The lesson outlined below went quite well last night. I did make a few changes which I will describe here. Students commented that it was interesting and that they understood the article with my scaffolding. So that was WONDERFUL! The area where I made my change was after we did the Read Aloud. It was getting late, people were tired and I did not want them to read the article in groups or individuals for fear of losing them. I also did not do the quiz. They had only been in class for two days and the reading was really much much higher than their level. So this is how it was adapted. After doing a read aloud with me. We did a choral reading. As we came across the words on the vocabulary list, we decided as a group what a good definition would be in English. For some words like rubber raft and air mattress, we made silly drawings. Next I ask each student to highlight one sentence that they liked. We talked about why they might like a sentence such as a new fact, something they learned, a new vocabulary word, etc. I then had them copy the sentence on an index card which they handed into me. I used these cards to create a dictation. During the read aloud we talked about how many people live in Houston and compared it to LA. We found out that LA is about twice the size of Houston. We talked about why the mayor did not want people to leave. The visual I gave the class is by asking them how is the parking lot when they leave class on time. They told me the parking lot had a long line of cars. I said hmmmm..There are maybe 200 people leaving. What would happen if 2 million tried to leave. We also talked about the fatalities and casualties. The article we read said there were 2. I knew the article was old and that there were more. What was interesting is that I found different numbers on every spot we traveled to on the Internet. So we just decided it was around 20. Next we looked a the number of Katrina casualties. There were over 1000. We talked about possible causes and reasons. That was it. The class was over. We had a big round of applause for being able to read a newspaper article on day 3. I took some pictures of students highlighting and will share them here.
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This is the first week of my last semester before retirement. This semester I have access to the pro version of NEWSELA. Many people are doubtful whether NEWSELA is useful at as low a level as I have. However, I am a proponent of extensive reading. I am very tired of reading the terrible readings in my text book. I want our reading to be relevant and interesting. I will start by printing out the readings and teaching students how to read using highlighters, and how to wade through vocabulary. After I feel that they have some techniques down, I will get them their NEWSELA accounts and see if they use them. I plan on giving them extra points for ever article they complete.
Here is how I plan on starting. I have the article on Hurricane Harvey which is at a second grade level. It is attached here. Before Reading 1) Ask students if they have any experiences with Hurricanes. Research with the class what the difference is between a typhoon and a hurricane. Have students talk about their experiences with the class. Try to elicit some key words. There may be a lot of native speak at this time but that is ok. What we are looking for is a shared experience to bond the class. 2) Handout the vocabulary sheet. Located here.
We will be using a Read Aloud to cover this first reading. We will start with the picture and try to make a few sentences about what they see in the picture. We will make note of the method of travel and relate it to some of the vocabulary for other possible methods of travel. 1)I will read it with the students and explain in English any difficulties in understanding. I will define the vocabulary in English and have the students write down the English definition in column 3 of the vocabulary worksheet. 2)I will then have them read it in small groups. 3)I will then have them read it individually. I will ask questions for comprehension for each process. Post Reading We will take the quiz together and I will students locate where the answer for each question is. I will teach them the following sentence frame. The answer is on line ____________. I will ask students to take the reading home and reread it again. We will stay on this topic with another reading from NEWSELA (next week if we have time) Today in New York City, my husband and I packed up to go out for the day at the 911 Memorial Museum. I had my phone, chargers, and cables at the ready along with my wifi hotspot to ensure that I had enough charge and battery power to last the day. Note: it was the day of the eclipse. As we got downtown, my phone blacked out. Oh no. I tried restarting it, nothing happened. I then reset it and was able to get a boot screen which I was able to figure out how to reset the settings. Still a black screen. Unfortunately, I had a dinner date with a colleague and now I didn't know the address where we were to meet because it was in my text messages. So I tried logging onto Google but I had two step authentication which required a text message. No luck. Then I tried to use another option but I had not saved my backup codes. No luck. So, fortunately, I had memorized the OTAN support number and called the Director who gave me Branka Marceta cell phone number. I text her in Denver to text my friend Nell Eckersley with whom I had the dinner appointment. She directed Nell to text my husband. When I went to Nell's office, I googled Project Fi support and within 20 minutes they had trouble shot the problem and are sending me a new phone that will be in my hands by Thursday. What did I learn from this?
1) Keep two step authentication but download the back up codes, put them in Google Keep and share the file with a significant other. 2) Have a critical number memorized to help you locate your friends LOL 3) Go with Project FI. The best cell phone service ever. No BS just great customer service. I have been using #newsela for about 3 weeks now to introduce my low beginning students to "real reading". We have been focusing on Global Warming. This was a topic I picked out. I noticed a few things. The first article Climate Change in Alaska read was very hard for them. They struggled and struggled. We went very slow. I made a Quizlet for them to review. No one has yet to review that Quizlet. The second article was a bit easier. It was about the Polar Bears.Again I made a Quizlet for vocabulary review. Again no one studied it. (At least that is what the data shows) The data does not account for students who just go on their phone without logging on.
On Tuesday I did the third article. This one was on "The Great Barrier Reef" This article was much easier to get through with the students. Although they had not reviewed the vocabulary, we were naturally reviewing by revisiting the same topic. At this moment, it looks like one person actually reviewed those words. That is progress. Because of the closing of classes, I expect to receive a lot of new students on Thursday. Therefore, I was planning on changing topics. This time was am taking a student vote on what topics they want to study. I felt like if I continue with Global Warming, the new students will be at a disadvantage. However then yesterday the Iceberg (Larsen C) broke off in Antartica. History like this on the correct topic of study does not happen every day. So I feel like we must discuss it on Thursday. The plan is to discuss it with a short description of what happened. Next to ask the students to read more about it at home in their native language and to post on Facebook, what they learn. (I hope they will post on Facebook in English). More to come after I teach this week. My new writing classnewsela.com/ is very very low. In some cases, perhaps lower than my pre level class. I want to develop reading skills as a way to help them with writing. To do this, I have decided for the 5 week summer session to just focus on one topic, Global Warming. My hope is that by reading different articles with different point of views, students will see vocabulary recycled over and over and increase their reading and critical thinking abilities. This I hope will transfer over to their writing as well. We shall see if this works and if I can keep their interest on one topic for 5 weeks. I want to add that I am planning on doing this by finding texts on NEWSELA (https://newsela.com/) lowest reading level.
This week I started my new summer school classes. I have two classes-Speaking A and Writing A. They are supposed to be higher than my PreLevel class that I taught in Spring. First NONE of the students had the free wifi access that the college offers. I don't understand why teachers don't help students get this access. It really is very easy. It seems unfair to students. I mean NONE of the students in either class. That is about 50 persons.
This really has nothing to do with my class directly. I spent the week attending an un-conference called NOTATISTE. You can find the link to the google group here-https://plus.google.com/communities/102762507417207490264
It consists of a group of educators from across the educational spectrum who can't attend the annual ISTE conference. There are selfie challenges (you need to know someone at ISTE to participate in these.) Daily challenges, twitter challenges, live sessions from the actual conferences, presentations by other NOATISTE members. I did not even realize that I have participated in this from its beginning. The first year I just followed. The second year I participated by doing an Ignite session. The third time (this year) I did a lot. I did a presentation, an ignite session and participated heavily in the selfie challenge with my friends Blair, Branka, Joyce and Penny from OTAN. I learned from the first keynote that if you don't struggle with something, you lose a part of the story that needs to be told. I connected with this because the first time I did an IGNITE session (this is 25 slides in 5 minutes) I almost lost my sanity. This year I had a lot less stress and was even asked to help someone else with their session. Wow! I learned in the second keynote that we all need to be adventurers and not give up on trying to make a difference in student lives. I participated in my first ever Twitter chat and felt empowered. NOTATISTE 18 will happen next year. Will you be there with me? As class wound up two weeks ago, it was bitter sweet. I had one on one appointments with all the students to go over their progress. One however sticks in my mind. He came in and really tried to describe what he wanted to say in English but said he had to use Spanish to get his point across. (Mind you my Spanish is not great, but I listen pretty well.) Here is the gist of what he said. He had tried to study a few times before but had failed. He indicated that it was at other schools. He said that he thought some of his problem was that he could not get along with other Spanish speakers. However, when he walked in the room that first day (he came a few weeks late) he felt a certain ambiance that he couldn't describe that made him feel comfortable. He had a girlfriend with him. She broke up with him within a week and this just cemented the idea that he was not going to be successful. However when she stopped coming, he did not. He felt that certain ambience which he could not describe. He sat at a table with Chinese students (one of my highest and two of my lowest students in the class) for two reasons he said.
1) He did not want to speak Spanish 2) He was afraid to get into some argument with the other Spanish speakers. He said that every day he woke up and the only part of his day that he looked forward to was class. When he came to class, he knew he would learn a lot and have a great time. He repeated that a few times and I could see tears starting to well up in his eyes. He said over time, he started to mingle with some of the Spanish speakers and even felt a bit comfortable to talk with them. He said I was very special to him and for that he was so thankful. Tears were starting to well up in my eyes as well. I wished him well and sent hi on his way. Saying thank you to him all the way out. So this week it is a new beginning. I have a high beginning Speaking class and a high beginning writing class. My speaking class was last night. None of the students are on the Portal from their last class...sigh...so I will have to get them all on the portal for Wifi access. I went over the syllabus with them and pointed to the sentence, "I use your phones. Please bring them charged." They looked at me in disbelief. I said does every one has a phone? They gave the look like (Yes of course we do). They don't have wifi though. All students except for 1 could use their own wifi for the time being. I will bring in my hotspot for those who have no access. I need to make a reservation in the lab to get them on the portal. I wish all teachers would get them this access. It helps with retention because they might just come more often if they can access the wifi on campus freely.
As the semester winds down, I realize how much I have learned. First, it almost seems like beginning level students are more eager to use technology or more easily persauded to use technology than my advanced learners. I am not sure why this is. Maybe it was just this particular class. I plan on using more things this summer with a speaking/writing high beginning group. We shall see how that goes. I made a story sphere of old town puerto rico that has no relationship to my class. I do want to embed it here so I don't forget about it. I will continue blogging until my retirement in December.
I have been thinking about how I move my students into using technology outside the classroom. Students don't naturally just use all the apps that I present. There is a process that we go through that encourages students to try using apps at home. First I create an online activity and show it to the students during class. Then I have the students try it out in class. I encourage them to use the tool at home, but that generally does not happen right away. I keep bringing the tool back to class until the students finally see its value.
Let me give you a concrete example. Quizlet is one of the tools. I create Quizlet sets and get the students enrolled. Next I have students study a set in class. I send them home ans ask them to review it. Very few students would use it at this point. So then I bring it in again and play Quizlet live. The first time we do this, they have a hard time. I review the set with them afterwards, replay the game and then they see the value of reviewing the set. But then again, they at this point they rarely go back to the tool and use it on their own. So then I introduce the different components of Quizlet. With Quizlet I start off showing off Match. My students like the competition and seeing that there is a competitive component helps them to use the tool at home. To encourage them, I will play the match and challenge them to beat the teacher. This often gets them using the tool more. Last night I decided to show them the spelling feature. They were astounded that they could learn how to spell better by using Quizlet. They had no idea that this was part of the tool. So this is what I learned last night. The students need to be exposed over and over and over and over again to the same tool in order to see its benefit. Once they feel that they have control over how to use the tool, they are more likely to use it outside the class. Using the tool outside the class is the best indicator of whether the tool is successful or not. |
Susan Gaer
A veteran teacher tackling the lowest levels of ESL instruction. Archives
August 2017
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