ESL-Students Learning about the Holocaust in English

As seasoned ELT Practitioners,  we try to find ways in our curriculum that go some way to helping students engage more in the process of learning. So, apart from language, the integral part of our syllabus in semester one, we move into more literature-based modules and units during semester two; however, never losing sight of the importance grammar and language plays in the mind of Turkish students.  That leads us to our final novel of the year, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, which, if you haven't read it/ taught it yet, we urge you to do so.  Not only is it an engaging read for ALL of the students, it affords you the opportunity to inform Turkish students of the horrors of the Holocaust, and in particular, the Death Camp at Auschwitz.
We begin the module by providing a lot of background knowledge to the students on how Germany was after WWI, and how Hitler was able to rise the nation up in a very short space of time.  This type of visual scaffolding on World History to young teenagers not only interests and engages them, but it also provides breaking-ground for them as they learn what happened historically in a second language.

The PDF version of the class-powerpoint is available when you click this link...

WORLD HISTORY: scaffolding part ONE

The scaffolding provides the students with great background knowledge as they begin the book.  Since the primary focus is close reading and textual analysis as the true "understanding" of the novel, we of course do not want to only concentrate on the ppps, and we have split the "world history" aspect into three parts.  As the narrative unfolds we find the young protagonist, the son of the Auschwitz commander, questioning the war, Hitler himself, and of course, Auschwitz.  At this point the students really start to see the horrors of what the Holocaust was.  That is when we show the second powerpoint, which is dedicated to the atrocities of the Holocaust.  We carefully warned the students that many of the images they were about to see would be very upsetting.  That done, we showed them the material.  The students were visibly shocked and at the end of the presentation and through discussion, my colleague and I both felt a genuine connect from the students.  Their inquiry and willingness to ask deeper-rooted questions told us how much this type of approach was having a lasting effect.

The PDF version of the class-powerpoint is available when you click this link...

WORLD HISTORY: scaffolding part TWO

With much of the book now giving insights to the racism and anti-Semitic views held by the Nazis, we felt it necessary to further inform the students how the victims were rounded up and herded into Death Trains.  The sheer magnitude of numbers and deaths by the horrific nature of the transportation further engaged the students.  We arranged the tables in class to show students how small the train carriages were that had over 100 people crammed into them with little air, food, water or sanitation.  This section of the book and lessons had perhaps the most effect on getting the students to realize the horror of the situation.  By putting it into size and perspective gave them more insight to what those poor people had to endure before they died or reached Auschwitz.

DEATH TRAINS: scaffolding part THREE

In order to let students get more reading practice we also included a few articles.  This we believe also gives more perspective to the students as they see it is not a work of fiction.  Indeed, nowadays, authorities are still finding Nazi war criminals, and it brings the reality right up to date and into the students time-frame.

As the final exam was approaching, we had already decided to include a small section on World History, and I felt it necessary to help them revise for it.  Not wishing to have students memorize details and events per se, I thought it a good idea to prepare a short reading text based on the questions they would see in the exam.  However, I wanted to include their close-reading skills in the revision lesson.  So, I wrote the article and embedded the information.  I informed the students that although the information contained within was historically accurate, it was from my creative hand.                    

The document would theoretically provide several key learning points:

• revision of history utilizing a different genre
• close-reading away from the novel
• further gleaned information 
• analysis of embedded textual information
• connectivity of content to exam

WORLD HISTORY: scaffolding part FOUR

The final part of world history scaffolding paradigm showed the students how Hitler's reign came to an end with an astounding extract from the film, The Bunker (below).

In addition to the video several slides were also prepared and can be seen in the linked pdf below:

WORLD HISTORY: scaffolding part FIVE

Below are two astounding videos that are worthy of inclusion in your Holocaust module.  The first is from a special report made by Oprah Winfrey who met and visited Auschwitz with one of its survivors.  The man, now a highly respected professor, shows an insight we could only ever have nightmares about.  It is incredible!

The second is a wonderful story designed to show the power of symbolism used to give an insight to racism, fascism, betrayal, oppression, regret, guilt and ultimately, the beauty of genuine humanity and reflection when even the worst of man can realize the mistakes they have made.  In the case of the millions lost, of course too late, but the message in the short film gives us all hope.

A beautiful short film that will touch your students' hearts..


W
We hope that this post hasn't depressed anyone too much.  We were, at the beginning of the unit, rather apprehensive using this with 15 year olds, but what we did was try to keep the extremely offensive images and information out of the units taught at school, but encouraged anyone who wished to discover for themselves and who wanted to talk about it later.  This students-autonomous inquiry did occur with several  of the students reporting back how they had looked for themselves at home.  One student even felt it necessary to share his two video findings on our Edmodo page. If we can get our students to share materials in this way, we must definitely encourage it.  We would hope to see this type of engagement next year.

One very pleasing note comes today after having graded the students' final exam for the year.  The short reading section on World History has returned every student with near full points.  It leads us to believe that the scaffolding in general, and in particular, the reading texts done this week have made an impact on the students.  We will continue to do such revision-tactics for future exams.

StudyBlue: A Mobile App for Vocabulary Building

A few weeks ago, while my colleague and I were having our weekly meeting, the discussion suddenly turned from what we were planning to do that week to a reflection on how this academic year had gone.  After chatting about the positives in our curriculum that had taken place, we got down to talking about what needed to be improved for next year.  Within a couple of minutes, we both agreed that basic vocabulary building was the one part of our self-made syllabus that we hadn't focused on enough throughout the year.  With all of the teaching of grammar, reading, writing, ICT tools and general academic skills, vocabulary seemed to just get pushed to the side.  At the end of the meeting, we promised ourselves that in the coming months, we would find more time and better methods for teaching vocabulary to our students next year.

A few days later, while surfing the net for vocabulary teaching strategies, I remember that my colleague had suggested to me that I check out a free vocabulary studying app called StudyBlue.  Simply put, StudyBlue is an app in which teachers and students can make their own visually-engaging vocabulary flashcards.  These can then can be shared with friends and peers in seconds.  Just have a look at their trailer below...

As you can see from the video, the concept of the app is very simple.  With StudyBlue being available on the web, as well as on smartphones and tablets, (you can reach the Apple App store link here) it allows students to study vocabulary or other items on the go, 24/7.

After registering for free, it takes just a few minutes to create your very own flashcards which are automatically in your 'backpack'.  You can produce very basic flashcards with just text, or you also have the option to include images.

For a trial run, my colleague and I decided to create two sets of simple flashcards for our students with vocabulary words from the novel we are currently teaching our students, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, by John Boyne.  From the onset, however, we agreed that we would not teach the vocabulary items with the app, but rather it would be just an extra tool for them to use.  The reason for that is that, generally, we find that our students are not able

to truly focus for longer periods of time when using technology in the classroom.  With activities like learning new words, it is better for our students to first engage in a more classic style of learning, like worksheets or dictionary-diving, and then have the ICT tools as a support mechanism.

After finishing the flashcards with the chosen lexical items from the novel, we shared them with our students via Edmodo.  We told them that they would have a quiz on the words in a few days time, and for those of them who wanted, they could use StudyBlue to help them study. Unfortunately, many of them could not be bothered with it as it was a choice for them, but the few who did use it told us that it was helpful and easy-to-use.  Several of them studied on the bus coming to and from school on their IPhones, and when asked after the quiz, they felt that it had a positive impact on their learning.  

While we are planning to do a lot more in terms of improving our vocabulary teaching for the next academic year, StudyBlue will definitely be used as an extra support tool for the students.  Try it out today, and let us know if and how you plan to use in your curriculum.  We would love to know.

      

ETAS Just published my 5-STAGES-of-LEARNING Article

This post is best suited for the published version for your perusal.  I have presented about this topic on ASSESSMENT & STUDENT AWARENESS of THEIR OWN LEARNING several times, and last year a Twitter-friend of mine, Vicky Loras, contacted me on the altruistic platform, and asked if I'd like to write it up for ETAS the Swiss Teaching Journal she was working for at the time.  I dutifully agreed, and with many thanks to her, it came out this week.  Please click on the link below the picture for the full article.

WHAT WE CAN DO TO MAKE STUDENTS BELIEVE IN ASSESSMENTS

Making Sure Your Students Have Got the Writing Process Down

We are committed as Prep-for-HighSchool teachers to ensure our students can deal with the complex challenges of the Academic Essay Process. It begins with general paragraph writing in semester one, and ends with our students developing the skills to produce the rudiments of a reasonably well-organized five paragraph essay. Although we know there are many opponents to the model of a five-paragraph opinion essay, we believe that it helps them to understand how to approach subjects they are not so comfortable with, and sets them up with the proper approach to any formal academic writing assignment by focusing on researching, planning and organization.

The reason for this post is to share with you an activity I came up with yesterday that had great responses from our students today. It actually came to my mind after having had much rejection to the idea of all that I refer to above. The students simply do not want to think past the obvious in and out of class, which does not bode well for research, development of any and all writing ideas and the success of a research writing assignment. So, I realized that it was an opportunity to see what the sticking point was. The next few paragraphs explain how the classroom activity went.

We put both classes into pairs, and asked them to tear a couple of A4s from their notebooks. They were told that these would be posted on the board in ten minutes, once they had discussed the steps for organizing an OPINION ESSAY on one sheet, and THE WRITING PROCESS itself on the other.

The students started talking, and it was clear from the get go that they were baffled by the task. Even though they asked for help, it was imperative that I didn't buckle and help them. I wanted it to be a SOLO task for them to reflect and question their own knowledge and understanding of the Academic Writing Process. Their frustrations were noticeable, and many of them gave up.

I closed the first session after ten minutes and asked the student pairs to blue tac their efforts to the white board. The students, now even more curious, start giggling and pointing to other groups ideas of the process. I instructed them to look and take note of their peers papers. The penny dropped as the collaborative action took place. After a few minutes, I told them to return to their seats and amend their first drafts. Now, the mood was frantic with the writer in each group furiously writing their newly found ideas. It was really exciting, if I am honest.

To end up, we worked as a class and formulated both processes on a Google Doc. Every student participated and the teaching-learning environment was abuzz with hands raised, and everyone desperate to have their say. Below are the results for both organizational models.

                                           

                                        ESSAY-WRITING PROCESS

1     THINK ABOUT THE TOPIC, & DO RESEARCH IF NECESSARY

2     BRAINSTORM &/OR HI-CLOUD IT

3     DECIDE ON THE PURPOSE OF YOUR ESSAY

4     DECIDE UPON THE THE MESSAGE

5     DECIDE UPON THE AUDIENCE

6     WHICH INFORMATION DO YOU WISH TO TRANSFER/SHARE WITH THE READER

7     BUILD A THESIS FROM GENERAL TO SPECIFIC

8     WRITE YOUR INTRODUCTION (GENERAL TO SPECIFIC)

9     TOPIC SENTENCE

10 SUPPORTING IDEAS

11 RELEVANT EXAMPLES (X HOW MANY PARAGRAPHS YOU ARE WRITING)

12 CONCLUSION

                                         

                       THE WRITING PROCESS ITSELF

1     GET THE TOPIC FROM THE TEACHER

2  (BEGIN THE ESSAY PROCESS): THINK ABOUT THE TOPIC, & DO RESEARCH IF NECESSARY

3     BRAINSTORM &/OR HI-CLOUD IT

4     DECIDE ON THE PURPOSE OF YOUR ESSAY

5     DECIDE UPON THE THE MESSAGE

6     DECIDE UPON THE AUDIENCE

7     WHICH INFORMATION DO YOU WISH TO TRANSFER/SHARE WITH THE READER

8     BUILD A THESIS FROM GENERAL TO SPECIFIC

9     WRITE YOUR INTRODUCTION (GENERAL TO SPECIFIC)

10 TOPIC SENTENCE

11 SUPPORTING IDEAS

12 RELEVANT EXAMPLES (X HOW MANY PARAGRAPHS YOU ARE WRITING)

13 CONCLUSION

14 SUBMIT IT TO YOUR TEACHER FOR FEEDBACK

15 RECEIVE THE FEEDBACK AND REWRITE BASED ON YOUR TEACHER’S SUGGESTIONS & YOUR OWN THOUGHTS FOR IMPROVEMENT

16 RESUBMIT IT TO PENZUCLASSROOM

17 WAIT FOR TEACHER (VIDEO) FEEDBACK

18 OPEN PENZUCLASSROOM AND REWRITE FOR THE FINAL TIME MAKING SURE FOR LOGIC, ORGANIZATION AND LANGUAGE.

19 THEN SUBMIT FOR YOUR GRADE

After this was completed, I thought of the possible ICT-ELT moment I could have. I got out my iphone and opened my recording app. I then interviewed each student, and the audios are below.

STUDENT REFLECTIVE AUDIO 1

STUDENT REFLECTIVE AUDIO 2

STUDENT REFLECTIVE AUDIO 3

STUDENT REFLECTIVE AUDIO 4

This activity really hit home to me the need for constant/continuous student reflection on any and every complex learning requirement in the classroom. By their own admission, this simple reflective activity with peer-collaboration made them realize they didn't know how to approach essay writing, even though we have been doing paragraph writing for months, and showing them what they had to do to move to the next level. It was great to see them all admit what they have to do, and I hope as they enter this academic writing environment, they can feel more confident that they need to focus more in their studies before the end of the month.

End of the Year Academic and Reflective Portfolio

As yet another academic year slowly comes to an end, our students are about to embark on the most important assignment of the year in our syllabus; the Academic and Reflective Portfolio presentation.  Portfolio presentations are essentially a way for students to reflect on what they have learned and produced throughout the year, and they are quite common in Turkish education, all through K-12.  In the most basic format, students choose several projects or assignments that they have done during the year, then reflect upon not only what they learned, but also the reasons behind choosing those particular assignments.  Students then incorporate these assignments into a presentation, usually in PowerPoint, and show them to their teachers, as well as their parents, who are invited to come to school on that day.

Just to give you an idea of what its all about, please watch the following clip...

My colleague David and I, who have been teaching in Turkey for a combined 25 years, are both huge supporters of portfolio presentations.  They provide a fantastic opportunity for teachers to see just how much their students really have learned during the year in terms of their English language ability, in addition to their overall improvement in academic skills.  Furthermore, depending on how candid the students are, teachers can receive beneficial feedback by finding out what students really think of their chosen assignments, projects, or the curriculum as a whole.

Because we teach our students for more than 20 periods a week, there are myriad assignments and projects that they can theoretically choose from by the end of the year.  It could actually be quite a headache for them when trying to decide on what they should present, and where those assignments are now (because they most likely lost them). Therefore, just as our blog motto states, we Adopted and Adapted the basic idea of the Portfolio and transformed it into something more suitable for our students' needs.  

First, we provide our students with a list of academic skills, activities, projects, books and ICT tools that we have introduced to them during the year (seen below).  The students must choose only three of these skills to present in their portfolio.

After deciding on the three skills they would like to present, we inform the students that they must make three PowerPoint slides for each skill.  Although they are free to design the slides in whatever fashion they wish, the slides must include the following three items:

Finally, in addition to the making the PowerPoint presentation, we also require our students to write up a reflective response on Penzu.  In it, the students simply further expand upon what they are going to/have present(ed) to us. 

We began to use this style of portfolio presentation two years ago, and it truly has been an amazing success.  It is remarkable to see many students, who came to us with very little English in September, stand up confidently in front of their teachers and speak about their reflections of the academic year.  Each year, we are able to find out students' opinions of our curriculum which we hadn't known before, and that allows us to amend some assignments or projects that perhaps didn't work so well in the academic year.  Then, on the flip side of the coin, it gives the students one final opportunity to show us what they have learned, and what they can do now in speaking, writing plus, of course, really show off their technical skills and ability to present in L2.

To wrap up, here is another short clip of a student presenting her portfolio to us last year...

EDCANVAS has added a QUIZ function

We have been using EDCANVAS now for four months. Initially, for video tutorials we had been using Tildee, but when EDCANVAS appeared on the scene we quickly switched over, and now we have transferred all our video lessons to this platform. The reasons are clear: simple to use, student-affective and very useful for getting your video-lessons over to students in a clear and crisp way.

I have already posted about EDCANVAS BRILLIANCE , so this post is more of an update since the site has just had a face-lift, and it now incorporates a QUIZ FUNCTION that allows teachers to make quick quizzes that can add to their Formative Assessment tool bag, and remove any need for time-consuming grading of papers at home.

The first step is, of course, to sign in (dohhh!), and press the huge + icon.  You are now in a position to make your new Edcanvas.  In this case it is one I made for our novel that is currently underway.

So, when you open the website now, you see the awesome team have added the option to make a quiz. This is in addition to the drag-and-drop functionality for images, videos and links from the right side of the template.  You can also see there an array of handy places to get your resources from like Flickr, YouTube, or simply the ubiquitous search engine, Google.  Once you have your opening description or image video or link, it is then up to you what you want to include.  This could be short summaries, vocabulary, links to themes EQs or whatever.  For this post i have kept it short.  So, my quiz is on the second slide.

The snip from the finished quiz shows the crisp borders and formatting the team has come up with.  The options for quizzes, in this case multi-choice, is limited for now.  But, I am sure they will increase this with feedback from their Beta-Amabassadors (I have been chosen for such feedback ;-)).  I plan to inform them of the need for varied types ,so as to satisfy all testing methods and assessment requirements from subject teachers 

My short tutorial ends with a YouTube link to the trailer for the movie, which we will show at the end of the book, then do a compare/contrast of the content and approach by both author and director to the themes of both genre-types.

You can see the Edcanvas if you click HERE.  

AND HERE...

We hope you try out this awesome service, that is FREE!!!  Incredible altruism, indeed!!

Here is a video PPP of the Boy in the Striped Pyjamas 

as an altruistic bonus for you

The Avengers Retold: A Comprehensive ELT Activity

The final two months, in all seriousness, is my favorite time of the academic year. The reason for that is, by April, we have brought the majority of our students up to a strong B1 English-proficiency level according to the CEFr, while a few have even reached B2.  Furthermore, my colleague and I have taught a variety of literary analysis and academic writing skills throughout the year, and now they are finally starting to sink in with the students. What this allows us to do is spend more time on innovative and collaborative projects that include a variety of academic skills to wrap up the year, one of which is called The Avengers Retold.  Just to give you a sense of what this project is about, please watch the following trailer that we have made on Apple IMovie.     

The Avengers Retold

From the trailer, this activity may appear to be as simple as getting students to fill in speech bubbles from any given comic book. That is indeed included, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. The Avengers Retold also incorporates a number of the grammar, literary and ICT skills that we have taught our students throughout the year. These included reported speech, the SCASI and SPRE literary organizational models, as well as IWB and PowerPoint technical skills. It was basically a year's worth of ICT in ELT teaching broken down over about six class hours between two groups.

The project all begins with each student getting one picture from The Avengers comic book with the aim of creating a dialogue to fill in the empty speech bubbles.  However, the key to this activity is collaboration.  Well before the writing of the dialogue can begin, the students are told that they have to put all of their pictures together to make one story.  In order to do this, they first have to work together to place the pictures in any order they wish. They, then, must develop the characters, story and dialogue using the SPRE and SCASI models to give the story a sense of purpose and a fitting conclusion. Finally, when the speech bubbles are completely filled in and saved to a PowerPoint presentation, it is sent to the students of the other preparatory class to assess and retell the entire story in reported speech; which is then recorded and turned into a PowerPoint video, as seen here.

 

Again, the entire process takes about six or seven class hours, not to mention a couple of hours of teacher preparation. Therefore, we have broken down the activity into three parts to give you a step-by-step detailing of how you can also prepare and implement this activity in your own class.  (You can also download a copy of a checklist for the activity here.) It is worth the time and effort. 

Step 1: Prior to Class

1. To begin with, you need to select pictures from any comic book for the number of students that you have.  Each student will get one picture for which to create a dialogue.  Secondly, you want to have an appropriate amount of speech bubbles for each picture, preferably four.

2. The next step is to erase the original text in the speech bubbles.  The easiest method for us is to upload the picture to the IWB and erase the text by rubbing it out.  If you do not have an IWB, it could be done on your computer through various picture editing programs.

3. After saving each picture, we then added them all to a PowerPoint presentation, and we assigned a picture to a pair of students who are not in the same class. The reason for this is that, for example, Barışcan will create the dialogue for the picture, and when all is said and done, his partner, Petek, from the other class, and who has not seen what Barışcan has written, will report what is in the speech bubbles to the rest of her own classmates. 

4. Finally, we printed out a set of pictures to help the students put the story together, which will be explained in Step 2. We also uploaded the PowerPoint presentation to our PLN (Edmodo), so that the students could have a digital copy of their assigned pictures as well.

(If you would like to use the same Avengers pictures as we have, you can get them here) 

 

Step 2: Putting the Story Together

Putting the story together from beginning to end is the largest and most time-consuming part of this class activity. 

1. Present the PowerPoint presentation to the class, and tell each student to identify and begin thinking about their own slide.

2. Go through the presentation a second time, and as a whole class, discuss the context of the pictures. What's happening in them?  

3. Then discuss the (S)etting, (C)haracters, (A)ction, (S)tyle and (I)dea (SCASI) of the story, and make a table on the IWB. Students copy the table in their notebooks.

 

4. Next, again as a whole class, discuss the (S)ituation, (P)roblem, (R)esponse and (E)valuation (SPRE).  This organization model will give the story a rise and flow, followed by a conclusion. As in the previous step, make a table on the IWB, and students write it down in their notebooks.

5. Attach the printed copies of the pictures to the whiteboard, and the plan the order of the story based on  SPRE.  You can assign one student to come to the board and help with the organization of the pictures.  Once you have the order set, you then change the order of the pictures on the PowerPoint presentation to correspond with what the students have thought about and decided. 

6. The students then get into small groups based on where their assigned picture lies in the SPRE. For example, the students with the pictures designated in the (S)ituaton come together, the students in the (P)roblem area work together, and so on.  They write out their speech bubbles in their notebooks, making sure that what they are writing makes sense as a story. 

7.There should also be one representative from each group to go and see what the group before them in the order of SPRE  is writing, again to make sure that the story is coherent and cohesive.

8.  When all the groups have completed their speech bubbles, they come back together as a whole class, but this time working in a discussion circle.  The students read and act out the comic they have written from beginning to end.  The teacher assists in fixing any errors in the content and language.

9. Once ready, the students then come to the IWB, in turn, and write out their speech bubbles.  Each picture is then snipped again using the Windows Snipping Tool and made into a PowerPoint presentation.

10.  The presentation can then be uploaded to your PLN for the students in the other class to download on to their own computers.

 Step 3: The Retelling in Reported Speech 

The final part of this activity is where you switch over to another classroom and the practice of reported speech comes into play.

1. Get the new group of students to download the prepared PowerPoint presentation from step 2. Have the students read the story by themselves quietly and also identify with their assigned slide.

2. The teacher also displays the presentation on the IWB.  As a whole class, read through the story and get the students to identify the SPRE  in the story. You can also discuss how the story may be different from their own class and whether they liked it or not.

3. Students then return to their netbooks where they downloaded the PowerPoint presentation and write out the speech bubbles of their assigned slide in reported speech in their notebooks.

4. Once all students are finished, call them one by one to the front of the class and get them to retell the story in reported speech.

5. As an ICT bonus, you could also record the students' voices while they are reading their own sentences. It is so easily done now with smartphones and tablets. Tell the students to go off on their own to a quiet place and record their sentences.  Once finished, have them email their recordings to you, and then add those recordings to the PowerPoint presentation, and save it as a Windows Media video. Upload the video to Youtube/ Vimeo, or your blog and proudly share their work with the world!

 

  A Final Word

Despite this being quite an undertaking in terms of time and organization, we definitely recommend doing this type of activity in any ESL class.  It is without doubt one of the most successful and rewarding projects for everyone, that we have designed, prepared and completed.  It combines so many facets of ELT all in one project, from grammar and speaking to literary analysis and story-boarding organization. To give you an idea of just how many skills have been incorporated into this project, we have listed them below...

GRAMMAR: Using direct and reported speech to retell the story

READING: Reading and understanding the other class' story

WRITING: Writing out sentences in their notebooks, and on the IWB

SPEAKING: Talking and discussing with classmates to create the story

LISTENING: Listening to each others' ideas during the creative process

CREATIVITY: Tapping into the students' creative process in order to create their very own story

COLLABORATION: Working together in small groups, and as a whole class to create the story, and then to make sure it is coherent & cohesive 

LITERARY ANALYSIS: Using SCASI and SPRE to not only analyze their own story, but also to assess the other class' story 

ICT:  Using ICT tools such as Edmodo, the IWB, Snipping Tool, PowerPoint and smartphones or tablets to make and record the final class video