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.
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Making Kahoots really ups the DOK(Depth of Knowledge)level for students level of critical thinking.
Today I attempted (successfully I might add) to teach my students to make Kahoots. For this activity you will need access to a computer lab. I got students in the lab and played them my You Tube video on signing up for Kahoot. I stopped at critical points to allow them time to type what they needed on the screen. Here is the video:
With this video, I took students step by steps through the video stopping at each step to get students to complete the task. Everyone was able to get an account. I even had 5 new students and they were even able to get accounts. I want to describe my class once more. They come to me knowing NO English. So this activity was done with them using native language support from students who had been in my class. They understood with this support and were able to be successful in the classroom.
Now it is time to proceed to making games. My students were very familiar with Kahoot as we have been playing my games daily. I noticed that as much fun as they were having, the faster levels needed more challenge. That is why I chose at this point to teach them how to make Kahoots. Once everyone had an account, I proceeded to walk them through the steps to create their first kahoots. I modeled each step. How to find a picture. Kahoot now has Getty images built in so we used those. I took them through making 3 questions. My faster/techie students picked up the process rather quickly and so I told them to make 8 questions total.My slow students crept along with me making the three questions together. I showed them how to save their Kahoots and then the fun began and we played many of them. 24 of my 25 students successfully created an account and one game. After our lab class was over, we went back to the classroom and started learning Food vocabulary. Unbeknown to me, my students were making pictures we were studying into Kahoot games on their phones while I was teaching. How wonderful! You can see a few of their creations below https://play.kahoot.it/#/k/a7bd236f-fabf-4813-80f5-3e60b89ce2cb https://play.kahoot.it/#/k/1cb11fa6-4900-4604-b587-2cd6e6fa0eb9 https://play.kahoot.it/#/k/97e2b4f5-a1c7-4700-9f12-97f6f73f690f My class loves playing Kahoot and Quizlet Live. I told the students that next semester they might get a teacher who doesn't use Kahoot and they were very surprised. For this reason, I have decided to teach my class how to make their own kahoots. More on that a bit later. On Friday, I subbed for another class. During the break I was able to spend some time talking about how I use technology with two other Pre Level teachers. It started off by saying ways they try to engage the students so that students would not use the phones. I mentioned that they might want to try using the phones to engage the students. One teacher dug deeper into my psyche by asking me how and what I did. I told her that I started off using Remind, then once the students were familiar with that we moved on to Quizlet and so on and so on. She mentioned that I seemed to be layer technology onto instruction. I loved her use of the word "layering". I think that is how I approach everything I do in teaching students language and technology is no exception. The other instructor discussed how she felt that the digital divide was too big for those older students without phones. (In my classroom every student has a phone of some sort). I mentioned that she could group the students together. She still felt it was inequitable. I hope to deal with that concern later in another post after I give it some more thought. So today I made a short 2 minute video teaching students how to sign up with Kahoot. I plan on posting the video on our Facebook group and through remind. I want to see if any of my tech savvy students will sign up for an account before class. I will use the video on Monday in the lab and have students get an account. I will then teach them how to make a game using the included Getty Images that are now embedded into the program. I have embedded the video I created below: It has been a busy couple of weeks. I presented at Orange County CATESOL, Napa Adult School and now off to CCAE in Long Beach. However, I did develop a great lesson to use with Low beginning ESL students using QR codes to meet the EL CIVICS Lesson on the DMV. I will be posting a link to this lesson as soon as I develop it futher, but I feel like it was very successful. First I flashed a QR code on the screen and asked students if they had ever seen it. They said no. Then I asked them what it looked like. They said it looked like a UPC code. I said great and introduced them to QR codes. Since we have been using our phones for research, Quizlet Live and Kahoot, when I told them to download the app for a QR code reader, they had no problem doing it. There were many to choose from and some were better than others. But after about 10 mins, they had all downloaded one that worked well enough for the activity. Once the QR codes were downloaded, I had a practice sheet where students practiced scanning codes. I had one with my contact information, one with my picture and one of a wordless youtube movie. The movie was a Subaru commercial with the Barkely dogs. Since our focus was on DMV, I had students watch the movie and find out what parts of the car they could see. Next I divided the students into groups. I carefully placed a higher level student in each group so that they could help lower level students. I gave each student a job. There was a scanner, photographer, secretary and organizer in every group.
The next activity was like a stations activity. I had four different tasks: 1) Go to a group members car. Take pictures of the outside of the car illustrating any ten different parts. 2) Got to a group members car. Take pictures of the inside of the car illustrating any ten different parts. 3) Go out to the parking lot and find as many vehicle types as possible and take pictures of them. 4) Scan a QR code that consists of ten different pictures of traffic signs and write down what the signs mean 5) Scan 10 QR codes of the process in the DMV. Order the process in a sequence as studied. The students got right to work and basically needed almost no help. They were having so much fun doing the activities, that we forgot to take a break. QR codes for beginning ESL students? Heck yes!!!!! I will upload the links to the activities along with teacher notes as soon as all the conferencing is over. |
Susan Gaer
A veteran teacher tackling the lowest levels of ESL instruction. Archives
August 2017
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