Mr Hammerlund

I am interested in studying ESL as a postgraduate degree. I am at least looking into some sort of ESL credential since certificates are a big deal here in Japan. Last week I opened my Gmail inbox to find a MAT advertisment at the top of my new emails. I usually ignore them, but this one was from USC. So I emailed the recruiter asking for more information. After getting a reply, I asked if they had some sort of ESL program, and they do. The next day my wife told me she looked into it and said that the program costs $40,000. I told her there was no way that it cost that much. It is only a one year program after all. I went to my computer and emailed the recruiter and sure enough, the total comes out to just over $40,000. I guess that I am living as if it is still 1999, but who can afford $40,000 for one year of education? This has me rethinking how I will get ESL certification. Maybe I should just take several courses as I have the experience working with non-native English spe...

About two months ago my boss emailed a few teachers and us if we knew anything about Facebook and Twitter and if we would be interested in using those mediums to promote the school. I actually brought this idea up a few years ago, but now the idea had traction so I said I was interested in helping. I got a reply saying there would be a meeting in the next week so I waited. And waited. And waited. Then at one team meeting, we were shown what had been done with the school's new Facebook page. I was a little taken aback that I had been left out despite being invited to be apart of the project. After some reflection though I realized that I had not been pushy enough. I am sure someone else had gone up to the boss's office and knocked the door down to be first in line. This is merely a small market project for the school. But what if it had been an interview for a better position or job? I would have missed out completely. I joined our social media group, but I wanted so...

In an attempt to break up the monotony that can come from group reading, I have tried an activity I dub "Team Reading". This could work because we were all reading the same article for one of our units of [inquiry] study. I first allowed the students to choose their own groups. This worried me as I thought about the potential outcomes. I then had the students read the article in their groups with each student reading one sentence at a time. I told them to read the article again if they finished before I told them to finish. That way the students who finished early would have something to do, and I could go around and monitor/coach those who needed the help.  I also told them that they should have a different person start the article when they got that far. After I was done helping those who needed it, I told them to stop reading. Then I had the students come up with a question for their group. I told them it could be anything related to the article, and they would com...

My school just started the DRA reading assessment to track student reading. The assessment has the students read aloud, and my coworker wondered why do we need to have students read aloud. I have been giving this some thought, and have come up with a few answers. If the students did not read aloud, we could not tell if they were properly pronouncing the words. I not only think that reading aloud is necessary for an assessment, but I also make it a daily reading practice. For ESL students, school may be the only place where they can hear and practice English pronunciation. Reading aloud also shows the teacher and student what words the student skips. All but one of my 17 students are non-native speakers, and they speak mostly fluently, but with little errors like leaving out articles or the "-ed" for past tense verbs. I feel that reading aloud internalizes the language for the students. With the students using their senses of sight, hearing, and I would argue their sense ...

This movie was made during summer school 2011. The students were learning about animation, and an easy way for them to apply what they had learned was through stop motion. If I were to do this again, I would first have them do a better job with the background. I would then do a better job with making sure they kept the tripod and camera set. I want to do another stop motion movie when the opportunity presents itself.

Here is an inquiry-based lesson I did with my students at the end of last year. Our unit of study [inquiry] was called "Expression Through Art and Music". Before we began discussing the different art periods, I wanted them to see if they could tell the difference between the periods themselves. This was a lesson I did for the IB Level 1 Teaching Award. Before they started, I was prepared for a disaster, but I was pleasantly surprised how well they worked together.

I know that life is not fair. Although I feel fortunate for where I am, there have been times in my life and career where I have been treated less than fairly and sometimes I have been taken advantage of. I get it. I understand what is happening. I also understand why it is happening. Something happened today that I felt was unfair, and while I was stewing about it, I wondered about what my students think about. Do my students think I act fairly? Do I act fairly with them? I think I am pretty good at giving students chances to be heard. But... How can I become better at it? I wonder what they think of the way I treat them.

Last week I was approached with the news that our school was to get 20 iPads for the elementary students to use.  In the middle of doing my happy dance I was hit with, "Could you come up with a list of apps that would be suitable for elementary students to use?" I am not an Apple user (yet) and I have limited experience using an iPad, so I was a little overwhelmed. Then I remembered an article I saw in PYP Threads , and so I went there. One thing led to another and I had a huge list of just links that I had to go through. I let it rest for a few days and decided to make a spreadsheet of my findings. I am pleased to say that I found several very useful free apps.  That will make everyone happy. Here is my spreadsheet so far.

I usually find inspiration for what I do from my coworkers and to a lesser extent - the Internet. Last year I was watching one of my favorite shows, The Universe , and I was struck with inspiration. The astronomer was at the beach to explain how they calculate the number of stars in space. Using sand, it was explained that the number of stars are calculated by counting the stars in a given space, and then estimating the number in the entire space. I decided to take this idea and use it for my class when we were studying mean, mode, and average. My challenge to the class was to estimate the number of blades of grass on the soccer field. I gave the students the challenge as a homework problem to simply brainstorm ideas on how to solve it at first. I then explained to them how we would figure out the solution. I had them cut out a 10cm by 10cm squares in graph paper. We then went outside to count the number of grass blades in the squares they cut out. The rest was simply ...