TESOL Member Moment celebrates our members’ achievements and contributions to the field of English language teaching.
Chadia Mansour TESOL Student Member
Doctoral Candidate in Online and Distributed Learning, Athabasca University
Alberta, Canada
Why are you a TESOL member?
TESOL membership provides me with opportunities to be an ELT knowledge producer through research presented at conventions and involvement in communities of practice TESOL offers. The learning through networking with colleagues and projects is invaluable. It has also fostered my leadership skills, helped me inspire others, and helped me be inspired by them!
What has been your most significant achievement in or contribution to the TESOL field?
One of the great achievements I always feel proud of is working on my master’s in law International Students Taking English for Legal Purposes summer program, which I designed and directed at William and Mary Law School, Williamsburg, VA. Also, teaching a course in this program made me able to connect the design with classroom practices.
Other than the active learning through in-class debates and various activities to foster legal English skills and persuasive discourse, students very much appreciated field trips to different courts for attending live trials and engaging in reflective e-portfolios. The linguistic, communicative, and related legal skills learned throughout this program open many doors to my international students in their home countries and the United States.
Throughout my English language teaching career, my goal has been not only to foster my students’ linguistics and intercultural skills but also to guide and mentor them to use those skills in real life. I feel accomplished seeing students empowered by helping them discover their potential. Their success is my success!
Education is a moving train. We are constantly collecting data, teaching lessons, doing evaluations, and grading student work. With COVID-19, we are doing this nonstop. With classrooms looking different than they did before COVID-19, we are still under the same pressure to get the desired outcomes from our student and our classes. Though content and outcomes are part of our classroom life, they are not everything. Our classroom community is far more important than any content that we could possibly teach.
Here are 10 reasons why community is more important than content.
1. Social-emotional learning is learning.
Taking about emotions and goals is just as important as learning a new grammar item. Social-emotional learning presents a unique opportunity for students to share who they are, connect together, and find authentic ways to communicate. This is priceless knowledge.
2. Content doesn’t stick to criticism. When students are asked to focus on learning content without the support of a community, how can we expect this learning to truly take root? New learning does not stick to criticism, it sticks to compassion. We need to listen to each other and check in with one another. When we slow down the content and make room for community, we are enabling the garden of knowledge to take root more deeply.
3. Learning is everywhere.
Technology, textbooks, and lessons can help classes to move through content faster. But, is faster better? Do students learn the content in meaningful ways? Are they able to grasp a concept and use it on their own? Learning is everywhere. Focusing on the community allows for everyone to learn from each other in meaningful ways. They can practice and dig deeper into material instead of just coasting alone.
4. Textbooks don’t teach, people do.
Textbooks are helpful, but they are not the sole solution. They can start conversations, but a teacher is the one who opens the door. A teacher is able to reach students and read the room. They can check in to see how everyone is doing and make adjustments as needed. It is the focus on community that allows an educator to act in meaningful ways.
5. Compartmentalizing our lives isn’t possible.
No one can turn off their personal life. We cannot simply walk away from our home lives and personal goals. This is part of who we are; this is part of our core. By creating space for this, we are allowing the community to direct learning. Our interests and lives become the threads used to hold the class and teach content.
6. We are not robots.
We are humans. We are living and breathing. Some days we can learn better than other days. Some days we simply cannot learn at all. It is okay if we feel like we are at capacity and cannot learn something new. This is normal, but this does not mean that we are not learning. We need to create space for the ebb and flow of life.
7. Any use is better than no use.
Opening up to others is huge. Sometimes, our society takes this too lightly. It is not always easy to share or to listen, to speak or to be spoken to. By focusing on community over content, we are building our voices and our confidence. Creating space for use, regardless of content or focus, opens doors for all in the community.
8. Filling your heart fills your mind. When we share ourselves with others and create space to connect, we are filling our heart. We learn about the world and we learn about ourselves. We have new thoughts that stick with us even after class is over. No textbook or online resource can ever replace the lasting thoughts that can stem from meaningful, heartfelt conversations with others.
9. Compassion creates confidence.
One of the best feelings that someone can have is when they are listened to and when they are heard. In a world that often closes, holding space for each other and our students is vital. When we take time to share our hearts and share compassion for each other, we are not only supporting ourselves but others as well. Compassion can reduce barriers in order to help students feel more confident.
10. The difference between walking and running is our breath. The semester and academic year move quickly. Sometimes, things are calm so we can walk slower. Other times, we are in a constant marathon. However, regardless of how things are going, there is one area that we have to focus on—our breath. Creating time to breathe together and share together with our community will give us the energy and support needed to keep things moving regardless of the speed.
Regardless of what you teach or who you teach, HOW you teach is most important. During these unusual and uncertain times, consider shifting the focus from content to community. Community is the single biggest thing that can bring learning to life.
You may have played the “desert island” game before: You’re put in a group and asked to work together to choose a limited number of items you’d want to have with you if you were stuck on a desert island together.
As the weather here in New England gets colder, I like to play a variation on this game called the Polar Challenge, in which my students are “sent” to a secret location above the Arctic Circle for 2 years as punishment for an imaginary crime. As in the desert island game, the idea is for groups to work together to figure out what they will need to survive in a remote area.
“Polar Bear” by Christopher Michel, (CC BY 2.0)
The following instructions are intended for high-intermediate to advanced students. To adjust for time and level, shorten the list and reduce or eliminate unfamiliar vocabulary.
Set the Scene
First, the students need to know something about where they are going. Following are some important facts about this secret area:
There is plenty of snow. However, there are no plants except for roughly three trees (each 2 meters tall) per 10 square kilometers.
The temperature is below zero Celsius all year.
It is dark half of the year and light the other half. At the time of class, it is light.
Animals in that area include small arctic foxes and huge, dangerous polar bears on land; whales, seals, and fish in the ocean; and many small birds that nest near the water.
There is no cell phone reception and no chance of escape.
Establish the Rules
Each group of students is allowed to take the clothes they are wearing, but no other personal items.
Each group member will also receive a heavy coat; bowl, fork and spoon; 7 kilos of chocolate; and a water bottle (water not included).
In addition, they may choose 12 items from the list in the following section to take with them. Many of these items are separate. For instance, the flashlight does not include batteries.
Unless specified, there is only one item (for example, one tent) that must be shared by the group. In this list, the items are in rough groups, such as tools and clothing. I allow students to use the internet to look up unfamiliar vocabulary.
Students should focus on finding food, clothing, and shelter. If the students can survive for 2 years, they will be set free. There are no wrong answers, and creativity is encouraged.
Make a List
Here is a sample list of 30 items for students to choose from.
400 matches
30 candles (10 hours each)
10 extra batteries (each one lasts 20 hours)
flashlight (needs batteries)
30 liters of fuel (each liter runs the heater for 10 hours)
heater (needs fuel)
rifle
club
sword
harpoon
3 small knives
ammunition for rifle (250 bullets)
magnifying glass
whistle
1 can opener
shovel
fishing rod and hook (can catch fish up to 20 kilos)
Large sled
Kayak and paddle
tent
sleeping bag (1 for each person)
beef jerky (80 kilos)
100 cans of food (120 kilos. Needs a can opener)
20 spools of heavy thread and 20 needles
100 meters of rope
solar powered walkie-talkie (set of 2)
backpack (1 for each person)
instruction book for camping in the snow (in your native language)
snow boots (1 pair for each person)
waders and wading boots (2 pairs)
Assign Roles
Assign three to five students to each group (or online breakout room) and give students roles, such as facilitator, time-keeper, note-taker, and reporter. You can find more ideas on promoting good discussions in my October Blog. Give students a time limit based on the number of items. For 30 items, I allow students 40 minutes to deliberate. Check in with groups periodically to answer questions and help the facilitator encourage everyone to participate.
Debrief
After the time is up, bring students back together and ask them to explain which 12 items they chose and why. It’s interesting to see what strategy each group chooses for surviving the harsh conditions.
Whether or not it’s cold where you are, I hope your students have fun playing in the imaginary snow of this activity. Are there any activities you like to do seasonally? Please share in the comments below.
Hello everyone, I updated this post, which I wrote sometime ago. I hope you like it!💕
As elementary teachers, we are always looking for and finding activities to teach English vocabulary to kids. We want our students to broaden and deepen their understanding and ability when reading, speaking, listening, and writing. We know that when a student, especially an English Language Learner (ELL), can distinguish between the shades of meanings of related words, they are more precise and imaginative in their writing. This is a strong and proven way to increase vocabulary.
Shades of Meaning~
Shades of meaning are the small differences among words that are related to a specific topic or idea. The Common Core Language Standard L.5 requires students to distinguish shades of meaning among words beginning in Kindergarten and continuing through elementary grades.
to teach elementary students the differences between related words and increase their vocabulary. This graphic organizer improves reading comprehension and works with both English Language Learners (ELL) and native English speakers. Graphic organizers for shades of meaning offer classroom teachers and ELD teachers a vehicle to reach the needs of all students. This type of gradient helps students distinguish between the subtle nuances of the meaning of related words and broadens their understanding of connected words, polar opposites meanings, and synonyms. Furthermore, semantic gradients show all students how to use vocabulary precisely when expressing themselves in speaking and writing. Semantic Gradients are great graphic organizers when you are looking for synonym activities, antonym activities, or teaching English to kids!
Semantic gradients are lists of related words that have similar meanings placed on a continuum moving from one word to its polar opposite. It is a continuum that orders related words by degree.
These gradients use anchor words (words and their polar opposites) at each end of the gradient. The vocabulary words used in between gradual shift in meaning.
For example, cool and sweltering would be the anchor words for a semantic gradient of temperature words that included the following: cool, warm, hot, roasting, and sweltering.
How do you use a Shades of Meaning graphic organizer?
• Identify your 2 anchor words by choosing a word and finding its opposite. • Find synonyms for each of those words and order them to create your word list. • Students then order the words to create a gradient or continuum.
Let me know if you use semantic gradients or other vocabulary activities to teach shades of meanings with your students when you are teaching English to kids!
Happy Teaching,
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from Fun To Teach – Grammar, Language, Math, ESL/ELD, Spanish, Reading, Writing, Centers and more! https://esleld.blogspot.com/2020/12/vocabulary-semantic-gradient.html
Many elementary-age English learners (ELs) in the United States spend a good part of December discussing Santa, elves, and reindeer. They listen to stories about Santa and his trip around the globe. They make presents for their parents and participate in discussions about what they want for Christmas. ELs sing Christmas songs, many of them based on the religious aspects of Christmas.
Parents of ELs may not realize that most of their children’s classmates would receive gifts from Santa, and they may not be aware of how left out their child feels. Unfortunately, many of us give little thought to the children who are looking in from the outside during our celebration of December holidays.What Is the December Dilemma?
In December 2014, I wrote a blog about the December Dilemma and ELs. I noted that “Every December a war is waged over what should be taught, what symbols can be displayed in the school hallways, and what music is sung at the December concert.” Emotions in U.S. elementary schools run high in December. Parents from religious backgrounds other than Christian don’t want their children to be inundated with Christmas festivities.
Decisions from the the courts have clearly stated that teachers can teach about religious holidays, practices, and beliefs, but they may not celebrate, endorse, or denigrate any specific religious holidays, practices, or beliefs. All lessons about religion must be neutral, objective, and nondevotional.
What can educators do? First, to promote inclusiveness in their classrooms, teachers should ask themselves the following questions, adapted from some suggested by the First Amendment Center:
Does this activity have a distinct educational purpose in mind?
Is your activity designed in any way to either promote or inhibit religion?
Will any student be made to feel like an outsider, not a full member of the community, by this activity?
Developing Activities That Promote Inclusiveness in the Classroom
Here are some ideas for promoting an inclusive classroom environment:
Move beyond Christmas, Kwanza, and Hanukkah. Teach holidays from various cultures throughout the school year and find balance by looking at how much time you spend on each holiday.
Teach students to respect each other. This can be a great tool in creating a classroom culture where all children have feelings of trust, safety, and inclusion. Practice inclusiveness in your classroom all year long.
Find themes in books that are common to all cultures. Also include books that represent the cultures of your classrooms so that your students can see themselves in the books that they read.
Provide opportunities so that your ELs feel comfortable sharing their traditions, including holidays, culture, food, games, and music with the class.
When discussing religious and cultural traditions in the classroom, establish ground rules for respectful communication so that all students feel included and accepted.
School special events, assemblies, concerts, and programs should be primarily secular and educational, and should not focus on any one religious observance. Religious music or drama can be included in school events that are part of a secular program of education.
If you have any comments or experiences to share about the “December dilemma” or about promoting inclusiveness in our classrooms, please share in the comments, below.
Hello and welcome to another edition of the TESOL Games and Learning blog! Recently, I had the opportunity to speak to a group of Fulbright foreign language educators about ways to incorporate elements of video game design into their online courses. For this month’s post, I thought I would share a condensed version of that talk.
An effective online course and a video game have much in common. Most important, they are intentionally designed objects. That means the experience of the user, not the content or the objective, is the first concern of the designer, and everything is designed to help the player/learner to understand the environment. To start, let’s take a look at one example of a well-designed game: Super Mario Bros.
Our goal is to use the same thoughtful process that game designers use to develop our online courses. We can start by applying four basic principles to our online courses.
1. Short-Term Objectives, Long-Term Goals
The most successful games make use of both objectives and goals. What is the difference? Game designer Josh Bryer describes short-term objectives this way:
the player is making immediate and visible progress in the game. This is why the early game of [massively multiplayer online game] is so engaging: The player is able to [defeat] enemies quickly, see their progress bar go up, and over the first few hours they will be constantly leveling up and unlocking new things.
In other words: Objectives are quick and relatively easy to achieve.
Long-term goals are harder to achieve: To defeat the boss and save the world takes a long time! Players are unwilling to devote the long period of time it takes to grow strong and defeat the boss if they don’t get smaller, more immediate awards (those short-term objectives!) during their quest. Games researcher Tom Chatfield describes it this way:
What Can Educators Learn From This?
An effective learning environment is a balance between these short-term objectives (complete the homework) and the long-term goal for the class (pass the class!), and an effective online class clearly communicates to the student these objectives and goals. What is critical is that students are provided short-term objectives that are low stakes (i.e., not a significant impact on their grade) where they can practice the skills they need to achieve before challenging the end-game boss (the final exam).
2. Frequent Feedback
Games are great at providing feedback. Whenever we make a mistake, we almost immediately see the “game over” screen, and importantly: The player gets to try again. This opportunity to try again almost immediately is critical because it lets the player learn from their mistake and try to improve. This failure/feedback/retry pattern is called a feedback loop, and in games the goal is to make that loop run as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, in a class, that feedback loop may take days as we work to grade student assignments.
What Can Educators Learn From This?
Think of those short-term objectives we covered in the previous segment—how often do they occur in your class and how much do they contribute to the final class grade? Short-term objectives are effective only when students can engage in low-stakes risk-taking when achieving them. Consider ways to allow students to try a quiz again, for example by making use of question banks that can randomize a quiz each time students make an attempt.
3. Multiple Ways to Solve a Problem
In the last video on homework (at 1:25 in the video), they presented an important aspect of games: Games don’t expect you to succeed on the first try in the same way homework does. Instead, games challenge the player with the question, “Can you find a way to solve this?” rather than “Do you know the solution?” Games reward players for finding solutions that work for them versus knowing the correct answer. We can use a similar approach in our classes to give students more ways to succeed in class. In fact, this approach is a key component of accessibility in education.
What Can Educators Learn From This?
When practicing language, what options are presented to the students for ways to use their language? Consider diversifying ways students can complete homework assignments that allow them to practice the target language in ways that are engaging to them. For example, can students only write a paragraph? Or can they make a speech, record a video, or write a song instead?
4. Affirmation of Performance
Video games tend to start with a mission objective, such as to sneak into the castle without alerting the guards, or climb the mountain using only the rope and hammer. Sometimes, these are given to players in the form of achievements that celebrate the player completing a challenging task in a game. These missions allow the player to understand what they need to do and how they need to do it. And, of course, if they fail they can compare what they did against what they were expected to do—in the classroom, we call that a rubric!
What Can Educators Learn From This?
Consider ways to design your coursework to take advantage of rubrics. Especially in online classes, students can feel lost and unsure what to do; rubrics provide a clear indication of what a student should do, usually via an example, and how they will be graded. Even better, rubrics can give students the feedback they need if they want to try again for a higher score. Rubrics are great to combine with task- or project-based learning, such as having students create a podcast in the target language, give a speech, or create a tourist pamphlet.
I hope these ideas can help as you consider ways to improve your online classroom experience. Until next month, play more games!
Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Solstice, Christmas, Ōmisoka, New Year’s Eve…with abundant holidays and traditions involving food, gifts, and socialization, December offers teachers many opportunities to engage students in fun and reflective writing activities.
As I wrote last month in my November post, in addition to supporting students’ ability to write grammatically, we should be helping them build fluency in their writing. What better way to encourage them to write more and with greater confidence than facilitating their writing about people, places, and activities that are meaningful? In this month’s post, I offer a few writing activities for learners of varying proficiency levels. Depending on your students, these activities can be implemented in a single lesson or extended across several weeks as process writing projects. They can be kept private (in a journal shared only with the teacher), shared with family, or posted publicly on a class website.
1. Gratitude Lists and Thank You Letters
December is the last month of the calendar year and therefore a good time to look back over the past year and reflect on the people who helped us in big and small ways. Sometimes, we get overwhelmed by the little things in life, but it’s valuable to step back and think about how we got where we are. Students can make a list of things, events, and people for which they are grateful. Lower proficiency learners might create multimodal collages of images that represent their meaningful moments (one free tool for making collages with photos and text is Adobe Spark). They could also follow the patterns of list poems to develop gratitude lists that evoke readers’ senses in relation to the described events.
More advanced learners could expand their lists into thank you letters to the people (real or imaginary) who have helped them over the year. In addition to allowing students to elaborate on how someone’s actions helped them in their own lives, writing letters gives students an opportunity to write for a real audience outside the classroom. Thank you letters could also be used within the class as an alternative to “secret Santa” exchanges, with each student being randomly assigned the name of a classmate; they need to then think back over the term and identify a few ways in which their classmate helped them out, no matter how small.
2. Year-in-Review Letter
In many countries, there is a tradition of sending holiday greeting cards (physical or electronic) to friends and family, accompanied by a letter describing the events and activities the writer’s family did over the past year. Some holiday letters are humorous, others maintain a coherent narrative across the entire year (following family members as characters in the story), and still others are more like short descriptions of separate experiences. If you have a collection of these sent by your own family or received from friends and relatives in past years, share them with your students to analyze as models of a genre. Discuss how the letters vary and what is similar across most of them. Students can then write their own year-in-review letters, supported by photos they took during the activities they describe.
3. Favorite Foods
Food is a core part of many winter holidays (leaving cookies for Santa, making latkes for Hanukkah, eating toshikoshi-udon at Ōmisoka), and students probably have fond memories of the foods served on the holidays their families celebrate. Favorite foods could serve as the basis for any number of writing activities:
Retelling recipes to share with classmates from other cultures
Describing the sensory experience of preparing or eating a favorite food
Telling a narrative of a moment sharing food with friends and family on a holiday
Reporting on the history or legend of how a particular food came to be associated with a holiday in their country or culture
4. Create a New New Year’s Tradition
Marking the change from one calendar year to the next, New Year’s is a nonreligious holiday celebrated all around the world. Even countries that also observe a new year celebration on a different date tend to have some kind of tradition for the night of 31 December. Discuss some of the ways people in different countries mark the new year. For example:
Chile: People buy new yellow underwear to wear on 1 January to ensure that they will meet new friends (maybe even a love interest) in the coming year.
Estonia: People eat seven, nine, or even 12 meals on 31 December so they are well positioned for an abundant new year.
Philippines: Everything should be round (like coins) to bring wealth. People also make a lot of noise by banging pots and pans to ward off evil spirits.
There are even more ways on this list. Then, encourage students to brainstorm other ways they could celebrate the new year. Students could dream up a creative, silly, scary, or otherwise unusual ritual and then describe it in writing (or act it out) for their classmates. They should explain what benefit the practice could have in the same way real traditions are described.
5. Academic Practice
If your class needs to continue practicing academic forms of writing, holidays offer ample content for many different types of academic text. Students might compare and contrast two different holidays or how two cultures celebrate the same holiday. They could argue for widespread adoption of their own made-up tradition. If students are learning how to do research, they might interview people to ask about their different holiday practices. It can be surprising how varied people’s practices are, even within a single culture!
If you’ve tried out some of these activities, or have other holiday-related writing activities that have worked well for your students, please share in the comments section. Happy New Year!
There are many interesting things about teacher Jon, and one is that he has helped quite a number of IELTS candidates pass the exam. Since he started his teaching career, he has provided English lessons for kids and test preparation courses for the standardized test.
Jon provides information about him as an English tutor online. He has been considered to be one of the well-experienced and most trusted tutors in the country. He offers Academic and General Training courses for individuals who want to do well in the speaking, listening, writing, and reading sections of IELTS.
Joel Jackson 