Some great websites for ESL

Gail Johnson put some interesting sites for ESL on the Blackboard site for our Friday morning ESL students. If your students don't have access, you can copy and paste the sites into your own Bb course. One of the sites is Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab. There are several hundred stories at three levels where students can listen, read, answer comprehension questions, and do vocabulary work (http://www.esl-lab.com). There are also very short 2 minute videos to watch followed by a few comprehension questions. I'm going to use some of the stories to supplement and reinforce vocabulary from stories we have read in class. I would suggest that you do one of the stories yourself and then use the overhead projector to show the students how to navigate through the website before they try it. This site is a great way for students to work on their listening skills as well as vocabulary.

There is also a link to Randall's Blog for ESL students (http://esl-lab.blogspot.com). This would be a great site for the advanced students to post comments about the various topics on the blog.

Project Part 2: Using Voicethread in ESL Education

My students surprised me today. I divided them into groups of five to talk about their cities. It is less threatening for them to speak in front of four students than twenty students. Their assignment was to present the same information that was in their written reports and on their Wordle, but in a conversational style rather than a formal speech. Other students were encouraged to ask questions so there would be group interaction. I walked around and listened in, and I was amazed at the group dynamics. Even my shyest student who seldom speaks in class was visibly animated as she spoke about Burma. She told her group about the recent tsunami destruction. Students were taking notes and asking questions. Others were walking over to the map and locating the cities and countries. Hamid from Casablanca gave his group advice for shopping in the marketplace. "Buy the leather jacket from the street vendor for $200. In the fancy store with the pretty girl the price will be $1200. Turn and walk away several times to get the price down." This might not seem like a big deal to some of you, but keep in mind that these students were not speaking their first languages. They were speaking English.

Students love talking about their countries, as was evident in my class today. Some of their comments got me thinking about how I could use Voicethread to record these comments. I thought it would be too challenging and possibly embarrassing for my low beginning/high intermediate students to record their comments for others to hear. But today they were polite and nonjudgmental as they listened to each other speak. Why would they be any different listening to each other's recorded comments? With enough preparation, I think they could do it.

One of my ideas is to use Voicethread to set up a world tour. Each student will become a tour guide and record a short speech about one interesting site in his or her city or country. The photograph could be a famous building, monument, sculpture, fountain, wall, market, or natural site. Other students could listen to the speech and make their own comments. Many of my students have limited educations, and this would expose them to new places in the world.
A similar idea would require the students to post photos and comment on their favorite sites in the United States. They could write sales pitches to encourage other students to visit these places.

Today my class finished an activity about famous paintings. Each student chose one painting from a site called WebMuseum: famous artists and wrote a short descriptive paragraph about that painting. The students also needed to comment on why they liked a particular painting. I typed all of their paragraphs into a document and distributed them. The students displayed their chosen paintings on the computers, and the class had to walk around and match the paragraphs to the paintings. I could vary this lesson by using Voicethread. Students could record their descriptions and comments about their paintings. Other students could listen to the comments and voice their opinions about the painting. I could incorporate a lesson on how to express agreement or disagreement with someone's opinion.

All of these Voicethread activities would require students to work on pronunciation, enunciation, rate of speech, and phrasing. These assignments would help prepare students for other types of public speaking. I think it will be worth a try.

I need help

I typed my blog on Word, saved it as a PDF, and copied and pasted it to my Blog site. The spacing is messed up. How can I fix this? Do I need to type the text directly into the Blog to get it right?

Project: Using Wordles in ESL Instruction

Using Wordles in ESL Instruction

In the future I can envision myself using Blogs, Twitter, and Voicethread with my ESL
students, but not until I can present this social technology with more confidence and
expertise. This technology is all new to me, and I need to begin with the basics.
I also feel that this technology is more suitable for an advanced ESL class. I teach a
stacked high beginning/low intermediate level class with students whose backgrounds
range from low elementary to post graduate education. In general, their writing skills in
English are poor. In addition, about half of them have never used computers. Using
Blogs, Twitter, or Voicethread would not only be technically challenging, but
grammatically challenging as well. It would be embarrassing for the students who
struggle to write or speak even the simplest sentences. At this level, I think these
activities would require the teacher to do much of the editing before the students could
make a post. This negates the ownership and purpose of using social technology in the
first place. At present, I don’t feel that most of my students are ready for this.
After reading the articles about using Wordles in education, I felt that creating Wordles
would be a fun and suitable activity for my students. Wordles are definitely at the basic
end of the technology spectrum, so I felt confident that my students could use them. In
my ESL class, I find that students are most engaged when they are talking or writing
about themselves, their families, and their countries. First, these topics are dear to their
hearts. Second, these topics are non-threatening even for the students with low levels of
education. They can find something to say or write about these topics without doing
research. These topics also happen to work well for creating Wordles.
My students recently wrote simple essays about their hometowns. These essays
included the name of the student, the name of his or her city and country, and
information about the size, descriptive qualities, geographical features, products,
recreational activities, cultural activities, and climate of the city. I asked the students to
use the important nouns and adjectives from their essays to create their Wordles. Since
most of them don’t type, it would have taken too much time to type the entire essay
into the Wordle box. Later in the semester, they may be able to copy and paste their
essays from Microsoft Word, but they are not at that point. Selecting only the nouns and
adjectives also reinforced our previous grammar lessons about parts of speech. I had
them write the nouns and adjectives on a chart before they created their Wordles. With
my students, I find that it is necessary to break an assignment into smaller tasks. During
our hour in the computer lab, they were able to open the program and type their words
into the create Wordle box. During this activity, we also reviewed capitalization of
proper nouns and the importance of correct spelling. They had ample time to
randomize their Wordles and select their favorite ones to post. I also asked them to
print one black on white version for themselves. Tomorrow the students will break into
small groups to talk about their cities, and they will share their Wordles within their
groups.
Creating Wordles is a simple activity, but it is also a brain centered activity that engages
the students immediately, activates prior knowledge, involves categorizing information,
introduces key vocabulary visually, integrates grammar, reading, and writing, and allows
students to use technology to share information.

Class Project: Using Wordles in ESL Instruction

Caramel Recipe for Jonathan and Daughter

I think I found a great use for my Blog--talking about FOOD! Jonathan's caramels were great, so I wanted to share our family recipe with him. He and his daughter can add this version to their candy making repertoire.

Cream Caramels
2 cups sugar
3/4 cup light corn syrup
1/2 cup butter
2 cups cream
Butter an 8x8 square pan. Combine sugar, corn syrup, butter, and half the cream in large saucepan. Heat to boiling over medium heat, stirring constantly. Stir in remaining cream.
Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, to 245 degrees on candy thermometer (or until small amount of mixture dropped into very cold water forms a firm ball). Immediately spread mixture evenly over pan. cool. Cut into 1 inch squares.

It might be fun to make a gift box of your dark caramels and these light caramels.

I need help with Wordle

After I created a Wordle on my Mac, I was able to use the Grab feature to capture, select, and paste the image without having to use Paint. Do PCs have this feature?