Meaningful practice makes perfect

This blogpost is exactly the kind of message I need to continue to remember and to communicate with some of my students and their parents. They are in a safe space: mistakes are okay and encouraged!  Every mistake is an opportunity for the language to take deeper roots!

Before, Room 1

I'm in three different schools this year, which means I have three different rooms to prepare and figure out. Overwhelmed? Yes. Can I do it? Oh yeah.

Today kick-starts the year, as the principal of one of my schools is hosting a retreat. Here's to collaboration fur the kids' sake!

Project-Based Learning for ELLs

One of my big goals for this summer was to create a skeleton or framework for at least one PBL idea for each grade level for my schools this year.  I will be in three elementary schools and I want to be a part of the PBL conversation because of how beneficial and engaging it can be for (everyone and) ELLs.

This short video from the Buck Institute for Education (BIE) gives you a taste of the kinds of differentiation techniques ESOL teachers can employ or suggest to general classroom teachers to encourage confidence and meaningful participation of ELLs in a group PBL setting.  Watch it below!

My new favorite word: Interpunct

As I'm working on building a curriculum for vocabulary, most especially around morpheme analysis and word sums by WordWorksKingston, I'm thinking way too hard about the little things.  I would love some feedback from any SLA experts, ESOL teachers, or general classroom teachers out there who can shed some light on my question:

Do the hyphens used to end or begin a prefix or suffix confuse your students?

Thinking about this like an eight-year-old, which is not much different than thinking about it like the adult I am, learning this in depth for the first time, I see the hypen as a subtraction symbol. How is an eight-year-old without a significant number of words to communicate their confusion supposed to know inherently that they are meant to add that suffix to the stem, not subtract it, when this is the first time they have seen morpheme analysis.

Unless someone stops me, I have half a mind to use an interpunct (·) in lieu of the hyphen.  Instead of de-, students will see de·.  It makes sense to me that we should use the same symbol used to separate syllables to separate affixes from stems, as they are also the place where will break up the word between syllables. 

De·tail·ing

De·:“to pull away”, “away, off"

·Tail·: coming from a French word meaning "to cut"

·Ing: progressive/continuous

All I had to do was search "etymology detail" and Google did the work for me

When you are detailing something, you are considering something cut away from the rest of the original, larger picture.  As Gus said in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, "So der you go."

Again, perhaps I'm over-thinking this, but removing the hyphens prevents eight-year-old ELL-me from thinking about subtraction and allows me to make the connection to syllabification.

What do you think? I would love some insight on this. Tell me if I've "discovered" something that was A) never really a problem or B) is already a topic of discussion in SLA research. 

Word Sums with WordWorksKingston

We learned about this in my teaching program, but I didn't pay close enough attention to how helpful this word sum, or word matrix, method could be for building vocabulary in ELLs!

I've spent the last week drinking it in and planning to teach it to my upper grade ELLs this year.  Have you used these matrices in your classroom?  What do you think?

Twitter for educators

If you looked at my resume three years ago, you would think I spent all day on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and in the deep, dark back rooms of various social media websites.  You'd be compelled to ask, "Exactly what does a social media manager do?"

Give me a dollar for every time someone told me, "I really don't get Twitter," or "Do people really pay attention to those social media details?" and I would roll in the digital dough.  There are innumerable resources out there detailing the tutorials necessary for getting started on social media networks, but many in education are still left in the dark as to what they all mean.  Consider this your glossary:

For the first installment of my social media advice series, let's focus on the most confusing of all social media outlets: Twitter. What is it? Why use it? How to use it.

What is it? Micro-blogging, zinger-perfecting, short and documented conversing for easy idea-sharing.

Why use it? Use Twitter to share AND consume ideas, information, news, and to foster relationships with others in your professions or interest groups.  You have interests and you have goals for joining Twitter: narrow down what they are.

How to use it? Ask yourself what is important in your general life and try to stay within those bounds in your first months on Twitter. No one is rushing you to have a thousand followers or to be the expert on sixteen industries at once. Making the mistake to cover too much ground will lead you to over-tweet and to become an undesirable person to follow.  Additionally, don't be selfish.  When you tweet and tweet and tweet and never converse with anyone, you send the message that you are gracing us with your presence in the Twitter world.  Social media has the capacity to mimic real-life situation, at least to the extent that we can draw analogies. Don't tweet like these characters:

• The broadcaster: like the loud guy at the office holiday party who has story after story to tell, leaving zero room for contribution on the airwaves.  Avoid having this Twitter personality by reaching out to people who follow you, retweeting with others have shared, and spending the time to genuinely read and comment on what others have shared.  It's not a real-life conversation, but it can mimic one.
• The pleader: follows 500 people per day, gives them 24 hours to follow back, and then unfollows them when they do not, moving on to the next batch of consumers.  High numbers of followers matter nil if you have little to share or collaborate.  These people tend to add "Please RT" or "please retweet" to their tweets, which bothers me.  If your content is compelling, your followers will retweet it.
• The fair-weather tweeter: I'm entirely guilty of this right now.  This person gets excited and engaged in the first few days, petering off shortly thereafter.  They come back to Twitter world when they remember they set up that account X moons ago. Or they return when they have something they really need to share, so they pop in, tweet out, and go back into hiding.  Is anyone reading that random tweet that shows up next to the unfamiliar profile picture on your home feed? No. Is anyone going to remember to loop you into the conversation when they need your opinion about a topic of interest to you? No.  The bottom line is that you should be as consistent as you can be with your social media accounts.  Set a goal for how often you will tweet and read and comment on others' tweets.  

Example uses for those in education:

Schools can use Twitter to blast out important information. They should, however, also use it to loop in the community surrounding the school. It should not be exclusively a place for parents to see if there is a snow closing or for reminders about parent-teacher conference day. Twitter offers schools a chance to create a face and a personality in the community.  Tweet out "overheard at X school" quotes throughout the day. Post pictures of student work (without names or faces).  If there is a cool cloud forming outside your front office, snap a photo! You'll be surprised to learn how many things you can find to draw people into the fold.  These "human interest" tweets may be easily cross-posted on Facebook or Instagram, as well.  Consistency is key.  Even when no one is responding to your posts, keep them coming.  You develop credibility over time, slowly, like the tortoise.

Principals can follow similar protocols as schools, but have the flexibility to inject more of their own personality into the mix.  You provide a place where parents may feel that they have a personal connection with their child's principal, though it should be noted that Twitter is not a replacement for real-life connections.  Twitter is your portal for public relations and where you can nestle into your niche.  Pick a few key topics on which you want to focus: PBL, technology in the classroom, arts in the school.  Make a goal to post at least once a day and retweet others at least three times a week.

Teachers should determine if they want their Twitter accounts to be private, so parents feel more comfortable getting specific news about their child's classroom from a private account, or public so they can help schools and principals grow their social media presence.  When you make your account private, only those whose permission you grant may see what you post.  They cannot retweet your posts, either, so your content will remain safe.  This option, however, prevents you from supporting your principal and school in the greater Twitter world. Anything of theirs that you retweet will only go out to those previously approved followers, who are likely already following the school and principal.

Free EdTech for the ESOL classroom

Whoa buddy, technology is a battleground buzzword in the teacher world.  Personally, I love the concept of EdTech and finding a way to work smarter, not just harder.  I've been sorting through my hundreds of bookmarks and pins to glean out the little gems I might be able to use this, my first year as an ESOL teacher.

Queue the chorus of well-seasoned teachers giggling in unison.

The following is the beginning of what promises to be a GIGANTIC list of free EdTech tools I am exploring for use in the classroom, in project-based learning groups, by gen ed teachers, or by students:

WordNet® is a large lexical database of English. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are grouped into sets of cognitive synonyms (synsets), each expressing a distinct concept. Synsets are interlinked by means of conceptual-semantic and lexical relations. It's nice to have a reference source like this readily at hand.

The Google has so many resources that have yet to become household names. Let's make them classroom names, instead! The Cultural Institute is a hub for viewing high quality photos of different aspects of the humanities. More to come when I develop the PBL ideas marinating in my head right now with this great tool, but there is so much potential for getting our students engaged in these virtual field trips and insights in the world's many facets.

• Cultural Institute's Street Art

• Cultural Institute's World Wonders

• Cultural Institute's Art Project

Google's Open Gallery - Virtual field trips to galleries and museums around the world.

Google Map Maker – a map editor wherein you impart your local knowledge to help improve Google's map features. This is a good PBL idea waiting to happen.

Google Knowledge - Help support your students' (and your) media literacy by learning tips and tricks of researching online from the experts.

Goo.gl – URL shortener for both Google and non-Google websites. Rather than needing to make sure the link is bookmarked on every computer (for those with somewhat antiquated networks), quickly plug in the link here and you will easily write the shorter link on the board.

Panoramio – Photos of the world.

Google Classroom - Are you brave enough to be a beta tester? Google Classroom is a content management system for schools that aids in distribution and grading of assignments and providing in-class communication. "Simple assignments, communication with Classroom, teachers can create and organize assignments quickly, provide feedback efficiently, and communicate with their classes with ease. Classroom lets students organize their work in Google Drive, complete and turn it in, and communicate directly with their teachers and classmates."

GeoGuessr - I spent way too much time walking around unknown parts of the world, trying to guess where Google had virtually dropped me while using this tool. This would be a fun Geography hook or 5-minute time stretcher.  Students use and collaborate their knowledge of landmarks and landscape to figure out where in the world they are, all the while realizing how similar some parts of the world are to others!

I will add to this list... I promise Google doesn't pay me to push their products. I just got started on one Google product and daisy-chained my way around the suite! This list will grow!

Joining in on Bloglovin'

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Part-Time Librarian

It's becoming real!  Fall is approaching, though I'm not wishing my summer away, and I'm hunkering down in my classroom planning work.  Today, that looks like multiple stacks of old, inherited books and an evolving Excel spreadsheet.

Having an Android phone, apparently, limits my book cataloging app-pickin's, so I started off manually typing every book into a spreadsheet.  As expected, there's an easier way.

Scholastic's Book Wizard (love that little guy) has a book list tool that aggregates the books you pick (including their levels, interest information, and other key necessities for classroom libraries) and allows you to download it as an Excel file. I will still fiddle with the final list, organizing and adding categories to help my kiddos.

The process continues to evolve! There's so much hope packed into this process.

...I fully accept my romanticizing of this, by the way.

Class set-up for ESOL teachers

Image courtesy of phasinphoto / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Class Set Up for ESL Teachers

As I'm preparing for my new classroom, this is going to be a helpful resource for thinking ahead. Organization Monster is starting to growl from within and I gotta say: there is a severe lack of attention to ESOL/ESL-specific classroom set-up in the blogosphere.

I might have to change that.

It's real

"Real," like "fix," is one of those words that I struggle to explain to my ELL students. Of course I can think of many examples and uses for the word "real."

Which is real? Which are fake? (Image courtesy of Dino de Luca / FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

However, the reader/English major/discussion-lover wants so badly to leave the door open for critical thinking and reflection on the more metaphorical uses of that word and I find myself holding back the explanations that will just add too much confusion to the learning soup.  We'll have to revisit that after there is a little more language to use as footholds, I tell myself.

Well, it's real for me now.  All of this is real!  I will be an ESOL teacher here in my home county beginning September of this year and I could not be more thrilled!

Now starts the summer of prep.  I am a planner and it's probably going to take years for me to learn in my heart the lesson I already know (thank you to the many wise teachers who have shared it) in my head: I'm not going to know exactly what to do in every single situation and I cannot always prepare for it.  I'm going to do my best to prepare as much as possible in advance, pretending I don't know that fact... because you would not believe how excited I am by this job/profession/life I am going to lead!

Mini-Lesson: Main Idea

I work with a sweet young lady who came to the U.S. from Japan in early December.  Having been here only five months (with many holiday breaks and snow days during that time) and no prior knowledge of the English language, she has limited English proficiency.  However, she impresses me everyday with her motivation to learn and her spirit despite the heavy cognitive load she bears as a fourth grader in an English-immersion environment.

I had a fifteen minute chunk of time to work with her on Friday (crazy schedule on field day...day) and thought she needed something more exciting than the guided reading of DRA level 3 books that she has endured since December.  I sat her in front of the computer, put the headphones over her ears, and asked her to watch this video (No, David! by David Shannon).



It is a three and half minute long video of the book's illustrations, as well as the text of the words being read by the narrator.  The book is ideal for a WIDA 1 ELL student read aloud for these reasons, as well as the fact that it isn't yet another story about a cat who sat on a mat.

I have done "main idea" lessons before where I use the concept of a table to explain the relationship of main idea and supporting details (the main idea is the table top and the details are the legs supporting it).  Students can even use the worksheet I created to have a concrete visual of what the concept of main idea and supporting details.

Yet, as I've already mentioned, time was tight and I needed to adjust for language background knowledge. So, this word-light little book helped us introduce, for the first time, the main idea-detail concept.  As far as I can tell, because she drew drawings of details and gave one or two word segments in answer to the call for details, she walked away with an understanding of what "main idea" means.

No, David! 

I love being an ESOL teacher (though it's just as a volunteer right now).  The challenge of balancing the social, psychological, and cognitive loads that children have is the perfect match for my personal curiosity!  Watching their progress is so much fun!

But I know where to start

Ahh! Grammar! I know, and you, fair reader, probably know, that teaching grammar directly, especially to English language learners is a somewhat fruitless endeavor.  The SLA king, Dr. Stephen Krashen, and many others have refined the concepts that essentially discourage direct instruction of grammar, both because it is largely less effective than natural acquisition of grammar through exposure and because it discourages students to produce language.  Hearken back to the days of old -- that high school Spanish classroom where you stared at half a dozen conjugation charts and fought the would-be urge to participate because you couldn't keep all of the rules straight enough to avoid making a mistake!

As a (probably conditioned) supporter of these natural order SLA theories, I hesitated to construct a lesson for my practicum this week.  My cooperating instructor suggested I teach a lesson about prepositions (quick Google search to remind myself about this grammar concept that someone labeled) because many of the newcomer students in the classroom had been running into vocabulary blockages when they spoke and wrote.  Challenge accepted.  I knew I could use my background knowledge of the newcomer middle schoolers in the classroom and make an engaging lesson.

Background knowledge: I have been working with these students since January and I've noticed some gaps in their use of prepositions (under, on, in, over, around, etc).  In preparation for my lesson and in an effort to highlight student choice, I asked them about their favorite English songs.  That was a fun few minutes where these students who constantly have a huge cognitive language load weighing on them got to relax for a moment and engage with their teachers about what they enjoy.

The lesson: I started the lesson by playing the first verse of Avicii's "Wake Me Up." Listen to the lyrics and let it blow your mind to discover: it's about prepositions ( ;) ). We have to know where to start, I told them. We were going to talk about, read about, speak about, and listen about words we use to tell people WHERE something is.

We spent a few minutes doing some Total Physical Response exercises to act out the target words.  Note: middle schoolers like sitting "on top of" their desks.

I printed out and laminated about twenty common prepositions, especially those used in the songs they told me they liked.  I also laminated a picture of John Legend and one of Shakira, allowing students to use these pictures to employ some of the prepositions they knew. "Shakira is on the desk; Shakira is under the desk; John Legend is between Ali and Victoria (pseudonyms)."

That gave me a good idea of their grasp of the concept. The next activity involved a simple "word hunt" wherein partners looked through the lyrics of songs I printed out and found the prepositions.  Again, I had the words on display, with picture supports, and they had already acted out several of them in the TPR part of the lesson.

I had a few of them share their discoveries and, to my delight, they all really did their work and some felt comfortable enough to sing the parts of the songs they found.  The next step was creation.  They voted and decided they wanted to write a song about Shakira instead of John Legend, to my dismay.  I asked them to partner up again, to come choose three of the laminated prepositions I brought and one or two magazine pictures that I cut out to serve as inspiration for their song.  They were to use the pictures and the prepositions to write part of a song "that we were going to create together," though that didn't actually happen. Rhyming and song-writing are for a different day...

Over all, it was a successful lesson. The students shared their work and a lot of it was really insightful. They were able to use the prepositions in literal and figurative manners, which made my English major heart flutter.  My CI and the TA both said how successful they thought the lesson was and one of the toughest cookies in the room kept asking if "we can do this everyday."  That is particularly touching to me because one of his biggest struggles is writing.

I was meant to be an ESOL teacher.  I'm still learning how to climb this mountain and how best to approach these challenges, but man, do I love it in the meantime!

Arvind Gupta: Turning trash into toys for learning

Brilliant, simple, and inexpensive hands-on toys that will help students understand concrete math and science concepts. I first watched this video a year ago and I continue to love watching his creativity.

Learn your roots

I love learning about the history of the English language...

Anglophile, revisited

A monster encouraged me to major in English.

Beowulf was my gateway drug into loving linguistics, the English language, and teaching English.  I'm still unclear about why I loved reading that text, learning a little Old English, and getting an introductory to the OED (all standard procedure for exploring the creepy underworld of the famous story). It fueled the fire of my Anglophilia, already growing in my teenage brain. It sealed my decision to major in English and spend all day reading books and discussing complex literary topics in college.

Image courtesy of papaija2008 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

After a stint using my English degree to write tweets and Facebook posts all day for a living, I returned to the academic world to learn how to teach tiny people. I met the monster again in the pages of the textbooks for literacy and teaching English Language Learners. "Muhahahaha!" he growled, "Sárcwide mec þín brægen" {give me your brain}. I love this so much that I'm reminded of how reading about the foundation of our Modern English inspired me to dig deeper into literary themes.

My chronic curiosity inspires me to learn more about how to teach these kiddos. Today I realized that this chronic curiosity might land me in Great Britain again in the future. Perhaps I'll have the opportunity to visit Ireland or England for one of the many conferences and seminars they hold on the topic of teaching English as a second language. Check it out!

• M.Phil. in English Language Teaching at Trinity College Dublin


• British Council's "English Agenda" seminars (some online webcasts here)


• International Association of Multilingualism conferences of interest


• International Association of Multilingualism L3 conference


• International Conference of English as a Lingua Franca

Classroom Routines, Vol. 1

Pinterest has both helped and overwhelmed my brain. I have more than 2,100 pins that I truly believe I will look through. Good grief, I'm a nutcase.

Image courtesy of [KROMKRATHOG] / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

As I read my SIOP book by Jana Echevarria, MaryEllen Vogt, and Deborah J. Short, I realize there are so many in-classroom techniques that I will simply never remember to implement or try in my future classroom if I don't make a list! Lists, lists! My kingdom for a list!

These routines and techniques come from "Making Content Comprehensible for English Language Learners: The SIOP Model." In paraphrasing their words, I intend only to make note of the great ideas and not to infringe on any copyrights. These are the ideas of the lovely ladies listed above, not my own (unless otherwise noted):

• More than jotting down objectives:
  
  
  
  • Get students to practice (and to make emotional connections) by asking them to find and circle the nouns and verbs (or --Elizabeth's idea-- words that rhyme with another word they've already heard today, like "journal" and "infernal" -- :-P )
  
  
  • Students paraphrase steps
  
  
  • Timed Pair-Share to predict what they might do in the lesson


• Self-Assess:
  
  
  
  • 1, 2, 3 - How well do you know what's going on? "1. I understand this concept, 2. I have studied something like this before, 3. I don't know this"
    
    
    
    • At the end, follow it up with a "How well did you meet the objective today?" self-assessment


• Jigsaw it:
  
  
  
  • This is an instructional model that encourages students to become "experts" about a given vocabulary word, topic, person of importance, etc. Students have to teach each other about what they learned, as they're all experts about different things. Many hands/brains make light work.


• Outline it:
  
  
  
  • If you're a general education teacher (as opposed to an ESOL teacher), consider giving your ELLs a breakdown outline of what you're teaching for each lesson or for each day. You're probably already creating this outline for yourself, so print off another one and give it to your ELL. He or she will be able to better understand what is going on if they have a map of it!


• Let them hear it:
  
  
  
  • Many sites have audio or video support tools for their content. Let students hear or watch supplementary tools to support their learning. No, I don't think technology is always the answer, especially if your students are easily distracted, but if you can show them you trust them to stay on task while scaffolding their learning, this is a good option.

Uncovering through teaching and other links

[caption id="attachment_137" align="aligncenter" width="448"] Image courtesy of digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net[/caption]

These are my favorite education (and education-adjacent) links from the past week. One of my classes requires that we stay up on current education events, something I should have already invested time, so here comes accountability:

7 Tips For Parents Of Struggling Readers | TeachThought


Highlights from the SMU National Center for Arts Reform Report | SMU NCAR


"5 Reasons You Should Be Teaching Digital Citizenship" | TeachThought

"Sport phrases" | BBC Learning English - It's so charming that these phrases can be read in a British accent.


Why New Teachers Need Mentors | Edutopia - Yes, please.

"The Second Lives Of 'Stuff' In Chicago Public Schools" | NPR - I have always wondered about this.

Persuading an Audience Using Logos, Pathos and Ethos | NYT - The Learning Network - Don't pretend that teaching isn't made up of lots of little performances and persuasive speeches.

Lexical distance between European languages | Flowing Data


"10 Innovative Ways to Bring STEM to Schools" | Mindshift - My strengths are the humanities, but I have a little engineer in my head and I'm motivated to introduce kids to STEM.

Tips for incorporating nonfiction into the ELA curriculum | Smartblog on Education

42 Idiom Examples & Explanations | TeachThought

Fun schtuff:

Highway traffic reorganized by color | Flowing Data - This is both helpful for and too indulgent of my OCD.


Elaborate New Portraits Drawn on Vintage Maps by Ed Fairburn | Colossal - Beauty.

Facial hair trends over time | Flowing Data - Methinks the beard graph should start ascending again.

Kris Trappeniers' Flickr albums - He draws portraits with one continuous line. Wow. Then, sometimes he Exacto-cuts out the negative space. Wow. Then, sometimes he uses that as a stencil to spray paint the portrait onto something else. Dang.

How to Introduce Yourself to SLA

Hello again.

I'm back for another wonderful ESOL class. I hope to integrate some reflections on my student teaching semester as I had the most lovely ELL student in the world! For now, a reading reflection:

The readings for this week weave together in  way that calls to mind what it felt like to be a classroom teacher with a single ELL student.

[caption id="attachment_132" align="aligncenter" width="290"] Don't forget the ELLs.[/caption]

I took a gander at the ACCESS tests, with their well-intentioned and mass-market approach to assessing. These are used to appease the 30k-foot level of viewers – the state or other entity that wants to see the students’ data as a reflection on the state of the school.

The WIDA can-do list breaks down the behaviors of an ELL student to its observable forms in reading, writing, speaking, and listening. These logically show an SLA teacher of any experience level what they can look for in a student and what level those characteristics reflect.

This gives such a teacher a starting point to begin implementing what they can learn from the surface level, nutshell version Van Patten provides in his epilogue of From Input to Output. The implications he summarizes in the epilogue give inexperienced teachers of ELL some basic guidelines (such as making sure that all interactions, assessments, and focus on form are authentic), which are solid reminders for more experienced teachers of ELLs.

Finally, when a teacher becomes aware of the need to focus on how their instruction can impact their ELL student(s), they can become further aware of how it is actually also impacting the ELL’s sense of self through Sumaryono and Ortiz's "Preserving the Cultural Identity of ELLs." Many teachers are ignorant about the depth of potential hurt that can be felt by an ELL student if they feel their being led away from their cultural roots or if they feel out of place in their classroom.

An inexperienced or non-expert of SLA and ELL research might not realize that they can and should integrate the students’ primary languages into the daily lessons in order to make them feel more comfortable and to put them on the same level as those who only speak English. The four readings for the week funnel the novice ELL teacher toward a profound awareness of what they are getting into as they learn more about teaching students learning another language. It’s not as simple as vocabulary instruction and learning how to fit in.