Sixth Post on ESL Findings

Photo by me

After a hard day's work you may want to curl up on the couch and relax! Unfortunately for me, my dogs got to the couch before I did and took up all of the available space. It's a little hard to see but Micah, the biggest dog, is setting on the edge of the couch even though he is the biggest dog. This picture, while silly, had me thinking about opportunities our students have. If you aren't fast enough you can miss out are great opportunities. Scholarships, internships, work studies, and jobs are time sensitive. This is another reason it is important to help out L2 students develop their language skills so that they are not at a disadvantage. With that thought out of the way, let's get into this week's findings!

Photo retrieved from https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/11/14881076/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-nintendo-interview

The first thing I found in my search was on the Gaming Lab at Smith College. The Gaming Lab offers over one hundred games that students can come in and play in an environment that encourages acceptance and appropriate dialogue. This is a great resource that the college has because, as a gamer, I know that playing games with strangers online can be hit and miss. While some players are very polite and friendly others are incredibly rude and will harass whoever they are playing with. Female gamers and minorities, unfortunately, are more likely to get harassed about their gender or how they sound when they speak online. So how does this Gaming Lab benefit L2 students? First all, it creates a space where gamers can come together and learn how to appropriately interact with players. It also serves as a safe environment where gamers can gather without being harassed. Most importantly, Gaming Lab is a place where everyone shares an interest: gaming. This offers a shared connection with all attendees of the Gaming Lab from the start. I run a video game club at my school and I have found that a lot of the "socially awkward" students are learning how to interact with each other better (at least during club meetings).

Photo retrieved from https://seanmunger.com/2018/03/07/retro-book-review-planet-of-the-dragons-choose-your-own-adventure/

The second thing my findings turned up this week was digital Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) books. There are a lot of wonderful options to pursue when designing a CYOA activity but the information I was looking at this week was focused on making sure the activity is appropriate. Examples of distasteful CYOA stories were a slave simulation, refugee simulation, and the Afghanistan War. The important thing to consider when creating your own classroom CYOA is what someone who lived through the topic you are writing about think of your activity. The last thing we want to do is alienate, traumatize, or offend our students & parents. I would recommend sharing your CYOA activity with a few colleagues or friends before doing it with a class to make sure it is appropriate for students.

That concludes this blog post, thanks for reading!

https://www.smith.edu/news/a-space-for-digital-storytelling/
http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2018/11/06/the-dangers-of-choose-your-own-adventure-genre-for-real-painful-stories/

Fifth Post on ESL Findings

Photo taken by Haley Haun

For this week's post I selected a photo of my dog, Micah, enjoying the pellet stove after a "hard day" of work. I selected this photo because my coworkers and I have been discussing mental fatigue and ways to cope with stress. For me, sitting in front of a fire with a good book or my dogs is a great way to relax! It is important that we help students find ways to relax, I know my students have more on their plates than I ever did at that age. With that said, let's see what we found this week!

Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Study_(16840395246).jpg

The first thing my search this week turned up was a study that was done on personal learning environments (PLEs) and the effects that PLEs have on students' higher order thinking skills. The study was conducted with a test designed to assess higher order thinking skills. I-Google Portal & Blackboard were used, the PLE students used I-Google while the other group used Blackboard. They study found that students using the PLEs were much more satisfied with their learning and scored higher on the test. My only complaint with the study is that two different online platforms were used but this may be because Blackboard might not be able to support PLEs or I-Google Portal might only be able to support PLEs. While I feel this is a good study I still would have liked to have seen the same online platform used for both groups (if possible) because that would make a stronger case for the strength of PLEs.

Retrieved from https://skyrisecities.com/database/cities/hong-kong

The next thing I found in my searches was about Hong Kong's English standards dropping. I selected this article because I have actually been to Hong Kong (almost three years ago over Christmas break) and I ended up in Hong Kong Disney. What is unique about the Disney Park there (and, really, the whole city) is that material was presented in three different languages on signs, handouts, and menus. Even the live presentations incorporated three languages so that all members of the audience could understand what was going on. Back to the article, the concern is that the less and less English is used in Hong Kong the less valuable Hong Kong because as an international commercial hub. The article states that English is being pushed to the wayside to focus on Mandarin but there weren't any sources backing up this claim. I hope. ultimately, that the author was mistaken because Hong Kong is a great example of what you can do when you incorporate multiple languages into your identity instead of focusing only on one.

Thank you for reading, I hope you had a wonderful Halloween! My parents' chihuahua, Corki, had fun dressing up!

Photo Taken by Holly Haun

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14703297.2018.1534601?journalCode=riie20
https://www.scmp.com/comment/letters/article/2170312/will-hong-kongs-falling-english-standards-spell-end-citys-unique

Fourth Post of ESL Findings

Photo taken by Haun

As we begin this week's search for information I decided to share a photo of Chris, our foster puppy from Speranza Animal Rescue. My first name is also Chris so we've had some fun mix-ups already! Puppy Chris was searching the backyard for a tennis ball and he's immediately what I thought of when I started to search for information this week.

Photo retrieved from: http://literacykewauneeco.org/

The first article I found was on another Adult Literacy program, this one in Wisconsin, called Literacy Partners. The article stated that Literacy Partners' main goal is to help adults learn English but they also accomplish so much more. They help their adult students become US citizens, get GEDs, licenses, and complete taxes among other things. The program is, unfortunately, exclusively for adults because Literacy Partners says that there are programs that exist within schools to help students develop their language skills. While I agree that there are programs in school I know my students would really benefit from having somewhere outside of school to practice and develop their English skills. Periods in my school are only forty-three minutes, which isn't a lot of time. Some ESL departments have limited funding. I do not know how one would go about creating a group like the ones that exist for adults but I do think that it is something that should be considered. To clarify, I think programs like Literacy Partners do great work and I am not trying to discredit the work they do. I just wish there were more programs like Literacy Partners for our students.

Image retrieved from https://4riverscs.org/home

The second thing I found was on a language immersion program in Oregon that has a high-achieving dual immersion program. Because of their success they are going to be studied over the next few years to hopefully uncover what the secret of their success is. That being said, the school in question is a charter school and has access to resources that not all public schools are able to afford. Still, I am hopeful that the results of the study will encourage schools to redirect some of our existing resources to our L2 students. And who knows, maybe dual language immersion programs will start to be implemented in more schools because of the success at Ford Rivers Community School?

That concludes my research for this week, thank you very much for your time. See you next week!

https://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/story/news/local/kewaunee-county/2018/10/17/literacy-group-helps-more-than-just-language-skills-needs-tutors/1670230002/ 

https://www.argusobserver.com/news/four-rivers-lauded-for-language-immersion/article_7bb1b12c-d4b3-11e8-958b-9fc1e8856a84.html

Third Post of ESL Findings

Photo taken by Haun

With the weather changing and the school year getting to the end of the first quarter I find myself washing my hands constantly to avoid getting sick. The sniffles are going around my school and several teachers have had to take a day or two off to get ahead of them. Fortunately I have not had to deal with a cold as of yet but I've got a good support group at home if I do get sick (pictured above). Cocoa is the black dog and Micah is the bigger dog that Cocoa is laying on. They are my best friends when I'm sick but my goal is to not put them to work!

https://www.facebook.com/TEDEducation/videos/291113918392666/

The first thing I found in my searching this week is Ted-Ed's new poetry video, "To Make Use of Water" by Safia Elhilo. This is a great tool in that the animations help depict what is happening in the poem and illustrate the author's writing. Ted-Ed is planning to do a poem a week and I think that this would be a great tool in English classrooms to talk about poetry. Poems are difficult to understand and words can take on whole new meanings depending on how they are used or arranged in poetry. An animation can help students see clearer what is going on and I feel that this would be a great resource to L2 learners. Additionally, the content covered in this particular is a great discussion point with students. The author starts by describing the experience of forgetting some of her old language and some of her new language. The author relates feelings of displacement and the desire to return home. This can be a great conversational piece but I would only recommend trying it with your students if you know them well. I did get another idea from this video though...

Retrieved from https://www.findlay.edu/blog/digital-storytelling-tools

Digital storytelling is a topic we started to cover this week in ESL 509 and I thought of a fun poetry activity using the Ted-Ed video as inspiration. In this activity students would have the option of picking a poem they like and creating a digital storybook to illustrate the poem. Part of the storybook would involve them reading the poem as it is written, animating what they think it means, and then they could explain what they think the poem means. This gives students a chance to flex their creative muscles on a subject that is quite tricky. I remember constantly having to write essays about poetry in school and, partially because of that, I developed a mild dislike for the writing style until I became older. I feel fun activities like this one is a way to teach students about the material in a way that is fun and enjoyable, hopefully encouraging a lifelong interest.

That's all for this post, thank you for reading!

Second Post on ESL Findings

Photo Taken by  Haun

Welcome back to my second post on my ESL findings! The picture above is of my dog, Clark, when he was looking particularly thoughtful (I think he just wanted to know when dinner was...). I found a lot to think about this week so I felt the photo was fitting!

The first article I looked was examining if technology can help improve language learning and, short answer, they found that technology can help. They said that there are tons of applications and websites that are designed to help with language learning and that there are a lot of programs specifically geared towards three year old children. The article states that this is the age brains are most receptive to learning a language. Unfortunately the article is very general and does not list any of the apps or websites they found in their research but it is nice to see that technology is helping with language learning. The last sentence in this article mentions that we need to become responsible handlers of technology. I agree with this statement but I would go a step further: we also need to teach our students how to be responsible handlers of technology. Technology is a wonderful tool but it can also be a distraction! I loved my graphing calculator in high school and it helped me get through calculus but it also had "block dude," which was quite distracting. I did not play it often but it was a constant temptation...

Block Dude retrieved from: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ErFXHHYXByk/hqdefault.jpg

The second thing I found interesting this week was on a school district in Massachusetts that is adding ESL classes for parents. The classes are held twice a week on Tuesday & Thursday from 9 AM to 11 AM. They already have twenty-five parents on a waiting list for the class. I love the idea of this class and I think it is very forward thinking of the school to offer classes for parents. My only concern with this program is that it is twice a week and during the work day. I am worried that parents that are working will be unable to attend and miss out on this opportunity. If my district were to do something like this I would do an online version so parents could access the lessons any time they wanted to. The lessons could be potentially hosted by the district's website or they could be housed on Google Classroom. I applaud the forward thinking of the district in Massachusetts and I'm not trying to critique them but I do know I would like to implement the program differently if my district were to try it.

Google Classroom Logo retrieved from: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/59/Google_Classroom_Logo.png/220px-Google_Classroom_Logo.png 

That will conclude this blog post, thank you for reading!  Have a great day!!

Retrieved from: https://www.hindustantimes.com/education/can-technology-help-improve-the-language-learning-experience/story-FncR0t5eGtE3sCM4VHdzKJ.html

Retrieved from: https://www.itemlive.com/2018/10/05/lynn-teachers-union-and-curriculum-department-debut-esl-classes-for-parents/

First Post on ESL Findings

Hello and welcome to my first blog post!

I will admit that I am a little nervous because I have never created a blog or a blog post before. I do use social media but this is much more involved  that posting statuses on Facebook. That being said, I feel that blogging will prove to be a much more useful tool. 

Some background information about me: I teach Business in PA and I am currently in my fifth year teaching. My wife teaches Biology in a neighboring school district. We have three dogs (just adopted the third two weeks ago). For fun, I like to read, watch movies, play board games, and some video games.

Onto my research, one of the first things I found this week was from the Tennessee Department of Education. They released a statement, in which they said: "Tennessee students speak more than 140 languages..." (Tennessee Department of Education). I found this number quite large but I am sure that  there are states with many more languages spoken. After seeing this statement, I talked with my school's ESL teachers and they informed me that our school alone has over twenty-six languages. On the door they have a greeting written in each of the students' native language. We only have two teachers in our ESL department. They have a lot of students they work with and they have to coordinate resources and strategies with all of their students' other teachers. I feel that by exploring technology solutions and improving my own toolbox I will be able to share what I have learned and, hopefully, alleviate some of their massive workload.

The technology I want to focus on in this blog post is Fiskkit, Fiskkit Classroom is currently in beta and you have to have a sign up code to use it. I have reached out to the developers and I will update this post later to explain how to get a code. Once obtaining a code and fiddling with the website a bit, I plan on using Fiskkit with my students. The website allows teachers to post an article and their students can then rate any sentence inside of the article. They can also provide comments to explain why they rated it as they did. You can also have students use the comment section of Fiskkit to highlight confusing sentences or topics they did not understand in the article. After all students have had time to view the article Fiskkit provides a graphic that shows you how students evaluated the article. I think this would be a great tool for L2 students because the rating aspect of Fiskkit requires them to think about the authenticity of the article instead of just the content. I also like that students are able to comment on specific sentences so you can see the parts of the article that were difficult to comprehend.

That's all for this blog post, please let me know what you think. Have a fantastic day!

Resource: Fiskkit

Retrieved from: 

http://www.chattanoogan.com/2018/10/3/377365/Tennessee-Department-Of-Education.aspx