It’s the end of June again, which means that another school year has ended and it’s my birthday again.
While last year’s early 50th hoopla was in April (attending and presenting at the IATEFL conference in Liverpool), this year I began giving myself a small, quiet, daily present at the end of February. And it will last an entire year!
I joined a “take a picture a day” project, otherwise known as The 365 Project. People do it for all kinds of reasons but my goal is very specific:
To notice something small, every day, in my regular surroundings.
I’ve been living in the same town and teaching at the same school since 1988. It’s easy to find interesting things when one travels to other places. I needed to see what’s new right under my nose.
It works! This project has already had an unbelievable effect on me. There IS something new under the sun every day, and one doesn’t need to travel to find it. Lots of new things in fact!
It’s a great gift to give to myself. It’s free too. A side effect seems to be that my photography skills are getting better. The first pictures were taken on an Ipod. Now I’m almost always with a camera in my bag!
Here are some things I hadn’t noticed at the Yehud High-School, where I teach.
Lizzie Pinard’s latest post: Helping Language Learners Visualise their Linguistic Development: Growing Learning deals with a subject close to my heart. How can learners see, VISUALISE, their progress? Students entire attitude changes when they realize that what we are doing together, what they are doing on their own, makes a difference.
Seeing Progress (Naomi’s photos)
Still, it’s a tricky business. Some of my attempts have worked. Others have not. Here are some comments on the issues raised in the post based on my experiences so far.
Is the design of a flower handout too “sissy”?
The “rule of some” is worth remembering. Some students will find it appealing others will not. It is always so. On the other hand, I would never advocate having the teacher spend time on creating lots of different versions.
I would recommend two versions (and only two!). One, the attractive flower. The other, a simple chart of columns. I have found that simple charts, where students see the numbers of bars rise, to be very effective. The fact that it’s plain and straightforward makes it seem ageless (particularly important for teenagers and adults who are at a low-level). Let the students choose which one they prefer!
What about the self disciplined learners who don’t need it?
Odd one out (Naomi’s Photos)
In order to get the class excited and used to the visual recording system I would insist that for the firs two weeks (depending on the frequency of lessons) everyone do it. I would ask to see their flowers /charts and make an issue of it. But afterwards the responsiblity must shift to the students. The ones who feel that the marking is just extra work on top of all the work they are doing should be given the option to opt out.
How about an app?
I agree that at an app would be excellent for this. Easier to color in, visually appealing AND students NEVER forget their cell phones. They will always have their charts with them!
At the high school these are days of final preparations for the big internal exams that precede the national ones.
Students may differ, there are new students every year, but some mistakes that my weak students make on their reading comprehension tests have earned the term classic – seems like I encounter them on a regular basis.
So I’m experimenting with visualising. I created a short slideshow to present one such common error. It took me a long time to simplify the text (it is not productive to throw a lot of text at weak learners, if they could deal with that they wouldn’t be weak!) and to choose the format in which to present it. I have found that students must have something active to do (as opposed to “read the Powerpoint) so the last slide has the students fill in the final answer with immediate feedback.
With all my simplifying efforts, it is still not something my weak kids would deal with on their own. However, with the students I’ve tried it with so far the presentation led to a good discussion. They all claimed that they know students who do that but THEY would never answer a question like that. I feverently hope that it is the case!
There is only one common mistake presented in this one. I think it is more practical to have lots of short slideshows than a long one presenting many different pitfalls.
And frankly, in this manner these slideshows don’t become a massive project, requiring identification of all the mistakes I want to address before producing a complete project. If I’m pleased with the results, I can gradually build up the slideshow library.
I had my students in mind when I created this first one. I’d be interested to hear if you find it useful as well.
I was tagged by Carol Goodey to participate in a new blog challenge that is everywhere on blogosphere at the moment (including non EFL teachers whom I know). At first I thought I wouldn’t be able to particpate – it most certainly isn’t vacation time here! How would I:
1) Write 11 random facts about myself
2) Answer 11 questions about myself
3) INVENT 11 new questions
4) Tag 11 other blogggers, most of whom have been tagged already (if not several times).
It just sounded too overwhelming to me.
But then I remembered that my blog “loves” me, and will accept whatever I CAN do.
So here’s what crosses my mind when the number 11 is mentioned:
Seven on Eleven
1. When I was ELEVEN years old we moved from a small suburb of Boston, Mass. to a distant suburb of Tel-Aviv. Big change in my life.
2. When I was TWENTY TWO years old I began working at “Shema”, the organization that supports deaf and hard of hearing students. I hadn’t even graduated from college back then. This is the framework for my current counseling job and things have changed dramatically. My hours and work mode will now have to change accordingly. BTW, this is the source of my screen name on Twitter.
3. My late grandmother (who passed away when I was 26) had a phrase that she used often: “I got there on the NUMBER ELEVENbus”. Which meant that she walked to the location, on foot! Each leg represented a “one”, two “ones” beside each other are the number eleven!
4. When I was THIRTY THREEI completed my Masters Degree in Curriculum Development. Our second child was supposed to have been born at the end of the last semester of the second year (afterwards it was thesis writing time) but there was a HUGE academic-teaching-staff strike and all classes were delayed. I ended up giving birth right after the beginning of the delayed semester. Twas difficult…
5. With two children we moved to our current apartment. We have ELEVEN pictures hanging on our living room/dining room walls (it is one open space). Two jigsaw puzzles, three enlarged photographs, five Impressionistic reproductions (Monet and Van Gogh rule) and one family tree (also a reproduction). It is of my husband’s side of the family, the Epsteins, and it supposedly traces the family roots back to Spain before 1492. Back then the family name was Ben-Benishti! * Note: I admit I hadn’t counted the pictures till this week!
6. When I was FORTY FOUR I began a period of proffesional soul-searching. I had been teaching for 22 years and for a while I played around with the idea of beginning a second career. My mother began nursing school when she was 39, a fact I find very inspiring. It took me time but I realized that what I needed was to look for change WITHIN my profession, not outside it. This realization and acknowlegment of a need, eventually led me to blogging and the world of online professional development.
7. When I was a kid living in the States there were only Five & Dime stores. My first visit back was when I was 17. I was surprised to discover they had all become Seven-ELEVEN stores!
Thankfully, blogs (and puffins) mature more quickly than human children do. Despite not being able to lavish as much attention on it as I would like, the blog seems to be thriving. This is post number 377 and I have 1019 followers on Twitter (Google analtyics confound me so I don’t dare to quote numbers, but the “cluster map” of visitors looks great)! Never would have predicted that! I feel that the blog has become an important part of me. I imagine what I would post even when I don’t have time to actually do so.
This past week I had an excellent reminder of why I can’t possibly do without my blog.
Part One: On Monday I finally had the opportunity to watch James Taylor’s “Making the Most of Reading” talk at RSCON4 which I had missed at the conferece. I found many useful ideas there but one specific strategy caught my attention in particular. It was not new to me, but James had visualisedit for me. James presented a picture of a man with the surprising caption ” I punched a bear”. He then proceeded to demonstrate how students first form their own questions and then answer them when they later get the text (about a man defending his family from a bear). I had only done this using titles of texts, not a line from the text itself (especially with a picture!), and believe it is more effective.
Part Two: On Wednesday I had a full morning of counseling work and met with several teachers. We had a long talk about reading comprehension strategies as that is a crucial topic when teaching English as a foreign language to deaf students. I brought up the idea of using a prompt from the text (preferrably with a visual aid) to have the students form their own questions before reading. Some of the teachers didn’t quite seem to understand what I meant. So, without thinking, I said: “Imagine I’m pasting a picture on the board of a man, with the caption I punched a bear”. What would you like to know about this person? This situation?”. That did it. They immediatly understood and looked at possible lines to use from the text we were holding.
I was so pleased! Not only had I enjoyed the talk but it had helped me clarify things for other teachers!
But what would I have done with this excitement if I hadn’t had my blog and PLN to share it with? My family are incredibly supportive but that level of detail is beyond them. There is no time at school between classes to share such things with other teachers, many of whom would much rather discuss other things when there is some quiet time.
A big thanks to all of you who can share in my excitement and discuss such things with me! This blog is here to stay!
I defined my series of activities using video for teaching reading comprehension as an experiment.
And experiments don’t always go so well.
There was no problem with the activity I had planned. I felt the students learned something from the discussion on how choice of vocabulary reflects the writer’s opinion. They certainly didn’t know a lot of the vocabulary items involved.
The video was the problem. I had debated whether I should use a commercial for something the students can actually buy. The previous ones I used were commercials too but not for anything relevant. However, the use of language here seemed so perfect for English Language Learners and the sentiment is lovely, that I decided to experiment on the adult learners. There is a difference in what one can do with adults compared to a class of high-school students in the national school system.
I won’t be using this commercial again. It spoiled the effect of the pre-viewing activity, which is the part which should stick in their minds.
Here it is. The worksheet is below. I have added a page with the full text from the commercial.
Take Two, highlighting ” support your answer” type questions, can be found here.
This exercise focuses on “main idea” type questions. The purpose is to make the following message more memorable:
The distractors given are usually true sentences (or facts) from the text. But they are not the main idea. So you must read the distractors carefully.
I used three videos though only showed the students two. The first exercise relates to the “Power of Words“ one we saw two weeks ago. It is a very memorable video and I see no reason not to use the same video for multiple purposes.
The second one is a very short commercial. I don’t know where I heard about this one. Here it is:
This one I learned at the conference from Jamie Keddie’s excellent talk and CD. In his talk he used it completely differently. I hope to try some of the strategies he used in the future. However, I don’t think they were designed for a class of 33 struglling adult students (note: I’m not being inconsistent with the numbers, we are now a class of 33!). In addition, I’m pursuing a different agenda at the moment.
Overall I was pleased with results. The students loved the videos and did not find them childish or unsuitable. I overheard two students discussing the fact that I show them really educational commercials. However, one student complained that the worksheet was too easy. Easy as in the answers were too easy to find (most certainly not the level of English!). I replied that I wanted the point to be clear, that they would see how all the distractors relate to vocabulary and information that IS there and that they must be careful. I added that if the examples were very hard we would have to spend a long time on the exercise (which we didn’t) and perhaps the point wouldn’t have come across so clearly.
Now I’m not as sure. I don’t know if the exercise shouldn’t have been harder. It would certainly be difficult to think of more difficult distractors.
On the other hand, only one student complained.
I’ll have to think about it. Lets see how carefully they treat the “main idea” questions in the tasks they have.
I learned about the educational value of this commercial from Kieran Donaghy, both from his excellent talk at IATEFL, Liverpool, last month and from his blog post about it on Film English.
It was a big hit in class this evening!
Today we used the commercial for LOTS – Lower Order Thinking Skills. In my first lesson of every course for adults (hearing!) struggling with reading comprehension, we review basic Wh questions and how they are to be answered. This ad works beautifully for this purpose:
* It is very short.
* There is no dialogue (can easily be used for my deaf students as well).
* It is very clear.
* It is funny!
We discussed the meaning of each question and possible answers in the worksheet (see below). Then we watched the ad and answered the questions. Simple but effective – they were all so focused!
I plan to use this ad for a review of some of the HOTS my students are learning (Higher Order Thinking Skills) when we return to school at the end of August. Obviously it is perfect for the skills of ” identifying different perspectives” and “comparing and contrasting”. My question to you is if it isn’t too “improper” to use the very last sceneof the ad for the skill of “problem solving”. The scene seems to fit the stages we learned but considering the location of the man in this scene, should we freeze this particular one to discuss the following?
* The man has identified the problem (lack of THE paper)
* The man has identified his options
* The man has compared his options and then has reached a decision. He calls his wife, Emma.
The speaker at a lecture I attended yesterday took a concept I was very familiar with and presented it to me from the opposite direction.
Brilliant.
One of the people who have had a huge impact on my teaching (though I’ve never met him) is Richard Lavoie. When watching his films I have always felt that he has the gift of phrasing things in a manner which is both very simple to grasp and very powerful. I was introduced to his films back in college and have seen them countless times since (its so easy now, with YouTube! Used to be much harder to do.).
In the segement I have embedded below, Lavoie compares self esteem to poker chips. He talks about how the special needs child “loses” poker chips all day long through negative encounters. He emphasizes how everyone who cares about the child should invest in keeping the number of chips the child has high, so that the everyday losses will not have the power to crush the child. That has been a strong influence in my developing and searching for Eureka Moment strategies, which allow the struggling learners to achieve some success in my classroom. The crisis and outbursts are not avoided, but they are less intense and are forgotten more quickly.
The speaker at the lecture pointed out that we, the teachers, need to work on keeping those chips high too.
Yes, keeping a balance between work and the rest of our life is often a topic discussed in publications, online and even has even been mentioned on this blog. That in itself wasn’t new for me.
What hit me was the realization that I, as a teacher and a person, can’t wait for the administrators to realize that “If You Don’t Feed the Teachers They Eat the Students!“ and start being more supportive of the teachers. I can’t expect the students to stop venting their frustration at me regarding what they can’t achieve (the fact that they now know more than they did when they begun is scant comfort to the high-school students who can’t take the final national exams with their peers). And I certainly can’t seem to learn to hang clothes on the clothesline any faster than my turtle’s pace…
I lose chips all day too. But, unlike the children, I take responsibility for replenishing my own chips. So it seems like when I make big decisions such as investing in the trip to IATEFL conference in Liverpool or minor ones, such as ignoring everything else and sitting down to write on my blog (like now!), I’m simply replenishing my chips.
You may say “duh”, but I really hadn’t thought of it that way. Did you?
For starters, I’m not sure if I’m using the term “Online Course” correctly.
The course I’m building (opens this SUNDAY!!!) is certainly online. I’m not meeting the students face-to-face at all.
Photo by Gil Epshtein
On the other hand, I WILL be actively interacting with the students – checking their tasks, commenting and assisting during the three week course. Its not a self- study course. While quiz -like tasks on the Edmodo platform, whichI’m using, give immediate feedback, all other tasks require interacting with me.
In addition, it is an enrichment course, for 11th and 12th grade high-school students with a hearing loss, preparing for their national finals. It’s goal is to highlight, review or emphasize, not cover a topic from “A to Z”.
I don’t know what exactly to call this course but setting the limits of how much material to put up for each of three groups (the exams are taken at three levels; 3 , 4 and 5 point level, a group for each one) is not a clear cut manner. I don’t know the students. I’ve taught Face-2-Face enrichment days for many years and I know the strongest students, the high achievers, are the ones who tend to show up (or in this case, sign up) for such things. So I want there to be enough material for them to find it challenging but not overwhelm them.
Then there’s the question of setting limits on how far to go to make the material special and attractive. I adore activities using photos and short films. I just saw the latest gem“Paperman” on Film English (6 min., no dialogue – perfect!) and my head is already buzzing, looking for a way to incorporate it into the course.
Yes, I haven’t finished preparing all three weeks for all three groups. Yes, I have spent HOURS on it. So who had the bright idea of having an enrichment course that spans three weeks?
Oh right. That was me!
Teaching English as a FOREIGN language to Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students
