Games

Hi Everyone!

We have a new category of links posted on our blog on the right-hand side....ESL games. Take a look and let us know your favorites.

Chant Writing

In case some of you want to try your hand at writing chants, start with the niehs website.  On that website, there is a section on games and songs.  That is where you'll find the MIDI files for the music.  Here is the direct link to that part of the website:

http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/games/songs/index.htm

When writing a chant, start by pulling out the academic information from text or content-area. Make sure you have all the vocabulary words that need to be included.  Try NOT to write things down in complete sentences so that you have the flexibility of using whatever music is available.  

Then select the music by sampling the MIDI files on the NIEHS website.  The children's songs and popular songs are good places to start. (If you are teaching adult students, these are the songs that they will probably be exposed to from their children.  This adds a "culture" component to the activity.)

Finally, go to RhymeZone and get to writing.  Switch the words around to make the best rhymes, but songs don't always have to rhyme if they have rhythm. 

Hope this is helpful!

Flipped Classroom - Part 2 (Reflections)

1)   The flipped classroom was definitely a success.  My lectures were more focused and shorter.  Students were able to go through the material at their own pace. Students who were more familiar with the content or were already teaching could go through the lecture at a faster pace.  Students who were not native speakers of English could take their time and look up words they did not understand.  They could also check in their book and in the other resources for explanations of the concepts.

2)    Students found the forums time-consuming at first but in the end said that they were valuable as a tool for getting to know each other, applying the concepts that they had learned, exchanging ideas with their peers, and it also provided a valuable assessment tool for me.

3)    The classroom discussions and activities were the big winners. Having the students come prepared for discussions (and me not having to do a long lecture) allowed plenty of time for group activities which then afforded me the time to listen in, and pose questions as an informal assessment.

4)    I felt that my assessments were varied enough to allow each student to excel in the class regardless of their learning modality.  By the end of the course, I was able to assess my students’ ability to: a) comprehend the text, b) apply the principles to their student population, c) lead and participate in discussions, and d) participate in a group activity with an oral component.  The forums and journals also allowed me to assess writing expression and ability.

Feedback from my students and self-reflection gave me some ideas of what I would do differently the next time I teach my course.

1)    The most difficult thing for me to do was to let go of control. Feedback from my students said that the sessions where I felt the need to go over the lecture notes again were the least interesting. I must trust that my students will do what they need to do in order to come to class prepared.

2)    I definitely need to rework my syllabus so that students know exactly what they need to prepare before coming to class, what they need to be prepared to do in class, and what is expected of them after class.  The timeline for preparation, discussion and activities, and responding to the forums needs to be more explicit.  This is something that can also be addressed by changing the format of my school website.  Right now, it is mostly a list of resources followed by links for assignments.

3)    Although I like the discussions and activities as I have prepared them, I would like to continue to refine them so that they become a better assessment tool.  I would also like to look for alternate assignments so that students have a choice in tasks and projects.

4)    The final change is technical in nature.  I’d like to make my presentation more visually appealing by including short video clips, using the tools available through the Faculte Studio, and providing additional assistance via the Q & A capability of the website.  My school website also allows for self-paced quizzes to ensure that students have gotten the correct information.  I would not use them for grading, but they would allow students to gauge their level of comprehension of the topic and ask questions for clarification.

I am also looking forward to getting ideas from the book I purchased as well as from the many websites available on the topic.  After all this time, I’m still learning and still loving it! 

The Times They Are A-Changin' (Part 1 - Flipped Classroom Reflections)

(by Dr. Alva Lefevre - the "L" in L&M Educational Consulting)

I’ve been teaching for what seems to be a very long time.  I’ve studied the research, practiced the strategies, and gathered a lot of information about my students. Some things worked and, over time, became part of my repertoire and others fell flat and eventually disappeared.  I tried models; didn’t like them; and finally realized that I must redefine the way I teach with each new group of students. 

I am presently teaching a course titled “Theories of Second Language Acquisition” at the university level and my students often joke that the name alone is enough to put you to sleep.  Over the last several years, parts of my course have been moving online making it a “hybrid”, with some sessions taking place on campus and others being in an online format (asynchronous). 

Embracing technology was not hard. Learning to live with it was another matter.

It was already a challenge to get to know my students when the course met on campus, as it only met once a week for a three-hour session and the “lecture” took up much of it.  Every quarter, my students would fill out an evaluation and tell me that the “best” part of the course was when they could discuss the materials with their peers and the class activities.  As much as I longed to be the "guide on the side", I almost always ended up being the "sage on the stage".  This was a very scary notion as I recalled my graduate school days of desperately trying to stay awake through boring lectures after a long day working.

Because the material can be overwhelming and I wanted my students to be ready to apply their knowledge when they took the methodology course, I spent a good part of each session explaining the theories, showing how the concepts would apply to the classroom, and I tried to challenge my students to figure out how the application would change depending on their teaching environment and their particular student population.  That didn’t always leave much time for activities and discussion and I would find myself rushing through a lecture to make time for the activities only to find out that not all students had understood the material. With my class composition being half native English speakers and half speakers of other languages; I felt that the pace was too slow for some and too fast for the rest.  The activities and discussions were fun; but not always fruitful from my perspective.  The students enjoyed them but were not always closer to understanding the theories or how they influenced curriculum design.

When I started to hear about the “flipped classroom”, I thought it made a lot of sense for me.  My students were motivated; and, for the most part, already used to having technology facilitate their learning.  Although the concept was not totally new, it intrigued me and I felt I was ready do things differently and to use technology as a teaching and learning tool rather than just as a way to access information and materials.

Flipping my classroom would entail having the "lecture" done at home via teacher-created presentations and having the class time used for activities and discussions.  This would give the students time in class to work on key learning activities and would provide a means to increase interaction and personalized contact between teacher and students.

The idea of the flipped classroom also appealed to me because it was a blending of direct instruction with constructivist learning and it catered to the three distinct roles in constructivism: the active learner, the social learner, and the creative learner.  Flipping my classroom would allow all three to flourish.

Students would be able to listen to a short lecture presentation at home, at their own pace, and read the additional materials.  They would come to class prepared to discuss the topic and to participate in group activities. 

During the classroom discussions, the students take an active role. Instead of just listening to the lecture and taking notes, reading the textbook and answering questions; they discuss ideas, debate hypotheses, investigate and design instruction as they begin to formulate ideas about their potential student population.  The group activities also bring into play the social learner.  Knowledge and understanding are constructed through dialogue with others and through the application to real-life scenarios. Finally, as creative learners, students examine their potential population and make educated guesses as to how the theories would apply to them.  This engages them in a discovery process and yields deeper understanding as they learn to make connections between the theories and their “real” environment.  It’s one way of engaging learners in an active problem-solving exercise that connects the knowledge they are acquiring with a real world application.

Putting my plan into action meant that I needed to focus my lectures so that, in recorded form, they would not be longer than thirty minutes.  It also meant that all ancillary materials had to either expand my students’ knowledge of the topic or lead them to make connections with other concepts.  At all times, they needed to be brought back to their potential student population. 

Packaging and narrating the presentations was time-consuming but received a thumbs-up from my students.  The discussions and activities were successful and it seemed that, from the formative and summative assessments, my students had a deeper understanding of how theory and application connected with students and classroom. 

In the second part of this blog, I would like to look at what worked in more depth and analyzed what needs to change – the how and the why.  I have found that there are many resources on the internet about the flipped classroom and that they can be as individual as we are.  A good reference is :

 Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day, by flipped classroom pioneers Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergmann, is available through ASCD

Fun and Games (continued) - Student Engagement

With summer almost gone, it’s time to scour the ads for school supplies and to gear up for the new school year.  The beginning of school always brings up conflicting emotions for me.  First and foremost, the excitement and anticipation of meeting new students and trying new lessons, but also the anxiety of trying to meet so many new needs.

Continuing with the trend of Fun and Games and with the understanding that engagement comes when students feel a connection with what they’re learning, here are some ideas gathered from two sources that inspired me this summer:

1)    David Warlick’s Smartbrief identified “four qualities of gaming and social networking experiences that provoke active and deliberate investment from the learner, into what they’re learning.”  He cites:

a.     Responsiveness (“Choices work or don’t, but everything gets feedback”);

b.     Collaboration (Learners discuss and build off one other to participate and achieve); 

c.     Personal Meaningfulness (quantifiable value and rewards (unlocking new levels, getting likes or comments), and player and participant identities are valued);

d.     Guided Learning in a Safe Environment (Players and participants learn from what works and what doesn’t and adapt their strategy). 

Sounds familiar?  It should.  These are the building blocks of a successful classroom. The final question: “What would happen if students and teachers were free to play with learning?”  filled me with new energy and enthusiasm as I started to work on my Fall Syllabus.

The Art and Science of Teaching  by Robert Marzano identifies five common factors related to student engagement:

High Energy—Teachers can use physical activity, appropriate pacing, and communication of enthusiasm and intensity in working with students to promote engagement and motivation.

Missing Information—Teachers can capitalize on the innate human need for closure by asking students to discover and supply missing information.

The Self-System—Effective engagement of students also involves incorporating topics, ideas, and processes that students find inherently interesting and valuable to them.

Mild Pressure—When students experience mild pressure while engaging in such activities as questioning, games, and competitions, they tend to focus their attention on key elements of the learning process.

Mild Controversy and Competition—Teachers can structure and manage non-threatening forms of controversy and competition through such processes as debates, tournaments, and related forms of team-based activities.

(Source is ASCD Website)

Module 13 focuses on the use of games and other forms of non-threatening competition as catalysts for promoting student engagement and Modules 14 and 15 present strategies based on these five factors that teachers can use to engage students.

More Games and Activities

Here's another link to ESL games: http://www.manythings.org/e/abc.html. This is the alphabetical list on the "Many Things" website. The idioms and slang sections are a great reference for intermediate proficiency level students.

Games and Activities 2 - Review of Instant Poetry Forms

Hi Everyone!

I have been taking some time to play with the Instant Poetry Forms (especially since I am writing some poetry for some world languages units :) ). It is listed under poetry resources on the right-hand side of our blog. I know that we had some interest in this site before, but I thought it would be worthwhile to remind you all of how fun these are! There are a ton of poetry frames. Here's one from my daughter that she wrote about her new beta fish:

I am a beta fish blue as an ocean.
I swim through my log.
I eat freeze-dried worms.
I can play guitar on my fins.
I can stare at my best buddy, Liv.
I am a beta fish.

Try some of the forms out and post them here or on our Facebook page!

Also, I just visited the New Mexico Chant Bank to see if I could find some inspiration for my own writing. They have a TON of new poems posted since I last checked them out (which was several months ago at least) . I like that you can add your own chants/poetry to the bank, too. Please take a minute to visit their site and let us know what you think.