“I was prepared to dislike Max Kelada even before I knew him”.

W. Somerset Maugham’s opening sentence of the story “Mr. Know All’ is crystal clear.

This is a story dealing with prejudices.

I should be saying:

“Great, Naomi. You already have a pre-reading task ready on “being too quick to judge”, go prepare something else for the upcoming school year”.

I try to convince myself:

“You even posted about the importance of focusing on the central idea of the story in the pre-reading task, including a quote from a reading expert! Move on!” (Shifting the focus of pre-reading tasks, August 2018)

But I can’t.

Look at the next sentence:

“The war had just finished and the passenger traffic in the ocean-going liners was heavy”.

The war in question is World War 1.

You may think that it doesn’t really matter that my Deaf and hard-of-hearing students haven’t a clue as to when that war ended (some are a bit surprised that there was a WW1 even though the numbering should have been a clue…) but it actually matters a great deal.

For starters, if I don’t emphasize the time frame my students cannot fathom why the characters are spending two weeks on a ship instead of hopping on a plane, spending their time ignoring the other passengers.

There would be no drama without the journey on the ship.

But then my students get the whole issue of nationalities mixed up.

And it all comes up in the first paragraph.

The narrator was traveling from San Francisco to Yokohama

My students assume the narrator was American (once we ensure everyone knows where these cities are located…) because who else travels from San Francisco?

After my students have already jumped to conclusions it’s much harder for them to internalize the information about the British Empire and who is or isn’t a real “British Gentleman”.

“… I should have looked upon it with less dismay if my fellow passenger’s name had been Smith or Brown.”

Those surnames do not indicate any nationality at all to my students…

In short, I created a new slideshow.

While there are a few spaces where students are required to fill in the missing information (“look it up, students!!), this is not a task meant to be completed independently, without teacher involvement.

While difficult vocabulary items can be glossed, setting the stage for the story is crucial.

Now I can work on updating the glossary…

Here is the slideshow.

Pre Reading Mr Know All.

There aren’t many authentic opportunities for a teacher in the school system to truly model seeing mistakes as an opportunity for growth and improvement.

You know what I’m talking about.

We teachers are always being told that we should teach the students to try, fail, and learn from their mistakes.

To view mistakes as a learning opportunity.

Important, right?

A truly important message for my Deaf and hard-of-hearing high school students learning English as a foreign language.

Yet we are expected to get this message across in a school system geared toward good grades and “getting it right”. A system in which the students trust me to know the material I am teaching them well.

So how do I show my students, at least occasionally, in an authentic way,  how I make mistakes, try to understand what went wrong, and try again? And again and again?

EUREKA!

Fast forward to the day after our recent annual national sports tournament day, for schools with programs for Deaf and hard-of-hearing students from around the country.

We’re back at school.

One 10th grade student catches me coming down the stairs on the way to the classroom:

(No hello first…)

” Why didn’t you take a picture of me when I was ‘doing’ the penalty kick?!! The teacher of the other school took pictures of her students! I saw you with the camera by the football field!”

The second 10th-grade student said “Hello” and “Good Morning”. And then (more politely)  wanted to know why I only sent her one photograph of herself at the netball game,  (standing still!) when she clearly saw me taking lots of pictures of her during the first part of the game.

Both students got the same candid reply:

“You know, I’m trying to learn artistic photography with a real camera (as opposed to a cell phone camera) and it was really hard for me to take pictures when you were moving so fast. Most of my photos were awful. You still have two more years at the high school. I hope you participate in lots of school events and I’ll keep trying. Maybe in the future, I’ll succeed in taking a good picture of you”.

Their reactions?

The “net-ball girl” – “Okay, I’ll be competing again. You keep practicing and try again. I got one picture, that’s a good start”.

The “soccer boy” – “Well, I’m not blaming you but if it’s hard you should practice. Maybe next year you’ll do better”.

Maybe I will take better photos of sports events and other school activities next year.

Maybe I won’t.

Either way, bringing my camera will work out well!

Additional notes:

• I ALSO told the “soccer boy” that I got hit by a soccer ball kicked directly at my leg while standing by the field, which didn’t encourage me to stick around. He didn’t really find that detail relevant… A true photographer doesn’t let small discomforts get in his/her way, right?
• One of the few “action photographs” I do have from the girls’ netball game is actually a funny one of a boy who barged in during the warmup time and caught the ball! You aren’t going to see it though – I don’t post pictures of my students anywhere online.

Ping: “Oh Pong, listen to this! I’ve got a new idea for the next school year. Let’s use…”

Pong (interrupting):  Now hold it right there. Did you just say a new idea? As in a NEW IDEA? Weren’t you the teacher complaining about feeling overwhelmed and tired?

Ping: That was me…

Pong: So convince me why I should even LISTEN to this new idea when you can stick with what you already have. Go ahead, let’s see what you can come up with.

Ping: It doesn’t require much teacher preparation time.

Pong: Not bad. Keep going.

Ping: Making small changes, even “tweaks” to the routine always boosts my work-related motivation level, and I really need some of that after this school year.

And the students might learn something…

Pong: Okay, okay, good points. Let’s hear the new idea.

Ping: You see, we’ll have “Grammar Pens” to… (Pong interrupts)

Pong: Wait a minute. “Grammar Pencils” are “A THING”. You can Google them and find sites to purchase them from. Those pencils have confusing grammar points on them, such as “to, two & too” or “there, their and they’re”. Are you already planning out-of-pocket purchases for the English Room?!!

PIng: No, no, calm down. Absolutely not. This idea was just inspired by those products. Our students prefer pens and purchasing things like pencils makes no sense as they aren’t made for long-term use.

Pong: Whew… (sighs in relief).

Ping: You know those students who never bring a pen to class? I once read that in such cases a student should leave something of his/hers until the pen is returned at the end of the lesson. Such a method would be problematic to implement with some of our Deaf and hard-of-hearing adolescents (I don’t what anyone taking off their belt, for example!). However,  I thought that perhaps I could still turn the situation into an educational experience.

So, before I let them use one of the English Room pens, they will have to tell me what the difference is between your/you’re,   its/it’s,  have/has, etc. I can add confusing vocab items such as long/no longer too.

Pong: What happens if they don’t know the answer?

Ping: We do what we always do, unrelated to this particular idea – I tell the student, and then the student has to tell it back to me.

Pong: How are you going to emboss/ engrave the target words onto the pens?

Ping:  I’M NOT!  Even if I knew how to do such a thing I wouldn’t.  It’s the same principle that holds true for playing board games in EFL lessons – you don’t want the target item to appear in a fixed place. On a board game, if an instruction or a vocabulary item is written in the top left corner, the students quickly memorize what they need to say or do when they reach that corner, and stop reading the words written.  If the words are permanently on “the red pen”, or the “large pen”, the students will just use such cues to retrieve an answer without focusing on the words written.  The cards can’t have numbers on them, for the same reason.

I’ll place a little box with the target words on cards beside our pen holder.  Easy to shuffle cards or pull out ones that are below/above a certain student’s level.  You get a lot more repetition with cards, compared to “fixed words”.

Take a card, respond, get a pen – easy peasy!

I can use it with the highlighters/colored markers too!

Pong: If you’ve got all that worked out, why did you call me in? I usually only show up when there’s a problem.

Ping: (Sighs in regret)* There is a problem.

Actually, there are two problems.

Pong: Start with the easier problem.

Ping: It’s a learning center, so not all the students are doing the same thing. If a student began the lesson working on the computer, and then went on to something else, he/she may ask for a pen in the middle of the lesson, not at the beginning…

At the moment they just go over to the table and take one without my involvement.

Pong: Hmmm… What’s the other problem?

Ping: What about the students who ALWAYS bring their pens, pencils, erasers, dictionaries, markers, and anything else they might possibly need for the lesson?

They need to practice these items too…

Pong: Why don’t you ask your readers for advice? Maybe they can offer suggestions.

Do you have any suggestions for me to consider?

____________________________________________

• Can you guess which poem I have been teaching recently, yet again?

See, Mom?

Here is the list of words for middle school that the English teacher told all the parents about when you came to school.  The teacher gave us the list too.

The teacher  gave us a challenge:

Find as many words from the list as we can, in our computer games.

We add the words to a shared online document – see how many words we found today?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fx5OGLYvR_oTRD-C06GinG_VRSRqWY22PCK3AvmLt3A/edit?usp=sharing

Now I’m looking for screenshots of words in the games.

Look! I found a few already.

Now, Mom, I have to call some friends. They have different computer games than I do.

I want to hear what they found.

• The list linked to in the post is a “work in progress” and will be updated! Note my comments in red  – the difference between “fresh” and “refresh” leads to a discussion of the prefix “re”!
• If you and your students find additional words or create a list of your own, please link to it in the comment section, so we may all use it!
• I’d love to hear about discussions you had or activities you prepared based on the connection between computer games and the “Band Lists”. Tell us about them in the comment section!

This post is a direct continuation of my previous post:

BUT SERIOUSLY, EFL STUDENTS, MEETING A COW WILL HELP YOU PREPARE FOR YOUR EXAMS!

In that post, I explained how the gaps in struggling students’ general knowledge about the world hinder their performance on reading comprehension tasks regularly.

“The gaps in general knowledge are most striking when it comes to texts related to environmental issues.  There are many such texts in our practice books and exams.”

Well, the amount of trash/debris cluttering up outer space is also an environmental issue. It’s time to push the boundaries of the students’ world knowledge and help them visualize the topic.

But first, a quick detour.

I began this “general knowledge project” with the video about cows and the environment (see aforementioned previous post) adding captions on a website called veed.io.

It really wasn’t particularly challenging to add captions using this website!

Video number two, on the topic of wild animals moving into the city also worked when using the site, despite its length. The site allows you to “chop off” a bit! My students were interested in the topic despite the fact the video is longer than the one about the cows. A few of them even had stories of animal sightings to share. I shared a picture of a jackal that I had taken, too.

Here is the original video. I’ve added a link to the captioned version (Hebrew captioning) below.

This is a link to a slightly shortened version of the video with Hebrew captioning. The captions have been edited for length and clarity.

https://www.veed.io/view/38f0c2fe-8513-4db2-9864-e879c8cfd9a0

Now, back to outer space…

The same captioning site did not work well with the video below. The helpful captioning in English on the original  (which I think is good for learners, regardless of the status of their hearing) is large and appears in different places on different scenes.

More importantly…

The topic of space debris and the dangers it poses when hurtling around outer space is much more complex and includes more terminology than the previous videos did.

It’s much easier to take in the clear visuals and read the text properly when you stop the video frequently.

But who wants to stop a video frequently on their own initiative? Especially if viewed in class?

Fortunately, I have a  wonderful 10th-grade computer whiz volunteering in my classroom – Amitay Merhav. Amitay translated the captions and spent time trying different captioning options to find one that works for my students.

For this video, we decided to use Edpuzzle, which I used to use intensively, but haven’t done so in recent years.

In this viewing mode, you see the English captions first, then the Hebrew version, and then the video stops completely until you hit the  “continue” button.

In short, the viewer controls the pace.

Captions in any language can be added this way.

Or questions about the text.

When the video stops there is time to think.

Here is the original video. The link to the version with Hebrew captioning, the one with the pauses, appears below.

Here’s the link to the captioned video:

https://edpuzzle.com/media/61bf18b89b9e1c4304b36977

If you have any suitable videos to suggest, please do so in the comments. It would be great to have a video library of visuals related to common topics in course books and on exams!