Coffee, no cream - Scrambled Slide Show Project

Here's a simple but very rewarding project that gives students a chance to practice pronunciation and transition words like "first," "second," "next," and "finally." Create a simple photo essay using Power Point or other slide show program demonstrating the steps of a process. Make each photo clear and distinct and put one photo on a slide. Don't add any text or timing. Scramble the order of the slides and save the presentation. Include in the saved name "Master" or "Scrambled." Students are to open the presentation, rename it with their own name replacing "Master" or "Scrambled," and save it with the new name.

They then unscramble the slides and add a narration giving directions (instructions) using the transition words.

Download the scrambled presentation here (click on the download link at the wiki).

I'll add actual student projects when I get back to school in January!

Project Enhancment: Once students have finished narrating the scrambled presentation, they can create their own presentation from scratch (Their own photos of a process they've selected.) I'll add some examples of original student projects in January!)

Authentic Easy-to-Read Stories Online at the Toronto Star

I was recently introduced to the "Acts of Kindness" series published weekly by the Toronto Star by a multilevel instructor who teaches in Canada. She noted that these true stories, submitted by readers of the newspaper, are very suitable for multilevel classes since they are short and often written in "easy" English. She has the students work in cross-ability groups with the stories in a variety of ways. For example, students may be assigned to explain a story to a student at a different ability level, or rewrite the story in their own words. After a quick search, I found that the more than 2000(!) stories are archived at the Toronto Star online edition at http://www.thestar.com/topic/ActsofKindness and they are not only suitable for multilevel ESL situations, they are a wonderful resource for any ESL class.

The stories cover a wide variety of topics and everyday situations, so there are many opportunities to work with vocabulary and associate stories with topics being covered in class already. For example, I saw several stories related to getting stuck without money and someone helping, others related to losing things on buses and recovering them, and still others related to being helped by a stranger when a crime is about to occur. Most newer ESL textbooks have chapters related to finances, public transportation, and public safety. It would be very easy to choose selections from the stories and introduce them as supplemental activities to particular units during the semester.

There is also a link to submit one's own story! Students at all levels could work in groups or individually to submit an "act of kindness" story and see it published online!

Visualize Student Writing (or any writing) Artistically Using Wordle!

Wordle is a clever new website (free)that lets you create artistic "word clouds" of any selected text or website. I'm not sure exactly how I'll use it in the ESL classroom but it's a lot of fun and beautiful too! Basically, you paste text or a URL into the site and it creates the word clouds automatically based on the frequency of the words appearing in the selected text. Here's one I made from one of my student's paragraphs.

As I said above, it's very artistic but I'm not sure about it's educational content! Any ideas? Is just doing it and displaying the text sufficient as a classroom activity? Perhaps it's enough to utilize simply as a motivational tool to get students to write something in order for it to be visualized...

Thanks to Sue Waters who mentioned Wordle on her blog Mobile Technology in TAFE.

Inspired by CATESOL 2008

I always try to implement at least one idea that I've seen at a conference within the first week after my return to the classroom. Sometimes it's more! The idea that I'm trying out came to me after attending the session on using PowerPoint presented by Beth Bogage and Jim Brice of San Diego Community College. Their workshop focused on having students prepare PowerPoint presentations enhanced by their own narration. Now I've been having students make PowerPoint presentations for several years, but they've usually involved preparing slides to accompany oral presentation of research they've carried out in class. Inspired by Beth and Jim, I've decided to have the students make two versions of their PowerPoint presentations from now on: one without narration to accompany their "in-front-of-class" presentations, and one with narration that can "stand alone" so anybody viewing the presentation will see the slides and hear the students explaining their research. Beth and Jim also suggested that students be encouraged to speak extemporaneously (as opposed to reading) and I've instructed the students to do that as much as possible. So far, the idea seems to have been well-received, and I'm getting my first student projects with narration to check. You can see the first one by clicking here, and the second one that was completed by clicking here.


Thank you Beth and Jim for your presentation!

What's Up Tigerlilly for ESL students-Bombay TV

Here's a great idea by way of Larry Ferlazzo's "Best Ways" series! Bombay TV is a site where your students(and you too!) can have great fun with English. Basically, you caption real movie clips from Indian movies with your own comic lines. It's great fun for native and non-native speakers alike! Click on the link to see a sample:

http://www.grapheine.com/bombaytv/index.php?module=see&lang=uk&code=6a1cb268756d2c45c8d11cf7626fa1e5

A new student project

This is another way to share photos that while not as visually captivating as the rotating tube, does include a way to turn a photo project into a language project because you can include captions. This one is experimental. The captions are unfortunately limited in length or they run over the photo (as on the last page). Click on the page to see the next photo. Perhaps uploading a smaller photo will do the trick...