What's on the Walls?

A member of my PLN, Cintia Costa, will be starting a new job this fall as an ESL literacy teacher. She asked me for ideas on decorating her classroom. There isn't enough room on this page for me to share all the ways I can think of for doing this. But I'll start a list of ideas with the hope that some of them will spark Cintia's imagination. Others can add more ideas in the comments.

Although this doesn't get you started on day one, I would say that having the students do the decorating is a wonderful way to make them feel at home and to instantly convey the notion that it is their class, their space. Their work is the focus; their work is valued.

Another thing to consider is whether you want stations, or want a classroom that can easily be reconfigured to accommodate learning stations (a table with iPads, a table with art supplies and paper, a table with letters that can be manipulated, a sand tray to help students with learning disabilities and kinaesthetic learners, a table with flashcards). I am a strong believer in self-paced, self-directed learning and think every school week should include at least one or two hours in which students choose their activity and pace--even if you have to narrow the choices down to only two: Puzzle or iPads? Peer reading circle or illustrating and colouring today's terms?

Each unit you teach will produce something that can be displayed on the walls.

Maria Margaritis incorporated students' colouring pages and stickers in a quiet alcove.

Students love to see their own work displayed on the wall. Everyone benefits from seeing what the other teams came up with. Our walls are a constantly changing gallery of learners' work.

When you succeed in creating a sense of community in your class, the learners will feel empowered to take over many tasks, such as throwing birthday parties for each other.

An alphabet line is invaluable. The many ways we use ours would take up an entire blog post. Try to find one whose illustrations are items that will be familiar and relevant to the learners (x-ray, not xylophone) and not babyish. You might even want learners to cut out their own pictures from magazines to create a custom alphabet line to laminate.

In one corner of my whiteboard, just under the day's date, I write any announcements, such as "Friday: no school." Students learn over time to keep an eye on that part of the board in order not to forget important events and information.

Students in my class also quickly learn that retrieving prior days' worksheets after an absence is their responsibility, not mine. I find that students of both my classes TRULY appreciate this system.

You may want to keep an easel chart at the front of the class for a list of words that you will revisit throughout that week's module.

Students remember the lexis when they have illustrated the new terms. These posters stay on our classroom walls for a week or two and then move to the computer lab for the rest of the school to see.

Some teachers post frequently needed phrases and gambits on a bulletin board, along the wall near the ceiling, or keep them at the ready for certain activities.

Some literacy instructors use word walls. For a while I had one poster for every vowel sound we learned to decode in CVC and vowel team patterns, but I found that over a period of a year or more, this system did not render much bang for our buck.

One thing I can think of that is really important to have on the wall is an exemplar of what the expectation is for a particular task. I put up a copy of the rubric or checklist we'll be using to measure success on a task as well as what success looks like. For example, this is uniform printing. This is not. These sentences each have a capital and period. These do not. And so on. (I seem to have lost the photo of my printing exemplar poster. Sorry!)

Oftentimes our walls are a reflection of what our classroom has become that week. Is it a doctor's office with magazines on a table in the waiting room? A family's dining room during Thanksgiving? A grocery store with aisle signs? A bus stop with schedule posted for weekdays and holidays?

One of the first activities Maria Margaritis did with her Foundations learners was on names of the colours. Their pastel creations soon covered one wall and instantly transformed a sterile little room into a safe and welcoming space.

From musical instruments to construction paper, from live plants to cooking utensils to cameras, the sky is the limit on what your learning space can contain. Cintia, I cannot wait to see what you do with your classroom as you and the learners form relationships and organically co-create the learning space and experience.

Ramping Up for PBLA

Hello!

Not sure where you all are in the PBLA process, if at all, but at my school we are just getting the training and starting our pilot modules soon. I'm open to any and all tips, suggestions, links, commiseration, encouragement, etc. that you are willing to send my way as I start off with my two classes on this exciting journey!

In my morning class of eleven Chinese, three Iraqi and one Syrian senior (over 55), I am gently introducing the concepts of goal setting and reflection. This week will be our first time to write out our individual and group goals for the module. We want our goals to be SMART goals: SPECIFIC, MEASURABLE, ATTAINABLE, REALISTIC AND TIME-BOUND.

I'll let you know how it goes!

In my afternoon class, which is literacy (one Foundations learner and the rest Phase I), we have just done our needs assessment for the term via sticker voting.

learners have voted for our first four topics

For goal-setting, I am going to rely heavily on Svetlana Lupasco's resources that she was kind enough to post on her blog Teach2LearnESL. She blogged about goal-setting with literacy learners HERE, and offered up samples for free download HERE.

Many of the teachers at my centre seem to have the same challenge right now: finding really good resources to guide students through goal setting. The best I've found so far is in the PBLA Best Practices - Resources document.

How about you? For those of you further along in the PBLA journey, do you have tips for those of us just starting?

Addressing My Frustrations

I love my morning class. This group of about eleven Mandarin speakers and four Arabic speakers--all over the age of 55--is the light of my life.

And they constantly express to me how happy they are with their class, especially since we've overcome the Chinese students' reluctance to participate fully in needs assessments and what I call classroom democracy. No, they are over that. Now they boss me around, which is wonderful. They adore their little English class that I tailor to their expressed needs.

And yet...

I don't feel I am helping them nearly as much as I could be or should be. Before I get into what isn't working, let me share...

Some things that ARE working: 

• Through a 'Back to the Well' approach, I can provide lots of rich 'affordances,' meaningful encounters with the same lexis so that their brains can latch on, integrate, build connections for long-term retention of new language.
• With regard to pronunciation, by focusing more on prosody (stress, rhythm and linking) rather than on segmentals, we are noticing an improvement in intelligibility.
• I make compromises which allow Asian students to indulge in habits left over from their upbringing in a teacher-centred academic culture, such as providing all handouts at least one day before they are to be used (students can go to town with their electronic dictionaries the night BEFORE the lesson).

I'm ashamed to admit that after three years with this group, however, I'm just now starting to wrap my head around what isn't working. My students, with a couple of exceptions, are NOT meeting their stated goal of increased social integration. They are not becoming risk takers. They are not breaking their addiction to the little gadgets. They are not practicing English outside the classroom, nor even at break time. In fact, a recent speaking/listening assessment that came on the tail end of two plus weeks of preparation for it left me crestfallen.

The task seemed simple enough to me. Start a conversation with a stranger. We practiced and practiced. We paired up with each other in every conceivable way in order to get ready for this test. We used photos as cues and role played these scenarios ad nauseum. The test had a few criteria, which we went over ahead of time, pulling up the rubric on the projector board. One of the criteria involved strategic competence. 

"I will use a word you don't know," I warned them. "You will be expected to use the strategies we've been learning in order to repair the communication breakdown."

The Arabic speakers had no issue with the task. When they entered the room to be assessed and saw me hit the RECORD button on the iPad then point to the photo of the neighbour shovelling out a driveway buried under a foot of snow, they chatted me up charmingly. When I used the word squalls to see if they could recover from encountering an unknown term, they used effective strategies.

The Mandarin speakers, on the other hand, floundered. The fact that they can ace grammar tests blindfolded with hands tied behind their backs isn't doing them much good if they can't carry on a simple conversation with a smiling stranger at the bus stop, especially in light of their stated GOALS. Sigh.

So! (This is where you, dear reader, come in.) I need a new attack. I'm going to try to find everything I can find on two topics, to start with: teaching strategic competence and teaching English to Chinese students specifically. I've already found one scholarly article online indicating that being raised in a culture steeped in Confucianism can indeed hobble an ESL student in some aspects of their ESL progress. Fascinating stuff.

One thing I may do is give them the Strategic Inventory for Language Learning. This might help raise their awareness of weak areas while showing me where we need to focus more of our energies. 

Can you help me out? Can you give me ideas and suggestions and paste into the comments area links to every resource you know of that could help me build a different and more effective curriculum for this special demographic of ESL learners in the new year? I need help!

The Box

Do you ever find yourself running back to the photocopy machine for one more copy of a handout for that student who is returning after one or more days absent?

I never do.

During my TESL training in Toronto, I observed how my second practicum mentor kept an 8.5" by 11" cardboard box in one corner of the room. She put extra copies of worksheets in there, and students returning after an absence knew to look in there for any materials they had missed.

I've taken that system one step further. To ensure disorganized students don't inadvertently double dip, I always make the exact number of copies needed for my class and write the names of absentees at the top of their worksheets. The responsibility falls to the student to look in the box before class upon his or her return.

I love how this practice minimizes classroom disruption and allows us to get on with the task at hand: learning English!

How about you? Do you do something similar in your classes?

What did YOU teach this week?

Having a bad cold is really no excuse. If you want to build readership of a blog, you need to stick to the promised schedule and post regularly. So I apologize.

The fact is that I had hoped to publish a post about tackling pronunciation in the ESL classroom, but the post grew so long that I'll now have to publish it in two instalments. I'm still working on it. In the meantime, why don't I just tell you what I taught this past week and which resources I found most useful?

My morning class asked to learn how to shop online. I used the English for Financial Literacy documents by the Toronto Catholic District School Board found on the Settlement.org wiki. The volume for CLB 3-5 was VERY helpful.

I also found a presentation on Decoda.ca called Shopping and Banking Safely Online, which fit our needs perfectly.

One student began using Amazon.ca as a result of what we learned during this week-long unit. However, they chose to get into a different (though connected) topic next: how to get and use a credit card.

My afternoon (LINC Literacy) class had just finished a week of learning some language to R/W/L and speak about food staples. Our second week of the FOOD unit was spent setting up the classroom just like Food Basics--our only supermarket in the downtown core. After learning shopping vocabulary such as shopping bag, shopping cart, list, aisle, frozen, canned, fresh, dairy, meat and produce, we practiced short dialogues.

For example, this was a chain drill that snaked around the class, with A holding a plastic bag and B holding a reusable bag.

A:  Do you need a bag?

B:  No, thank you. I have a bag.

We also practiced:

A:  Excuse me, where is the _______?

B:  It's on aisle ____.  (Or: It's at the back; it's in dairy; it's next to the milk; it's at the front, etc.)

A:  Thanks.

B:  No problem.

After a tour of the store, students set off in teams of three to complete a scavenger hunt. Each team had a different set of items and prices to find.  The T.A. and I took pictures of the field trip so as to be able to put the photos into a Language Experience Approach booklet. The students will add the language then learn to read it fluently over the course of a week.

I am really looking forward to the week preceding Thanksgiving. We will use the items we purchased at the supermarket to make a pumpkin pie. Yum!

What did you do with your class(es) this week?

Free Library Resource

When our newest teacher asked me the other day for a copy of the "Using the Public Library" worksheets, puzzle pieces, and unit plan that has been passed around among several of my colleagues since I developed it, I was surprised to find that I'd never posted it with other freebies on my website. That was probably because it included a transcript of an audio lesson I did not have permission to replicate or upload. So I've deleted that part, making the whole thing sharable under a Creative Commons license.

Literacy student using her new card

Literacy students comparing borrowed items

Now is a great time to plan a field trip with your students to the closest library branch. At my school, we're fortunate enough to be within easy walking distance to the main branch. I take my literacy class there each spring and fall, avoiding the walk during the broiling hot and bitterly cold months.

A unit plan and photocopiable materials for CLB 3 and up are under FREE RESOURCES - Settlement Themes - Community and Government Services. For literacy level, we spend a couple of weeks skill-building, then write a Language Experience Approach story around our trip, which we learn to read during the week following the field trip.

How about you? Do you take your class to the library to teach them how to access resources and get a free borrower's card? If you do, I really hope these materials are useful to you. Please leave a comment if they are.

Free Language Activities for iPad Lesson

Hello!

This coming week I will be introducing both my morning and afternoon classes to the iPad. Among the students in my multi-level seniors' class, two of them own or can borrow an iPad from a family member. Those who don't have access to one often gather curiously around the iPad users. They are eager to learn about this tool in so as to decide whether purchasing one would be a worthwhile investment.

I have developed some worksheets to get our week started and have put the language activity pack on my FREE RESOURCES - COMPUTER page for you to download. As usual, the resource is a Word document, which allows you to easily edit and tailor for your learners. As our week progresses, I will get a feel for what is working well, what additional resources we need, where they want more focus, etc.  So I will go back into that activity pack and add, correct any errors we discover, etc. If you find any problems with it or have suggestions for enhancements, feel free to leave a comment.

In my afternoon (literacy) class, I have been using one iPad with the newest student for about two weeks. I am amazed at how her self-directed, self-paced practice with the app iWrite Words has trained her to form each letter of the alphabet perfectly. With this app, you have to trace each capital and each small letter with your finger or stylus. If you try to write any stroke backward or out of order, it won't let you proceed. You have to follow the little crab fellow (or is it a ladybug?) as it leads you through the strokes.  Having spent about three hours per week for two weeks using this application, the new students now models wonderful penmanship when she comes up to the board to fill in a blank. I am impressed!

I am thinking that we will do something like stations to introduce a handful of classroom apps. I could ask each partnership to familiarize themselves with one of six applications. Then we can do an "each one teach one" activity in which one partner stays at the station to teach others who visit that station. At halftime, I can ring the bell, at which point the itinerant student returns to his/her station, becoming a teacher and allowing the formerly stationary student to travel around to learn about the other apps.

I have uploaded a nascent iPad language activity pack for literacy learners to the FREE RESOURCES - COMPUTER page back on my website for you to download and enjoy with your class. I will be shaping, improving and adding to it this week as learners give me feedback.

What are your ideas for other activities I can facilitate around the iPad? 

Thanks for visiting my blog. I hope you'll leave a comment, even if it's just to tell me whether the snow has yet melted where you are. ;)

****

P.S. Check out my WORKSHOPS page. I am excited to announce that I'll be facilitating a webinar in May on creating a blog for the ESL literacy classroom. I especially want to encourage teachers who are not terribly comfortable with technology to give this webinar a shot. We are going to take it slow and easy, step by step.

What Does Learner Autonomy Mean?

Thanks to Svetlana Lupasco, I have recently discovered the weekly Twitter forum #ELTCHAT. The first time I tried to join the conversation, I forgot that my Twitter settings did not allow anyone but my followers to see my tweets. No wonder nobody responded to anything I contributed. They weren't being rude; they couldn't "hear" me.

The following Wednesday morning, I forgot about it. But I was able to use Nurph's play-back feature to see everything that had been said.  I believe the topic was learner autonomy, and the entire conversation got me to pondering: what does learner autonomy mean?

I mulled over the question as I went about my teaching week. A varied number of scenarios prompted me to ask myself, "Isn't that autonomy?"

I asked myself that question while teaching my literacy class. As I often do when the teaching assistant isn't available and the topic and vocabulary are too difficult for my newest student, I offered her one of the school's iPads. She smiled, put the earphones on, tapped the icon for her favourite phonics app, and spent the next hour in self-paced practice of short vowel words. Then she did something she had never done before: took out a pencil and began copying the words from the iPad screen into her notebook.

The question silently revisited me in the same class on Friday during BINGO when a taciturn student rose from her chair and took the bowl full of bingo words from me, motioning for me to take a seat at her desk. The week prior had been the first time I had invited her to be caller. I guess she'd liked it!

But the question most loudly resounded in my mind when one of the students in my class of fourteen senior citizens told me that she had started a petition asking our orientation department for free bus tickets for all the seniors during the winter months. She told me that senior citizens shouldn't have to brave the icy sidewalks to come to school, nor should they have to stay home and miss class on days when the conditions are brutal.

This story amazed me for a number of reasons.

For one, there is the fact that when these students first came to our centre, trying to get them to participate in what I call classroom democracy was like pulling teeth. But gradually they have begun to give responses to my incessant invitations to help shape the curriculum, such as the request that resulted in my adopting the 'Back to the Well' ideas of John and Chirawibha Sivell.

The second thing that made this so surprising to me was the fact that they didn't come to me with this need, but organized the petition on their own.

This incident seems to be part of a larger trend with them. The more comfortable we become with one another, the more we bond and build a culture of collaboration, the more they take matters into their own hands. Case in point: they recently organized a pre-winter-break party (complete with programmed speeches, food and entertainment), and they did so entirely without input or help from me.

On a recent TESL Ontario Blog post called The Power of Disorientation, I responded to the question of what we do to empower our students by saying that I tend not to compartmentalize and say that this activity empowered while that lesson didn't. Everything I do, including smiling warmly to encourage small acts of independence like Say Say's claiming the helm on BINGO day, is designed to empower. Whether we are learning to read a bus schedule, to talk to the doctor, to use an ATM, whether we are building together the rubrics against which we will grade our own essays or are using CLEO materials to learn about our rights as employees and tenants, we are working on autonomy. That's how I see it, anyway.

How about you?

How do you define autonomy? Is it something you think consciously about, or something you weave into your teaching quite naturally? Is it something real, or is it, as one #ELTCHATter mused, just a buzzword?