Good News, ESL Literacy Teachers!

 I have good news. I asked myself, "Kelly, why are you stuck? You've created the outline and a lot of the script for a masterclass on making those activity packs. Why don't you just start, already?"

I realized the hangup was around making a video of myself talking. I don't think a lot of value will be lost if I just give you all a written tutorial, so that's what I've decided to do in order to get rolling. Instead of calling it a masterclass, we'll just call it a "how-to guide." Sound good?

More good news: once the video element was removed from the picture, my muse showed right up, and my creative juices started to gush. I've spend several hours over two weekends, and I'm almost done!

Yet MORE good news is that today in a webinar from the guys at Build It Yourself, I learned that Claude Cowork can be trained to do just this sort of thing (the activity packs) for you! Man, if I had had Claude back in 2016, I definitely would have shelled out $200 a year for the premium features. Those of you who are scared of AI should maybe just go get a cup of tea and come back in five minutes after the rest of us have finished chatting about this. ;) 

This is what Claude can do today: you give Claude two or three of my best activity packs to analyze. You tell Claude to package that set of routines into what is called a "skill." Then when you need a new activity pack, you just show Claude the new reader of the week and ask for the same type of activity pack using that new story. Now, I'm not positive Claude would do a flawless job today, but with a few iterations and refinement cycles, I think Claude would come very close if not nail it. Certainly within the next year, Claude will be able to do in 30 minutes what I'm about to teach you all how to do in my Activity Pack HOW TO course.

Man alive, $200 a year is not a lot of money when you're talking about being able to go to bed at a reasonable hour the rest of your teaching life. But I am not here to promote Anthropic. I'm here to say "stay tuned" because the instructions you asked for are coming very soon.

As if this isn't all enough great news, I can also report that a broken link finder searched through every single link on my website and identified the broken ones, which I then either deleted or fixed. Yay!

I hope you all are doing well and are surviving PBLA, if it still exists. As for me, I'm thriving in library work. I have a sweet boyfriend who is very nerdy and who treats me like the princess I am. My mom, in whose guest bedroom I still reside, is doing pretty well for someone who will turn 96 in December (Insh'allah). She can still be left alone while I work; she makes her own breakfast and lunch.

What are you up to? I miss you all and the field!

Update on Master Class and a new free resource

 Hello, ESL Literacy teachers!

Well, since announcing that I would create a master class to show new ESL literacy teachers how to build a module’s worth of activities around a Bow Valley College reader or LEA book, I slipped into a state of perpetual procrastination. I had even bought the special little mic that clips on your lapel and had downloaded the recommended open-source software that enables me to split the screen between a lovely talking head and a screenshot of a worksheet. Sigh. I really do want to create this free course. Maybe the email I got from a teacher today will light a fire under me and get me going again. I don’t want to over-promise and under-deliver again, though, so I won’t say more yet.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Meanwhile, here is a new resource that is free or maybe freemium. I checked it out. It reminds me a bit of English in Vancouver with its videos of people interacting in English. There is a gamified aspect to it that might appeal to some students. I’m not sure how much of these materials are appropriate for the earliest arrivals with lower literacy, so I encourage you to vet the resource well before using it with your learners.

Here is the description that was provided to me: 

Boston English Center offers 36 free beginner English lessons with videos, vocabulary, and interactive exercises covering everyday topics. Teachers can use them as supplementary classroom resources, and learners can practise independently. No registration or payment is required.

https://bostonenglishcenter.com/free-english-materials

Cheers!

Kelly

Those Elusive Bow Valley College ESL Literacy Readers

 Well, I never thought I'd be posting here again! No, I haven't returned to the field of teaching English. I do, however, continue to get inquiries, six years later, into the ESL literacy readers and the activity packs that I created to complement them. Everyone has been so very disappointed by Bow Valley College's decision to take them down or no longer host them on the web. That being said, they must still exist SOMEWHERE, even if that somewhere is on our old thumb drives. So, mission number one is to find them all and put them where they cannot ever again go missing. For me, that means downloading PDFs and providing download links on my website thejoyofesl.weebly.com.

The good news is that achev.ca seems to have made a place for the PDFs to reside, and on this Google Drive you can find slide packs of the same readers. Finding these resources again after thinking them all lost has been so exciting for me that I might even create activity packs for the rest of the readers, such as for Inge Cuts Hair.

The second reason I've come here to this blog today is to announce that I have been asked to come back to Canada to teach other teachers how to create the activity packs. Well, I see no need to hop on a plane in these post-pandemic times. We all know how to teach and conference virtually now.

So! Mission number two is for me to put together a masterclass, a series of very short videos explaining exactly how I did what I did to provide a week's worth of learning activities to go along with one of the readers or with a Language Experience Approach reader co-created by you and your learners.

If you see this post, please leave a comment.