My list of activity ideas is attached (Willow’s Pedagogical Repertoire). I chose activities that can be used for all levels of ESL or EFL, unless I indicated a specific level.
Pedagogical Repertoire
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Author Archives: Willow Barnosky
Four-Square Graphic Organizer-Pedagogical Trade Fair
Our poster focused on the four-square graphic organizer, a simple and versatile tool that can be adapted to be used with any group of students. We displayed examples of adaptations that are appropriate for English language learners. We showed a four-square that could be used to help students brainstorm classroom rules at the beginning of the semester. With the 4 categories of Rules for me, Rules for others, Rules for the Classroom, & Rules for the School, the tool could be useful for many different ages and contexts.
We also had examples of four-squares to use with different classes. One was a four-square vocabulary organizer with space for the definition of the new word, an example in a sentence, a synonym of the word, and a space for student to draw something that would help them remember the word. Another was an example of a four-square that could be used in K-12 content-based ESL classes: the organizer focused on the life stages of a butterfly, so that students could review biology vocabulary and processes as well as practicing English sequence marker words and common verbs. The adult EFL four-square could be used to help students organize their ideas in paragraph and essay writing, with spaces for the topic, topic sentence, supporting sentences, and the concluding sentence. The adult ESL four-square could be useful with students who have limited literacy skills, and teaches sequence words in order to write a paragraph.
For the interactive portion of our poster board, we used an activity that engaged participants by asking them to compare and contrast the needs of different student populations. Participants read short descriptions of students and decided if they fit ESL, EFL, Adult, Children, more than one category, or all categories. A few examples were: These students might become distracted and go off-task if the lesson is not engaging (children); These students might not speak English outside the classroom (all); These students might not have access to any native speakers except for the teacher (EFL). The answers were subjective, and we had some great conversations with people who stopped by our table, as they shared their experiences and their perspectives on student needs.
Annabelle Royer and Willow Barnosky
BUILD Chinese class observation
I observed Amy and Yejing’s final Beginning Chinese BUILD class of the semester. They divided responsibilities by teaching alternating classes; Amy taught the class I observed, while Yejing sat in the back and made comments and contributed as needed. It was immediately clear that the teachers had a good rapport with the students (there were two that day) and had created a friendly learning environment. Yejing shared a stirfry dish that she had made, and wrote the name in Mandarin on the board and shared some cultural information about the dish.
Amy started the lesson by writing vowels on the board and reviewing “Today’s pinyin.” The class seemed to have routines in place that the students were familiar and comfortable with. Amy reviewed the pronunciation of vowel sounds, the students repeated a few times and she corrected them if needed. The students were comfortable asking questions and drawing connections between the lesson and previous classes.
Amy reviewed the pronunciation again, this time by pointing to random sounds and asking students to pronounce them. When she seemed satisfied that the students remembered the sounds, she moved on to the next activity by telling students to take out their pinyin charts.
She asked them to read through the syllables (?) on the chart, checking their pronunciation, giving feedback (praise, I assume?) in Chinese and sometimes giving them a hint (?) in Chinese when they couldn’t remember a sound. Both students were highly motivated to work through the chart, and it was clear that Amy and Yejing had done a lot of prior work with the students to enable them to remember all of the sounds. At the end, Amy announced that they’d finished the pinyin chart, and they applauded.
Next Amy wrote more syllables on the board and checked to see if students remembered how to pronounce the sounds. She quizzed them to see if they remembered some of the trickier ones, with pinyin spelling that didn’t match the pronunciation. She then told them that she would say the sounds and they would write the pinyin. The students seemed familiar with and confident with this dictation activity, and one student sometimes asked questions in Chinese and Amy answered. It sounded like the student was connecting the words to earlier words or phrases they’d learned, and at times he used the words in sentences and asked Amy to confirm if he was using them correctly.
Amy used gestures when talking about different tones, and reminded students of some exceptions to the rules about pronouncing tones. She asked students to tell her which words they’d like to learn, and she’d say them in Chinese and they’d write them in pinyin. Students asked a lot of comprehension questions, and again there were some student questions in Chinese with Amy confirming or correcting (?).
For the culminating activity, Amy gave students a story written in Chinese (and pinyin?) and students took turns reading and translating the story. The story was the familiar children’s story Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? The students applied their vocabulary knowledge to guess at some new words, with Amy and Yejing reminding them or introducing them of terms that were used, for example, to apply to objects of a certain size or point out similarities between groups of vocabulary. Students also noticed connections between Chinese and Korean, and Amy encouraged this, noting, “A lot of positive transfer here.” The students commented that they were happy to be learning new grammar and vocabulary along with the familiar words.
The lesson seemed almost impossibly well-timed, as the students finished reading the story a few minutes before class ended. The students and teachers thanked each other for their work. I asked the students if they’d taken Chinese lessons before, and was shocked to hear that they hadn’t, and had learned enough vocabulary and grammar in less than a semester of one hour per week to read an entire story (several pages long) in Chinese. They said that studying Korean had helped, but that they’d learned so much because Amy and Yejing were excellent teachers.
Although I’ve never studied Chinese and could only guess at what the students and Amy were saying when they spoke Mandarin, it was clear that Amy is an experienced teacher. She made teaching look easy! The well-planned yet flexible lesson, her confidence in teaching and eliciting output from students, her leading questions and comprehension checks, her knowledge of and ability to clearly explain the rules of pronunciation, writing, tones, etc., were all evidence of Amy’s talent as a teacher. It was apparent that both teachers had provided level-appropriate activities and made informed choices about making use of the L1 in the classroom. They had obviously provided enough scaffolding throughout the semester so that students were able to activate prior knowledge and use a familiar context to read and comprehend an entire story in a language they hadn’t known just a few short months ago.
Pronunciation Activity: Adaptation of Scene Performance Activity
In class on Monday, we watched a video of the Scene Performance activity, which showed EFL students acting out clips of TV shows as part of a larger project focusing on pronunciation.
One of the activities in the larger project was called mirroring, in which students read along with short TV clips and trying to match the actors’ pronunciation and intonation. The activity seemed like one that could be adapted to various levels of students, so it seemed like a good one to try for a pronunciation lesson for the Peace Resource Center, where I’ve been subbing. Since the classes are drop-in, teachers aren’t able to predict which students will attend, and it can be difficult to plan lessons without knowing specific student level/interests/goals, etc.
I decided to find clips that focused on the theme of food, a universal topic that could be relevant for all students. Even beginning level ESL students tend to have some familiarity with English used in daily routines like shopping, etc. The first clip (~25 seconds), from Parks and Rec, showed 2 characters shopping, and had a brief exchange at the cash register. In the second short clip (~25 seconds), the same character is eating a meal with friends; a friend offers him food that he doesn’t like. In the 3rd, longer clip (over a minute long), from the show The Office (the US version), one of the characters explains how to cook a meal at work using only vending machine ingredients. The scene used recognizable language like the names of food and common kitchen appliances that students of all levels would be familiar with.
I typed up transcripts for each of the clips and made 2 different cloze dictations for each clip, one missing only a few words for lower-level students, and another missing more words for higher-level students.
Only one student showed up to class, a higher-level student who has very good speaking, reading and writing skills, but could work on improving listening comprehension and pronunciation. Because the class was two hours long, we had time to do all three clips. First I asked questions related to the video. Before the first clip, we talked about shopping, favorite places to buy food and other supplies. I gave a brief into to the clip, and then we watched it. After that, I replayed the clip several times while the student filled in the missing words on the cloze worksheet. I gave him a copy of the transcript to check against his sheet, and after that we answered questions that he had about the vocabulary. Then we read the transcript together a few times, played the clip again and mirrored it a few times. We reviewed the pronunciation and he practiced a few phrases. Before the second clip we talked about favorite and least favorite foods, favorite restaurants, etc. We followed the same steps for that clip. For the third clip, we talked about cooking and ingredients for favorite foods. We did more mirroring with the clip in order to focus on specific pronunciation issues.
The activity did seem to help the student with some pronunciation issues and taught him a few new phrases and vocabulary. It also functioned as an informal assessment because it highlighted specific areas of grammar and vocab that could be used to help the student in future lessons. If I did this activity again in a drop-in class, after using the clips, I would ask the student to write his own short dialogue based on his own daily life. We could check the vocabulary and grammar and then practice the pronunciation of that dialogue. Time-permitting, there could be more focused work on pronunciation.
-Willow Barnosky
Alligator River: Adaptations
Last Friday we were introduced to a new activity, Alligator River. We watched a short video about 5 people, and then were asked to rate the 5 in terms of their character, from least to most reprehensible. Then we were asked to discuss our ratings within our groups (4-5 people per group), explain the rationale behind our ratings, and try to arrive at a consensus. At some point we also brainstormed ways to agree and disagree, ranging from informal to formal, gentle to firm, and the idea was to use those phrases in our negotiations. Additionally, we had also been given cards with titles of group roles and asked to brainstorm other roles and duties that would be useful in group work. We were supposed to incorporate those group roles into the activity, but because my group had such an animated discussion about the ratings, with all 4 members engaged in the conversation, we didn’t stick to the group roles we’d chosen earlier. In fact, I didn’t realize until the end of class that all 3 components were part of the same activity, and had taken them as 3 separate activity ideas.
I’ve been jotting down activity ideas that I learn in all of my MIIS classes for use in future ESL/EFL classes , and Alligator River seems like the sort of activity that can be used and adapted in many ways, whether as the main activity, focusing on specific structures or vocabulary, or as a review of a previous lesson’s topic, or one of those fun activities to be kept in mind for those days when students have finished the lesson much more quickly than expected, and an engaging activity is needed to end the class on a high note.
First I thought of a few ways that the activity could be adapted for an adult ESL class, intermediate level. If the topic for the class was expressing agreement and disagreement, AR would work perfectly as the fluency activity. However, if I were working with students who for various reasons weren’t comfortable talking about anything related to sex, I would adapt the story in some way, possibly saying that Sinbad coerced Abigail into robbing someone in order to earn a ride across the river. The story could be presented as a recording that the students listen to, or could be typed up and one student from each group could read the story to their group, or students could take turns reading the story aloud. Simpler language would be used to describe the rating system for the characters; depending on the vocabulary of the students and prior work on comparatives and superlatives, it could range from very good— very bad, or most innocent to most guilty. After the ratings and the group discussion, I could do a final informal assessment of their use of the agree/disagree phrases by asking a student to give their opinion of who was the best, etc., and ask the next student to respond with agreement or disagreement, adding his/her opinion, and so on, in a response chain around the class.
If teaching students who are comfortable talking about infidelity, a couple of variations could be used. One would be to use two versions of the story in the class, one in which the unfaithful character is a woman, and the other in which it is a man. The two stories could be split between groups, and part of the final discussion could focus on checking to see if the ratings were drastically different between the two groups, and why. That could be a great lead-in to an upcoming topic on families, gender roles, relationships, etc.
In higher-level classes, this could lead into the idea of break-out groups that Peter suggested, with tables focused on topics such as gender roles, ethics in society, etc.
Another variation in a closely-knit ESL class with at least a high-intermediate level, would be changing the story completely, to focus on “illegal acts”, with the characters breaking the law for various reasons: to save time (breaking the speed limit)/to make money (hiring people w/o documents and paying them substandard wages)/to help her family (immigrating w/o documents to be able to feed family), etc. Students could discuss their ratings from worst to least serious crimes. The follow-up discussion could focus on topics about immigration, perceptions of immigrants (documented and undocumented), reasons for immigration, immigration laws, etc.
Lastly, the activity involving group roles could either be incorporated into general class practice, or grow out of a discussion with students about class rules, class goals, etc. I love the idea about having a rotating Silent Facilitator in order to ensure that all students have a chance to participate, and that one student isn’t dominating the discussion and/or their peers.
-Willow Barnosky