(Skkn 2023) applying azota to help 12 graders themselves revise for gcse exam

NGHE AN DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING TAN KY HIGH SCHOOL ===== ===== TEACHING EXPERIENCE TITLE APPLYING AZOTA TO HELP 12 GRADERS THEMSELVES REVISE FOR GCSE EXAM Author : Co-authors : Group Tel : : Nguyễn Thị Huệ Nguyễn Thị Hải Phan Trọng Thể English 0915042700 0948058636 0945757359 April, 2023 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page TABLE OF CONTENTS PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1 Reasons for the study New points of topic Aims of the study Methods of the study Scope of the study PART 2: CONTENT Theoretical and practical background 1.1 Theoretical background 1.1.1 What is the concept of self-study? 1.1.2 The importance of self - study for the exam 1.1.3 What is Azota tool? 1.2 Practical background Solutions 2.1 Create groups in Zalo 2.2 How to use Azota 2.3 Some work should be done before teachers assign tasks to students 2.4 Practice activities for topics required in 2023 GCSE exam 2.4.1 Pronunciation and word stress 13 2.4.2 Grammar and vocabulary 14 2.4.3 Reading comprehension 19 2.4.4 Synonyms and antonyms 21 2.4.5 Communicative skills 23 2.4.6 Error identification 24 2.4.7 Sentence transformation and sentence combination 25 2.5 Trial tests 25 Results and evaluation 26 PART 3: CONCLUSION 29 The meaning and scope of application of the topic 29 Recommendations and suggestions 29 REFERENCES 30 APPENDIX 31 For teachers 31 1.1 The urgency of the proposed solutions 31 1.2 The feasiblity of the proposed solutions .31 For students 31 PART 1: INTRODUCTION Reasons for the study In the modern world, with the impact of 4.0 revolution, almost all fields of the society has dramatical changes In education, the 4.0 revolution has created a change in teaching and studying This requires education to adapt to the new technical environment It is required to shift from the physical education environment that only focuses on imparting academic knowledge to the one that needs renewing by providing learners with knowledge and skills, including a lot of skills such as teamwork skills, creative thinking skills, critical skills and selfstudy The 4.0 revolution in education also encourages and forces learners to actively change and make them more active in learning Teaching in the modern world does not require only a paper, a pen, a board and chalk to teach and study To deliver learning content, today a lot of smart technologies have been born to support teaching A teacher is no longer merely a person who provides knowledge, but also a person with sufficient professional knowledge and skills, diligence in research and creativity in method innovation, who can help students meet the requirements in the new modern world Recently, a lot of tools have been made to help students study and revise effectively Azota is one of the tools that the authors feel satisfactory because of its effectiveness and convenience For the reasons above, I would like to conduct the Teaching Experience namely: “Applying Azota to help 12 graders themselves revise for GCSE exam” New points of topic Revision programme for grade 12 in the class is carried out every year With 25 sessions required in my school curriculum for English GCSE preparation, other people believe that it provides enough knowledge for learners However, as it can be seen in some recent years, the results are low and perhaps, it has not not only provided enough knowledge but also created motivation and encouragement for students Self-study and self-revision for exam outside the class with books and photocopied papers make students feel bored and stressed The solutions to improve students’ self-study have focused on a lot of factors that can contribute to the better results for students Aims of the study The aims of the research are as follow: For the teachers: - Design a wide range of interesting kinds of activities for revision - Help students actively and eagerly participate in self-study - Help students improve some skills effectively and skillfully so that they can get expected results - Provide as many trial tests as possible for students, help them recognize the weakness and strength in each topic of the tests and then find the ways to improve it For the students: - Know how to manage the time for study at home, forming the habit of selfstudy which is an important skill for their life - Know how important the exam revision is for the GCSE exam Methods of the study In this study, we use some following methods: - Study some web tools - Read materials relating to the topic - Design suitable extra activities for students - Collect information from students and teachers - Learn from experience based on achieved results Scope of the study The grade 12 students PART 2: CONTENT Theoretical and practical background 1.1 Theoretical background 1.1.1 What is the concept of self-study? "Study, study more, study forever" is a saying that contains a deep meaning that our ancestors passed on to the next generation, a saying that is a testament to the spirit of self-study and determination To better understand the problem of selfstudy, we need to understand what self-study is There are many different concepts about self-study, but each concept shows the high consciousness and selfdiscipline of young people “Self-learning is brainstorming, thinking and using intellectual capacity (observing, comparing, analyzing…) and sometimes muscles (when using tools) and the main qualities of oneself (honesty, objectivity, forward-thinking, perseverance, patience, passion for science) both motivation, emotion, human outlook, and world view to occupy a certain area of knowledge that of humanity, turning that field under its own" - According to Nguyen Canh Toan (1997), the process of self-study “Self-study can be understood as a form of cognitive activity of an individual to master the system of knowledge and skills conducted by the students themselves in class, outside of the classroom according to or not according to the curriculum and textbooks According to regulations, self-study is a basic form of teaching organization at university with high independence and personal nuances as it has a close relationship with the teaching process" - according to Luu Xuan Moi 2000) 1.1.2 The importance of self - study for the exam Learning is a process of constant development and improvement, learning and acquiring knowledge are the responsibility of every student Being aware of their own learning role, young people are constantly striving to improve their sense of learning Studying at school is not enough time for them to firmly grasp the knowledge they have learned, so self-study outside the class is very necessary Self-study is a skill that parents always want their children to practice There must be an effective self-study method to achieve high quality results Self-study not only gives us results and knowledge about the lesson, but self-study also helps us practice a lot of results around it Self-study will help you orient and plan positive and effective learning results, it helps us to acquire knowledge actively Self-study gives us good qualities: Self-taught people will always feel that they are proactive in everything else, giving themselves the spirit of desire to dominate knowledge, not hesitate in the face of difficulties, learning challenges Self-study helps us to evaluate and select important and useful knowledge, to improve our capacity Therefore, selftaught people are often very humble They always want to know more 1.1.3 What is Azota tool? Azota is a technology software that helps teachers assign assignments, create exam questions, and grade online - offline exams quickly Azota develops powerful automation and customization features that are easy to use for all users With Azota's intelligent algorithm, teachers not need to take many operations to digitize exam questions With just drag and drop, teachers can create different types of questions: multiple choice, essay, gap filling, mixed test, group questions in a short time The great advantages of Azota: Inspite of the appearance of many other learning applications, this application is still favored because of the following reasons: + Anti-cheat ability Perhaps this is the biggest advantage that users appreciate about this application Because the application Azota developed mainly to help with the problem of performing the test Therefore, this is an application trusted by many schools in assessing students Through the tests, it can be seen that this software supports very well in anti-cheat Specifically, the inability to access other websites during the test with the application Thereby students are unable to ask for help from friends or to look up information + Easy sync with Zalo Users are easy to use the app and not have to waste time creating a new Azota account Users can easily synchronize with the Zalo application to register and log in All personal information of Zalo is also very convenient for users.This is a feature of marking multiple-choice quizzes in two forms: Marking from the computer or marking from the scanned file + Teachers can create exam questions easily With available files and questions, Azota is very helpful for teachers It is much easier to create exam questions or online assignments + Teacher not take much time to grade One more wonderful advantage to support teachers of this software is to support grading Azota is equipped with an auto grading system for instant results The test only needs to be submitted and learners can know the results immediately + There are learning statistics in Azota Marking and statistics of study results are a series of outstanding advantages When teachers have learning results statistics, they can easily evaluate students At the same time, parents can also view their children's score statistics + Easy to use Azota is developed for teachers and students, so visualization is a must In addition, it should be an easy-to-use application with a logical, simple and smart design Because it only takes a few steps to be able to use it to bring high efficiency Even people who are not good at technology can use this software The effectiveness of Azota in revising exams + Assign assignments easily Azota can create and deliver assignments anytime, anywhere, on any devices with simple operations - Support exercise creations with all formats (word, pdf, audio, video ) - Set submission deadlines, deliver assignments at the same time for multiple classes - Allow students to submit assignments without creating an account - Integrate icons, fonts, colors, diverse custom interfaces - Allow hiding/showing results - Upload photos, share exercise photos on all platforms + Create Quizes quickly 1.2 Practical background In recent years, the result of English in GCSE exam in our school has not been as good as we have expected There have been many reasons why to explain for this problem - Parents not pay attention to their kids’ English at the young age Therefore, when they enter to a secondary school, parents are certain that their children are not likely to study English well because they believe that English is too difficult As a result, they enter high school with low level of English - Students’vocabulary and grammar are so limited that they can not understand the meaning of sentences and the texts in the exam - At the high school, many students are provided with smart phones, living far from their families Actually, they are not much interested in study After class, they hook on smart phones connected to social networks as Facebook, Tiktok, and online games They know that revising for the exam is important but they find it hard to change theselves According to many teachers, outside the class, students hardly concentrate on self-study and self-revision With photocopied paper assigned in the previous lessons by the teachers, they forget doing or even not remember to bring it to the class to be corrected Solutions To optimize available cellphones that students have in revising exam and in effort to help students have a large of number of materials and references to self study, the authors have designed a lot of topics as following: Part 1: Practice activity for topics required in GCSE exam Topic 1: Pronunciation and word stress Topic 2: Grammar and vocabulary Topic 3: Reading comprehension Topic 4: Synonyms and antonyms Topic 5: Communicative skills Topic 6: Error identification Topic 7: Sentence combination and transformation transformation Part 2: Trial tests 2.1 Create groups in Zalo and Messengers At the beginning of the year, teachers created each group for every class Advantages of having groups in Zalo and Messengers - Assign homework for all the members at the same time - Encourage students to and hand in homework in time - Remind students who are lazy to complete the tasks - Provide students with related topic theories which they are going to learn or have learnt, helping them have time to understand more the knowledge The following are groups for each class 2.2 How to use Azota - Sign up Azota - Choose Create New Account: You can use a telephone number or an email to register in Azota After you log in, you can see its main interface: At this display, users are able to choose which they would like to create uch as homework, exams and create students list of classes 2.4.5 Communicative skills Aim: This activity helps students understand the topic of communicative skills With two questions in the exam, teacher should classify communicative questions into groups which help students easy to remember such as: - Invitation - Advice Greetings Thanking and apologing Suggestion - Request Opinion expressions 23 2.4.6 Error identification Aim: This task helps students understand some common mistakes in the exam and practise doing the task There are two main types: Spelling errors: In the question, there will be a word or phrase spelled incorrectly Grammatical errors: This is the most common form of error identification such as tenses, subject and verb agreement In the exam: there are questions about mistakes: one about wrong tense of the verb, one wrong reference word and one vocabulary mistake which usually causes confusion 24 2.4.7 Sentence transformation and sentence combination This topic consists of sentences: Sentence transformation: One about inversion and one in conditional sentence or wishes Sentence combination: three questions: one about tenses, one about reported speech and one about modal verbs 2.5 Trial tests Aims: Teacher provides students trial tests to practise, recognise every topic and know the ways to the test effectively 25 Results and evaluation The following are the results cut from the Azota 26 27 As can be seen from the results, students have done the tasks with high spirits although they have not gained best highest scores and in the trial tests, there have been low marks However, the authors believe that, if they continue to actively participate in the tasks, their results will improve, and students themselves will become responsible for their exam 28 PART 3: CONCLUSION The meaning and scope of application of the topic As conducted in the research, Azota has provided students with a lot of opportunities to revise for their exam Except for some passive students, the other ones take part in study activity actively and enthusiatically - Good students: With a large of number of available exercises and trial tests, good students may make full use of the app Azota Besides they have complete the homework is assigned for the class, they can themselves choose which ones are necessary for them - Low - achieved students: Through the tasks assigned, they must realize their weak points They must be worried when their points are low Then they will find the ways to improve the results Therefore, the effectiveness of self- revision undoutedly increases - Teachers: Although the preparation takes time, the procedure of management and information collection brings a lot of benefits Compared with traditional homework, teachers can manage all students with different information such as the points, the time they used and the difficulty they get during the tasks From then, teacher can adapt and adjust the contents so that they can help students improve their scores Recommendations and suggestions Azota is really useful not only English subject but also almost other subjects which use multiple choice tasks created for exercises, tests or exams However, teacher should take notice of the following: + In order to make students interested in doing exercises through Azota, teachers should create suitable levels of exercises for them Moreover, at the beginning, teacher should give them award and punishment policy beforehand, encourage active students and motivate the lazy ones to try their best + Like other apps, Azota requires an account and its password Students usually forget them and report them to the teacher to create a new account, which lead to missing their previous study record Therefore, teachers, at the beginning, remind students to write down them in a notebook 29 REFERENCES www.azota.vn Tieng Anh 12 The process of teaching self-study, Nguyen Canh Toan (1997), Publishing House Education Trial tests from schools 30 APPENDIX For teachers The authors have created a list of questionaires to make a survey through Google form on urgency and feasibility of the topic with the subjects which can take advantage of Azota in Revising GCSE such as: English, Maths, Biology, History, Biography, Physics, Chemistry with 32 participants at Tan Ky High School Appendix The survey the urgency and feasibility of the topic: Applying Azota to help 12 graders themselves revise for GCSE exam Respondents Respondents Quantity Teachers 32 Survey results on the urgency and feasibility of the proposed solutions microsoft Excel 2010 software is used to calculate the average score X Distance value = (Maximum - Minimum) /4 = (4-1) /4 = 0.75 We will have the value: + 1.00 - 1.75: Not urgent + 1.76 - 2.51: Less urgent + 2.52 - 3.27: Urgent + 3.28 - 4.00: Very urgent + 1.00 - 1.75: Not feasible + 1.76 - 2.51: Not possible + 2.52 - 3.27: Possible + 3.28 - 4.00: Very possible Option = point Option = points Option = points Option 4= points 1.1 The urgency of the proposed solutions Table 1.1 Assess the urgency of the proposed solution Parameters TT Solution X The urgency of creating exercises and trial tests, including the Azota application in assigning assignments, helping students to prepare for GCSE exam Level Very urgent 3.56 31 From the data obtained in the table above, the following observations can be drawn: The overall average value of the urgent assessment of the proposed solutions is 3.56 (at the very urgent level), in which the solution is evaluated at the urgent level or higher, including solution The solution is considered to be very urgent In general, it has been clearly seen that Applying Azota to help 12 graders themselves revise for GCSE exam is necessary 1.2 Feasibility of proposed solutions TT Solution Parameters Level X The feasibility of making exercises and exam questions for students to prepare for exams on the 3.78 Azota app The feasibility of applying the Azota application to help students revise for better results 3.65 Very feasible Very feasible As can be seen from the table above, we can evaluate the feasibility of the solutions with 3.78 and 3.56 which are at the very feasible level Appendix The survey form about the urgency and feasibility of Applying Azota to help 12 graders themselves revise for GCSE exam Teachers collect information from other teachers at our school Contents of the questions The urgency of the proposed solutions Not urgent Less urgent Urgent Very urgent Scoring method: Option = point Option = points Option = points Option = points 32 33 https://docs.google.com/forms/d/13pqKa4wJT9MvyWP90zs4W1HXiyXVq gcLRNHwLlVxh-E/edit#responses 34 1.3 For students: We conducted a survey on 123 students from class 12A2, 12A5,12A9 and 12A11 and the following is the result: 35 36 https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1_iFDAksPN8WExBzkf1ybzG0fq1CK1Px WP-O2fi7s8Nw/edit#question=1838092164&field=143167666 As can be seen from the charts, most of the students (more than 80 %) shows positive attitude toward Azota and only a small number of them show their uncertain opinions about it Almost all of them also hope that they continue to be given homework of exam revision in the future 37