Podcasts for the ESOL Classroom

Matt and Mark have created a site that contains several podcasts that provide teachers of English as another language resources and suggestions to use in the ESOL or EFL classroom called: ESL Teacher Talk. One podcast that I listened to was called, Teaching Communication Strategies. This necessarily would not be used in the classroom with students, however; it focuses more towards professional development in TESOL. I am always interested in improving my classroom instruction and consider myself a life-long learner. I find it really interesting to listen to discussions about issues concerning the ESOL classroom, also strategies and ideas to help facilitate English language instruction. This podcast was more about how teachers could teach students the pragmatics of entering, maintaining, and exiting a conversation.

English as a Second Language Podcast is another website that provides a series of free English podcast to help ELLs improve their English language abilities. There are many categories that ESL students can participate in, for example; daily life, health medicine, relationships, and English cafe. I listened to an ESL podcast about insulting people. This can be used at an instructional level when teaching American culture and pragmatics. This would be great for English language learners who are about to enter or already live in the United States. Learning about insults in another culture is practical and important when ELLs are faced with a problem or discrepancy within another culture. Students must be able to recognize criticisms and insults in order to respond appropriately and deal with that problem.

ePals

Exploring the ePals website was inspiring! This social website is exclusively made for students, teachers, and districts around the world and can help create the bridge of multicultural communication. I enjoyed searching through many of the projects made on ePals by teachers from other countries. Such projects included; digital story telling, the way we are, and so much more! I really liked that this website inspires literacy events in a global environment. Students are able to connect with students from other countries to gain understanding of multiculturalism through e-mails, pictures, and blogs. I was shocked to hear that the website can translate a number of languages to overcome the language barrier and make the power of connection accessible for everyone. This website is a great source for promoting cross-cultural awareness. That just so happens to be a NYS standard of TESOL. In my ESOL classroom, ePals can prove to be a great resource for information when exploring the English language. For example, the digital story telling is a great idea to promote a narrative voice in English. Many ELLs around the world can help each other improve their English story through dialogue, discussion, and story development in English. Not only will this promote language learning, but also promote meaningful cross-cultural connections through different perspectives. Learning English as a second language and as a foreign language may hold different learning contexts for the students, but they all share the same goal, to improve their English language knowledge and competencies. Having the ability to share similar struggles and achievements will help build confidence. Also, creating authentic learning spaces such as ePals and digital storytelling, motivates students to continue with learning language.

A Possible ePals Project:

After reviewing all the great tools that can be used to enhance instruction within the classroom, I would like to create an ePals project using the tool of Shelfari.com. This is a website that allows students or teachers to keep a running lists of books they have read, and provides the option to reviews those pieces of literature. I would like to see a huge cross-cultural book talk of popular books read in classrooms and great suggestions to incorporate pieces of multicultural literature within the classroom. Granted it would be hard to read books that are not in a familiar language, however; it would be interesting to find out how many books have already been translated and then hold a major book talk session. For example, The Diary of Ann Frank, has already been translated into many languages. Having multicultural book talks about such a piece of literature can really bring in other perspectives. This promotes critical literacy. Also, having access to multicultural books within the classroom promotes cross-cultural awareness, and Shelfari can become a means to create meaningful connections with literacy talks that spread throughout the world.

Videos in the Classroom

I searched several websites for videos, such as You Tube, Teacher Tube, Google Video, and Yahoo video. I enjoyed the ESL:Show and Tell video, by Antonio Graceffo. This serves more as professional development then actually being used during class instruction. However, I have a great interest in increasing oral language proficiency of English language learners in my class. Antonio Graceffo gives great detail purposes for this linguistic activity. Through my study here at UB, oral language development in vital to prior literacy instruction in reading.

The other videos included demonstrate certain English grammar points, such as nouns or personal pronouns. These videos could be used in the classroom as either an introduction or follow-up to that particular grammar lessons in the ESL classroom.

Applications using Flickr

After experimenting with flickr for a while, I accessed the bookr application. This is a great tool that can use your images (or others) to create a virtual picture book. I looked at picture books already made by others from the archives. A Little Alphabet Book by GP (which cannot be seen through this blog) is a virtual picture looking at all the letters of the alphabet in the environment. This gave me many ideas for the ESOL classroom. First of all, creating personalized picture books is a great source of writing motivation. ESL students could first learn the content from the teacher (the alphabet), take pictures from their environment that could illustrate that letter (grapheme or phoneme), then go to bookr and create their own picture book. Little syntactic structure is needed, making such an activity great for beginning ESL students. This could also be extended into creating personalized dictionaries for students. They could either find or take pictures that represent a certain vocabulary word, upload them on flickr, then create their own personalized vocabulary dictionaries. This makes learning vocabulary authentic and motivating for the students.

Colorful Rainbow Balloons 114/365

Colorful Rainbow Balloons 114/365
Originally uploaded by Pink Sherbet Photography

Flickr is a great source for finding or uploading personal realistic images for the classroom. In TESOL, it is important to use as many visual aids as possible that illustrate concepts, ideas, or vocabulary in order to make information and input more comprehensible. Flickr can also store visual information that can be used year after year in a safe online account that will not crash. I would use Flickr in my classroom as part of the Language Experience Approach (LEA). For example, I would give my students an experience (taking them on a public bus ride), and take pictures of the entire experience. I would then upload all the pictures onto Flickr to have them stored in a safe place and later use those pictures in a classroom story of their experience riding the bus. All pictures would illustrate key vocabulary items for that particular lesson.