital

Visiting the elderly house: a habit that we cherish

The club has its own roadmap. Sometimes when events do not require using the English language, students get engaged to make the outcome of the activity in English. There is always feedback on the activity in English. This is why in each activity there is a large number of participants to share the tasks. This project work approach helps to reveal the studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; hidden talents. So, before and after each extra-curricular activity, they use their special talents and perform all sorts of tasks to make the activity fruitful. Each one does his/her part of the work. Some prepare interviews, write comments and reports or make illustrations. Others sing, dance, enact role-plays, use modern technology or collect relevant material. They also perform speaking activities. For instance, they use specific skills and communicative functions to tell their peers about the moral they got from visits or meetings. Each time they prove to be creative and innovative thanks to the great variety of tasks they perform.

A new concept was born through giving feedback: it is translation, which has become the low-achievers’ favourite task, since it allows them to overcome their weaknesses and get involved in the various activities through another language.

✓ The fruit of such an extra – curricular language club Great achievements have been reached thanks to the club’s activities: A – Improving the students’ competences and performances: By the end the term, semester or academic year, obvious improvement in the students’ abilities is always noticeable: * Beside motivation and getting rid of inhibiting feelings such as shyness or lack of confidence in one’s ability to bring about positive change, the club’s activities help to reveal the students’ hidden talents. * Students become more fluent and willing to talk and express their opinions about various topics.

* Greater engagement in collecting information and performing tasks on their part in an endeavour to be active agents in their community. * They learn through different means in different environments. * They feel freer and not confined within the school’s walls. * Students deal with authentic issues that build a bridge between education and ‘real’ life. * Learners come to create a link between what they are taught and what they come across in their lives. * They realize the importance of voluntary work. * They learn to collaborate through genuine practice. B- Learning to be self-confident: The adopted strategy for project work was not easy at all in the beginning. It was something utterly new, this was why many refused to join or support the club’s activities. However, the students’ growing self-confidence, motivation and great willingness have been more than sufficient to make this initiative a success. They have concretely corroborated the motto that all it takes to succeed is a change of heart wedded to a firm belief in the realization of one’s aspirations. Little by little the idea of volunteering and extra-curricular clubs has been implanted in our school because such activities have proved to be an innovative way to reduce the monotony caused by the teaching and learning routine. The club has attracted students from different levels, so far. Students no longer feel bored or nervous while attending the English class.

They plan all sorts of activities almost every Friday afternoon or on the weekends. Thus, project work has become a fun and alluring activity in which students engage wholeheartedly. C- Competing on the national and Arab levels: By the end of the previous academic year, the students were able to take part in local, regional and even national celebrations. For instance, they were invited to attend a national poetry forum in a cultural centre. Some students participated with poems they wrote themselves while others preferred to honor a Tunisian poet by translating one of his poems into English. Fourteen and sixteen-year old pupils stood side by side with poets from Tunisia, Syria, Iraq, Morocco and Lebanon. It was such a pride for the teacher, the students, their school and their families.

D- Taking care of the school’s image As mentioned previously, a great majority of our pupils came from under-resourced areas, this was why people – quite often – made prejudices about them and their school. Nevertheless, the club succeeded in changing these misconceptions and everybody started to consider Riadh

Prep. School as an innovative and active educational community. For instance, the school was invited to conclude partnership conventions with both civil society and some state institutions working in the educational, cultural and environmental fields in order to encourage extracurricular activities. D - Growing hope and love of life in the future generations The humanitarian aspect of the club is worth mentioning, too. After a serious accident at school, the club members approached the regional hospital with a request to get first-aid training sessions delivered to the school staff, the pupils and their parents. The club called this group of voluntary doctors the “Save a life Team” and together they succeeded in widening the scope of these sessions to the nearby schools. So, here I present to you my experience as an EFL teacher in a modest area of our beloved country in the hope that you can see for yourself that nothing is impossible, even when everything seems to say the opposite. My dream is to expand learning outside the walls of the classroom, render it authentic and purposeful and engage students in meaningful activities that empower them – not only by way of preparing them to be future responsible citizens but also as already active citizens able to achieve wonders when provided with guidance and support. And here is my calling: why not look at project work differently?

A Wide Range of Learning Styles: Project Work with an Eye on Inclusive Practice Zouhaira Boukhari, EFL teacher | Jendouba Abstract: In The Official Programmes for Basic Education, issued in September 2006, English is acknowledged as a means of communication that will “foster learner’s self-expression as well as appropriate interaction with peers and other interlocutors, which, in turn, will ensure access to universal culture through Anglophone contexts” (The Official Programme 4). This means that the emphasis has been laid on three focal points: the learner, self-expression, and universal culture. Thus, learners are central to the teaching process and because of their idiosyncratic learning needs varied pedagogical strategies are wrought up to teach mixed-ability classes. In this context, this article about differentiated instruction aims, first, to highlight the varied needs of learners on a theoretical basis. Second, it seeks to put into practice the theory mentioned through the writer’s experience in class with pupils in a cooperative, collaborative, and critic team work on an open day about smoking organized by 9 th year pupils. The purpose, then, is to share and encourage such experiences and to get the chance to be read and constructively criticized.

Key Words: Learners, Collaboration, Communication, Practice Abbreviations: Ls (Learners), TH (Third Hour), Ss (Students)

Theory: Howard Gardner of Harvard university crafted the Multiple Intelligences theory in 1991. According to him, learners (hereafter abbreviated ‘Ls’) “are all able to know the world through language, logical-mathematical analysis, spatial representation, musical thinking, the use of the body to solve problems or to make things, an understanding of other individuals, and an understanding of [them]selves” (xii). Therefore, it is quite vital to create educational systems that take these differences into consideration to help Ls make progress in a number of domains.

As different as human beings naturally are, young Ls show a variety of learning styles under the influence of their social, psychological and cognitive peculiarities. In this context and for this very reason, Third Hour (hereafter abbreviated ‘TH’) activities are designed in a way to create a magic blend that is remarkably able to cater for this wide range of learning styles, intelligences, and needs (as the picture below illustrates).

Multiple-intelligence, by Sajaganesandip, Wikimedia, is licenced under CC BY-SA 4.0 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Multiple-intelligence.jpg

Animation and presentation techniques used in the TH and open day activities, pertaining to the teacher’s role, are interactive patterns of classroom communication including among others modalities of grouping students (hereafter abbreviated to Ss) – teaching a class as a whole, individual work (intrapersonal learning), pair, and group work (interpersonal learning – peer tutoring). They increase Ss’ participation, maximize their talking time, and minimize the teacher’s.

It involves both left- and right-brained learning. The physical actions illustrate the meaning effectively so that all the Ss are able to understand and use the target language.

Practice

As an EFL teacher in a boarding preparatory school in an under-resourced area of the governorate of Jendouba, I have always approached project work as an authentic opportunity for meaningful learning underpinned by the principles of fostering collaboration and building awareness about different topics in my students.

The project described in this article was conducted with my ninth year Ss who were made responsible for organizing an open day, under the guidance of their teacher.

Ls. not only cooperated but also collaborated to learn from each other, exchange information, correct each other’s mistakes and promote each other’s learning. They gained trust

and self-confidence through cooperative learning, which is a strategy used to increase motivation and retention of knowledge. This consequently helped Ss develop a positive image of self and others, provided them with a vehicle for critical thinking and problem solving and promoted social skills.

The final product of the open day consisted of three sections: a power-point presentation, a play, and a poem. Breaks included some quizzes to attract the attention of the audience. The school headmaster, many teachers of English, and other 9th year pupils were invited to attend the workshop. Guest teachers

Invitation card sent to guests

Being aware of her Ssâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; varied learning styles and social backgrounds, the teacher divided pupils mainly into seven groups with definite missions to fulfill.

Those who were endowed with good aesthetic skills were in charge of preparing some masks and pictures for the play.

Bodily-kinesthetic Ls. were ready to perform a play entitled A Sound Mind in a Sound Body. Others with higher spatial skills were meant to decorate the eventâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s venue. Tech savvy Ss coached their friends while creating the Powerpoint presentation and recorded the event. Interpersonal Ls asked the audience some quizzes and gave gifts to those who provided right answers. Finally, intra-personal pupils prepared a poem to conclude the workshop with.

To put it in a nutshell, Ls. were more than willing to participate, create, and effectively collaborate once they felt that their teacher cared about them and valued their abilities. By the end of the workshop, and after presents and certificates were given to the different performing groups and guests, students felt proud of their efforts, their teacher, and their peers. They even asked for more similar activities to be held regularly. So, if you want to be a teacher who ‘stands out of the crowd,’ you have to pay close heed to your Ls’ multifarious learning styles so as to cater for their needs while tapping into their multiple intelligences at the same time. This is, indeed, the backbone for authentic projects that promote students’ voices while offering a pertinent opportunity for developing their skills.

Works Cited *Byram, Michael, ed. (2000). "Total Phsyical Response." Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning. London: Routledge. pp. 631–633. Print.

*Gardner, Howard. Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Books, 1993. Print. *Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 7th ed. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2009. Print.

Mindmapping for Better Learning: Integrating Mindmaps in Teaching History and Geography Hana Jeguil, History and Geography inspector | Tozeur8

In this article I will give the reader an overview of an educational project

–

undertaken under my supervision – by history and geography teachers in some schools in Tozeur.

The project consists in training teachers in the use of mindmaps in teaching, transferring this knowledge into classroom practice and, later on, studying the results obtained by students so as to determine the impact of this tool on the quality of learning.

I will not dwell long on the history of mindmapping in education as this falls outside the scope of my article. I will rather point out the fact that despite the long-standing tradition of integrating this tool in teaching in other countries, it has but a limited use in our classrooms.

The project stemmed from myriad observations and feedback by teachers and students concerning the static nature of history and geography as ‘bulky’ and ‘unauthentic’ disciplines. These disciplines are indeed wrongly judged as ‘sterile’ subjects unable to spark students’ interest and are, therefore, prone to devaluation and misconceptions by students and parents

Translated from Arabic by Lama Atoui

alike. This can but engender a feeling of frustration among teachers who end up seeing their efforts as futile.

Consequently, and in my endeavour to create a culture of innovation in teaching history and geography so as to regain students’ interest in them as important disciplines, I devised a plan to implement the project under scrutiny in this article in a disciplined way. After researching the different aspects of the topic – rationale for using mindmapping in education, objectives, benefits, steps, etc. – I pondered over its potential place within the official programmes in order to harmonize practices and approaches. In fact, I did not find any difficulty in delineating the alignment between the objectives of the project and the recommendations of the latter.

The objectives of the project are manifold: ✓ Foster a culture of innovation and collaborative work among teachers; ✓ Prove that innovation does not necessarily require costly equipment and colossal means; ✓ Motivate students by offering them meaningful learning experiences; ✓ Develop students’ analytical and critical thinking skills. The planning of the project is summarized in the table below:

Activity Training session about mind mapping

Objective(s) -

Trainer

The Define mindmapping, Present its uses as an inspector educational tool, Encourage teachers to integrate it into teaching by detailing its benefits in the context of teaching history and geography,

Audience -

Venue

Preparatory- CREFOC school Tozeur teachers Secondaryschool teachers

Date -

3-22016

4-22016

Explain the means employed to track its impact on learning, - Constituting a team of teachers (in preparation for implementing the project). st 1 - Agreeing about meeting the levels and with the lessons that project’s mindmapping will team be used with. - Preparing a roadmap for the implementation of the project in classes. nd 2 - Studying the meeting team’s conceptions of the lesson plans; - Agreeing on a unified teaching approach. rd 3 - Evaluating the taught meeting lessons, - Constructing tests and specifying grading criteria, - Agreeing about the questionnaire to be used in evaluating the experience. th 4 - Collecting the final meeting products: lesson plans and materials, the filled questionnaires, students’ results in the administered tests.

Inspector

members of the project’s team

CRE Tozeur 10-2-2016

Inspector

members of the project’s team

CRE Tozeur

26-22016

Inspector

members of the project’s team

The inspectorate locale

14-32016

Inspector

members of the project’s team

The inspectorate locale

13-42016

The tools used in collecting data are: o An observation form employed by teachers to keep note of the fields of use of mindmaps, their positive impact and the witnessed hindrances, o A questionnaire for students, o Tests. Data analysis tools – Excel and SPSS software – were also used. Without getting into the details of sorting out data and categorizing them on the basis of hypotheses and variables, the main conclusions were the following: ➢ Using mindmaps improves retention and betters analysis of information; ➢ It helps improve students’ results; ➢ There is no difference between genders in terms of the impact of using mindmaps in learning.

(N.B.: You will find a summary of the statistics in the appendix [ in French and Arabic]).

A noticeable fact has to do with the high percentage of marks above 15 for tests out of 20. Another one is related to the tendency among students to resort to mindmaps even for other lessons (apart from the targeted ones). Teachers, too, had a positive appreciation of the project’s impact. They, however, pointed out some obstacles.

Advantages of using mindmaps -

Better concentration;

Helping learners better grasp concepts and detect wrong information;

Encountered difficulties -

Problems with constructing the mindmap for some learners;

Difficulty in grasping the

Better retention rate;

connections between concepts

Organisation of ideas (regularity +

for some learners; -

progression); -

Richer dialogue and interaction among peers;

Time gain;

Clarity of instruction.

Density of content in some lessons.

Appendix ‫ إعدادية تمغزة‬: ‫الجغرافيا‬-1

‫قيمة 'ت' غير دالة إحصائيا وبالتالي فال فرق في النتائج بين‬: ‫النتيجة‬ .‫الفريقين‬

‫‪-2‬التاريخ‪ :‬إعدادية تمغزة‬

‫النتيجة ‪:‬قيمة’ت ’دالة إحصائيا لصالح الفريق الذي اعتمد الخارطة المفاهيمية‪.‬‬

‫‪ -3‬المدرسة اإلعدادية النموذجية‬

‫النتيجة ‪:‬قيمة’ت ’دالة إحصائيا لصالح الفريق الذي اعتمد الخارطة المفاهيمية‪.‬‬

‫‪70‬‬

‫❖ الفرضية ‪:‬التالميذ من اإلناث يفضلون أكثر الخارطة المفاهيمية أداة للتعليم والتعلم‬

‫النتيجة ‪ :‬غير دالة – ال فرق بين النوعين‬

‫❖ الفرضية ‪ :‬تساعد الخارطة المفاهيمية على بقاء أثر الدروس واإلعداد الجيد لالختبارات‬

‫النتيجة ‪ :‬نعم تساعد الخارطة المفاهيمية على بقاء أثر التعلم واالعداد الجيد لالختبارات‬

‫‪71‬‬

On Using Rubrics and Checklists in Language Teaching Compiled by Lama Atoui, ELT inspector | Béja

This is neither an article – properly speaking – nor a description of an accomplished project. It is merely a compilation of some useful information about the use of rubrics and checklists in the EFL classroom. It was used during a training session with teachers in Béja as preparation for a coming project on using these effective tools, which have the merit of promoting critical thinking, reflective practice and self/peer evaluation susceptible of creating congenial conditions for self-regulation. There might be no innovation in it; yet, education is not about reinventing the wheel but about improving it with the means at one’s disposal.

✓ What is a rubric? In her well-acclaimed book How to Create and Use Rubrics for Formative Assessment and Grading, Susan M. Brookhart defines a rubric as a coherent set of criteria for students’ work that includes descriptions of levels of performance quality on the criteria. […] rubrics have two major aspects: coherent sets of criteria and descriptions of levels of performance for these criteria. […] The main purpose of rubrics is to assess performances. For some performances, you observe the student in the process of doing something, like using an electric drill or discussing

an issue. For other performances, you observe the product that is the result of the student’s work, like a finished bookshelf or a written report. (p. 4)

✓ Why use rubrics in the English class?

Personalized feedback is extremely time consuming and can be a huge drain on an instructor’s time. ―It is also not uncommon for a kind-hearted teacher (like yourself) to thoughtfully craft a beautifully-written personal note on their student’s paper only to watch said-student look at their grade for 2 seconds, ignore the rest, and promptly toss their kindhearted teacher’s time laden, carefully annotated assignment in the trash can as they walk away without a second thought! Never again. Extracted from a presentation by Sheri Stover, retrieved from: https://www.slideshare.net/D2LBarry/rubrics-improve-students-learning-and-save-instructors-gradingtime-81197305

Students tend not to read the comments; they look at the grade and get on with life. As a result, the same mistakes occur in subsequent assignments. Extracted from a presentation by Sheri Stover, retrieved from: https://www.slideshare.net/D2LBarry/rubrics-improve-students-learning-and-save-instructorsgrading-time-81197305

Rubrics give structure to observations. Matching your observations of a student's work to the descriptions in the rubric averts the rush to judgment that can occur in classroom evaluation situations. Instead of judging the performance, the rubric describes the performance. The resulting judgment of quality based on a rubric therefore also contains within it a description of performance that can be used for feedback and teaching. This is different from a judgment of quality from a score or a grade arrived at without a rubric. Judgments without descriptions stop the action in a classroom. (Susan Brookhart, How to Create and Use Rubrics for Formative Assessment and Grading)

Rubrics provide students with a clear understanding of what is expected of them. Students have concrete directions about what makes a good science project, a good persuasive writing piece, etc.. Many studies have proven that rubrics improve students' end products and thus increase the students' overall learning. Rubrics provide students with valuable information about the degree of which a specific learning outcome has been achieved. They provide students with concrete feedback that displays areas of strength and areas in need of improvement. Students can use this feedback as a tool to further develop their abilities. (retrieved from: http://www.teachersfirst.com/lessons/rubrics/why-use-rubrics.cfm)

•

The 4 Cs of 21

century learning

Four essential skills have been identified as necessary for the 21

century learner:

✓ Critical thinking ✓ Creativity ✓ Collaboration ✓ Communication

The P21 organization developed a framework detailing these skills:

In her book Critical Thinking Skills, Stella Cottrell asserts that “[c]ritical thinking gives you the tools to use scepticism and doubt constructively so that you can analyse what is before you. It helps you to make better and more informed decisions about whether something is likely to be true, effective or productive” (2). This joins Robert H. Ennis’ description of the ideal critical thinker as someone who is disposed to try to "get it right," to present a position honestly and clearly, and to care about others (this last being auxiliary, not constitutive); furthermore the ideal critical thinker has the ability to clarify, to seek and judge well the basis for a view, to infer wisely from the basis, to imaginatively suppose and integrate, and to do these things with dispatch, sensitivity, and rhetorical skill. (―The Nature of Critical Thinking: An Outline of Critical Thinking Dispositions and Abilities, 2011)

â&#x20AC;˘

Checklists and rubrics: terminological disambiguation

Links to sample checklists Samples 1 and 2 (writing) Sample 3 (speaking) Sample 4 (listening) Samples 5 and 6 (project work)

•

Two of the most used types of rubrics: Holistic vs. Analytic rubrics 1. “A holistic rubric is the most general kind. It lists three to five levels of performance, along with a broad description of the characteristics that define each level. The levels can be labelled with numbers (such as 1 through 4), letters (such as A through F) or words (such as Beginning through Exemplary). What each level is called isn’t what makes the rubric holistic — it’s the way the characteristics are all lumped together.” (extracted from: https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/holistic-analytic-single-point-rubrics/)

2. “An analytic rubric breaks down the characteristics of an assignment into parts, allowing the scorer to itemize and define exactly what aspects are strong, and which ones need improvement.” (extracted from: https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/holistic-analytic-single-point-rubrics/)

“Analytic rubrics have different levels of achievement of performance criteria. Each level for each criterion has a precise descriptor of what students should demonstrate that they know and can do, in as observable and measurable terms as possible.” (extracted from: unbtls.ca/teachingtips/gradingrubrics.html)

3. Advantages and disadvantages of each:

(By Nicole Glass, retrieved from:http://slideplayer.com/slide/760153/)

o Components of a rubric

(retrieved from : http://chtl.hkbu.edu.hk/main/teaching-and-learning/obtl/)

â&#x20AC;˘ Explanation of the different components: from Introduction to Rubrics by Stevens and Levi Task description: â&#x20AC;&#x2022;The task description is almost always originally framed by the instructor and involves a performance of some sort by the student. The task can take the form of a specific assignment, such as a paper, a poster, or a presentation. (Stevens & Levi 7)

Scale or performance level:

The scale describes how well or poorly any given task has been performed and occupies yet another side of the grid to complete the rubric’s evaluative goal. Terms used to describe the level of performance should be tactful but clear. In the generic rubric, words such as mastery, partial mastery, progressing, and emerging provide a more positive, active, verb description of what is expected next from the student and also mitigate the potential shock of low marks in the lowest levels of the scale. Some professors may prefer to use nonjudgmental, noncompetitive language, such as high level, middle level, and beginning level, whereas others prefer numbers or even grades. Here are some commonly used labels compiled by Huba and Freed (2000): • Sophisticated, competent, partly competent, not yet competent (NSF Synthesis Engineering Education Coalition, 1997) • Exemplary, proficient, marginal, unacceptable • Advanced, intermediate high, intermediate, novice (American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages, 1986, p. 278) • distinguished, proficient, intermediate, novice (Gotcher, 1997): • accomplished, average, developing, beginning (College of Education, 1997) (Huba & Freed, 2000, p. 180) (Stevens & Levi 8-9)

Dimensions (criteria): “The dimensions of a rubric lay out the parts of the task simply and completely. A rubric can also clarify for students how their task can be broken down into components and which of those components are most important.” (Stevens & Levi 9)

Descriptors: “Dimensions alone are all-encompassing categories, so for each of the dimensions, a rubric should also contain at the very least a description of the highest level of performance in that dimension. A rubric that contains only the description of the highest level of performance is called a scoring guide rubric[…]. Scoring guide rubrics allow for greater flexibility and the personal touch, but the need to explain in writing where the student has failed […] For most tasks, we prefer to use a rubric that contains at least three scales and a description of the most common ways in which students fail to meet the highest level of expectations.”

(Stevens & Levi 10-11)

(retrieved from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Writing_Process_Flow_Chart.gif)

The six (+1) traits of good writing Ideas—the main message Organization—the internal structure of the piece Voice—the personal tone and flavor of the author's message Word Choice—the vocabulary a writer chooses to convey meaning Sentence Fluency—the rhythm and flow of the language Conventions—the mechanical correctness Presentation—how the writing actually looks on the page (retrieved from: http://educationnorthwest.org/traits/trait-definitions)

More on the 6 traits of good writing: http://mrsbrockla.weebly.com/61-traits-of-writing.html https://www.thoughtco.com/six-traits-of-writing-2081681 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAp5w-ZKeXk

Example of 6-trait rubrics https://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/~/media/ArtsEdge/LessonPrintables/grade-68/writing_a_fable_six_traits_writing_rubric.ashx http://www.nea.org/tools/lessons/59760.htm

A checklist and a rubric suitable for preparatory school students (made by A group of Tunisian teachers of English in BĂŠja during a training session) 1. Sample of a checklist Title: --------------------------Studentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s name: -------------------

class: ------------

Date: -----------------

2. Sample of a rubric Title: --------------------------Studentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s name: ------------------Task description:

class: ------------

Date: -----------------

o Rubrics for speaking

In his seminal bookTeaching by Principles, Douglas Brown states 7 principles for designing effective speaking activities: 1. “Use techniques that cover the spectrum of learner needs, from language-based focus on accuracy to message-based focus on interaction, meaning and fluency”; 2. “Provide intrinsically motivating techniques”; 3. “Encourage the use of authentic language in meaningful contexts. 4. “ Provide appropriate feedback and correction”; 5. “Capitalize on the natural link between listening and speaking”; 6. “Give students opportunities to initiate oral communication”; 7. “Encourage the development of speaking strategies.” Sample rubric for oral communication: o CEFR: https://rm.coe.int/168045b15e Basic speaking rubric devised by teachers in Jendouba to train preparatoryschool students in evaluating their peers’ performances.