A couple times a year, Larry Ferlazzo asks me to host his ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival, and I guess that I’m just a girl who can’t say no because I usually end up doing it.
What is a blog carnival? A chance to share a blog post or other online piece by you (or the work of someone else that you feel is worth sharing) on the subject of teaching English as a foreign or second language. You might want to look at the Twentieth edition of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival which Sabrina De Vita from Buenos Aires, Argentina, graciously hosted. You can see all the previous nineteen editions of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival here.
“How to participate?” is probably your next question. My answer, use this easy submission form. If the form does not work for some reason, you can send the link to Larry via his Contact Form. Make sure you get it in by January 28th, and I will be posting it…here, by February 1st. Hope to see you then!
In my prior post (The “Green Line”) I discussed the entrenched position of a lot of the arguments about education and education reform these days. Here is one of my favorite arguments:
Really, how does the discussion recover from that point? The funny part is there are a lot of initiatives to change how we do education in this country now, that are an alternative to the vision that reform-y types have in their head. One of those places is Accomplished California Teachers. These issues get discussed regularly on their blog, but their biggest initiative has been to try to revamp the teacher evaluation system in our state (maybe your state needs to do this too?) to include student outcomes, but not performance on a once a year standardized test.
But, I fear. I fear that we’ve lost trust. I fear that we’ve so lost trust that even efforts like these, generated by teachers themselves, will not be heard by either side in this debate. The climate for any change has been poisoned by programs used as a weapon, rather than a means to do better. This effort will require all participants to have trust in the program. Teachers need to hear from leaders that they are the part of the solution, not the just the problem. We need the media to be responsible in their reporting, instead of jumping on bandwagons that may lead us to where no one wants to go. Once that happens, we can sit down at the table, roll up our sleeves and “get ‘er done”.
Ms. Flecha has just posted the Nineteenth Edition Of The ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival, and my post is included and had a lovely write up. It was paired with another post from a TESOL educator in Brazil, Henrick Opera, who has a really interesting post on world Englishes standards. With more non-native English speakers world-wide, you’d think we’d all understand each other better, but the big elephant in the room with TESOL teaching seems to be what version of English do you teach since there can be significant differences in pronunciation, and that bug-a-boo idiom between the different Englishes spoken around the world.
I’ve run across this myself the first time I watched The Commitments (based on the novel by Roddy Doyle, who I referred to in my post). It’s about working-class Dubliners. My husband and I felt like we needed subtitles, and we had to really listen carefully, and “translate” what they were saying because the accent and idiom/slang was so strong. It helped when we figured out they were using a variant of the f-word rather liberally with the double “oo” rather than short “u” sound. Opera’s post is very though provoking and I highly recommend it.
Other useful tidbits:
Ask Clarifying Questions is a great list of questions to use with ESL students to get them thinking about what they are reading.
English with Jennifer shows how using poetry can help introduce learning, and culture. I’d add songs too to the list.
Speaking of Music, Larry Ferlazzo has a post on a Boston Globe article on using subtitles in music videos.
You wouldn’t think that teacher still need this, but if you or co-workers do, Mathew Needleman has a nice post on The Right Way to Show Movies in Class.
There’s more up than these, so I high suggest stopping by and checking it out.
Takeaways: I know I did not cover everything as well as I could have, after I saw what Adina Sullivan, and Mathew Needleman did on interventions, but I think I covered the adult/paperwork part of RTI pretty well. You can judge for yourself. One thing that I’ve done for past presentations is to look up presentations after mine (since this one was at the second session, it would have been easy) that were related, or covered something I showed in more detail. I could kick myself for not doing that this time.
Post I wrote when I observed in Larry Ferlazzo’s class
Takeaways: This was a DELIGHT to do. It was small intimate gathering (the Edublogger Cafe), but since it was at a “crossroads” in the hallway, some people dropped in. What was very nice was having input from Tammy Stephens who did the prior session on constructivist learning. The two sessions dove-tailed well together, and Tammy adding some wonderful comments about the work I was doing.
DEN 7×7 Presentation
I don’t have any materials or video from this, it was largely based on this post, only I limited to seven and only got up to four, lol.
As happens in the run up to Winter Break, time takes on some very strange and elastic properties. While days once dragged on endlessly, they are now short. Or time is endless, but your students’ attention span is not. What I find happening with classes in my school is that as time winds down to the break, the ability for classes to complete research reports planned in the hope and optimism of October/November disappears. What options do you have beyond having students cram in a low-quality writing assignment in the time remaining and handing out coloring sheets? How about gathering together what the kids have learned and putting it on a VoiceThread. Since this scenario happened with the fifth graders I see, I’m going to share how I think this could work in a regular classroom with only a few computers (let’s say 2-6).
Requirements:
Knowledge of how to create a VoiceThread. This is not a very high barrier. If you haven’t done it yet, get out some of those holiday pics you’ve taken in digital form and go to this page for how-tos, then create a VoiceThread on your own. Once you’ve done one, you’re ready to do it with your class. I’ll try to hit on some of the management aspects in my instructions. You’ll need at least one computer with an Internet hookup. A digital projector to share the results with the class would also be nice.
1. Research and writing: Likely you will have already done some of this, just not enough for each student to come up with a one, two, or five page report. The idea at this point is to gather what knowledge they have gained.
Lab version: I had them in the lab, so they read on the Internet. The topic was Astronomy. I had them go to sites with information about the topic. NASA Kids has a whole encyclopedia of information on astronomy topics they can search. I’m more concerned with the lexile level at Wikipedia, than the quality of information (since science sections are pretty well-maintained, they can be more up-to-date than encyclopedias). WikiJunior has an astronomy section as well at a more accessible reading level for elementary students. I had the students write short blog posts summarizing a paragraph they read. I could have had the kids correct each other online by replying to each others comments with editing suggestions.
Class Version: If the class is doing a thematic unit they should be reading on paper as well as the Internet. Have take turns in pairs on computer looking up the online topics, and then have them look through books in the classroom as well. Have them do quick writes (a couple sentences) paraphrasing what they learned. You could have them pass the quick writes around for a “buddy” edit.
2. Getting photos: Visuals will make this more engaging for the kids and give them something to speak to.
The NASA site has a number of excellent pictures if astronomy is your topic. Flickr Commons is also good for other topics. VoiceThread will let you use creative commons photos on Flickr by using the Media Sources button when you are adding photos/video to your VoiceThread. You may want to “pick out” photos by searching Flickr in advance, as the VoiceThread tool is really great, but the search facility is not as strong as Flickr’s. A tip for looking for astronomy pics, add NASA as a search term (all government photos are public domain and can be used) to get the best photos of planets, etc. Pull one or two of the kids back at a time to pick out photos to use.
3. Add students’ voices: This is where the small parts they have learned will be gathered together and hopefully make something of more depth.
Have the students come with their quickwrites (or if you’re in the lab, pull up their comments on the blog), and have them read what they wrote as a comment on an appropriate picture. Ask them a follow-up question to see if they have picked up knowledge beyond the recall level. You can also have them come up in pairs or trios. Since you’re recording, you’ll want it quiet (although I never get it “silent” and you shouldn’t worry about that). Make sure the other students know to give you silent signals, etc. at this time. You might want to consider a small coloring/drawing project to keep the other students engaged, then you can scan or take a picture of the best ones to put up on the VoiceThread.
4. Listen and learn: Play the VoiceThread for the class via projector, or have them go up in small groups and listen. Ask them to share something they learned from others. If time permits, you can have them leave comments.
Is this as good as a research report? Is this going to have a lot of higher order thinking? Maybe, maybe not, but it will make the work they’ve done more useful and long-lived than just stopping abruptly, and not completing the reports. It will also give you and the students some closure on the thematic unit.
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