Welcome to the 23rd edition of the ESL/EFL/ELL Carnival with the focus on Young Learners! Let us start the month with some fantastic resources on motivating and managing young learners. These resourceful reading materials are from many of the finest bloggers, authors, and educators of the English language teaching world! So brew your favorite coffee and indulge in the quotes I share from each post.

You can also enjoy this slideshow with clickable links and music. Just click play and on any of the images to be taken to the post! And, feel free to embed this Vuvox slideshow on your own blog

Tips, Lessons, & Issues

In Carol Read’s ABC of Teaching Children blog, she asserts in her post, S is for Storytelling:

It is arguable that stories can play a similar role in the context of children learning a second, additional or foreign language as well. From my own experience over many years of teaching, I am convinced that it can. In our classes with children, the magic of stories seems to lie in the way that they provide shared contexts for promoting participation and developing emerging language skills in a natural and spontaneous way. Stories also potentially engage children’s hearts and minds, as people and as thinkers, with issues that are relevant, real and important to them.

In Richard Whiteside’s I’d Like to Think That I Help People to Learn English blog, he describes in his post, Let’s see what the magic bag thinks:

Sometimes in class we want to choose one child to do something and often this can be difficult because the kids get annoyed if they aren’t chosen. What criteria do you use to choose which child is going to do whatever it is, or go first? … I recommend a simple technique that I learnt a couple of years ago.

In Dave Dodgson’s Reflections of a Teacher and Learner blog, he describes in his post, Student (De)generated Dialogue:

My attempts to include more drama and more ‘unplugged moments’ in my lessons have continued in the new semester and so last week I decided to try some ‘unplugged drama’ with a twist on the classic ‘disappearing dialogue’.

In Sabrina De Vita’s weblog, she reveals in her post, Dogme with Young Learners:

Been thinking quite a lot about dogme recently, and it has just struck me that I am applying it in my young learners classes without even having noticed it.

In Leahn Stanhope’s Early EFL blog, she illustrates a lesson for us in her post, Tried and Tested Drawing Activity for Young Learners:

This is a really simple but highly adaptable  controlled practice activity that most children really enjoy. Quite simply take a piece of paper show the children how to fold it into 4 or 6. It depends on you. Next get them to number the boxes 1-4 or 1-6. Now you’re ready to draw.

In Sandie Mourao’s Picturebooks in ELT blog, she describes the book in her post, My Nose, Your Nose – Celebrating Individuality:

There’s a nice rhythm here, the two children shown as different, each on different spreads, then brought together with a similarity onto one spread.   Melanie Walsh uses this rhythmic, visual structure to reinforce her message, which culminates in bringing all four children together.

In Jason Renshaw’s English Raven blog, he points out in his post, Ways to Extend News Articles in the ELT Classroom for Multiple and Integrated Skills:

On my World News for Kids Teacher’s Page, I demonstrate how I build extensive ‘kits’ based on initial news articles, working through reading, extending into listening with additional topical content, then working through a variety of different speaking and writing activities.

In Barbara Sakamoto’s Teaching Village blog, she reminds us in her post, Rocco’s Day: A Student-generated Story Activity for Literacy Practice:

This foundation of spoken language is the perfect base from which to begin reading and writing. If students have a good teacher and/or a good course book, then the language they have learned helps them talk about the things that interest them, which means they can learn to write about the things that interest them, and can practice reading things that interest them. It’s a winning situation!…Today, I want to share a very simple  activity I use with emergent readers and writers.

In Marisa Constantinides’ TEFL Matters blog, she tells us in her post, Watching Young Learners at Work: From Practice to Principle:

This post is based on three activities on video with a young class in their first year of English videotaped as part of a training project for a course on teaching young learners.  At the point of  being video-taped, this class of Greek children attending classes in a small language school in Athens, had had about 40 hours of English in total, mostly concentrating on oral work.

In David Deubelbeiss’ EFL Classroom 2.0 blog, he posts a poem and illustrates how to use it in his post, Imagine…. (a poem about school):

Listen to the original song and share with your students. What do they imagine about education and school? Here’s what some elementary school students wrote me when I asked their class to give me questions they’d like to know answers about! Imagine if they had the time to explore as they wanted?

In Ken Wilson’s blog, he shares a guest post, Guest blog 21 – Beccy on teaching ‘difficult’ primary school pupils…:

I’d never met children with such a low opinion of their own abilities. And there were many like them in the class. The children were spectacularly down on themselves. They were disengaged. They thought they were “the worst class in the school”. Obviously, the urge to do something about this was strong.

In Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day blog, he tells us in his post, The Best Resources For Learning How To Use The Dictogloss Strategy With English Language Learners:

Dictogloss is primarily a listening and writing activity used with English Language Learners. It can certainly be done a number of different ways but, very simply-put, the teacher reads a short text, often one students are familiar with…Here are few of the best resources that I’ve found on using the dictogloss strategy.

In Erika Osváth’s For English Teachers – Angoltanároknak blog, she describes in her post, Our children transforming education in action:

Kids can do this so naturally, so why don’t WE, adults learn from them? It’s high time we paid more attention to what kids can teach us before they go to school and all their innate knowledge, abilities and aptitudes are slowly or quickly, for that matter, anaesthetised and then killed.

In Mark Chapman’s The TESOL Zone blog, he says in his post, ESL Writing for Children:

Writing is an important, if sometimes neglected skill, when teaching children English… It is needed at school, it deepens the student’s understanding of English grammar and vocabulary, it helps students develop their own thinking, provides an alternative creative output for children, allows students to work at their own pace alone, or can be used to encourage group work and more social interaction.

In Kevin Gallagher’s AbsolutESL blog, he says in his post, Humor in the ESL Classroom:

Whether I like to admit it or not, one of my biggest struggles in any classroom is maintain the attention of my students. It seems humor, especially in the East Asian countries where I taught, can help to break the ice.

In Mary Ann Zehr’s Learning the Language blog, she points out in her post, The Nation Sees a Drop in Latino Preschool Enrollment:

Yoshikawa observed that Mexican-American preschoolers have a very low rate of preschool enrollment in the United States, while the rate of enrollment for preschoolers in the country of origin of their families is very high.

Teaching YLs Effectively with Technology

In Burcu Akyol’s Blog My Integrating Technology Journey blog, she says in her post, DOs and DON’Ts of Blogging With Students:

This is a little reminder for the blogging ISTEK teachers. These guidelines are specific to our school but some of the suggestions might be valid for the other blogging teachers too.

In Eva Büyüksimkeşyan’s A Journey in TEFL blog, she describes in her post, Easy to Use Web 2.0 Tools:

They are digital natives, I know but they are only good at playing computer games and as they are young learners they are slower than the teenagers. However, they are more motivated and enthusiastic. I belive if they hear their voices published on their class blogs they will be more willing.

In Graham Stanley’s and Kyle Mawer’s Digital ELT Play blog, they describe in their post, Playing video games = Healthy body, healthy mind:

You’ve probably sat on a bus or train and see someone playing ‘braintraining‘ and finding out how old their brain is. You may even have played it yourself. This popular hand held puzzle video game was designed by a prominent neuroscientist who claims that playing the games’ puzzles reduces the chances of dementia in old age.

In the Pumkin English blog, the new free Iphone app for kids is described:

Learn the colors for free with our new iPhone app. We were on the iTunes “Whats New and Noteworthy” area. So you can be assured that it is noteworthy. In fact it is much more than noteworthy it’s amazing!

In Jennifer Verschoor’s My Integrating Technology Journey blog, she says in her post, Virtual Worlds for Young Learners:

Motivate your young learners by introducing virtual worlds in your daily teaching. I´ve been uploading several virtual worlds in my Web 2.0 online calendar!

In my post, Survival Tips for Teaching Kids English: 30 Tips & Resources, I reflect:

I remember teaching a group of 14 seven to eight year-old students. They climbed the walls (oddly there were racks on the walls), fought a lot, and flew paper airplanes everywhere. I went home after a 9 hour day and cried. I wanted to quit. I have a fighting spirit, though, so I went online to research lessons and ideas. Throughout the four years that I have been teaching in Germany I have collected some great research, resources, and tips to make me a much better English teacher of young learners!

Looking forward to the next carnival?

The Carnival welcomes any blog posts, including examples of student work, that are related to teaching or learning English. You can contribute a post to it by using this easy submission form. If the form does not work for some reason, you can send the link to Larry Ferlazzo via his Contact Form. The following edition will be published by Eva Buyuksimkesyan on September 1st. The November 1st edition will be hosted by Berni Wall. Let Larry Ferlazzo know if you might be interested in hosting future editions.

You can see all the previous editions of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival here.

Challenge:

Try any of these resources with your young learners.

If you enjoyed this post, you may want to subscribe for FREE to receive regular updates!

What are your tips for working with young learners?

Part of the Cool Sites series

Every Friday I am presenting free webinars thanks to American TESOL! We have an incredible time. Recently, we shared ideas for integrating drama in the classroom. Teachers do not have to be skilled in acting. Instead, the webinar was away to introduce teachers to different games that get students to tap into their creative juices and get them moving! As Ken Wilson said in a recent interview with me, “Animate your classes!”

Classroom activities that include drama skills include:

• role plays
• puppets
• pretend games
• mime
• pantomine
• total physical response
• dance
• music
• dress-up
• improvisation games
• puppetry
• storytelling
• digital storytelling

Find more activities by watching this webinar, Using Drama in the Classroom!

Drama Activities & Resources

Check out these resources to help you animate your classes!

Improv Games: Videos

• Game 1: Yes And (click to watch a video example)
• Instructions:
  • Put students into pairs
  • One student begins with a sentence and the other student says “Yes and” then adds more information.
  • Use a timer to get students speaking for 1 minute or longer.

• Game 2: Rumors (click to watch a video example)
• Instructions:
  • Put students into pairs
  • Student A makes up a rumor to tell student B.
  • Student B adds to the rumor then both students giggle.
  • Student B then makes up the rumor and student A adds to the rumor.
  • Use a timer to get students speaking for 1 minute or longer.

• Game 3: Pass the Prop (click to watch a video example)
• Instructions:
  • You will need an everyday object such as an eraser, a chair, a broom, or other object. You can choose to bring in as many as you want. We will use a broom as an example.
  • Place students in a circle.
  • Place 2 students in the center of the circle with the broom.
  • Student A decides what to pretend the broom is either than a broom. For example, student A may decide the broom is a spaceship.
  • Student A then demonstrates the broom is a spaceship through acting and using dialogue until student B figures this out.
  • Student B determines the broom is a spaceship and plays along matching the dialogue.
  • When a student in the circle imagines the object is something else that student taps student A or B and replaces that student in the skit.

• Game 4: Jibberish to English (click to watch a video example)
• Instructions:
  • You will need a bell or whistle.
  • Put students into pairs
  • Have the pairs make up a scene or give them one. They are choosing a scene they can easily talk about so they may want something simple like going shopping, playing a sport, etc. Or you could have the scene match your lesson topic.
  • Student A begins by speaking about the topic. Student B rings the bell every 10 seconds or so. When student B rings the bell, student A must speak in Jibberish (a made up language).
  • Use a timer to get students speaking for 1 minute or longer.

Resources for Using Drama With Young Learners

• Serious Drama With Young Learners by Ania Kozicka on Ken Wilson’s blog
• Teaching English Vocabulary to Young Learners via Drama (PDF)
  • research and activities listed
• Drama with Young ELLs
• Drama Techniques for Teaching English
• Storytelling and Drama by Carol Read
• Watching Young Learners at Work: From Practice to Principle by Marisa Constantinides
• ESL Children’s Drama Games
• Puppets in Primary
• Several Puppet Making Resources & Scripts
• Digital Storytelling- several links and resources

More Drama Resources

• My Drama Wiki with videos and more!
• Using Drama and Movement to Enhance English Language Learners’ Literacy Development
  • amazing background information (8+ pages) on using Drama with English language learners. You will get a solid understanding of the benefits and pedagogical basis for various activities
• 40 Drama Resources via Sean Banville
• Roleplay Tutorial
• Several Drama and Theater Resources via Cybraryman
• Animating Stories by Marisa Constantinides

Recommended Reading

• Drama and Improvisation by Ken Wilson
• The Drama and Theatre Category of Ken Wilson’s blog

Challenge:

Try one of these ways to animate your lessons!

If you enjoyed this post, you may want to subscribe for FREE to receive regular updates!

Part of the Cool Sites series

As an English language teacher I love opportunities to teach culturally responsive lessons (CRT), a type of curriculum that celebrates and responds to various cultural issues through student-centered instruction. In a previous post, Do Our Students Realize They Live in the World, I explain why all students need to develop skills in collaborating with others worldwide. These skills are rarely thought in schools. How many teachers do you know in your school that participate in international projects?

Nelson Mandela is an incredibly wise man who realized that one way to unify people in a nation is through sports! The World Cup is the sporting event that unites nations and brings the world together to rejoice, cheer, kick, scream, rant and now blow our vuvuzelas! My adult English language learners are having rich discussions about the World Cup and my kindergartners are also enjoying learning about sports! However, you can use the World Cup to teach any subject, such as math, history, and statistics.

Lesson Ideas

Below are the resources I have been using with my adult English language learners (pre-intermediate level) and hope they provide you with ideas:

Sean Banville’s Listening Exercises & Quizzes

To prepare for the class, I suggested my students complete these activities in our wiki:

1. Please read this article about Germany in the World Cup
2. Then listen to the MP3 of the article without reading the article
3. Now take these quizzes to check your understanding- Quiz 1 and Quiz 2

Sue Lyon’s Video & Listening Quiz On Vuvuzelas

• In class, we sparked thoughtful discussion by watching a video on the ESOLCourses blog about banning Vuvuzelas.
• As a class we created a concept map of what we remembered from the video about Vuvuzuelas and what we had each observed.
• Then we took this video quiz.
• We then separated into two groups to debate the issue if Vuvuzelas should be banned! We had an incredible discussion with the majority of the class voting on Sue’s poll to not ban them. Many of the students came up with great arguments, such as Vuvuzelas being a tradition, a symbol of hope, preventing coaches from communicating with players, and more!

Can I Play This at Home? The World Cup Online Game

• In class, students also created questions for this fun game, Can I Play This at Home.
• This game has the students choose a team, then answer questions correctly to make the footballers make a play.
• Students are submitting their questions on the website then having their classmates play the game at home.
• There are also preset questions in several categories, such as math, spelling, and grammar.

Here are more World Cup resources and ideas:

• Use these free creative common photos from Pic App of players, crazy fans, and more to have students create dialogues using Super Lame Word Balloon generator.
• Quizlet: Want to Sound Like a World Cup Expert? created by Ana d’Almeida!
• Pearls of Wisdom from Soccer Greats by Ken Wilson- Students will have a fun time seeing famous players and discussing the quotes they say. Students then find their quotes from their own favorite players and a great photo to accompany the quote!
• More World Cup Lesson Ideas by Eva Büyüksimkeşyan!
• The Best Sites For Learning About The World Cup by Larry Ferlazzo
• The World Cup 2010 – Quizzes & Activities by ESOLCourses
• World Cup Video Lessons by ESOLCourses blog
• Over 50 World Cup Lessons, Resources, & Ideasby Sean Banville

If you enjoyed this post, you may want to subscribe for FREE to receive regular updates!

One of my favorite TV moments is when Norm of the series Cheers walks into a bar and everyone shouts, “Norm” as if they were welcoming him home. Part of the Cheer’s theme song, Where Everybody Knows Your Name by Gary Portnoy, goes:

Making your way in the world today
Takes everything you’ve got
Taking a break from all your worries
Sure would help a lot
Wouldn’t you like to get away

Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name
And they’re always glad you came
You want to be where you can see
Our troubles are all the same

And this is what Twitter is for me, a place where my Personal/Passionate Learning Network (PLN) knows my name, they’re glad I came and we find out all our educational problems are pretty much the same.

IATEFL Conference

This past week, I attended the IATEFL (International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language) conference in the UK. Maybe you saw the hashtag on Twitter and followed along. Our tweet-ups (meet-ups with people who are on the social network Twitter) were regularly at Christie’s Pub and many of us were Norm from Cheers as our PLN shouted our names, embraced us, and we chatted and joked like old friends. Many of us had only meet for the first time, yet it always feels like we’ve been friends for a long time.

IATEFL….

was the largest Tweet-up for me so far and I got to spend as long as 9 days with some of my Twitter friends.

As educators…

we face enough troubles. Our governments continue to not support us by making policies that cut our tenures, salaries, retirement, benefits, and so forth. Education policy around the world is usually not run by educators who spent years in the classroom with students. High stakes testing punishes teachers if they don’t get the right scores. Now entire staffs of teachers are being fired and our leadership is supporting these measures.

When someone asks why a Personal/ Passionate Learning Network (PLN)? Why Twitter?

My response is, “Why not?”

Why not have a support system that reminds you why you decided to teach in the first place, helps you self-reflect, collaborates with you, and at the end of the day is glad you are there? When our government education policy and school systems fail us that is when our PLN helps us.

IATEFL Highlights….

Thank you PLN for making this an incredible conference with your incredible presentations, support, love, and friendship! I’m always glad you came….

From my IATEFL Flickr Stream

Watch Jan Blake tell stories!

harrogateonline on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Hear Jeremy Harmer‘s poetry with the beautifully haunting melody of Steve Bingham!

IATEFL Links

In case you missed the conference, here are related video links & resources:

• Ozge’s and my wiki for our presentation- Technology 4 Kids
• My IATEFL Interview
• IATEFL Interviews
• IATEFL Video Sessions
• IATEFL Pecha Kucha Night
• IATEFL Reporter Accounts of Various Sessions

Posts about IATEFL

Please read the following in depth posts about the conference:

• Let us Now Praise Famous Women by Nik Peachey
• Tweet-ups and tweet-watchers – how IATEFL Harrogate changed ELT conferences for ever… by Ken Wilson
• Sophie at IATEFL Harrogate by Tamas Lorincz
• IATEFL Pwned by Gavin Dudeney
• Waiting For the Great Tweet Forwards by Mark Andrews

Which conference touched you? Did Twitter or your PLN play a part of the experience?

Part of the Cool Sites series

An Xtranormal Kind of Introduction

Teaching phrasal verbs is my favourite activity of all!  Why is this so?  Well, in my experience, I have found that students generally don’t like studying them because they find them “too difficult, miss!”  I set out from elementary level to train my students not to be afraid of them, but to look forward to showing off their newly acquired knowledge of them. To stand out from the crowd. To use phrasals in a natural way.  In the correct context.  How do I do this?  I will explain.

I encourage them to chill out during the lessons if I see they look a bit stressed out.  I ask them to come up with ways of using new phrasals both in class and outside of class.  I encourage them to ask each other this question as a natural starter “Have you come across this word?  Do you know what it means?”,  if for example, they don’t know the meaning of a word.  Instead of asking me all the time, students are encouraged to ask each other first, always using this phrasal verb until it becomes instinctive for them and of course, second nature.  On a Monday morning my first question is inevitably “What did you get up to over the weekend?”  Students then ask each other in pairs and dialogue ensues following this prompt.  Another question would be “Did you get through the weekend homework?” I make sure that these questions are all in context and provide opportunities for practice.

Slideshare

Below is an example of a Powerpoint presentation converted to Slideshare. I have created this in order to maximise opportunities for student discussion. This would either be used as an introduction to this set of verbs, or as a review and recycling activity.  I have introduced 18 phrasal verbs with some follow-up activities at the end. I have experimented with whole pictures as background for added interest.

Bookr

Bookr by Pim Pam Pum is a nice tool for exploiting images to enhance your  phrasal verbs lessons.  You can easily create a “book” in minutes by selecting pictures, according to the theme you want to explore, and then simply dragging them into the pages of the book. You can write a short sentence on each page.  The example below is one I created especially for this post to demonstrate how it can be used.

Dvolver

This is a great site for dialogue exploitation. The animations are easy to create with a set group of characters. There is a choice of background music which adds to the special effects. There is no sound for the characters.

Go!Animate

This is another cool site for creating animations. Go!Animate can be used by students to recycle phrasal verbs learned or indeed, any item of vocabulary that needs to be reviewed.

GoAnimate.com: Getting Down to Phrasals by Janet Bianchini

Create your own at GoAnimate.com.

The ZimmerTwins

I registered on the ZimmerTwins site for the purpose of researching for this post.  I was surprised at how intuitive and easy it was to create my very first animation.  I have a feeling that students will love this tool!

Have a look at Phrasals in the Jungle!

ToonDo

I love ToonDo because it’s easy to create cartoons for any topic you like.  Students enjoy creating small dialogues or comic strips.  Here’s one I created which has a phrasal verbs theme.  The cartoons can be easily embedded into your class / student blogs or posted via email.

Create your own Toon!

PhotoPeach

The last on my list of favourite e-tools to make teaching and learning phrasal verbs fun is PhotoPeach.  I was able to create a simple quiz using my own photos. You have to select a synonym  out of the 3 options given for the verb in the picture.  I hope you enjoy it!

Test your Phrasals! on PhotoPeach

Challenge

I hope I have inspired you to use some of these cool sites with your students. You can adapt them to suit whatever theme you are working with. Why don’t you try one of these out for your next class? I am sure your students would enjoy creating short animations and dialogues or short books or indeed quizzes to test each other on new vocabulary or structures they have learned with you.

Have you had experience with any of these tools? If so, I would love to hear from you to learn how you and your class got on with them!

—————————————————-

I would like to thank Shelly for giving me this wonderful opportunity to write for her Cool Sites series. It’s a great honour for me to be here.

Janet Bianchini (@janetbianchini) has been an EFL teacher for over three decades.  She still loves teaching and she is enjoying the challenge of learning more about new technologies and how to integrate them into her lessons. She writes a blog called Janet’s Abruzzo Edublog.  When she is not writing, studying or teaching, she loves to spend time in her rather wild garden with her menagerie in tow.

Part of the Cool Sites series

In every subject students must acquire new vocabulary, which is often taught through rote memorization. How do we engage learners to engage with new vocabulary? In a previous post I shared with you 12 word cloud resources. Now, I want to share how I make vocabulary engaging by using various websites in conjunction with the word cloud tool, Tagul.

Tagul Video Tutorial

With Tagul you can:

• create a word cloud by pasting in text or from a url.
• choose to have your word in a variety of shapes such as a heart, star, rectangle, or cloud.
• choose which specific website you would like to draw your links from for each of your tags.
  • By default, Tagul will have the clickable links lead to Google search results.
  • In order to customize the link to go to a specific website, replace the Google search link with the website’s search link and at the end add $tag.
  • To get the website’s search link, you type in a word in the search box and a link will show up that has an “=” sign. Copy the html address up to and including the equal sign. Paste this in the Tags’ Links Pattern box and add $tag at the end.

The following video tutorial will show you the process.

Lesson Example

This is a Tagul word cloud I used to help my students learn about the Winter Olympics. My adult English language learners click on any of the words in the cloud and find a video, image, or article related to that word. I used Nik Peachey’s tip on using Vocab Grabber to create my word list for the Winter Olympics to copy and paste into the text box instead of having the system grab words from a website. This lesson helped my students learn vocabulary within a specific context and choose which topic they wanted to explore. The students then brought in their findings to talk about in class. I embedded this in my class wiki for the students.

Vocabulary Resources

You can use a variety of websites to help your students define words aside from typical dictionaries. Here are some ideas and their search codes to copy and paste into the Tags’ Links Pattern box:

• Visuwords- Enter words into the search box to find an interactive mindmap of the word with associations, synonyms, and definitions. The url to paste is http://www.visuwords.com/?word=$tag
• Wordia- Search for a word and a person defines the word in a video. Students can upload their own videos defining the words. The url to paste is http://www.wordia.com/Search?query=$tag
• Kidstube- Type in a search and find kid friendly links to videos, audio files, blogs, and images. The url to paste is http://www.kidstube.com/search.php?type=videos&keyword=$tag
• National Geographic- Find videos, images, and articles on a variety of topics. The url to paste is http://www.nationalgeographic.com/search/?search=$tag
• Neo K12- Educational videos and lessons for K-12 in math, science, and social studies. The url to paste is http://www.neok12.com/php/search.php?qry=$tag
• History- Find videos, images, and articles on a variety of historical topics. The url to paste is http://www.history.com/search.do?searchText=$tag
• Word Pics- Illustrated English vocabulary for adults learning by words on pictures. The url to paste is http://wordpic.com/?s=$tag
• TED Talks- TED videos with inspirational speakers on a variety of topics. The url to paste is http://www.ted.com/search?q=$tag
• Earth Touch- Videos about wildlife all over the world. The url to paste is http://www.earth-touch.com/search/#page=1&SearchString=$tag
• WatchKnow- Videos that teach students about math, science, and other school subjects. The url to paste is http://www.watchknow.org/SearchResults.aspx?SearchText=$tag
• School Tube- Student friendly videos on a variety of topics. The url to paste is http://www.schooltube.com/videosearch?q=$tag

Challenge:

Tagul the next chapter, vocabulary list, or article you want your students to read.

You may want to subscribe for FREE to receive regular updates!

How can you use Tagul to improve a lesson?

Part of the Cool Sites series

If you teach English language learners in their native countries, then finding opportunities for them to use the English they learn outside the classroom can be challenging. In reality, I cannot cover all the language skills they need to learn in an hour and a half class period. The students need to explore opportunities to use English in different contexts limited by my classroom walls. They need to step beyond the classroom and use English in the real world. That is how one learns a language. I am quite fortunate that my institution provides numerous free English speaking events for the community. However, I have noticed that many of my students do not attend these events. My students want to attend these events, they just are busy and probably lack some motivation. For this reason, I have found integrating technology into homework tasks very beneficial. Yes, it takes work! I have wikis to maintain for two children’s classes, three adult classes, and a teen class. However, the students seem to like the outside work and many do the work even though it is not required or graded. The tasks are all optional. Therefore, I am sharing with you my favorite sites for helping English language learners practice dialogue outside the classroom. It is not better than real world experience, but my students will actually do these activities when they will not attend free events.

Chatbots

There are several chatbot sites that are great for English language learners. Simply, the student types in the dialogue and the chatbot will respond.

• BELL- A female chatbot that responds to messages typed in by children and adults.
  • Read Anne Hodgson’s article on her experience talking with Bell, The Chatbot and I: Grammar and Pragmatics. In this article she has you examine if the conversation is human like or robot like.
• ESLFast- Students can speak with Tutor Mike, a male bot, or the female shopping bot. There are many dialogue examples on the right side of the website. English language learners can listen and read the various dialogues for various situations.
• Elbot- This is a robot that chats with students. Click on the red button on his stomach to chat with him.

Language Learning Communities

Students have opportunities to speak with English teachers or other students for free. Many more online language learning communities exist, but I only list ones that are free for my students for more than one lesson.

• Livemocha- Students register for free and have access to free interactive lessons and the ability to chat and speak with native English speakers or others learning the language.
• Edufire’s Free Classes- Students register for free to have access to plenty of free English classes for students with real teachers. This is through live video and chat. A group of students learns at once.
• ESL Online Talk Community- Students who like to use instant messenger to talk will love this website. All they do is join the community for free and add other members’ emails.
• Teach You Teach Me ning- Students have the opportunity to teach another member their language and that member will teach them English in exchange. This occurs on Second Life, which is one of the best tools for learning a language if your students are willing to join.

Dialogue Generators

The following websites are best when students are paired with others to create meaningful dialogue for specific contexts and situations. Usually, I do not assign these as homework until I have adequately taught the students how to use them in the classroom. Then students can practice creating dialogues on their own.

• Voki- I have one for each of my wikis. It is an avatar that talks. You can add your own voice or type in text that the avatar will say. You can choose from a variety of characters. For adults, I use a lifelike avatar but for the children I use animals to greet them by their names. I also have students type in what they will say to the voki. See the examples below of two people having a conversation about the Super Bowl. One is my natural voice and the other is one of the voices you can choose from. Click on the arrows to hear the characters talk.

• Xtranormal- Students select characters, the scene, and create the dialogue they hear aloud. This is one of the few sites where students get to hear the dialogue they have created. I wish the voices were more life like.
• Classic TV- Students create movies by editing sequences and adding dialogue to scenes. I learned about this site from Russell Stannard.
• Dvolver- Students select characters, scenes, and type in the dialogue. I live the various ethnic characters, but some of the items may not be appropriate for all students. The students see the words in their movies.
• Overstream- Add English subtitles to old movies, which are usually spoken in foreign languages. You can haveg students find a movie scene in their own language and writing the subtitles for the movie and introducing it to others or have students use films in different languages and write the script. I learned about this from Lindsay Clandfield.
• Larry Ferlazzo’s Students’ Movies- see many movie making sites and examples by Larry’s English language learners.

Challenge:

Test out one of these tools to see how you can use it to encourage your students to use the English they learn in the classroom.

You may want to subscribe for FREE to receive regular updates!

Do you have any great lessons you use with one of these tools?

Welcome to the fifteenth edition of the ESL/EFL/ELL Carnival. Let us start the week with some resourceful reading materials from many of the finest bloggers, authors, and educators of the English language teaching world! So brew your favorite coffee, relax, and enjoy. Our posts include tips to help educators with their social media experience, ways to integrate technology effectively into the classroom, advice on giving presentations at conferences, and suggestions to help improve methodology from various experts.

I recommend subscribing to each of these blogs, which you can easily and quickly do by clicking on the button below:

Having trouble reading this online? Feel free to download this free pdf file of the carnival with clickable links.

PDF file of the 15th Edition ESL Blog Carnival

Thought-provoking Pedagogy

In Ken Wilson’s post, Ten Things I Think I Know (Part I), he delineates five points that may make you question your approach to teaching English. These include that most students are there because they have to be, most English classes are monolingual, most English teachers are not native speakers, most teachers have to use a coursebook, and most English courses are exam directed. Make sure to read the insightful comments and debates that are taking place.

Never make a big deal about how many people learn English and pretend this is some kind of carrot for learners. It isn’t. – Ken Wilson’s Blog

Marisa Constantinides gives various tips for helping instructors build a sense of community to facilitate learning in her post, Storming out or Norming in?.

If our objective is to make of our learners effective communicators and to acquire the much sought after communicative competence, then we have to create a social environment in which the members will have the DESIRE to communicate with each other about matters that are of personal interest to them, which will provide them with a PURPOSE and will generate INTERACTIVE situations.- Marisa Constantinides, TEFL Matters

Nick Jaworski offers advice on having a more learner-centered approach in the classroom in his post, The Teacher as Narrative: Moving from a Teacher-centered to Learner-centered Classroom. His suggestions include using drama and video.

The students think, “Oh what’s our crazy teacher up to now?”  You can talk to the students casually for a bit and point out who you are, what year this is, and what you’re doing in their class.- Nick Jaworski, Turkish TEFL

Ms. Flecha relates how she uses the L1 of students to help them learn to spell in her post Incorporating Languages I Don’t Know Into My Teaching. She also share’s her student’s story about the struggles her grandmother encountered as a young girl in  A Stunning Moment.

Alia told me her grandmother, when she was 8, had to get a job because she didn’t have the $3 it cost to go to school, plus her parents had just died.- Ms. Flecha, My Life Untranslated

Nightwalker provides several examples of effectively using L1 in the classroom in the post, Should L1 be used in EFL classes?. Moreover, he gives a nice description of the monolingual and bilingual approach.

Using L1 is not the problem. The problem is when and how to use it. -Nightwalker, My English Pages

Dominic Cole encourages us to let students cheat in his post, Spelling acivities 12 – Let them cheat. He even provides us with some lessons that ensure students cheat. One of my favorite lines of this piece is posted below.

The lowdown scumbag is actually looking to see how the word is spelled. I like students who look to see how words are spelt.- Dominic Cole, The Really Boring English Blog.

Jason Renshaw describes how teachers can be more effective by using the Engage Active Study Activate instructional approach in his post, ESA vs EAS(A) and the Fear of Failure in ELT. Jason prefers the EASA approach for many reasons and expands on its merits in this post.

EASA is somewhat discovery and task-based, assumes students can (and should) use existing language to communicate before doing any specific building or practice (without assuming anything too specific about what they already know), and is reflective where ESA is predicative. – Jason Renshaw, English Raven

Barbara Sakamoto reminds us of the importance of reflection of those who influenced our instructional styles in her post, Lessons Learned from Great Educators.

If someone had come up with a crystal ball and told me that I’d end up teaching English as a foreign language, and living nearly half my life outside my home country, I’d have thought it was a great joke. However, looking back at what I learned from the great educators in my life, the path becomes easier to see. -Barbara Sakamoto, Teaching Village

David Deubelbeiss provides several great micro teaching skills and acts that will improve student learning in his post, It’s The Small Things That Count. Some of these include personalizing lessons, using personal space wisely, and knowing when to step back.

So many teachers believe that their teaching would be better if they had a better book or they had fewer students or the administration were better or if the classroom were arranged differently or if ……… I’m skeptical. -David Deubelbeiss, Teaching Village

MarmaraELT posts research and findings about The Role of Input in the Child’s Acquisition of Language. In his research he notes the importance of adult and peer input in helping children learn a language.

Children react very consistently to the deep structure and the communicative function of language,and they do not react overtly to expansions and grammatical corrections. -Marama ELT/ EFL Resources

Congratulations to Johanna Stirling who will soon have her book published. She shares some of the topics in the book in her post, Spelling Bees- How Do You Spell…? Some ways include through sound, sight, and patterns.

While I was playing with the Times spelling bee game (I told you it was addictive) I was trying to work out HOW I knew the spellings that I knew. -Johanna Stirling, The Spelling Blog

Henrick Oprea talks about the traits he looks for when hiring teachers in his post, About Teachers. These include listening skills and the ability to inspire.

I find that one of the most important things in a language classroom is building rapport with your learners. Rapport facilitates learning, and therefore teaching.- Henrick Oprea, Doing Some Thinking

Before we begin learning about important technology tips, Marisa Constantinides reminds us Don’t Forget the Pedagogy.

“Very little is said about the methodological issues surrounding some of these new tools, their advantages and drawbacks, in fact, what most well-trained teachers instinctively start thinking about.”- TEFL Matters

Teaching Effectively with Technology

If you are like me you love integrating technology effectively into the classroom. One of the best ways to do this is by having your students provide you with feedback about your use of technology in the classroom.

Larry Ferlazzo and his colleague surveyed their students to determine which activities they enjoyed. You can read more of the results in his piece, How Do Students Feel About Using Computers to Help Learn English posted at Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day. Many of his students asked to blog more, have lessons where they create movies, and visit the computer lab more.

I fairly regularly try-out different instructional strategies with my students that also include surveys and assessments in order to help analyze what has worked and what hasn’t been particularly successful.- Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day

Nik Peachey presents 10 Teacher Development Task for Web 2.0 Tools posted at Nik’s Learning Technology Blog. These tasks involve incredible web 2.0 video, audio, writing, and dictation tools. Visit his post for the several tasks.

I created a number of tasks for teachers which I hope will help develop their ability to use technology and to evaluate and create materials using web based tools.- Nik’s Learning Technology Blog

Karenne Sylvester presents several different ways to revamp the Getting to Know You, Getting to Know Me activity with students in her post, Powerpointing Me -EFL Tech Tip #13. These include using Wordle, Photopeach, Flickr and more.

Objective: Create an atmosphere of sharing right from the get-go. Find out your students’ communicative abilities and weaknesses: particularly when making small talk /asking and answering questions.-Karenne Sylvester, Kalinago English

Vicky Saumel presents 40 Things you can do with a Data Projector in an EFL/ESL lesson.  Some of these activities include view and solve interactive problems in groups and displaying images for brainstorming.

There’s no doubt that IWB’s are very popular these days. However, many schools do not have them, but have data projectors instead. – Vicky Saumel, Educational Technology in ELT

In Jamie Keddie’s post, The Third Conditional- A Lesson Plan, he provides us with a creative lesson in pdf format to download for free. In this lesson, students learn the third conditional by searching on Google and analyzing a Homer Simpson quote. The students are bound to have a lot of fun.

Homer Simpson once said something along the lines of: “If God had wanted us to be vegetarians, he wouldn’t have made animals out of meat.” This is the starting point for a lesson plan on the third conditional. -Jamie Keddie

Sean Banville presents a clever way to introduce yourself to students through a glog in his post, Glogster – My Glog.

I hope a lot of what I had included on the glog provided them with some kind of model (more in terms of content than language structure) for them to write about themselves. The scripts I got back from them were definitely more creative than those I’d received in previous years. -Sean Banville’s Blog

In Eva Büyüksimkeşyan’s post, Best of My Students, you do a lot of enjoyable exploring of her students’ glogster projects.

It is a great tool and I believe it enhances their creativity because of that I often assign projects with glogsters.- Eva Büyüksimkeşyan, A Journey in TEFL

Janet Bianchini shares examples of how to use several web 2.0 tools to manipulate images Images4Education and Moodle for Gardening and Cooking: Course Update. These include making motivational posters, an Oscar’s award, book cover, and more.

As you can see, I have been able to combine some of the new things I am learning from my Images4Education course. I am delighted to share them with you here.- Janet’s Abruzzo Edublog

Arjana Blazic shares an interactive quiz she created on the site a4esl.org, Words Related to Books and Literature, which is posted at Activities for ESL students.

Sue Lyon-Jones presents some fantastic tongue-twisters in her post, Tongue Twisters for The Digital Age. You must read them all.

We all wailed when the Fail Whale failed!- Sue Lyon-Jones, The PLN Staff Lounge

Tara Benwell presents a partner interview activity, Writing Challenge #13: An Interview with a MyEC Member – My English Club.

You are going to interview your partner about a topic of your choice. Tara Banwell, MyEC Writing Challenges

Berni Wall shares 10 Top Tips for Improving IELTS Scores. Some of these tips include practise often, join an online community, and use the language around you.

The test is a means to an end not an end in itself and the danger of only concentrating on the test is that you are not seeing the wood for the trees! Berni Wall, Radical Language

Marisa Pavan describes how the Internet and educational technology have improved her teaching methods in her post, Reflections on Edtech.

The use of the Internet has been great help for me to be able to make my students expand on what they are learning. -Marisa Pavan, Linguistic Consultancy

Presentation and Social Media Advice

Jeremy Harmer gives some advice for presenting in front of audiences in his post, On Being Nervous. He personalizes the post by sharing his own experiences with shaky legs and hands.

Sometimes the audience seems to ‘get away from you’ and you find yourself talking into a vacuum and have no idea how to get back in touch with them.- Jeremy Harmer’s Blog

Burcu Akyol invites educators to mentor other educators in social media or to be mentored by becoming involved in this important European Union project, European Union Request and Invitation for Associate Partners.

Using a PLN language educators will be able to find their way through the jungle of ICT resources on the net and find language teachers, just like themselves, that will help them use the resources. -Burcu Akyol

Gavin Dudeney stirs quite a debate in his post On Going Public. He advises those new to Twitter and blogging to learn about the culture, respect those who have been in the field for awhile,  and be consistent with your opinions.

Be a responsible global citizen – listen to the people in your PLN. It’s not all about you.- Gavin Dudeney, That’SLife

Ozge Karaoglu provides 10 ways to become a webhead in her post, How to Survive in 2010 – Digitally. Some of these include start blogging and tweeting, Google your name, and attend online sessions.

The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.- Ozge Karaoglu’s Blog

Graham Stanley believes this is the year more educators will become active on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. He describes his reasons in detail in his post, 2010 Year of the Personal Learning Network.

All of this is why I think 2010 will be the year when teachers many more mainstream start to embrace the idea of the PLN and begin to take a more active part in belonging to the global staffroom that is out there waiting for you, offering you friendship, support, help and advice – if you want it!- Graham Stanley, Blog EFL

Dominic Cole provides a useful tip for both English language learners and educators in his post,  Use iGoogle as Your Home Page.

What you need to do is think about how you can use your computer to get the experience of living in an English speaking country. -Dominic Cole’s Learn English Daily.

Issues to Ponder

Mary Ann Zehr presents Most-Read Blog Posts in 2009 posted at Learning the Language. Some of the great articles she posted are Obama Visits School Where Large Number of Students Are ELLs, Research on Push-In Versus Pull-Out, Resource: Research Brief on RTI for ELLs, Ten-Year Anniversary of Proposition 227, and For Some Students in L.A., Once an ELL, Always an ELL.

The attention to these two blog entries tells me that educators are seeking to expand their repertoire of strategies that work with ELLs.- Mary Ann Zehr, Learning the Language

Lindsay Clandfield makes six predictions for our field in his post, Six Language Teaching Trends of the 00s. These predictions include English as a Lingua Franca will rock the boat and technology will become the new imperative. Lindsay has also started another great blog on the Global site. He describes it, “What about a travel blog, full of reflections on teaching in different parts of the world, trip anecdotes, inspirational photos of teachers and classrooms in different countries and short video clips done in a documentary-style with a handheld camera? Kind of like a global tour of language teaching today?”

More than anything else, this decade could be seen as the decade in which technology muscled its way onto the teaching scene amid a mixture of delight and anguish (perhaps more anguish than delight in many teaching contexts). -Lindsay Clandfield, Six Things

Tom DeRosa presents 5 Tips for Building a Quality (non-ELA) Classroom Library. Some of the tips include providing several books in a series, books with characters the students’ ages, and including newspapers and other media. Additionally, he provides tips for funding a library and getting started.

One way to ensure your success is to build a quality classroom library full of books your students will actually want to read.- Tom DeRosa, I Want to Teach Forever

If you are not an ESL teacher, we end with the perfect post for you! Seth Baker details what it takes to be an ESL teacher in his post, ESL Teaching: The Easy Way to Live Abroad. He brings up issues like what factors to consider when teaching abroad and paints the reality of the situation.

I need to qualify my title: living abroad is never easy. It’s fun, it’s rewarding, but it sure isn’t easy. -Seth Baker, Happenchance: Useful Stuff for Creative People

Looking forward to the next carnival?

The Carnival welcomes any blog posts, including examples of student work, that are related to teaching or learning English. You can contribute a post by using this easy submission form. If the form does not work then feel free to dm Karenne, @kalinagoenglish, on Twitter or email it to Larry Ferlazzo through his contact form. If your post was not included, then I may not have received it through the form.

Karenne Sylvester at Kalinago English: Teaching Speaking Using Technology will host the following carnival on April 1st. Mary Ann Zehr at Learning the Language will host the Carnival on June 1st. Please leave a comment if you’re interested in hosting a future edition.

You can see all the previous fourteen editions of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival here.

Part of the Cool Sites weekly series!

Like most of us, I have only just recently (about a year ago) began to use web2.0 tools in my classes. It wasn’t easy at first. There is a myriad of tools at our disposal and new ones keep emerging at such speed that it’s enough to make your head spin. So, when I choose a tool to use I always try to think of what my students can get out of it, how tool A is more beneficial to them instead of tools B, C or D. I have tried quite a number of tools and I’m sure I’ll try many more, but at the moment my personal favourites are:

English Central – I love this site, because it allows my students to practice their speaking/reading skills, providing them with immediate feedback. HERE you can check the sort of assignment I give them.

Glogster – I guess this is already an old favourite of many of us. My students love the possibility of putting text, images, audio and video together in one place. HERE are some glogs they created.

Animoto – Simply brilliant! You upload your photos (and now even short videos!), add some text and music, let Animoto work its magic and you’re given back a wonderful video that you can post anywhere. No fuss, no muss! HERE are some examples.

GoAnimate – The possibilities are endless. From digital storytelling to book reports or simple vocabulary practice, you think it and GoAnimate will bring it to life! HERE are some of my students’ animations.

MyStudiyo – Great tool to easily create multimedia quizzes. I usually get my students to create the quizzes themselves and then use an interactive board to get the whole class to try out the quizzes. HERE is one.

Vocaroo – I use it  to give my students extra practice on their reading and speaking skills. They record themselves as many times as they want and then just post or e-mail me their recordings. Here are some examples.

VoiceThread – A recent favourite. Great tool for collaborative projects and to provide students with their own niche where they can practice and interact. HERE is my first project.

Last, but not least – Livetyping – It allows me to witness my students’ writing process, showing me what they corrected and rearranged before submitting their final text.  HERE are some examples.

So here you have it, my favourite tools. Am Looking forward to reading about yours!

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Shelly for giving me the honour to contribute for her Cool Sites series, and also to express my sincere gratitude for all that she does for all of us.

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Alexandra Francisco is an EFL teacher in Madeira, Portugal. She has been teaching for 15 years at the secondary level and has only recently began to be involved in the teacher training area, providing short (25 hours long) workshops on the use of web2.0 tools in EFL classes.

You can follow her web2.0 experiences at her tech blog: ZarcoEnglish – Tool of the day. You may also check her assignments blog and her students’ showcase.

December 1st edition!

My guilty pleasure is…. Twitter… as you can tell by this weekly series, What Did They Tweet?

Kid’s Digital Stories

@JohnMikulski’s students have created beautiful digital stories using Storybird. Storybird is one of my favorite applications that you can read about here! John describes the project which has students write a short story in which the protagonist discovers something he/she would have been better off not knowing. Please read the stories and leave these students comments on their stories. Below was one of many of my favorites!

The Tower on Storybird

Using Scenarios in Your E-learning

This brilliant Slideshare presentation provides a wonderful reflection of how we design our instruction. Although the focus is on e-learning, this really relates to the instructional design of all courses. Cathy Moore challenges us to reflect on our instructional methods to answer the question, “Are we teaching our students to solve problems?” This presentation was tweeted by @EthanKuniyoshi.

View more documents from Cathy Moore.

Project Peace for Students

@ddeubel has created an international global project for students everywhere! If you are looking for an easy project to connect your students with other schools worldwide, then you may want to check out the details here. Join the ning, choose 1 of 8 songs about peace, download the song cards, have students decorate them, then make a video! Here’s an example of one of the video projects.

Find more videos like this on PROJECT PEACE

Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference

One extremely valuable part of Second Life is the various free conferences you get to attend. @barbsaka, an amazing educator who has attended several Second Life conferences, tweeted about the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference taking place on March 12-13, 2010. Last year, over 3800 educators attended the event. Below is an example of what you can expect. If you feel comfortable with your Second Life skills, the conference is looking for volunteers, paper submissions, and presentation proposals. If you are new to Second Life, please join the SLife is Life ning where you will find educators like @barbsaka and me willing to show you around.

Dec. 4th Students Save the Rainforest!

This Friday, December 4th, at 12:25pm GMT, your students and you have the opportunity to ask Javier Dril Bustamente, a native of the rainforest, questions about saving the rainforest via twitcam. DM @chickensaltash to participate in the project. This will be a wonderful opportunity to get students involved in a project that helps them reflect about their responsibility to protect the planet.

Add the people in this post to your PLN by using this mass Twitter tool. Just copy and paste this list!

ddeubel, JohnMikulski, ethankuniyoshi, barbsaka, chickensaltash, larryferlazzo, kalinagoenglish

If you enjoy this series, you may want to subscribe for FREE to receive regular updates!

If you enjoyed this post, you may also want to check out these posts with a more extensive list of favorite tweets:

• Monthly Best Tweets by Larry Ferlazzo.
• Monthly Tweets by Karenne Sylvester, Kalinagoenglish.

Challenges:

Leave a comment for the children’s stories or have your students leave a comment! Join many of the other collaborative projects in this post! Attend the free Virtual Worlds Conference in March!

What do you think of these tweets? Leave a comment below!