I have been preparing for a lot of conferences this spring. This time, my focus is on integration. It is no longer about what apps you can use and about how cool tech is, but about how to integrate into your instruction. I am in a classroom with no computer access and a book that is mediocre at best. But none of that matters for the learning process. What matters is how engaged the students get and how much they practice the language. In order for technology to be meaningful, it needs to be INTEGRATED into the instruction using new ways of learning that fit that INTEGRATION. To this end, I have started archiving good tutorials and lesson integration plans. You can see the tutorials here and the lesson plans here.
The more you can encourage students to practice outside of class, the more time they spend on task. The more time they spend on task, the more they learn. My students are really busy. They work all day and come to school all night. They come to class almost every night and sometimes they don't eat dinner. Some of my students drive about 1 hour just to get to class after work. They don't have any extra time to spend learning. So teachers have to make it as easy and convenient as possible by producing practice activities on the topic at hand that are easily accessible whenever the students have a free moment. All the tools I use are very mobile accessible. I encourage the students to practice at break time, on the bus, while eating lunch, etc. Of course not all of them do, but I continually remind them that this is what they need to do.
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Susan Gaer
A veteran teacher tackling the lowest levels of ESL instruction. Archives
August 2017
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