Using PowerPoint to Deliver Content Instruction or Practice

A very engaging way to introduce or practice vocabulary or grammar content is to use a series of images in a PowerPoint presentation. View the PowerPoint presentation below to see the way several ESL topics could be introduced or practiced. The presentation is just a sampler, with one or two slides demonstrating each type of activity. In practice, each topic would have anywhere from 10 to 20 slides to provide sufficient material for introduction or practice.

View the sampler presentation

Using Video Clips as Prompts for Conversation and Making Predictions

I was recently reminded of the importance of reading stories as a classroom exercise in terms of giving students the opportunity to make predictions about what will happen in the next part of the story to be read. The same can be done with video clips. The following three clips come from a car commercial. I play them in order for the whole class. The students work in groups. Each group has to make a prediction about what will happen next. I write the predictions on the board before showing the next clip. Try it yourself by watching the clips in order and making your own predictions.

Watch the first clip



What do you think will happen next? (Write your prediction down!)


Watch the second clip



Was your prediction accurate?
What do you think will happen next? (Write your prediction down!)


Watch the final clip



Was your prediction accurate?

Try it with your students! If your students are anything like my students you will have great discussions and they will enjoy the surprise endings, especially after the second second clip!

First video uploaded to Teacher Tube

I've obviously seen a few videos on Teacher Tube but I finally was able to successfully create one using Camtasia Studio software and upload it myself. This is a short training tutorial about how to create a link from one wiki page to another wiki page using pbwiki.




To view the same video directly on the Teacher Tube website click here!

The uploading process to Teacher Tube was quite easy. Recording using the Camtasia software was also easy. Figuring out how to export the video was more confusing and I'm still not sure if I selected the best settings for optimal file transfer and viewing on the website. I still need to experiment with that!

More Email Messages From Students About Attendance

Berenice wrote in an email message:

From: a7bXXXX@gaggle.net (Berenice)
To: bbakin@gaggle.net
Subject: (No subject specified)
Date: Tue 07 Aug 2007 04:47:21 PM -0700

Hi teacher this is Berenice. I have to be absent for a few days. My sister in law is pregnat and I have to care for her during the morning. I hope to be in class next week. Please, don't miss me a lot...

Sincerity.....

Berenice

Gloria wrote in a message the other morning:

From: a7graXXXX@gaggle.net (Gloria R) Add to Address Book
To: bbakin@gaggle.net
Subject: No attending classes
Date: Mon 06 Aug 2007 09:59:20 PM -0700
I'm sorry for not attending classes lately, I'm not feeling very well


Vilma is a student I had last year. She wrote earlier this week:
HELLO TEACHER I WANT TO BACK TO SCHOOL AFFTERNOON BUT I DON'TKNOW WHEN IS
STAR OF THE CLASS CAN YOU TELLME WHEN IS STAR, I TELLING YOU I CHANGE OF
WORK NOW I WORK IN THE UNIVERSITY ... .TAKE CARE SEE YOU SOO.......

After I responded to her message she wrote back:

Hello teacher thank you for answer my massege I am happy for back to school
I need to learn English. I'm nervous with my new job because many people
are speack English, so I don't nkow how can I speack with them but I nkow I
can do it if I go to school tanks again teacher ................. take care see you soon....................................

>VILMA



Email, while not the only option that students can use to communicate with a teacher, is simply another channel to keep the lines of communication open. Perhaps, in fact, students might feel more comfortable writing a message then speaking...

TRIPLE FIRSTS: Using Audacity to record reading passages, pbwiki to create a webpage to access them, and Gcast to podcast 'em!

Marian Thacher and David Rosen keep reminding people about wikis and how easy they are to use so I finally decided to try my hand at one. I'd also been thinking about how nice it would be for my students to be able to listen to me read passages from the stories that I use regularly in class for reading practice. I've developed some quizzes (using www.thestudyplace.org) for certain motivational stories that are featured in "Everyday Heroes" (Beth Johnson, Townsend Press) so I assign the same stories every semester. Once a week, I have "reading time" where I read paragraphs aloud so students can listen for pronunciation (They only listen, I read and then discuss vocabulary and content paragraph-by-paragraph). Unfortunately, students who are absent miss out and I never repeat myself due to time considerations. It's always bothered me that the students don't get to hear the paragraphs as many times as they need to really grasp the pronunciation. (From what I've been reading about the latest learning theories, repetitive listening is important.) Sooooo, to make a long story short, I finally put into action some thoughts that had been bouncing around in my head.

I downloaded AUDACITY and a separate associated program called LAME MP3 ENCODER (the Audacity website explains everything) so I could record passages. I had seen lots of demonstrations of how easy it is to use at the CUE 2007 conference, TESOL 2007 and CATESOL 2007, and indeed, it really is easy to use. (Make sure the microphone is working, click on record, click on stop recording, trim the ends using a simple editing button, click on "export as MP3", save the file to a location on your computer and voila! you've created an MP3!)

I signed up for a free wiki at pbwiki (stands for peanut butter wiki because they say creating a wiki is as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich) and created a wiki page for the class. I uploaded the MP3 files of the first paragraphs I recorded directly to the page in paragraph order. (Also easy: click on "attach file", find the file, upload it, etc.)

I signed up at Gcast for a free podcasting service. I uploaded the same MP3 files to my podcast page there so that they can be downloaded to student's devices or computers. (Same story here: click on "upload new audio", find the file, upload it, wait a few minutes and refresh the page and your podcast is ready.)

So it's a start! I have three paragraphs done and available at this moment and hope to get the entire first story completed this week! Please check everything out at the following URL's!

My new wiki page is at http://mrbakinsesl.pbwiki.com

Mr. Bakin's ESL podcast is at http://www.gcast.com/u/MrBakinsESL/main

I'm using both because podcasts are displayed in reverse order and I'm not sure if that can be changed, whereas I can display the listings for each paragraph in page and paragraph order on the wiki very easily.

It's now 4:45 p.m. and I've been at this since about 1:30, but that includes downloading all of the software, reading about how to use it, recording three separate paragraphs, uploading them to both websites, and writing and editing this blog post! The nice thing of course is that the reading passages will be available for students to listen to on their own time. I'm hoping that at least some of them will be sitting on the bus sometimes, the text open in front of them, reading along as they listen....