ESL etc.

First time? Check out the site overview.

I’ll be away over the break, but I wanted to wish everyone out there a happy Buy Nothing Day.

This can be a great way to introduce consumerism to students, and can fit into discussions on other holidays.

CheatNeutral is a funny, accessible way to introduce the “logic” of carbon offsets to students. They have created a mock website that allows people to buy cheating offsets, offsetting relationship infidelity. I’m a little concerned that my students would have trouble with the speed and accent of the language, but I might give it a try in my global issues class.

thanks Michelle

PS - 25,000 here I come!

The Animals Save the Planet is a series of short videos from Animal Planet that illustrate global issues and actions. They are funny, and they use very little language, making them accessible to language learners. Basically, each clip uses claymation animals to illustrate a point, and then has a pithy two or three sentence conclusion.

I am thinking of using a few of these for a fun last day of class activity with my global issues class.

via IATEFL’s GISIG

PS - I’m knocking on the door of 15,000.

In my (relatively) new position as technology coordinator, I am often called upon to do new things. Yesterday, I was asked to create a vector-based version of our logo for a company that will be producing USB drives for us. I had no idea what a vector graphic was, let alone how to make one.

Fortunately, I quickly found Inkscape, an open source vector graphics editor. The nice thing about vector graphics is that they can be scaled without getting pixelated.

Anyhow, if you are ever called upon to produce a vector-based logo, check Inkscape out.

Incidentally, if you’re looking for another type of teacher-y open source software, I’ve got a list.

Materials Used:

• Final Project Topic and Action Ideas
• Final Project Rubric
• Pay It Forward Questions
• More Topic and Action Ideas
• World Changer Interview

Each Tuesday, students led reading circle articles. In addition, on the Tuesday of week 5, I introduced some ideas for final project topics and actions. For homework, I asked them to write out a one to two paragraph long proposal, due the following week. On Thursday I gave them a rubric outlining the project requirements. We also watched a clip from Pay It Forward and did some discussion questions.

Tuesday of week 6, I gave students some more ideas for final project topics and actions. I also asked students to get into groups and do mini-presentations on their topic and action ideas. On Thursday, my mentee taught, doing a lesson on issues in Africa.

Week 7, after the reading circles, I introduced the World Changer Interview. I asked students to choose a person, find some information, and prepare 5 questions that they would like to be asked about. We will do the interview roleplay next week. On Thursday, my mentee taught again, doing a review lesson that culminated in having the students present short news reports in groups.

If you’d like any more info on any of these activities, feel free to ask!

Ready, set, go!

Materials used:

• Reading Circle Peer Evaluation Sheet
• Financial Crisis Timeline Activity
• Financial Crisis Lesson Handout
• Financial Crisis Readings

On Tuesday, we did the first reading circle. I was pleased to see that it went well. I had done this with a global issues class I taught in Hawaii, but at that school reading circles were a common part of the curriculum. Here, none of my students had done them before. Still, they did a great job preparing their articles and had active discussions. I was a little worried about this because, in whole-class activities, there are a few people who tend to dominate. Fortunately, things seemed very balanced in the groups, with quiet students becoming more talkative.

After they did the reading circles, I handed out the peer evaluation sheet. I don’t know if I’ll bother doing this in the future, as the feedback has been extremely positive and thus not particularly useful, but I wanted to give it a try. Plus, I like letting students know that I want their opinions.

For the remainder of Tuesday’s class, I briefly introduced the final project. I didn’t give them any handouts, but I wanted to get them started thinking about possible issues and actions. For their project, I’m going to have them choose an issue, do some research, and then take an action related to the issue. Their project (in the form of either a paper or a presentation) will be to share what they learned about the issue, and their experience with their action. I will introduce it more formally next week.

On Thursday, my mentee taught her first class of the term. For a topic, she chose the global economic crisis. She did a great job. Last week, she had asked students if they were interested in learning about the financial crisis and, to my surprise, they were. I didn’t think that an ESL activity about the financial crisis would go over well.

She started by splitting the students into pairs and giving them one event from a timeline. They were asked to summarize the event in their own words, and then place it on the timeline that was drawn on the board. Students were then asked to take turns explaining their part of the timeline, while the teacher answered questions and helped with vocabulary.

She next gave students a handout which included some vocabulary words and discussion questions. She went through the vocabulary words, then had students watch a video clip explaining how the crisis happened. They watched it twice. After, the students discussed one of the questions from the handout in a small group. Each group then shared a brief summary of their discussion with the class.

The last thing she did was lead a short class discussion about the nature of sources, explaining the difference between subjective and objective and discussing their relative advantages and disadvantages. She also gave the students some readings offering additional information.

Watching someone else teach my class was a very interesting experience. First of all, I was able to see my students from a different perspective. One thing I realized is that I need to be firmer with them. With adults, I tend to shy away from telling them what they must do, preferring instead to frame things as suggestions. For example, instead of telling students to be quiet, I usually just start talking and wait a few moments for them to realize on their own. Part of my job as a teacher, though, is to be more authoritative, pushing students to do things that are good for their language acquisition, even when they may not want to do them.

I also appreciate the opportunity to see someone who has a different approach than I do. For example, I would never have done the timeline activity at the top of the class. I almost never do activities where students get up and move around. Seeing that it can work, and how it adds variety to a lesson, I hope I can start using this type of idea in the future.

Recently, I was asked to find some sort of gradebook software for our teachers to use. I quickly found Engrade, a free online gradebook that allows for weighting grades in categories. It’s very simple to use, and has all of the features that we need in a gradebook. Plus, it allows students to log in to view their own grades, check on missing assignments, etc. It also has attendance and calendar features. I’m going to give a workshop on it next week at our faculty development day. I’ll post my introductory handout here once I’ve finished it.

All-in-all, it looks good. I’m a little concerned that the servers will be overloaded, but they seem to be taking steps to remedy that problem.

November is National Novel Writing Month.

Last year, I had a great time completing my 50,000 word opus, and I am looking forward to giving it another go this year. In a creative writing class, this could be a great way to get students to write a lot without worrying overly much about grammar.