Fall Equinox

Tomorrow is the fall equinox.

New England Aster

I don't have anything to say this week, so I want to pose a question or conversation prompt.

Would each reader share a favourite classroom activity with other readers?

I'll start.

In my literacy class, I especially like forming small reading circles with one strong reader in each group. I circulate the whole time and am often beckoned to one group or other to clarify the pronunciation of a word. We usually don't attempt such peer-supported reading groups until the class has been reading the same book for two full days. This past week we read Sado Goes to School, a reader from Bow Valley College School of Global Access. I love watching students help each other.

In seniors class, we have a new activity we are trying out for the first time, and it's Show and Tell. Yes, I admitted to them that I stole the idea from my kindergarten teacher, but added that I think it's very transferable to an adult classroom. I started it off by bringing in a sewing project I'd accomplished over the summer: a fanny pack. A student followed suit by passing around photos of the biggest fish he caught over the summer; he reported having pulled a 10-pound channel catfish out of the Detroit River!

I started a new page of our classroom blog called "Show and Tell Gallery." I'll be posting photos there as the students take turns with this new idea.

Okay, YOUR TURN!

Everything Old is New Again

Miracle of miracles, my prayers have been answered. I had been dreading returning to work. I was, as any regular reader knows, racking my brain trying to come up with a way to make teaching fun again as I hit the middle of my tenth year at this job, almost all of which have been spent teaching the same two classes. Two students in my seniors class just remarked that they have been with me since 2013!

I am not sure exactly which lifestyle change to credit for this (though I have an idea), but when I stepped back into the classroom on September ninth, it just felt new. I'm feeling a renewed capacity ot be in the moment, be in Flow. I've got my old excitement and energy back.

I've been doing a lot of work on myself in Jungian analysis AND have also begun medically prescribed and monitored treatment of my Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder with CBD oil. That only started September 1, so it's a bit early to know if my new and improved outlook and uncharacteristic ability to let things roll off me is the oil or just the usual summer chill not yet worn off. I'll be sure to let everyone know in a few weeks.

This week was all about the needs assessment. My literacy class is almost FULL right now. I hope it stays that way. There is such wonderful energy with a group of around ten that just isn't there when numbers drop below eight. As they were milling around on Wednesday asking each other, "What do you want to study?" while recording classmates' answers on the peer survey forms, it occurred to me that there is no classroom chaos quite as sweet as peer survey chaos in a literacy class.

The new guy, F, is policing his classmates since I admonished them for trying to "cheat" by simply shoving their papers under each other's noses for names to be copied. I told them they have to ask, "How do you spell your name" and have to listen as a classmate does so. I hear them correcting each other and patiently repeating: No J, G. No E, A. They are negotiating meaning! This is what I live for.

peer survey chaos

Also this week we received a reminder from the PBLA lead to get "About Me" sections in order in all student binders. One of the items on the checklist says: inventory sheet filled out and dated by students, not by teacher. Well, let me tell you about that. When it comes to the four skills sections of the binders, my literacy learners do fill those out in their own hand. Each Tuesday, which is task pass-back day, we all open our binders together to the correct section. I put all the info on the board and everyone copies. It takes a long time, longer for some than for others, but we patiently wait until everyone has it.

But for the About Me section, that would have meant having them copy phrases like "program agreement" and "conference report." They would have had to copy six lines of such words that are not level appropriate. So I just made an executive decision to rebel against that one little aspect of my PBLA lead's directive. Literacy learners in my class do not have to copy those six lines of big words onto the inventory sheet for the About Me section. I pre-printed it onto the sheet for them. I added a note to any future auditor regarding my small act of rebellion.

How about you? How was your week?

Open Thread - Summer Miscellany

I love that you guys feel comfortable enough here to ask for what you want. A comment came in from a reader:

Hi Kelly, 

I just had an idea. I'm wondering what you think of setting up an open summer "forum-like thread" on your blog . People could discuss whatever they like, including PBLA (let's face it, probably PBLA). Just a summer miscellany. I see it as a place that would be easy to find (no need to search through all the other topics and posts to see what people have to say). What do you think? 

Interested in what people are thinking/experiencing/discovering about PBLA

That's easy enough! Feel free, everyone, to pull up a Muskoka chair and share what's on your mind lately.

On Summer Break

I'm taking a break from posting on this blog for the summer. The end of this semester found me closer to burnout than I've ever felt before. I have GOT to find a way to make it fresh for myself again. But if a change is as good as a rest, an actual rest is even better, and I welcome this one.

a watercolour by Dottie Morrissey, my mother

On teacher-student conference day, I received a bit of a boost to my tired soul. Several students in my morning (seniors) class expressed appreciation for my teaching style, my patience and kindness, and the topics we were able to explore in depth. I had though that my module on diagnostic imaging had dragged on too long and that it had, in the end, been too dry and too difficult. But several students said they are glad I did not abandon it when some students could be heard moaning toward the end (okay, actually just one student who is given to audible yawns except on days when she gets her way) because they felt that by the end of the enormous module, they had reaped many benefits in the form of stronger communication skills and retention of key vocabulary. One man said he is so glad that he can now read any requisition form. ***BOOST***

One student said she found the courage to go to a medical appointment by herself for the first time since her arrival in Canada many years ago. She felt confident explaining her symptoms to the doctor and understood much of what was said to her. ***BOOST***

Even though I was feeling like a failure because I had not managed my usual morning smile or pep in my step during the last weeks, several students gushed about my pleasant nature and how I always greet them with a smile. One woman, alone with me for the meeting and the door shut for privacy, grasped my two hands and broke down in tears because she's getting her citizenship and won't be back in our class this September. Our class had been there for her when her husband died. Joining our class saved her from being alone all day in her apartment with her overwhelming grief. ***BOOST***

This sort of feedback helps, but I am still desperately in need of rest. We pour our hearts and souls into this work, but self-care needs to come first.

This summer I am cutting way back on the things I usually do so that I can concentrate on two things that have taken higher priority. One of those priorities is spending time with my mom, who will turn 89 at the end of this year. She is far more active than I am with neighbours who drop in for her hospitality once a week, artists with whom she generously shares her outdoor art pavilion, and shows in which she enters her work. She is my best friend, my soul mate. I cannot fathom life on this planet without her, but I know that even with the longevity that runs in the family, every moment counts these days. We have two visits planned this summer; first I'll go to her and then she'll come to me.

The second priority is a project that should result in a new resource that could be used across Canada as well as in public schools--if I can pull it off!

How about you? Are you working or off this summer? Will you have a chance to rest and recharge at all?

The New Disconnect

Another semester is drawing to a close where I teach. Word on the street is that IRCC will be sending an auditor around to check our students' binders in June. Although the new PBLA guidelines prohibit the PBLA lead from coming round and checking my students' binders, there is nothing stopping my employer from simply shifting this task to the manager, which they have done.

There are two things that happen every five to six months at the school where I teach: 1) the end of one school semester and beginning of the next, marked by progress reports and student-teacher conferences and 2) performance evaluations of teachers by their manager culminating in the completion of a performance review and manager-teacher conference.

To get ready for the first of these semiannual rituals, artifacts, however you wish to spell that word, are tallied. During the semester, I enter every assessment--skill using or real-world task--into an Excel spreadsheet along with a mark that allows me to see whether the student received a beginning, developing or achieved score, or was absent. Calling on skills I acquired over years in clerical and quasi-technical roles, I have written formulas to do the math for me. It often feels as if I am becoming as much a statistician as language teacher. Having this tracking tool makes short work of the end-of-semester progress reports that we all must prepare. Some students will have collected enough artifacts--most of them successful--to have a benchmark changed in HARTs; others will not. In any case, it is the responsibility of the teacher to have provided students with about two "assessment opportunities" per skill per month.

As for the second of these twice-yearly protocols, the one I underwent last week marked the half-way point of my employment year. It is a time to check in with my manager regarding some non-negotiable goals tied to the IRCC contract and other goals that I was allowed to choose for myself from a list of the organization's core values.

Did I file all my reports on time? Yes, every month for the past nine years, my reports have been filed within 3 days of being due, and usually early. Are they slapdash reports? No. They have been held up as exemplary to newer employees.

Am I executing PBLA as mandated? Yes, my afternoon class was administered 32 assessments, all but one of them having been concluded before the onset of Ramadan.

How am I doing on my chosen value of "innovation?" Knocking that one out of the park, I'd say. Self development? Developing others? All my ratings were either satisfactory or 'excels.'

And yet...

Having brought one binder from each of my two classes to this meeting, I discovered alongside my manager that my wonderful student A, who worked for the federal government of her home country in a scientific role, had items in her "About Me" section that were not perfectly in the same order as listed on the inventory sheet. (This is the class that has been officially excused from "doing" PBLA, by the way; I have voluntarily done some PLBA with them just to keep abreast of how to do so with a higher level class should I ever need to dust off my resume and apply for LINC work elsewhere).

And so that is the goal assigned to me for the second six-month period: check every student binder, even if it means dedicating teaching assistant time to that, in order to ensure that every single paper filed in the binder is in perfect order according to the inventory sheet.

I know that this new manager is just doing her job. I know that she has already gotten an earful of how I feel about this, and I know that I've already received her pep talk about keeping it positive, especially in team meetings, more times than I can count. With a weak smile, I thank my manager for her time, sign the form, return to my classroom.

Driving home, I am already dreaming of the hours I can spend on a new project that has no connection to my next performance review. Once upon a time my passion and energy were connected to what happens in my classroom. Now there is a disconnect.

Few people seemed to understand why I posted the clip of the movie Cool Hand Luke, the scene in which he is made to dig and fill and re-dig and re-fill the same hole in the ground. The most demoralizing thing in the world is being forced to do something in which you see no value, no meaning. It's especially demeaning if you think the task you are being forced to perform is COUNTERPRODUCTIVE to your students' wellbeing.

How about you? Is your school year coming to a close or do you work through the summer months? Are you able to find meaning in your work?

Spring Fever

The tulips in my yard are opening, the peonies are just starting to unfurl their shiny new leaves, and the grape hyacinth is in bloom along my driveway. My boyfriend loves seeking out the ephemeral wildflowers in the woods this time of year. I am a birder who enjoys catching the migrating warblers as they pass through as well as ticking off new species on my fern and wildflower checklists. Today he got Trout Lily, Red Trillium, White Trillium, and Spring Beauty while I craned my neck at the budding canopy where Yellow-rumped, Black-throated Green, Black-throated Blue, and other warblers foraged.

photo by Grant Segall

At school, there is something in the air. Teachers can be overheard counting the weeks until summer break. In the hallways, I have seen more than one huddle around a crying student. Is it the sudden crunch of assessments and knowledge that there's only so much time left to make the grade?

With each April, the world is made to feel new again. After nine years in the same job--four years longer than I've ever stayed with the same organization or position--I'm struggling to find ways to make it feel fresh. I'm very fortunate that half my teaching day is spent with seniors; they are always open to adventure. To keep things from feeling stale, I rely on a steady stream of topics that are intriguing not only to the students but also to me. Each comes with the possibility of a guest speaker or field trip.

Last week the seniors and I hopped on a city bus and visited our local hospice for a tour. And no, my school does not receive any funds for field trips. We were able to go because every single student owns a bus pass. I paid my $6 round-trip fare from my pocket.

At the bus terminal

Another thing I do to make old topics feel novel, aside from leading field trips and hosting guest speakers, is to expand on or enhance previously used materials. This week, for example, I jazzed up a module on Vitamin D and calcium with a trivia game for the traditionally lighter fifth day of the school week. If you are using a lesson pack on calcium and vitamin D from the OPH-OCDSB Collaborative Team via Tutela.ca, you are welcome to download my trivia game cards from https://www.kellymorrissey.com/health-and-medical.html.

Literacy class is even more prone to feeling repetitive. In the back corner of the room stands the same grey file cabinet I've had for nine years. The second drawer holds all my literacy materials: master copies of handouts, picture flashcards, and all those matching games that took hours of early morning time to cut out and paper clip together for up to five pairs of students. So, as with seniors class, to keep myself from going mad, I find ways to make each iteration of the same module a bit different.

This past week the afternoon students were learning about minimum wage with the Laws About Pay materials from Community Legal Education Ontario (CLEO). I'm happy to say that all but one of my students will be moving to the mainstream CLB 1 class in September, as they can now handle level one work such as this booklet from CLEO. This time around, I added a listening activity that brought in both numeracy and map skills by quickly grabbing a copyright-free colouring page from the internet.

First I led them through colouring the water so that it was easier to see where land ended and water began. We talked about the wiggly lines (coast) versus the straight lines (international border). Since Windsor is a border town, they easily got the idea that the straight line along the "bottom" of Canada is the U.S.A. After colouring the provinces and territories, which I hope will strengthen their growing ability to identify provinces and territories, I turned the map into a worksheet for a listening quiz. With a list of Canada's minimum wage amounts in front of me, I first had a strong student come to the board and write in the dollar amount as I dictated "Alberta's minimum wage is $15 an hour." He got it right. I then called on the second strongest student to write in an amount on another province. After three more demonstrations, I had everyone copy these five amounts onto their maps. I then dictated the last eight dollar amounts to the whole class as each student listened and pencilled in the remaining dollar amounts on their maps.

How about you? Do you have spring fever? Have you been teaching the same level for some time? How do you make the old feel new again?

Outdated

I'm still mulling over the five questions Geoff Jordan put to teacher trainers via Twitter about a month ago. After I wrote this blog post, he commented expressing an interest in hearing how my beliefs play out in my classroom practice. So I then spent two more blog posts writing about the rather special demographic that I teach each weekday morning for 2.5 hours and how I try to address their needs.

While my teaching style can seem a little loosey goosey, there are principles that guide me. Two of these concepts are closely related: comprehensible input (which obviously is followed by lots of output) and the idea that less is more, which has been a topic on which I've presented or co-presented six times.

Regarding Comprehensible Input (CI)
In my TESL course, we did spend a lot of time on what our prof called grading our language. Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) was mentioned only briefly, but without using the i +1 terminology, we were still dwelling a lot on this notion of not speaking over students' heads, of making ourselves understood, and of not giving our learners material for which they were not yet ready. When I walked into the LINC 2/3 class where I was to do my first practicum and addressed Tanya's learners for the first time, my mentor said I'd got it bang on. She said it was very unusual for a teacher in training to nail that from the very first utterance. Maybe I get this right because I've tried to learn ten languages and have traveled through areas of the world where it was a struggle for me to communicate my needs. Or maybe teacher-speak is one of my languages; slipping into it is akin to code switching, as I did Saturday when I received a phone call from a political candidate's father back in my home state of Arkansas. Without any conscious effort on my part, I found myself parroting the elderly man's deep southern drawl.

As long as I'm on this topic, I want to say that I believe there is a helpful way and a wrong way for us to grade our language, especially with literacy learners. Leaving out the function words, as if speaking to a dog or toddler, is not--in my opinion--a good idea. Examples: Bad dog. or Stove hot! That isn't natural language. For nine years I've been speaking in full, grammatical sentences with my literacy learners without any puzzled looks on their faces. When I make the content words long, slow and clear, the listener's brain filters out the (relatively) quickly uttered function words until they, the learners, are ready for them. I can say "My NAME is KELLY," where the words my and is are barely discernible. This maintains the natural rhythm of English while allowing the listener to easily focus attention on the words NAME and KELLY as I point to my name tag. By the end of a term in a program with continuous intake, that same learner will have heard me utter this sentence hundreds of times. Don't program unnatural language; that's what I'm saying.

But I do not feel we got a lot of explicit training in creating what Martina Bex calls the comprehensible classroom. That is to say, HOW exactly do we provide lots of aural and written CI and how do we then push the output? That's an area where I'm floundering and searching on my own.

Tangent over.

Called into Question
My blog post of October 15th left off with a note about pedagogical ideas that I'm still toying with but am not yet ready to write about. That's where I want to pick up today. Which principles or ideas am I leaving behind because their validity is being challenged in the literature, and which ideas are catching my attention these days?

Let's talk about the things we were taught that are being called into question. A few come to mind right away:

• TTT-STT ratio (Teacher Talk Time / Student Talk Time)
• No L1 in the classroom / how much value is placed on translation
• The banning of devices
• learning styles (visual learner, auditory learner, kinesthetic learner)
• Everything we know about teaching listening

Although I have not yet arrived at firm beliefs regarding what's valid, I do feel it's important not to swallow what I was taught hook, line, and sinker. My responses to each point above are:

• As long as it's for the right reasons, perhaps there are times when it's okay for me to talk for more than 20% of the class period. 
• As for first language use, I have come to believe that it has a place in our classes and is a very valuable resource. Lately I've been paying attention to the TPRS movement that is getting a lot of traction in American K-12 language classrooms; translation to the L1 is an essential part of the method. 
• I no longer ask students to put away their devices unless I see that they are texting friends or checking every Facebook like. If their device use is enhancing learning, I want to work WITH that, not against it.
• I'm glad the notion of learning styles has been debunked lately. That being said, as far as I know, it is still true that learners do better retaining newly learned material or language in multisensory environments.
• I'm questioning everything I was ever taught about the teaching of listening. Gianfranco Conti has made me aware of the need to stop giving short shrift to the bottom-up skills, such as the ability to recognize word boundaries.

I can't yet write about these things beyond saying that I'm discarding old notions and exploring new ones. When I feel more confident about my grasp on these ideas, I'll surely let you know.

How about you? What ideas from your TESL training have you come to question or outright reject? Why? How has such a realization informed your practice?

My 'Principled Eclecticism'

My afternoon class is literacy--refugees either learning to read and write for the first time in any language or learning the Roman alphabet for the first time WHILE learning to speak and understand English. That is a whole other can of worms. I'm hoping to do an online class soon on what works for me with that group of learners. So let's not talk about them today.

Let's talk about an average week with the seniors, the group I blogged about here last week. In that blog post I mentioned some things that have not worked very well.

No more fighting the translators
Because so many of them have set-in-stone study habits when they emerge from forty years of grammar-translation style second language education, I have abandoned all attempts to pry the translators from their hands. I have read and heard a lot lately about the value of those electronic dictionaries, so now I am working with instead of against them. By compromising and allowing a lot of prep before activities designated as 'no pencils, no dictionaries,' I'm seeing much better levels of cooperation when I ask students to put the machines away just for a little while.

What Happened to PPP?
In response to this post, Geoff Jordan said he was happy to hear about some aspects of how we teach settlement English in Canada, but was "not so pleased to hear that [we] were given the PPP lesson plan as a model." You know what? I am feeling vindicated right about now because within about six months of landing my first teaching job, I was starting to feel like either PPP was unrealistic or I was a defective teacher. I remember trying to get students to the 'free practice' part of the lesson by the end of the class period, and in the case of my lunchtime pronunciation class, that meant get there in under an hour! I did it in the beginning, but it never felt quite right. When I landed the job as teacher of a class full of senior citizens who were always begging me to slow down, I made an executive decision to stray from that model.

So if I am not following Presentation Practice Production or Controlled practice, semi-controlled practice, free practice, then what am I doing every day? That's a good question. I'm not sure I really know or can articulate it well. I know that I am continually listening in on what other teachers do (such as by participating in #CdnELTchat on Twitter, being an active member of Global Innovative Language Teachers on Facebook, attending webinars, reading books, and listening to podcasts by people like Joe Barcroft and Scott Thornbury. I bring all sorts of ideas to the classroom and try them out. Some become part of our routine and others don't withstand the test of time. Following are some of the ideas and practices that have stuck, at least for now.

The Structure of a Module
Everything begins with a needs assessment. Not only do I conduct formal ones at the beginning of each five-month semester, but we often do impromptu votes to help me with minor decisions all through the module.

Secondly, I plan out a module on a particular topic that satisfies one of the needs expressed by the students. For example, students voted to study health. Topics voted for included talking to medical professionals, making appointments, etc. When I mentioned meeting a naturopathic doctor over the weekend at a How to Fair, students perked up. "Would you like me to invite him to speak to you?" They were keen. So we are now doing a module on naturopathic medicine as we gear up for his visit.

I decide what the objective of the module is: have the background knowledge and vocabulary to understand Dr. Oake's talk, to ask him a question or two, and to make an informed decision on whether to seek a consultation from an ND. From there I do task analysis: what skills do we need to build up between now and the presentation? That's what I try to give them over a period of one to two weeks. This particular group has requested no writing and grammar only as the need arises. So I plan some listening, speaking, and reading lessons.

For every module, we make a vocabulary acquisition plan. We keep an easel chart at the front of the class where that module's vocabulary is recorded--often colour coded and grouped by part of speech. We are mindful of which terms promise good 'surrender value,' as Gianfranco Conti calls it. We may quickly turn to COCA to check frequency of use and pencil a number next to the term.

A Lesson
Every lesson begins with a warm-up. Cognitive science tells us that it's helpful to prime the brain for the topic. I use a variety of activities to accomplish this. It could be a brainstorming session where I'm secretary with marker standing at white board, or it could be "think, pair, share" or a KWL chart. I like to activate prior knowledge. My class is made up of engineers, doctors, scientists, pharmacists, etc. They have a lot of knowledge to share with me and with each other.

I would say that from there, things get a little intuitive on my part. I have my very rough plan scribbled out in front of me, but it's not unlike me to completely scrap the plan if I start to feel that it's not going over well. I try to tune into the learners and get a feel for what they need next.

As for that old PPP model, I haven't forgotten it altogether. I loosely follow the idea behind PPP if you consider that early in the week I am asking students to do something with that week's text (audio or written) that is more 'controlled.' I'm trying always to be mindful of the cognitive load of a given activity. In his book Input-Based Incremental Vocabulary Instruction, Joe Barcroft points out that if we cognitively overload students during the initial phase of new lexis exposure, we can actually inhibit uptake / long-term retention of new language! Sometimes I just let students have a block of quiet time with translators. Often I give examples of usage; I pantomime, draw pictures, and pull up Google Images.

Activities
I would say that my teaching style is very activities-based. Once I know what is to be achieved in a particular stage of the module, I reach into my grab bag of activities and choose one that I think fits the need while matching the current mood and interest of the class. If we just did a Dictogloss last week, I probably won't repeat that one this week. Some of my go-to activities are:

• Each one teach one (Divvy up new vocab two terms per partnership. Each pair produces a small poster with definition, pronunciation, example sentence, illustration. Partner A stays with poster while partner B circulates around room as a student, then As and Bs switch roles.)
• Jigsaw
• Dictogloss
• Conversation groups with photo prompts
• Extemporaneous speaking (E.g., Students line up As across from Bs; I give each A or perhaps both sides an index card with a topical question and they begin to chat. I ring the bell and Bs move clockwise.)
• Read aloud with focus on good prosody (linking, phrasing, sentence stress, intonation), remembering that English is a stress-timed language a la Cows Eat Grass.
• Back to the Well with graphic organizers I developed with John Sivell, Professor Emeritus, AppLing, Brock University.
• Read or tell a short interesting story then do 'circling,' i.e., yes questions, no questions, which/binary questions, wh- questions
• projects, presentations, posters
• role plays
• pair work
• group work
• guest speaker
• one hour of computer lab per week (buffet-style choices, self-directed)
• field trips

Team 3 - Teaching us how to fish

Principles

While I'm stitching together this patchwork of activities with more scaffolding at the beginning of a module, there are certain principles I'm attempting to adhere to. The whole thing might appear to an observer to be heavily influenced by dogme.  Even though it was just my undergrad minor, I feel confident when it comes to applied linguistics. Having studied ten languages and having aced advanced English grammar courses, I feel able to respond in the moment to intriguing questions about a grammar point or even a trivia question. I try not to let these raised hands hijack an entire 2.5 hour class, of course! I check in with the students to see if the majority want the tangent. If not, we may put it in the parking lot for a dedicated lesson. But if it's desired by the majority, I often give 'pop-up' grammar or pronunciation lessons.

field trip

Within the last year I've become aware of The Learning Scientists' website and materials. I've shared them with my students and together we've made it a goal to incorporate the six strategies for effective learning in my teaching and their practice. So for example, instead of three solid weeks of health, we did a week on reviewing parts of the body and organs followed by a week of their second chosen topic, Canadian culture (Thanksgiving), then a return to health. That's interleaving. We also have two fun games we play for big review, a way to revisit past pages of that big easel chart. Supposedly this is going to help us get new language into long-term memory!

You will notice that not once have I had to mention Portfolio-based Language Assessment. That's because I wrote a proposal asking for the seniors to be exempted, and this was granted. :) We still have the big white useless binders that I force the seniors to lug home over the summer break. We maintain the About Me section and sometimes even create artifacts--not an easy task since their abilities span CLB 2 to 8.

Materials

In putting together modules for my learners, I tend to create or find one simple audio or written text and use it in a gazillion different ways throughout the week. I long ago learned to, as Leo van Lier once said, "cover less, uncover more." That one text could be from the LINC 1-4 Classroom Activities binder/pdfs or from the Citizenship Resource. It might be a true story about me or a set of pharmaceutical labels. Sometimes, though not often, I do give an explicit grammar lesson, but it is always driven by a need that has arisen while we were using the language, and I always allow students to vote on whether or not to pursue the grammar formally with rules and exercises and all of that. I'd say we agree to that about twice a year. Otherwise, we focus on grammar in context.

Edited to add: I wrote this quickly without much revision or proofreading. Please point out my typos or errors. Also, I notice I didn't say anything under PRINCIPLES about comprehensible input or bottom-up listening activities. These concepts have made it onto my radar but are not yet a fully-formed conscious part of my teaching approach. I'm still studying. I will attempt to blog about emerging practices and principles very soon.

Looking Back

Our spring term is coming to a close this week, and I've been reflecting on which techniques and activities worked well this time around and what did not work well.

For my morning students, all over the age of 60, jigsaw activities seemed especially useful and engaging. This is the technique I used to help students become familiar with a select few of the sculptures we would see on our field trip to Windsor Sculpture Park. I used it again to help them get ready to visit The François Baby House and Museum, and again when we learned about staying safer in hospital. For the 'safer in hospital' module, one group became experts on VRE, one on MRSA, and one on C. diff.

Expert groups will later split up into colour groups.

What didn't work? Rushing. I have to remember that I cannot just tell these students what I expect. I need to produce an exemplar for them to model their work on and I need to provide the rubric ahead of time so that they really understand which criteria I'll be using to judge their work. Also, the next time we do reports or posters, I need to impose a maximum word limit. Although I stressed many times the importance of brevity for a poster to grab the attention of students passing by it in the hall, we still ended up with posters drowning in text. So I definitely learned my lesson and will provide both an exemplar and rubric next time. That being said, they are proud of the "my hero" posters that were part of preparing for a trip to Jackson Park.

In the afternoon class, a high level (CLB 1L-2L) literacy class, the techniques and activities that worked the best were Language Experience Approach books and multi-sensory lessons. In some cases, we had a multi-sensory experience that we then turned into an LEA book.

Tasting our way through the regions of Canada

Sometimes we cannot go out and take pictures of ourselves having an experience. In those cases, we can still make the new language and concepts personal by giving our opinions and expressing preference, which is how I turned the topic of "summer in Windsor" into an LEA book. Instead of going to Summerfest, the beach, fireworks night, etc., we talked about which ones we planned to enjoy this summer and then built a true story around that. This book becomes the basis of a week's worth of activities. We spend some time each day practicing reading it until we reach fluency, starting with choral repetition and ending with being able to read it individually by Friday. I love being able to load up our sentences into SpellingCity, which then gives us myriad games and worksheets using the same terms and sentences.

F. wants to eat cotton candy at Summerfest.

M wants to take her children to Sandpoint Beach via bus #2.

After helping compose sentences, students copy text into blank versions of LEA book.

And what didn't work? Well, they are a very agreeable group. I find that most anything helps them improve their language skills and helps them learn how to learn so long as I follow a few basic principles. Language must be taught orally first and must be personally relevant. Also, I need to change things up a lot--both week to week and also about every twenty minutes--while also maintaining certain predictable routines.

So if we use a reader from Bow Valley College, School of Global Access one week, we will write our own LEA book the next week, and follow that up with a chapter from the Talk of the Block series the third week. Within a given class period, I try to go back and forth between activities that focus on meaning (questions about the story, relating the story to our lives) and activities that focus on the building blocks of language (copy, pronounce, spot the intruder). I also try to switch every twenty minutes or so between a sedentary activity (writing) and one that gets us up and moving around (peer survey, flyswatter game, coming to the board).

To be honest, I think the ideal lesson is a multi-sensory one or a lesson that is based around a field trip. I have to admit, however, that I don't find myself having the energy to manage such lessons every single week. It takes a lot out of me when I cart 20 pounds of kitchen equipment up to the school so that we can make gingerbread cookies while learning fractions. But if I could snap my fingers and have a host of helpful elves appear every time I needed them, I probably would take students out into the world or into a kitchen or maker space almost every week.

How about you? Is your term coming to an end soon? How are you feeling about it? Which activities will you bring back again because they were successful? What might you abandon because it fell flat?

My First Blog Needs Assessment

I am really feeling at a loss this week regarding what to write about in this space. So let me ask you, my readers, what you would like to read about here, what information you wish ELT bloggers would share, what you feel is lacking in what you are getting from your network of fellow teachers.

Just to help you start to think about it, I will start the brainstorming.

Your turn!

Teaching Each Other

The seniors spring to life when asked to share their knowledge and expertise. It's sad that in this society we do not more often tap into this amazing resource that is our senior population. They know how to knit, crochet, mend and alter clothing as well as sew their own. They can teach you how to prune the suckers off a tomato plant and how to cast your bait into the school of White Bass when it runs through the Detroit River in springtime. They can teach you to hold a ping-pong paddle and how to tilt your pelvis upward for the first stance of 24-step Tai Chi.

This past two weeks we have been sharing our hobbies with each other. The first week was spent on vocabulary building, skill building, exploring ideas, making posters, and planning the presentations. The second week we had the presentations.

The class broke into three groups and chose to teach: 1) three basic knit stitches 2) the basics of fishing, and 3) how to play ping-pong. Each group created a poster; some made videos; others brought in photos. Their presentations were the best I've seen in three years. Nobody stared down at a script or mumbled unintelligibly. Everyone made eye contact with the audience, spoke slowly and clearly. It was evident that this time they had practiced several times beforehand.

I have to remember to do this more often. It seems that they enjoyed themselves, made progress in the area of fair distribution of work, and actually succeeded in interesting classmates in a new hobby.

The success of these past two weeks leaves me wondering how far we could take this idea. Could we write our memoirs and get them published at the library? Should we learn to create e-books? What about doing something in collaboration with the on-site childminding department? I'm sure the children would be thrilled to get a hand-made toy or book from the seniors.

Do you have ideas for our class? I would love it if you would leave those for me in the comments section below.

An ESL Literacy Teaching Habit

This past two weeks I have had no choice but to turn my classes over to supply teachers. The first day I was able to leave a detailed lesson plan for the literacy class, but then fevers swept over me, robbing me of my mental clarity. The best I could do, rushing to get my email typed before the next fever hit, was send a link to one of the Bow Valley College readers along with my corresponding activity pack. The supply teacher would have to write her own lesson plans, but at least she would have more worksheets than my students could possibly need in one week.

I inserted little 8-point font notes on some pages. "Teacher, Ss should be ready for this by Thursday," and so on. I mentioned that we usually practice a given story multiple times throughout the week, sometimes even reading it together in 15-minute increments two or three times on the same day.

A strange thing happened. One of the supply teachers reported to me that the students, on Thursday, were completely mystified by the Yes / No quiz. They were not able to do it. They didn't understand all the words in the questions.

Now it could just be that the material I had chosen was too high for the group. Three new students joined the class while I was away and one moved up. So it could have been that. In any case, it got me to thinking about how I teach ESL literacy. Is there anything that I do that comes so naturally to me that I might not even think to mention it to a newer teacher whom I'm mentoring? Since Beth Beardall has just posed a question on the TESL Ontario Blog about literacy teaching tips, I have decided to try to put into words a teaching habit that I think benefits my learners and helps them get to fluency and mastery of one story by week's end.

Before I get to the tip, let's get some basics out of the way.  When introducing a new story, I not only activate prior knowledge of the schema but pre-teach the terms that are new to the learners.  I use pictures, realia, and also try to personalize a new term on the spot. So if a new vocabulary item is the word son, we will go around the room asking one another, "Do you have a son?" We'll talk about how many sons and daughters we each have. If a new word is bill, we will talk about the various bills we pay. I don't start the story until most students are getting at least 65-75% accuracy when I ask, "What's a bill?" "What's a dentist?"

So now we're looking at a week that we will spend learning to read, for example, Mark Goes to the Dentist. We'll spend the week going back and forth between the whole and the parts. We'll do activities involving the meaning of the language, such as: dialogues and role plays, sentence unscramble, paragraph unscramble, peer surveys, T/F quiz, and my verbally quizzing them on meaning. We'll do other activities that focus on the parts of language, such as: spelling dictation, word shapes worksheet, categorizing by sound, hidden word, etc.  I will usually also find space in the week to assess a real-world task, such as filling out a form, role playing with the receptionist, and so forth.

Okay, so here's the tip.  Never waste an opportunity to reinforce either ability to read aloud (and pronounce), the ability to spell a new term, or the ability to show comprehension. Below are some examples of what I mean.

• If a student comes up to the board to write the answer on a worksheet where meaning was the focus, never let her sit down until she has read the sentence aloud.
• If you are the scribe calling on students for the answers as you write them in the spaces, don't settle just for the word. Have the student spell it to you as you write it in.
• If you are taking up a worksheet where the focus is not on meaning, just on the spelling or shape of the word, before you erase the board, go back over all words--this time asking the class to say the word and give the meaning.
• Never erase anything without having students read aloud/pronounce the words one last time. If they can say it, you erase it.
• If you've been using sentence strips or flashcards with partners, don't let them just put the items back into the envelopes or paperclips. Make a new activity out of that: "Everybody show me 'The drink is cold.' Put 'The drink is cold' back in the envelope."

In this way, day by day, students build up their abilities to read all the words aloud, read the sentences aloud, spell all the words, define all the words. And don't think that I put students on the spot for these performances. Mine is a low risk, safe classroom. All are free to pass and know they will be encouraged when they are ready. However, I don't let strong students take easy questions! Those are reserved for the less confident students. With a quick glance in their direction, I give them the chance to signal me when they feel ready.

When we play Sentence Unscramble, I do not tell them if I think the sentence is right or not before I hit SUBMIT for them. I ask the class, "Everybody, is that right?" Through peer coaching, they eventually get the syntax right. I keep a poker face. Make the students do the work.

I fashion the end-of-week Yes/No quiz in such a way that most are easy and just one is tricky. One question requires the student to not only understand the new language, but also to be able to use it in a novel context.

Mark has a drink. 

The drink is hot. 

Mark has a toothache.

Mark gets a filling.

The bill is $1,999.

Kelly is a dentist.*

The same notion of cycling through ability to read aloud / ability to spell / ability to understand meaning can come into play in a simple game of BINGO. My students make me play it till I'm sick of it, so I jazz it up by switching from calling the words to calling out the spelling to making them guess the word. "This is what Mark gets. He can't pay it all today." They say, "BILL!" I say, "Yes, how do you spell bill?" Or, at other times, "What does B-I-L-L spell?" Also having a student play the teacher in this game allows peers to correct poor pronunciation. 

So to summarize my ESL literacy teaching tip: there should be no moment when the teacher is writing something and students are just sitting there staring. When the teacher is writing, the students have a job. When the teacher is erasing, the students have a job. When a student is at the board, the other students have a job. Chances to reinforce the language are EVERYWHERE. And keep your formative assessment feelers up at all times. 

How about you? Have you left a comment for Beth on her blog post?

PBLA and Back to the Well

For those of you who only care about the practical stuff, you can scroll down to the CLASSROOM APPLICATION sub-heading. :)  You're welcome.

All week I have been communicating with stakeholders at every level of this PBLA puzzle. The more I talk to other teachers and the more I listen to national and regional project leaders, the more I become convinced of three things:

1.   Those of us who are more conscientious, tending toward perfectionism, are feeling an extra dose of stress as we attempt to learn to implement PBLA while continuing to be responsible for the day-to-day delivery of lessons. It's like asking a career quality control officer to design a plane while flying it. In addition to feeling overwhelmed by the multi-tasking challenge, we balk at the ethical conflict of subjecting our passengers to a risky flight aboard an unproven aircraft.
2. Many teachers--whether they weren't 'ready to understand,' as Joanne Pettis has put it to me, or whether unintentionally misinformed by their trainers--have been operating under certain assumptions that are now being contradicted. I am talking about exactly which elements of PBLA are non-negotiable and which are flexible, as well as how flexible we can be.
3. There has never been a better time for teachers who are struggling with PBLA to consider slowing down, turning fewer pages, and engaging learners more deeply, i.e., "Sending Them Back to the Well."

To those teachers for whom the first point above resonates loudly, I want to say to you that your mental health, your work-life balance, and the wellbeing of our clients come before the forms pushed on us by bureaucrats. We MUST speak up when we feel something is ethically wrong for our students, for ourselves, for our classrooms. Only by speaking up are we ever going to get answers, solutions, compromises, acknowledgement of our right to do what is best for our clients.

That brings me to point two. I am beginning to feel cautiously optimistic and believe that I as a classroom instructor am still free to use my judgement when it comes to assessing my students' skills and making promotion decisions. Yes, I will certainly strive to collect the quota of artefacts to support and back up my decisions, but I am going to make sure that the assessment timing and methods are compatible with cultivating a safe space where learners' confidence is built up, not eroded. I will do whatever it takes to shield my clients from unnecessary test anxiety. I will set them up for success, not failure. I will assess my seniors' competencies in a way that does not demoralize them or bring to their attention the fact that their benchmarks seldom change. I will design assessments in such a way that a literacy learner with a (suspected) learning disability is not made to feel stupid; rather, I will test in such a way as to bring out each student's strengths and acknowledge ways in which they learn to compensate for areas of cognitive difference and/or differences in which their brains process language. I will not create a classroom in which excessive focus on testing exacerbates existing levels of PTSD. I will first do no harm.

Thirdly, I want to recommend that everyone--whether you teach literacy or level eight--read John Sivell and Chirawibha Sivell's article, "Sending Them Back to the Well" in the summer 2012 issue of Contact Magazine. Additionally or alternatively, you could read "A Year of Slow: One Teacher's Implementation of 'Back to the Well,'" the article John and I wrote for the February 2015 issue.

Just today John wrote this about the subject:

"...in relation to respecting students’ right to receive intellectual and affective satisfaction – I’ve recently been thinking about a very old idea from S. Pit Corder (Introducing Applied Linguistics, 1973), which I learned about a long time ago: it stuck in my mind and, on reflection, it now dawns on me that it has a potentially useful connection with BTTW – viz. his idea (although since then I think others have claimed it) of ‘surrender value’.  His analogy is to life insurance: if you buy a whole-life policy and then decide to cash it in early (before dying), how much is it worth? … i.e. what’s its surrender value? The idea is that we ought not to hold up the great benefits that will eventually result if a student continues studying until (say) CLB 8, because we know very well that nearly all of them will ‘cash in’ their studies much earlier, say at CLB 3-4. On the other hand, if we focus on making sure that students learn (cognitive) and feel good about (affective) something worthwhile right away, every single day, we take honest account of the reality that what learners really need is a reward now, not at some distant time. By going back to the well consistently, we can provide students with what they deserve (cognitively and affectively), which may well not only assure that they trust in the early surrender value of our lessons every day, but also that they might decide to hang in there and ‘cash in’ their studies later than they might otherwise have done.

Thanks for that, John!

And that brings us to...

----- CLASSROOM APPLICATION -----

To give others an idea of how I continue to go Back to the Well with my students, I have started using the #BackToTheWell hashtag on Twitter, and I invite you to do so, too! Also, I'm going to start providing links to the materials we used in class to revisit the same lexis in a gazillion (ha!) ways, leaving it up to the students as to when we move on to a new text. I assure you that students like to feel they have really come to own the new language.

Okay.

Having finished a series of modules covering the journey of a newly diagnosed diabetic patient from initial appointment to lab to follow-up visit to pharmacy, the seniors and I then extended the last module by examining those colourful auxiliary labels found on prescription bottles and boxes.

To see all the ways we worked with those labels, visit my website - FREE - Settlement Themes - Health. Scroll down to PHARMACY at the bottom. Within those free printable sheets, we do not even come close to exhausting all the meaningful linguistic encounters we can facilitate for the learners.

Finally, on lab day, seniors learned to use Spelling City (which I normally only use with my literacy class) to practice spelling of our week's words and syntax of our sentences. This provided them with yet more opportunities to gain mastery over that week's lexis.

So what's the bottom line? Since learning to implement PBLA is taking up some of my precious cognitive real estate, I now have even more incentive to utilize a 'do more with less' tactic in my classroom. As counterintuitive as it is, I find that students do not get bored with repeatedly revisiting the same text in myriad ways. Rather, they appreciate the opportunity to gain intimate familiarity with a given set of terms and phrases--from collocation to connotation, from prosody (sentence stress, intonation, word stress, linking) to parallel paragraph writing. It all adds to their sense of mastery and thus to their confidence levels. Over time, students are able to lead activities themselves--freeing up some of the teacher's time and energy for writing / adapting new assessment tools, marking, and other new duties under PBLA.

What do you think?

My PBLA Triumphs and Tribulations

Disclaimer: the opinions expressed in this post and all posts on this blog and on my website are my own and are not in any way meant to represent the policy or positions of my employer.

Background

My school is two months away from full implementation of Portfolio Based Language Assessment. We've been ramping up for a very long time, it seems. I attended my first PBLA workshop in Toronto at least three years ago and have attended many more sessions both in person and online since. I began using the Language Companions with my students back in spring of 2016. It is also worth mentioning that I have been conducting needs assessments to guide my teaching from day one of my TESL career.

Early Rumblings

Although I heard rumours of instructors quitting or retiring early due to their misgivings and anxiety around the thought of implementing PBLA, I was pretty open-minded about it from the start. I assumed those teachers leaving the field in the face of change were just old fuddy-duddies and teachers who were close to burn-out anyway. You know what? I want to apologize right now for thinking that, and I'll say more about that later in this article.

Best Possible Leadership

My own site supervisor has been a pioneer and keenest of the keen among leaders and pilot teachers. She is one of the most organized educators I've ever met and has a strong academic background in both the English language and second-language acquisition. She came to me for sample rubrics as she was working her way through her PBLA courses. The amount of theoretical reading and assignments she was tackling struck me as almost befitting a graduate level degree. I was aghast, but she tackled it all with enthusiasm and got high praise from her profs for our rubrics and other templates, and her early reports from the pilot classroom put many of my worries to rest, although she warned, "You will have less time to cover content."

Not All Roses

Fast forward a few months and what do we have?  I still see the value in PBLA in terms of teacher and learner accountability. There is much more transparency for the students, and that can only be a good thing. I like giving students the reins, allowing them to take ownership of their own progress. I see that PBLA intends to make our programs as student-centred as they were always supposed to be.  (I say intends to because I also see the potential for poorly supported teachers to end up with less client-centred classrooms.) There's a lot I like and appreciate about PBLA, and I'm sure I will discover more that I value about it as I move into full implementation in the new year.

That being said, there is no denying that not everything PBLA is coming up roses.  Some of the teachers around me and some in other cities and provinces with whom I'm in contact are reporting being overwhelmed, stressed out, sleep deprived, and irritable with everyone around them. We've caught ourselves snapping at one another at the copy machine. Families are feeling the stress as children and spouses rightfully assert that the teachers in their lives are no longer practicing good work-life balance.

My Critiques

Of course any program redesign is going to cause extra work during the training and learning phase. I expect that bump in extra workload and time to level out as we get a handle on what we're doing. I am not as convinced, however, that there is enough time in the day nor enough trees on the planet to properly implement PBLA in a way that does not unfairly take something away from both learner and instructor. I'm hoping to be proven wrong about this in time, but for now, here are the problems I'm seeing:

1) Continuous enrolment and PBLA do not strike me as terribly compatible. At our centre we have a T.A., thank goodness, but all her time is now being gobbled up giving new students their Language Companion orientation, guiding them through "My Story," putting the dividers in place, putting their inventory sheets in place, etc. This is so time consuming that we have basically lost our reading tutor, which is no small thing to those students for whom one-on-one tutoring made all the difference between success and falling through the cracks. I can't imagine how schools without a Teaching Assistant are coping!

2) Remember at the top of this article when I said I thought it was the crusty old inflexible teachers jumping ship as PBLA came down the pike? What I'm seeing now is that it's actually the passionate teachers accustomed to going above and beyond the call of duty who are suffering the most. Already giving of their own free time and often digging into their own pocketbooks to give our beloved students as enriched an experience as possible (think pumpkin pie, art supplies, after school clubs, field trips), the most devoted teachers have to cut something to find the extra time needed for module plans, reporting, reflection, rubric design and marking. Given a choice between taking that time away from our families or eliminating the enrichment activities, we sadly start to cut out the labours of love. (This blog is just one of mine.) As one teacher put it, "It's killing my joy."

3) PBLA is easier to implement with some demographics than with others. While a class comprised mainly of Eastern Europeans and Asians at a CLB 3 or higher might take to PBLA like little fish take to water, trying to fully institute all the components of PBLA with other groups can be daunting for the teacher as well as demoralizing and/or stressful for the learner. Some groups for whom I question the appropriateness of PBLA include seniors, those experiencing PTSD, and literacy learners, especially foundations and learners with interrupted formal education (LIFE).

4) PBLA kills a lot more trees, eats up a lot more toner, and requires teachers to spend a heck of a lot of time at the copy machine (rubrics, inventory sheets, reflection sheets, etc., etc.)

5) The Language Companion for literacy learners does not follow best practices for materials design for this group of clients. In my own practice as an ESL literacy teacher, I go to great lengths to ensure that I never set any piece of text in front of my learners that does not follow best practices, e.g., no font smaller than 18 pt, not more than one activity or item per page, text supported by images whenever possible. (I am gradually going back through all the literacy materials I've ever designed in order to insert supporting graphics.) So I say to the designers of this resource: first do no harm.

6) The Language Companion is too bulky for it to be conveniently used as intended. My seniors absolutely refuse to be burdened by such a heavy item in their backpacks. How I wish the contents had been divided into a slender reference text and a slender three-ring binder for their work! I would encourage the designers of the Language Companion to read the book Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath, especially the chapter on shaping the path.

7) We teachers were already creating or patching together all the content for our courses. It took a heck of a lot of our home time, but was more or less doable on most days because we had complete academic freedom. Now we are expected to CONTINUE doing that AS WELL AS inventing all the support materials needed to implement this new framework. What should have been provided to us before asking us to adopt PBLA has been offloaded onto us to create / write.

As one friend articulated it, many genuinely good ideas last only as long as a few hyper-motivated proponents keep them going, but have no independent staying power because they are simply too demanding for general application.

What Can Be Done?

While I am open to the idea of PBLA, I remain skeptical about the practicality of its implementation for all demographics. But what am I going to do about my skepticism? 

For one, I'm going to continue to comply with program mandates while hoping that our needs for better support are addressed over time. 

Secondly, I'm going to sign up for PBLA workshops and I'm going to raise my concerns wherever I go. I already have a plan to attend several workshops in Toronto later this month in order to learn, to compare notes with others in the field, and to give feedback to someone who is in a position to carry my frontline experience and concerns to the CCLB Board.

Thirdly, I am going to attempt to be a leader who finds a way for us all to survive and perhaps even thrive as we navigate this challenging change. Because I love my profession and care about my learners and the quality of program delivery they receive, I am going to push back as an advocate for them and for my colleagues across Canada whenever I perceive that a problem is going unaddressed or is being sugar-coated or swept under the rug.

Stay Tuned

I entitled this article "My PBLA Triumphs and Tribulations," yet I've filled the page with far more about my tribulations than my triumphs. That doesn't mean I haven't experienced successes with PBLA and don't have good things to share. I do have. What I plan is to share ideas, templates, rubrics, sample module plans, and much more with my readers in order to help you keep afloat while we manage up those mandating this new framework. I hope to begin this series of PBLA lifesavers with next week's blog post.

In the meantime, please use the comment box below to share your feelings, hopes, and frustrations around PBLA. It is possible to comment anonymously.

How I Use the Literacy Activity Packs

I apologize.

I was rushing on October 2nd and didn't do a good job. Let me try again to describe how I build a week-long module. This time I will get much more into specifics regarding how I use the activity packs that I have been uploading to the LITERACY area of the website.

Staying within a Theme
Though I don't always spend an entire month on the same theme, I do think it is beneficial to the literacy learner to stay within a theme for more than one week. Why? I say this because with literacy learners, it takes a lot longer to activate the schema and prime the brain for the topic(s). Once you've warmed them up for one set of linguistic terms and cultural concepts, why would you want to burden their cognitive load unnecessarily by jumping from topic to topic? Why not settle in a while and allow them to become really comfortable as they layer more and more skills and a richer vocabulary within the same theme week by week? The lower the stress, the more room there is for fun, and I would argue that retention of the new language increases.

Starting with a Needs Assessment
Since settlement English programs are student-centred, you will have consulted with the learners via a needs assessment to determine how to prioritize the topics. I have found over time that some topics cannot be optional. One example is learning about our PBLA binders; another is learning personal information and calling 9-1-1.  I also weave lessons on phonics, decoding skills, and printing into the thematic modules without asking the learners if they want that.

Mapping Out the Modules
When planning a series of four interrelated modules within a month-long theme, I start with a couple of modules that are heavy on skill building and end with a module or two that take advantage of the learners' new abilities. Just as a lesson starts off with more scaffolding and more controlled activities, gradually reducing the need for 'training wheels,' so can a module or series of modules be constructed so that students are using language more independently by the end. They can also be reading about the topic at a higher literacy level or with more fluency by the end of a module or series of modules when you stay within a theme.

An Example of Layering Modules
Let's say the theme is housing and the house. My series of modules might look like this:
Week 1 - learn the names of the rooms and a few key furniture pieces for each room
Week 2 - learn to read a house-related story in Talk of the Block short vowel series, HOME volume
Week 3 - learn to read Perminder's Cleaning Day
Week 4 - learn to ask the landlord to address problems in the apartment

Key Resources
The resources I would use to execute the modules listed above could include: a picture dictionary; student-made reference materials from flyers and catalogs; HandsOn!; Talk of the Block, ESL Literacy Network's Readers and Read Aloud versions of the same readers; ESL activity kits from Community Legal Education Ontario (CLEO); my own activity packs.

My Activity Packs
The resources I've listed above almost never come complete with sufficient activities to give the learners the number of linguistic affordances (opportunities to encounter the new language in a variety of contexts and ways) that I believe are necessary for long-term retention of the language. I have therefore developed the habit of creating my own set of activities that I use week after week. I simply change the vocabulary while keeping the activities pretty much the same. To see a sample, check out my activity pack for Deng Starts School.

One huge benefit to this habit of staying with a limited number of activities is that it vastly reduces cognitive load that otherwise would be devoted to instructions for the task. Students become so familiar with our routines that their entire cognitive load belongs to the linguistic and cultural content of the lesson. This level of confidence on the part of the learners means that when a new student joins the class, a peer will always jump in and show the new student the ropes.

An activity pack will typically start with easier controlled activities such as:

• Match the word to the picture
• Word Shapes worksheet
• Listen and fill in the (first, middle, last) letter
• How many times can you find the word?

It will include guided and more difficult but still relatively controlled activities, such as:

• Unscramble the sentence
• Gap fill with no word bank (answers are in the reader)
• Crossword with no word bank (some schematic knowledge, some verbatim from reader)

I try always to include a peer survey. This can be used as a free activity, giving students an opportunity to use new questions and answers related to the real-world task or it can be used to help activate the schema and prior knowledge at the beginning of the unit.

Finally, I include two activities to be used at the end of the week to solidify rapid recognition of our new lexis:

• Flyswatter game (I often don't include this as a document in the pack because teachers can simply print the words across the board)
• BINGO grid with word bank

Incorporating the Activities into Lesson Plans
At the beginning of the week I remind students of our needs assessment so that they recognize the module as being an answer to their expressed need. This helps give them confidence to communicate to me any desire to slow down, repeat, add new material.

As I place activities into lesson plans, starting with a hook, I try to be mindful of how the student will be feeling after one activity. To keep a fast PERCEIVED pace, which has nothing to do with actual pace, I strive to give them a change in activity about every 20 minutes. I endeavour to go back and forth between work that focuses on meaning (e.g. T/F quiz) and work that focuses on form (e.g. printing). I also try to break up periods of sitting and concentrating with bursts of movement and interaction.

Of course all the while we are building toward one or more real world tasks such as asking, "Excuse me, where's the sugar," understanding, "On aisle six, with baking," and responding, "Thank you."

A Snapshot
So a typical day might unfold like this:

12:30 - announcements

12:35 - review the alphabet and sounds

12:40 - review the prior day's learning (if it's Monday, ask each other about our weekends)

12:45 - hook - activate the schema, brainstorm, elicit prior knowledge

12:55 - introduce the new lexis, reader, etc.; students predict from pictures, pass around picture flashcards, etc.

1:05 - matching words to picture (project onto board)

1:15 - take up the worksheet by projecting it on the board, students come up and draw the lines

1:25 - work with word flashcards - one set per partnership; teacher says, "Show me X, show me Y..."

1:35 - categorizing activity - students group the picture or word flashcards in some way, such as by part of speech, by type of object, by sound, etc.

--BREAK--

2:00 - Introduce a short dialogue, such as "Do you like _____?" "Yes, I do / No, I don't." Give students a chance to practice it verbally many, many times in various ways. These exact phrases will appear on the upcoming peer survey.

• Repeat after T
• Teacher plays role of A, students take turns taking role of B
• Chain drill around the room
• Write the dialogue on the board. Read and speak.

2:20 - Project the peer survey form on the board, demonstrate. Make sure students remember how to say "How do you spell your name," and can spell their names. New students are allowed to cut corners (copy instead of speaking). Veteran students are strongly encouraged not to 'cheat.' Hand out the peer survey. Teacher always participates.

2:40 - Do a plenary activity with the results of the peer survey, such as forming 3rd person singular statements about others. Ali likes tomatoes. Jenna doesn't like tomatoes. (Note that you have now covered all forms of this grammar point: question, positive and negative answer, positive and negative statement in first and third person.)

2:50 - Written sentences summarizing our peer survey findings or start a puzzle. (Teacher is now free to start cleaning up the classroom.)

Extending with Online Games
There are times when I need a little ten-minute filler activity and the students need a change of pace. In that moment, I'll be so glad I loaded the week's words and sentences from their text into Spelling City. Our school pays about $74 CAD per year for up to 25 students at any given time to use the premium activities. If you only want spelling test and a few games, you can get a free account. Since I believe the Sentence Unscramble game has enormous value to the learners, I have the premium account.  In a given week, I might use Hang Mouse once, Sentence Unscramble once, and then link to the word list on the classroom blog so that the learners themselves can opt to practice our week's lexis using these same games and quizzes. 

The Week
I tend to stick to a rather predictable pattern through the week:

Monday - presentation, controlled activities, take pictures for LEA books

Tuesday - skill building, practice reading, paragraph unscramble in pairs, phonics

Wednesday - iPads, reading circles, gap fill, posters, practice reading

Thursday - comprehension quiz, peer survey, flyswatter game, role plays, assessments

Friday - learning logs, BINGO, computer lab

Conclusion
So those are some routines I follow in order to reduce the cognitive load on me and on the learners! When the students are highly familiar with an activity, they do not rely on me to spend my time and energy explaining and re-explaining, wrangling and redirecting them. This frees me up to help struggling students, tick boxes on rubrics, or prepare for the next activity.

What do you think?