Tech Ideas for a BLM Learner

Photo by Waldemar Brandt on Unsplash

I got an email from a friend asking what kinds of activities I could suggest for an EAL / ELL / BLM student.

The request was for ideas and things the student could do independently.

Here are the ideas I shared back.

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1. Google docs voice typing. 

Write a few sentences that you want her to practice. Then below type 1, 2, 3. Have her voice type to practice her pronunciation. (Idea from 

EXAMPLE

I live in Taiwan. 

1. voice type

2. voice type

3. voice type

I live in Japan. 

1. voice type

2. voice type

3. voice type

2. QR code listening activity

When I taught Grade 1, I would select articles for students to practice their reading. I copied them onto paper and attached a QR code that led to me reading the article. 

For a middle school student, depending on her level, you might be able to find Newsela articles, give her the link to the article and your reading. 

Here is a few examples I made for my Grade 1 class a few years ago. 

 Audio Book QR Codes

3. Book Creator book about herself - she does the speaking

She could do a project in Book Creator introducing herself. BC allows you to record audio and it is really easy to share out your book after you are done. Here is an example, it's elementary but shows adding audio.

This could be done with whatever she is learning.

Or, if you want to spend a little time, you could create this kind of book for her.

4. Video diary

I was thinking it would also be good to track her progress by having her do a video diary.

5. Words Their Way Word Work

You could have her do some word sorts from words their way. You could have a recording of the pronunciation, then have her record herself saying the words.

6. App - https://iknow.jp/ (paid)

This is not free, but I used to use it. 

I think I would do a station rotation model of 3-4 of these activities. 

Another site I just thought of is elllo. It has a ton of English-learning activities on there. 

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Take Advantage When Opportunities Arise

In her book, The Power of Inquiry, Kath Murdoch has a chart of what inquiry teachers do. One of those things is to link investigation to authentic contexts (p. 21).

This has been a focus of mine for this current unit. The phrase jumped out at me because I missed out on one such opportunity about five years ago, and I have probably missed out on many opportunities since then, but I have always thought about that missed chance. Hopefully, regretting that missed chance has helped me be more confident in taking risks with my teaching and looking for opportunities when they arise.

The other day I may have caught the opportunity.

The Junior High was having a Pancake Bake Sale fundraiser, but it was during recess time. The schedule worked out so that Grade 1 had class during this time. My students were not too pleased with this development and I got an earful coming up the stairs.

We are currently looking at opinion writing, so I decided to try to make a connection to our writing by telling them that they should make their voices heard by writing letters. I gave them a choice of three people to whom they could write and set them up by saying that they should think about:

Who - who will they write to
What - what they want
Why - why they want it

There was only about 15 minutes of writing time until an assembly, and some students were not into it since we had already "done writing" in the morning. But some students were able to express themselves. And hopefully, the others started to realize that the different subjects are interconnected throughout the unit.

* While not exactly an authentic inquiry, I think it was an authentic context for which I could guide the students to make a connection. It was probably as close I could get with this group.

A Digital Readers Theater

I read the story, Ganesha and the Curse on the Moon, for my students and they really liked it. So, I started thinking about plenary activities for them to do and decided we would act out the book as a play.

Right away I could see the vocabulary would be a challenge and there would need to be a lot of time to practice lines. I also wanted a way to share their performance more than once.

I made the book into a script and printed out enough copies for all the students. Each student was able to choose a part. They could be a reader, someone who reads the lines, an actor, someone who controls the puppets, or a narrator. After they chose their parts, I highlighted it for them so it was easier to read.

I started by trying to record the audio separately and was going to put the audio together with the video. iMovie doesn't allow you to tag, or rename clips. So the audio and the video got jumbled and were difficult to put together. The actors did not know when to do what because they could not hear the readers.

One of the things I did right, was to use the mic on my earbuds to get better sound quality. And although we had to film in the hallway, and it got noisy, the mic made the sound audible.

In the end, I ended up just filming the students acting out and reading the parts and then doing the reshoots right then and there.

Sometimes simple is best.

Looking into Vowel Sounds

I wish I had prepared for this with anchor chart paper, or just simply paper. But, sometimes these little inquiries happen when you don't expect them ... and those are the best kind. It seems the best inquiries happen when the students are ready.

I just ordered poster paper, so I'll be prepared for next time.

And next time I would have them think of all the words they know with "oo". Then I would have them grab a book and look for 5 min to see what other words they could find. Then we would come back together and I would ask how they would sort them. I would imagine I would need to guide them to see the difference in sounds, but they would probably surprise me.

Word Sort With Google Drawings -- Improve Me!

Last week I went into an elementary classroom and observed a solid language arts class. It was a solid program with students learning independently and knowing just what to do and what was expected.

I had been wanting to try using Google Drawings more for a long time, and I could see a few ways I could easily substitute it in.




It went OK. The students were engaged, but they were not speaking as much as I thought they should be speaking.

So now I have a followup lesson where the students will take the words they practiced and use them in sentences.




So, what do you see that I could do to make either one of these better?

If you are interested in either of these Google Drawings templates, let me know.

Reading to Learn in Science - Challenges of Science Texts

Some notes from a MOOC about teaching reading in Science. 

If you have ever taken a MOOC, you know the basic format - the course will have video lectures, links to further reading, and will encourage [or force] participants to use the discussion forum. This MOOC is a little different, and the professor has made short formative comprehension tasks to be answered during the videos.

I like this model, and hope to see it more in flipped learning environments.


== Notes ==

Before reading difficult [nonfiction] texts, elicit students' prior knowledge about the topic by discussing relevant topics students have learned to see if they will be able to make sense of the new ideas in the text.

"Reading to Learn" involves reflective reading skills - knowing when to reread parts of the text for clarity.

• Visualize figurative and metaphorical language
• Give students strategies to develop a metacognitive awareness of their reading habits.
• Reading comprehension can be strengthened by talking and writing about what they read.

Three-Part Model to Support Reading

Pre Reading
Use an activity to activate students' prior knowledge.
improves comprehension among all students.

During Reading
Students use strategies to monitor and improve their own comprehension.
Students should know to reread and reflect.
Student-centered activities during reading improve comprehension.
Good readers naturally monitor their own comprehension.

After Reading
Strategies for organizing and summarizing the information they read.
Summarizing and organizing chunks information.



Look out for ...

• Nominalizations - when processes are turned into nouns. These often end in -tion (i.e., evaporation) 
• Polysemy - words with multiple meanings. For example, there are many types of "energy", and the reader needs to infer which meaning by inferring from the text.
• Multimodality - text and images, diagrams, etc.
• Academic Language - not science specific, but not a part of everyday language. Teachers need to be aware of words like "whereas, interactions, fundamental, emits, etc." and include these when teaching for clarity.

Three Tiers of Vocabulary
Tier 1—Basic Vocabulary
Tier 2—High Frequency/Multiple Meaning Vocabulary (academic writing)
Tier 3—Low-Frequency, Context-Specific Vocabulary

Using Google Maps to Extend Book Comprehension

I just started "book club" reading with my students. I have been wanting to try this for a while as a way to mix the students of different reading levels (experience?). I was also looking for a way to extend some of my second graders thinking.

For this, the first week of our book club, I assigned the books. I wanted students to choose their own, but I also wanted to make sure the students were comfortable with their reading materials.

So, for now, I made groups of like-leveled (experienced) students.

The second graders finished their book much faster than the others. Their book was a fable called The Mouse Deer and the Crocodiles.

When my students finished reading and their plenary activity, I asked them to use Google Earth to find a place on the world where they thought the story took place.

One student asked how. So I asked him where the story happened, and the group tried to find clues in the book. I had them list all their ideas and one was a jungle. That brought us into a conversation about what jungles were, and where they are. We searched the map, talked some more about the equator, and looked for rivers.

It was great, but I felt like we were moving too far from trying to find where the story really could have taken place.

That led me to ask where crocodiles lived and where mouse deer lived.

I divided the group into two groups, so they could research both and then overlap where both animals live and come up with a location.

The first results they found about each animal's habitat was on Wikipedia and it was difficult for them to understand. I wish I had explored the page more before directing them to Enchanted Learning, but that was less help.

Then time ran out and it was recess time.

This gave me a great idea for the future. I think there are a lot of possibilities with this project since there were many skills involved.

• search skills
• map reading
• scanning for information
• reading comprehension
• knowledge synthesis
• cooperative learning

7 Keys to Comprehension

This was supposed to be a post containing notes from the book, but I finished the book a long time ago and I never finished this post.

If you get a chance - it is a great read. 7 Keys to Comprehension

Still waiting to be finished ...

Group Reading for Engagement

Living in Japan is great most of the time. However, since we are so far to the right of the map (depending on what map you are looking at) Japan is really far time-wise from many webinars I want to attend. All the IB webinars are Amsterdam time. This translates to midnight Japan time.

On a school night, that can't happen if I am going to keep up with the bouncing students in my room.

I recently watched a webinar in the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Curiousity Series called Using Cliff-Hanging Texts to Ignite Students’ Comprehension. On this day I happened to wake up at 4:00 (how does that happen?) and was able to watch it.

There was one thing that resonated with me about previewing the text. This is something I do often with my lower ESL students; I preview the pictures in the text asking them what is happening, and what they think will happen next. The problem is that doing a picture walk through a story can disengage students in the story preventing them from thinking while reading.

The presenter, May Ellen Voght, walked through a lesson she does with her students, and today I tried it with mine.

I found a version of Jack and the Beanstalk on the BBC and broke it up into chunks, and put each chunk on a slide. We then read each slide together.

At the end of each slide, I asked the students if there were any words they did not know, which I highlighted in blue. I asked them if there were any words on the slide that would help them understand the word, but I did not feed it to them as they were expecting (although some students couldn't resist but to share their knowledge!)

I then asked if there were any interesting words on the slide. I highlighted those in red.

Then I asked if they had a prediction of what would happen next, followed by having them think for about 30 seconds of what the scene might look like.

After reading through the story, we watched the short video that accompanied the story and I asked them if their pictures matched the video. This is something I need to be more clear about next time; I think they thought I meant if their pictures "looked" just like the video rather than what I meant by them thinking of the same general idea.

Unit Vocabulary: Finding What You Don't Know

Confucius — 'True wisdom is knowing what you don't know'

Something that is hard for me, and probably for most people, is knowing what I don't know. After all, it takes knowledge ans self-awareness to get that far.

I feel that I am slowly moving in the right direction in my career at least, and that comes with experiences, as well as reading, PD, and connecting with other people.

As we were starting our unit in Weather, I wanted to try something different with the unit vocabulary. I not only wanted to assess where they were, but I also wanted to see if there would be any effect on the students if they knew what they did not know.

I started by writing the word "weather" in the middle of the board and having them do the same in their notebooks. I then had them grab their favorite color from the colored pencils I had set on their tables.

I then had the students write all the words they could think of related to weather in their favorite color. When they were all done, I took their ideas and wrote them on the board in my favorite color (or the closest marker).

I then had the students pick a different color they liked, and had them write any new words down.

The last component was for me to add the new unit vocabulary for them. I asked my class to choose a third color for these words.

I did think that my students were using the unit vocabulary much more than they had before, but I cannot say this was the reason. Still, it is something I will try again but will try to emphasize more. Maybe it would be good to do the same thing at the end of the unit and compare the two.

Teaching Writing Organization

The writing process is messy. It can be unpredictable and can lead to a path that was previously unseen.

I like that about writing. I want my students to also like that about writing.

Writing is also hard to teach.

The Unknown Path

Four Square
I have my class use an adaption of the Four Square Writing Method when prewriting. I have not been trained in this though. Last year when I started teaching grades 1 and 2 for the first time, I need to revise the way I taught writing, and this was one way I found. I liked it because of its simplicity.

Four Square Writing Method uploaded to Wikipedia.org by Thespian, available 
under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

Last year, I thought it worked really well.

This year, I have seen my students have more difficulty organizing their writing. There were students who were disconnecting thoughts. They would start talking about one thing, drift to another, then suddenly go back to the first thing. Then more of them started doing it.

This caught me by surprise, but I thought it could be because:

1) I have been teaching a watered down version where the students simply write four words in the boxes.
2) I teach writing by having the students write in multiple periods rather than try to do everything in 45 minutes. We prewrite on one day, then on the next day when the write it out, I encourage them to add ideas they may have left out.

Looking for Answers
A few years back I took a correspondence course on The Six+1 Traits of Writing. So when I was looking for some answers for organizational writing, I took a look in the lower elementary version.

There are some great activities on organization, but they are more pre-activities, and they don't really deal with organizing a piece of unorganized writing.


What I Did

Day 1

I wrote some sentences similar to what some of them had written in their own writings on the board. I wrote them in a list since I want them to move beyond the list format. Next to it I wrote the same thing in paragraph format in the same sentence order.

We talked about what I had written for a little bit.
What do you see?
Is there anything you would change?

One student remarked that the paragraph on the left was not a paragraph, but a list. That was a good place to start. Some more discussion brought out the idea that the ideas were not put together well.

After discussing what was wrong, it was time to discuss how they would change it.

Day 2 

The next day it was time to break up the writing. I gave them some strips of paper on which to write each of the sentences in their paragraphs.

I remember doing this in high school with research notes. I hated it. But, this was the best idea I had.

I then asked one student if I could use her writing and I put the strips up on a white board. I made sure that they were out of order when I did this.

Then we read the sentences together.

I asked them if there was anything they wanted to change. We then discussed different ways of organizing it. Since the sentences were on strips, and I had put them on the white board with magnets, they were easy to move around.

The students had several different ideas about ways in which they could order the writing. After one student would give what they thought was a good way, I rearranged the sentences and we reread it. Then I asked another student for their idea and rearranged then discussed. We did this a few times.

Talking about writing like this allowed me to talk about beginnings, middles, and endings to writing. We will need to get back to that after Fall Break.

At the end of this session I had them arrange their strips into a way that was different from how they wrote their piece. Here again some students decided to add some more detail to their writings by adding more sentence strips. I had them rearrange three or four times until the end when I told them to put the sentences into an order they liked. I told them beforehand that they might like the way they had their writing originally and if they chose that way it was OK.

They then numbered their strips of paper.

Putting It All Together

On Day 3 they spent time writing newly rearranged writings in their writing notebooks.

How do you teach writing?
How do you teach organization?

The Movie in Your Mind

When I was in seventh grade I remember my teacher reading the Gary Paulsen book Hatchet. (All this time and I didn't know he was born in my hometown until just now when I looked up how to spell his last name. In Minnesota there are many Paulsons/Paulsens, Andersons/Andersens, Olsons/Olsens.)

In the book, the protagonist has to survive in Canada with only a hatchet. I remember one part vividly where he has to get his own food and I remember making connections to my own life. To this day I can still remember how I felt landing in the icy water and finding my own shelter.

Edited with GIMP

In the first of the 7 Keys to Comprehension is that of a "Motion Picture of the Mind". When talking about reading in the past, I have always told my students to "paint a picture in my mind". When I say that phrase I always get this image of an impressionist painting that is bleeding paint and the colors are almost swirling around.

Do my students see that?
What do they see?
Have I told them what I see?

When talking about the "Motion Picture of the Mind", Zimmerman and Hutchins stress the importance of talking with children about what you are seeing as you read.

So I have started stopping when I read stories to my class and taking turns telling them what I see, and asking what they see.

After doing this for about a month, I want to try another suggestion from the book. I will have them act out short scenes that we read. (And we are reading short books, so it will be quick.)

What is Fluency?

What is language fluency?

Google Define gives two definitions:

The quality or condition of being fluent, in particular. The ability to speak or write a foreign language easily and accurately.

The first definition is not very relevant (nor very good), but the second is better.

How can you measure this? Is it measurable?

I have seen (and taught myself) people who I felt are very fluent, but once I went to teach them, because the vocabulary and grammar was new, reverted to what they knew and struggled. I think it is important to continue to try to expand on your knowledge as a language speaker, foreign or even mother-tongue, no matter your level. I think there is always something to be learned or improved upon.

The purpose of language is communication, so with that in mind, what is the best way to achieve the second definition (The ability to speak or write a foreign language easily and accurately) as a teacher?

From my own experience, fluency is extremely subjective. Someone who might appear to be "fluent", can easily flounder when put into an unfamiliar situation.

I am still trying to figure out the best way to teach young students vocabulary as I feel that is the best way to become fluent.

Can fluency be measured? No way. But we can measure learning.

How Does Your Class Write?

When I write best, I write in the quiet with no distractions. 

When I was teaching the grade 3-4 class last year, I imposed this onto the class during when they would write in their journals as well as most other writing periods. For the most part it worked OK. I found myself being a taskmaster sometimes when the students would talk. I guess it was more than sometimes.

It's a fine line between collaboration and chatting. 

This year I have been more relaxed during writing times, encouraging my students to discuss their writing with each other. 

Help each other spell words they don't know. Their preferred method is going up to the whiteboard or chalkboard to write it there. Come to think of it, I think they are copying me.

There are also times when students will just get on with their writing.

Why did my thinking change?

Since my students are young and inexperienced EALs, I could not help then with all their questions, so this all happened early in the year when I would tell students to ask a friend for help.

There are times when I want to see what my students can do on their own. But even when the students are helping each other, I can evaluate who is helping and who is being helped. I can hear their questions and answers. We are now working on reading our writings to each other after we finish and giving helpful feedback.

They have come a long way this year.

A More Relaxed Book Report

I want my class to be able to talk about their books, and I want them to be able to tell their audience interesting things about the books. But, my students are non-native English speakers in Grades 1 & 2.

I tried having them make book covers, or pictures to go along with their stories. Those did not capture their interest like I wanted.

This week I tried having them write a friendly letter from one fairy tale character (our current unit of study) to another character in the same story. I used a Kidspiration template I found for friendly letters to give them a template.

I had no idea how it would work, but it turned out better than I had thought. I liked the one letter from Jack (of Jack and the Beanstalk) to the giant saying he was sorry that he stole the hen, but that he and his mother really needed the money.

Today I had the kids go to the front of the room with a book they had read and I had the other students simply ask them questions about the book. That was a great way for me to know if they had understood their books.

And this post hopefully is getting me back into the swing of blogging.

What's a Wop?

Many moons ago now when it was still warm out and the students would come in from recess looking like they just got out of a pool, I tried an idea [I got from one of the Japanese teachers] to help my students better grasp word families; words with the same pattern.

This beginning was a great way to assess where my students were. Could they see the pattern? Did they know words that ended in __op?

As this was the beginning of the year, I put up on the board the pattern "__op". Then I asked the students to give me a letter to fill in the word.

While the students were giving me ideas, I put them on the board. While I was doing this, I was explaining the words they did not know. I did this until they gave me a word that made no sense. As soon as they gave me that word (this time it was wop), I put it on the board and told them that a wop was an animal and they had to draw it.

They all looked at me as if I were crazy and doing something really unfair. They complained that they did not know what it looked like. I again told them that did not matter and that anything they drew would be OK. I told them to use their imaginations. This was really hard for them after always being asked to draw something they had seen before.

After they drew their version of the wop, I told then to add to the picture some of the other words that we came up with.

This is a Wop.

This was the first time I did it, and I tried it again a few days after this, but it was not as good. I am going to try this again though. Maybe I need to leave more time in between when I do the activities to make it more successful.

Ignition

It happened before I even knew it. The lesson I had planned for was being delayed because it required the assistant who was tending to her sick child at home. These things happen in the dynamic environment that is a school.

I am always amazed -- and sometimes disheartened -- by the power  a few have to influence the many in some classrooms. This year my student population is in the single digits, and I am teaching younger kids, so I am seeing it more.

But when it is positive, it can be a great thing.

Today I asked some of my students to read quietly while the others worked on a word family "slider". After a few minutes one of the more dominate girls in the class told me she didn't want to read and asked if she could create a book instead.
 

How could I say no to that?

Right after I said yes, other students decided that sounded like a good idea and they started writing a book too. Hopefully this fire will continue to burn long enough so we can make something for our library's newly created Young Publisher's Club.

Before, Between, After

During my prep period today, I wandered into the kindergarten room on my way back from the office.They were working on the words before, between, and after. These are words my class needs review on as well, so I stayed for the lesson.

The problems they had with these words were the same issues that my own students were having. The shapes were arranged on the white board and the students were asked where shapes were in relation with each other using the words before, between, and after.

Time after time the students would use the opposite word the teacher was looking for. 

I looked around for some clues as to why the students were getting the words mixed up. The first reason I thought of was a cultural one. Japanese writing is originally right to left, so I wondered if there was something else about Japan that was influencing them. I quickly dismissed this theory when an American boy made the same mistake as his Japanese counterparts.

Then I wondered if the way they line up to leave the room is influencing their understanding of before and after. The way they line up is how they were explaining before and after.

Everyday Practice

"Practice makes perfect."

I don't really like that quote because I believe it leaves several other factors that allow for people to excel.

But practice, and especially consistent practice, is essential for success. There is a reason that people studying karate practice punching hundreds of times everyday.

The problem comes when you have kids who don't enjoy practicing. It is the teacher's job to get the motivated and to make activities fun and exciting, but that is not always enough.

A few years ago I had a student who was positive in her outlook about school, but she was reluctant and lacked confidence. She was writing very little at the time. I tried to encourage her at school, but she was not improving as much as I believed she could.

Before

After

With some encouragement and (a lot of help from her parents who made sure she was writing at home) this girl went from writing a few sentences per journal entry to now writing two or more pages.

But it wasn't only the volume that increased; her sentences are now more detailed, she is developing her own voice, and most importantly for me, her entries flow and make more sense.

The best part about this particular student is that I stopped having to hound her for her journal, after a while she was hounding me to have me check it!

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Reading the web today, I came across a website that had all these exclamation marks on it. The site reminded me of a quote.

Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Two years ago I had a class of third-grade girls, and they loved using exclamation points in their writing. Their emails were full of emoticons.

It was cute.

Next year I will have a new opportunity with a new grade level. It won't be the same, but there should be some good stories throughout the year.