KEEPING STUDENTS ENGAGED at the end of a semester

Finding ideas and lessons for ESL students at the end of a long and tiresome semester (idiomatically and literally) is a chore and a serious challenge for the ELTeaching brigade.  That is why I find, like all of you reading this, an extremely difficult time of the year to come up with anything fresh that can hold a group of teenagers interested for any length of time.  So, it pleases me to announce that my colleague and I have come with another lesson idea that might help you to allay those fears and get them on it.

We had planned to use this amazing video earlier in the year, but for several reasons we put it off from being rolled out.  However, now that the major 6th exam has been completed and now all that the students have to keep them interested in participating is the feedback we can give them on their impending yearly portfolios (the post of that organization can be found here by scanning the QR Code below.


So the video I am espousing is a short film that won numerous awards, and one which I last year and just new it would be a hit with our students.  The film, Peter and the Wolf, has no dialog, but relies on wonderful animation and the music soundtrack supplied by its writer, Sergio Prokofiev from 1936.  WAIT!!!!! How can a student from 2013 even begin to accept something so old. Well, you would be surprised.  Not one of the 15 year olds got bored of the movie, so we had to raise the bar for the activity.  

The video is below and the activity follows right after...

Before we watched the video, we instructed the students to take notes. This would add more focus to the task of 'just' watching another video.  Then we put the students into groups of THREE.  Not only do these numbers suit us for tables filled in one classroom, we have also found that it is by far the most effective way to group OUR kids.

The worksheets, made before, were then displayed on to the IWB. However, we had one sheet also printed off for each student.

NEXT: We instructed the students to discuss the movie and first 10 questions, now on display, in front of them, for FIVE MINUTES.  They were not allowed to right the answers on their worksheets yet. THE REASON? They were being encouraged to speak English throughout, thus giving them the opportunity to practise their L2 discourse.  This process was timed and with the use of my iphone 5 clock timer, the 'nuclear attack' type buzzer tone went off to inform them their talking session was over.

Then they were given the worksheets and from their notes they had to fill out the worksheets from their discussion, and notes made during the previous five minutes.  At this point my colloeague and I looked over at each other in dismay. The sound of the 'one-hand clapping' anthithesis sprung to mind, as they all furiously wrote down their answers against the new clock of THREE minutes. We seriously could not believe our eyes.

Once they had their answers to the first TEN questions down, and the clock alarm sounded, we went from table to table asking random students the answers to the questions.  That is when the fun started as competition grew, and tensions mounted.  If one group member got it wrong, we moved to the next and so forth. This caused great hilarity around the room.  After that was completed and scores in, we moved to the next 9 questions.  This time the students were even more focused on getting their discussions right, and questions written down.

IT WAS A TOTAL NO TOLERANCE TURKISH SPEAKING ACTIVITY, which was affective!

This activity, especially at this time of the semester, was hugely succesful and fun. Not only did the students get to watch an awesome, funny and interesting film, they got to watch it while listening to classical music (something they NEVER do), which they so enjoyed, note taking, peer-collaboration, L2-discussions, against-the-clock writing, answering the questions, listening and a competitive fun spirit. AWESOME!!

IT WAS GENUINELY A GREAT DAY FOR HISAR HAZIRLIK TODAY

Read the Book, Watch the Film, Compare them in Class...

My passion for film can not be understated, yet I know that to simply show one to my students at any time of the year, just because I like it, MUST also have a purpose other than "filling in time" to get through several lessons.  This, unfortunately, an attitude, adopted by too many ELT educators I have observed in every school I have worked since moving to foreign shores.  Their reasons for doing so is not down to them being lazy or unprepared, but I believe they trying to keep their restless students pasified after many grueling exams and FOUR tiring semesters.  However, I believe those teachers I am alluding to, are missing a great opportunity to squeeze even more out of the modules and thematic units they have been teaching, without their students even realizing that they are "learning" something else, so no negative reactions.

Our final unit is based on The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, with a strong focus on world history, and in particular the atrocities seen at Auschwitz.  

The World History Post is here   ⇰  

We did take our students down a truly rocky emotional road with the novel, support materials and facts from history.  But we believe it has become the most successful unit in our literary-analysis section of our syllabus.  So, as a treat, we felt that it would be fitting for the students to watch the movie based on the book, since although it clung pretty closely to the original prose, there were significant directorial choices that were worth identifying, exploring, presenting and discussing in class via group work.

Our students have become dab-hands at presentations over the year, as we have taught them the 'rights and wrongs' of slide construction, organization and the necessary visual pointers to engage audiences.  So, we had high hopes for this activity.  It was to be thought-provoking, informative and totally collaborative. We weren't disappointed, and  here are the steps of the process:

BACKGROUND TO THIS ACTIVITY

STEP ONE

Read the book with SSR and Close Reading Worksheets

STEP TWO

Engage and Participate in the World History Power Point Presentations

STEP THREE

Watch the movie

STEP FOUR (TODAY's ACTIVITY BEGINS HERE)

Use Triptico to choose your groups of THREE.  Three is the perfect size as you will assign a task for each student to do:

                             1- Film scene snipper

                             2- EDCANVAS maker

                             3- Introductory & Reflective paragraph writer

                    

                      1-2-3- Collaborative discussion all the way through with compare/contrast paragraphs

STEP FIVE

While students are discussing their choices of scenes they wish to compare/contrast and present transfer the film via Flashdisk to the students netbooks or laptops.  If your students are not in a 1:1 program, you can use your own lap top and once students have chosen the scenes, you can work with students '1' to snip their scenes while their peers do the writing.

STEP SIX

The building of the Edcanvas and their paragraphs, alongside their discussions is what makes this activity rewarding for both students and teachers.  We all get to share in the students observations of both book and film, their collaborative writing skills, and perhaps, which was the case for my colleague and I, surprises of what they had seen and managed to compare. It proved to us how perspective plays such a huge part in this wonderful teaching/learning paradigm.  Three out of the six groups chose the contrast of how Bruno, the young German protagonist, has his head shaved for an infestation of lice, but that doesn't happen in the book. We all agreed once they had presented that this was a real oversight by the film director, since in John Boyne's original text this seemed more realistic with the inevitable transfer of lice between the imprisoned Jewish boy and his new German friend.

Below are some examples from one of the Student-group's Edcanvas.  I must add that we gave no assistance in editing or proof-reading, so for first drafts in terms of comparative paragraphs, they have done a grand job.

EDCANVAS # ONE

EDCANVAS # TWO

EDCANVAS # THREE

EDCANVAS # FOUR

It was really enjoyable to see the students working furiously and enthusiastically after having so many lessons on the subject matter.  It made it clear to us that if you structure more activities of a different nature, even on the same subject, students will rise to the challenge and become engaged.  In addition, they leave the unit now having learned and used the necessary grammatical linkers to show how the text and movie contrasted.  Plus, of course, they honed their skills of ICT, Presentation-organization, Peer-collaboration, Target Language-discussion, Persuasion-techniques and Presenting to a size able peer audience.

FOOTNOTE

We expected all of the students to say during their presentations that they has enjoyed the film over the book, but surprisingly there were two groups who preferred the extra details seen in the book. Although the film did take preference over the written word by most of the students, it was refreshing to learn that reading isn't 'dead' in the eyes, at least, in some of our young teenagers.

CLICK HERE FOR THE  "EDCANVAS"  THE STUDENTS MADE.

or scan the QR-code ☟

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

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.