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=GENRE ACTIVITIES:= In my opinion, students' identifying the different genres of books is really important. Therefore, in our group, we planned a genre activity. In a box, we put different types of books such as historical fiction, fantasy, mystery, biography, realistic fiction, science fiction and so on. The teacher passed out these books in pairs. Each pair had a different genre. Then the students scanned the books and tried to fill in the bookmarks which were prepared accordingly. Also in each class, we put up the informational leaflets of the genres.

**DO YOU REMEMBER THE LITTLE, ANGRY MAN -LA LINEA? WHAT ABOUT USING LA LINEA VIDEOS IN CLASS!?:**
La Linea- The Line- is one of the legendary cartoons of all times. Its creator is Osvaldo Cavandoli. Turkish people remember it in Cenk Koray's TV shows on Sunday afternoons. The cartoon features a man called Mr. Curious drawn as a single outline around his silhoutte walking on a line. While he is walking, lots of strange things happen to him. It is almost inevitable to understand what he says but he murmurs and continues to walk and walk on the line. This year in 7th grade classes, we have started using this little, funny man's videos. After showing the two or three minute videos, we made the students write speech bubbles for Mr. Curious.They loved it! Isn't it interesting to see a 12/13 year old kid like a cartoon which belongs to a 31 year old woman's childhood? This is what we call classic, I guess. =SURFING IS LIKE TEACHING= After a few experiences I certainly believe that students are actually interested in hearing things about themselves, families, friends rather than listening arbitrary recorded tapes of the books as listening activites in the classes. Have you ever had hard times to get the focus of your kids in classrooms while playing a recorded text of a school material? This is simply just because they may not be interested in what Bob does on Mondays or where Carol is going the next day. But if the text comes from the students they would be much more interested in listening. So this exercise below is one of the ways of enchancing listening activities by using student context. -ex.1) Students are grouped in three.One student is chosen as 'the listener. The other two students gossip about that student. The listener sits backwards but at the same time he/she is able to hear what the two others are talking about him/her. The idea is as I mentioned above students would like to hear about //themselves// rather than hearing about arbitrary characters who don't exist actually. In addition two other students practice spoken interaction at the same time. - ex.2) Students work in pairs and T explains each of them will have sixty seconds to speak to the other. The topic is open. After the paired monologues Ttells that they will report one thing the other said to the whole group. During each monologue the listener is to respond without speaking. Each student reports one thing said by their partner to the whole group. It is both a speaking and listening exercise including spoken interaction and production with a receptive listening task.But it is certain that you can not use student texts all the time because they won't be authentic materials. As a teacher if you are using textbooks in your classes most probably you come across with certain dialogues that you should be using as teaching materials. But not all of them are interesting enough for our digital natives, video games addicts. The main reason is a very classical one- even it is true for an ancient piece of writing. 'THE CONFLICT'. If there is no CONFLICT in a text it is impossible to see it as an interesting piece for the reader. So in a text book you may have these types of dialogues such as three friends going to a circus without any conflicts or a group of teenagers talking about their free times. At these times students can easily get bored and have difficulties to focus on these types of texts. Here the role of the teacher should be with a little creativity adding a CONFLICT to the written text. What can it be? Ok three friends are going to the circus but there is a problem about......OR these teenagers are talking about their free time activities but they are having hard times to decide which one they are going to join as clubs at their schools and etc...In addition you can change the perspective a little bit and if you have a computer in your classroom you can make a short movie about the dialogue in few seconds by using the site below. It is so easy and really fast! - http://www.dfilm.com/live/home.html The only thing is make the students get the main idea of the dialogue and make it shorter and by using the characters on the site you can watch the individual interpretations on the overhead projectors. It is so fun and really easy! I admit when I first started teaching I was using arbitrary names, names which do not mean anything to the students while teaching a subject. Then I realized that nobody cares about them, actually who are these people? I think everyday connection is one of the most important issues in teaching. If we use the REAL LIFE SITUATIONS and if we can make the students connect the subjects with the real life status then it will make sense. In order to turn something to a meaningful context we need a connection to our daily life issues. So why do we use those names such as Jack, John, etc.. Once I was asked to write an essay about my favourite teacher. I thought a little bit but not too much. I knew who she was,She was our Literature Teacher at university. The reason was simple. She was SURPRISING us at all times and she was acting not teaching! Her lessons were like watching plays at a theatre.Once our subject was analysing one of the sonnets of Shakespeare. The sonnet was about 'the destruction of time'. It was one of the fall mornings with wet and humid dried leaves covering the windows and floors outside. During the lesson our teacher looked through the window and she didn't move or talk for a few minutes and then she turned around and said that there is no way to analyse this sonnet better and she went out and we were all surprised. What was she going to do? Why did she go out? The class was on the first floor so she quickly went out and came back with a bunch of dried leaves in her hands. She gave them to different people in the class and now she said let's read the poem again but this time by touching the dried leaves you are holding in your hands. There is no better way to show the Destruction of Time then by touching and looking at the dried leaves of fall. It was amasing and it was impossible for me to forget that sonnet and the main idea of it and I think this was true for everybody in the class even the ones who were not paying attention at all.
 * 1-LISTENING TO PEOPLE**
 * 2- HOW CAN WE CHANGE A BORING TEXT TO AN INTERESTING ONE?**
 * 3- WHO IS BOB? DO I CARE ABOUT JANE?**
 * 4- MY FAVOURITE TEACHER- WAS SHE AN ACTRESS?**

media type="custom" key="2656179" AT A PRIVATE SCHOOL IN ISTANBUL, TURKEY.**
 * WELCOME!** **I AM BURCU ÇUBUKCU KAYITMAZ, A TEACHER OF ENGLISH and THE TEAM LEADER of 6th, 7th & 8th GRADE LEVELS
 * THIS PAGE IS ABOUT MY TEACHING CAREER AND SOME EDUCATIONAL TOOLS THAT ARE USED IN MY CLASSES.**



. I started teaching seven years ago and I have been teaching English to 11-13 year old kids in Terakki Foundation Schools since 2004.


 * Here you can see my resume and at the navigation bars on the left you can find some websites that I use for giving online assesment especially for listening tasks and our online newspaper which I have been in charge of for three years in Terakki. Also if you explore the links of some other wikispaces on the left you can find our students' forum pages where they discuss some topics in the target language.

* CREATIVE METHODOLOGY by Paul Davis, Pilgrims. http://teachers.pilgrims.co.uk/teachers/default.asp LOCAL ASPECTS OF ADVANCED ENGLISH COMPOSITION []
 * SELF IMPROVEMENT COURSES**
 * CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT by Adam Newman Turner
 * TESTING & ASSESSMENT by Kari Smith
 * PROJECT BASED EDUCATION by Prof. Coşkun Küçüktepe
 * USING TECHNOLOGY IN CLASSROOM by British Side http://www.britishside.com/
 * USING E-PORTFOLIOS by Toon Van der Ven-CINOP [|www.eurotrainer.org]
 * PERCEPTION MANAGEMENT by Ali Saydam [|www.bumed.org.tr]
 * DIRECTING FILMS AND WRITING SCENARIOS by Plato-Sinan Çetin [|www.platofilmokulu.com]
 * TRANSECTIONAL ANALYSIS by Erçin Kimmet http://www.xperteyes.com/
 * TRANSECTIONAL ANALYSIS by Prof. Dr. Azmi Varan, Ege University, İzmir
 * COMMUNICATION TOOLS AND MEDIA by BUMED-Nuri Çolakoğlu, Fatih Türkmenoğlu [|www.bumed.org.tr]
 * PRODUCTION TECHNIQUES IN FILM MAKING by TRT-Neşe Bilginer
 * E-ASSESSMENT by TESOL- ELECTRONIC VILLAGE ONLINE COURSES-2007 http://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/index.asp
 * USING TECHNOLOGY IN CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES by Nathalia Haas
 * TESTING & ASSESSMENT by Sibel Sagner, British Council [|www.**britishcouncil**.org/turkey.htm]
 * READING by Pilgrims http://teachers.pilgrims.co.uk/teachers/default.asp


 * TEACHING EXPERIENCES**
 * Private Fono College- 2002-2004 http://www.umutfono.com/
 * TVO- Şişli Terakki Primary Schools-2004- present [|www.**terakki**.org.tr/]


 * CONFERENCES PARTICIPATED AS A PRESENTER**
 * Kultur Schools - Creative Writing
 * Şişli Terakki Primary Schools - Jazzing up the Classroom


 * PROJECTS**
 * Students' Newspaper Project
 * Outside Classroom Activities - Coordination of the Picture Talk Competition
 * Making Short Films with the students at the club
 * Coordinating the drama activities for two years at school
 * Working in special task groups such as 'Autonomy in Learning - Autonomous Learners' 'Formative Assessment'
 * How to apply Bloom's Taxonomy*


 * EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND**
 * Adana Anatolian High School 1988-1995
 * Bogazici University- Western Languages and Literature 1995-2000
 * Hacettepe University-Teaching English-2001
 * Bahcesehir University-Communication & Media Studies-Film Making Certificate- 2002


 * INTERESTS**
 * History, Literature, Film Making & Writing Scenarios

English-Advanced German-Intermediate
 * LANGUAGES**