Why Use the Term “Professional Development” and not “Training”?

Greetings readers! I am truly honored and excited about serving our global TESOL community as the new blogger on topics related to professional development! (Click here if you’d like to listen to this as a podcast!)

Since this is my first blog post for this interest area, I thought it was a great opportunity to define why we (I!) specifically use the term “professional development” rather than “training” for this blog. It may just seem like a simple word choice, but as you know, words matter!

This image by Laura Baecher is licensed under CC by 4.0 | Created in CANVA

For instance, many perceive the idea of training as repetitive practice leading to compliance and obedience (e.g., dog training). This may feel a bit extreme, and not helpful, as there are many instances in which training is needed and appropriate for educators.

The Utility of Training

Guzdial (2010) writes that training is a necessary activity, which he likens to the type of precise, guided practice nurses or computer technicians receive. He reminds us that this type of skill-based training is essential in order for professionals to feel confident in implementing new approaches and to execute their tasks with automaticity. Indeed, it is hard to imagine beginning to use, for instance, a new web conferencing platform (Zoom, anyone?) without some type of training, or to implement a testing protocol in a school without full staff training.

A potential risk with training is that educators can become outdated if they do not have a personal professional development destination. Gaining one’s training solely from what the workplace provides or requires can lead to “dinosaur” syndrome: educators whose skills have not evolved with the times or who may not be learning “how to be better problem solvers, critical thinkers, and innovators” (Raisonliving.com, n.d.).

“Draw A Dinosaur Day” by 427 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The Importance of Professional Development

Professional development, or professional learning as it is perhaps even better named, is not done “to” educators, but rather, accomplished “by” them. In contrast to training, which is considered to be focused, formal, and linear, professional development may be less formal and have several possible outcomes, formats, and foci (Herbert-Smith, 2019). The educator makes choices about their interests and needs, and thus is empowered in the process of learning (Calvert, 2016). The educator who pursues professional development will be continuously evolving, surveying the land, and making choices about which direction to head toward. The bird-in-flight is a great mental image for this dynamic process.

“UnexpectedVisitor” by Alex Hiam is licensed under CC BY 2.0

These distinctions are further identified in the following table. As you review these, what do you see as the “hidden curriculum” of a training versus professional development stance?

Training	Professional Development
The organization invests in the program or application.	The organization invests in the individuals.
Fills a temporary gap or bridges a particular issue.	Works toward long-term adaptability and growth.
One-directional, from trainer to trainee	Multidirectional, often in collaboration with a facilitator
Time-bound learning at the behest of the organization	Continuous learning for its own sake
May be best suited for novices to the field or to an activity	May be best suited for the more experienced
Separate from the context of implementation	Must be implemented in context
Concerned with the present	Concerned with the future
Focused on the job	Focused on the career
Focused on the “how”	Focused on the “why”

Looking at Training and Professional Development in Action

Let’s imagine a training day and a professional development session in a school. The goal is for teachers to use more active learning strategies with their young learners. Where do you see opportunities for teacher learning? Where do you see limitations or challenges?

Scenario 1

A group of teachers who all provide ESL/EFL classes to young learners (ages 4–7) are given a day off from teaching to attend a training or “inset” day. They have no idea what the topic will be and show up to the classroom unsure of what they will be learning. Their school leaders let them know that an outside consultant has come to give them training on how to use more active learning techniques in their classroom. There is some modeling of the approaches during the training, which is enjoyable for the teachers, who rarely have time to interact with one another. During the lunch break, they begin discussing some common challenges but quickly have to return to the session.

Scenario 2

A group of teachers who all provide ESL/EFL classes to young learners (ages 4–7) are given a day off from teaching to attend a professional development day. Prior to this day, they were given three choices of focus related to active learning techniques, and when they come to the session they quickly join their chosen group. The teachers have each researched and brought in one active learning technique they have used or want to use, and model it in their small groups. Eagerly, the teachers discuss how the techniques have worked or could work in their context. At the close of the session, each teacher commits to exploring one to two of these active learning approaches. They know the group will be meeting again in 2 weeks to assess their experiences, and that their supervisor will be their audience to hear how the implementation is progressing.

I look forward to engaging with you on a monthly basis on all topics related to professional development/learning! Let’s make this a space to reflect and grow together!

In the comments, please join in the conversation about “training” and “professional development”! I promise to reply!

References

Calvert, L. (2016). Moving from compliance to agency: What teachers need to make professional learning work. Learning Forward and NCTAF. https://nctaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/NCTAF-Learning-Forward_Moving-from-Compliance-to-Agency_What-Teachers-Need-to-Make-Professional-Learning-Work.pdf

Guzdial, M. (2010). Teacher training v. teacher professional development. Computing Education Research Blog. https://computinged.wordpress.com/2010/04/03/teacher-training-vs-teacher-professional-development/

Herbert-Smith, K. (2020). Training vs. professional development—What’s the difference and does it matter? IRIS Connect Professional Development Blog. https://blog.irisconnect.com/us/training-vs-professional-development-whats-the-difference-and-does-it-matter#:~:text=It’s%20about%20learning%20how%20to,evolve%20your%20capability%20and%20competency

Lord Byron Quotes. (n.d.). Quotes.net. https://www.quotes.net/quote/38715

Patnoudes, E. (2015). What should come first, training or professional development? EdTech Magazine. https://edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2015/03/what-should-come-first-training-or-professional-development

Raisonliving.com. (n.d.) Is there a difference between training and professional development? https://raisonliving.com/2018/10/20/training-versus-professional-development/

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/why-use-the-term-professional-development-and-not-training/

Understanding Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy

In recent years, there have been many calls to transform approaches to schooling in pluralistic societies that have treated the languages, cultures, and ways of being of people of colour as deficiencies that have to be overcome to succeed both in and out of school. Scholars have proposed a range of educational frameworks that can be adopted to engage learners whose experiences and cultures are traditionally excluded from mainstream settings, and adopt ways of repositioning their linguistic, literate, and cultural practices as resources and identity-affirming assets.

Such culturally responsive pedagogical approaches will empower students not only academically but also socially, emotionally, and politically. Given the range of different frameworks that promote culturally responsive pedagogies, (e.g., culturally relevant teaching, culturally responsive teaching, and culturally congruent teaching) let us turn to see what the terms really mean and how the frameworks sustain the cultures of minoritized students.

What Is Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy?

Ladson-Billings (1995) introduced the term culturally relevant pedagogy over two decades ago, based on her work with effective teachers of African American students. She outlined three goals to be attained if teaching was to be culturally relevant.

Goals of Culturally Relevant Teaching

1. Teaching must yield academic success.
2. Teaching must nurture positive ethnic and cultural identities in all students while supporting them to achieve academically.
3. Teaching must help students to make sense of and critique inequalities that exist in societies.

Building on Ladson-Billings’ work, Gay (2010) proposed a framework that she referred to as culturally responsive teaching. She called for educators to centralise the cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of culturally minoritized students by making positive changes not only at the level of instructional strategies, but by transforming the classroom climate to be more culturally responsive to the students’ needs and perspectives. This included changes to teaching materials, teacher-student relationships, and incorporating critical thinking and self-reflection to encourage students to acquire high expectations of academic success, develop sociocultural competence, and practice critical consciousness to help them critique and interrupt social inequities. According to Gay, culturally responsive teachers should make the following changes to their classroom practice:

Practices of Culturally Responsive Teachers

1. Assist students in restructuring their attitudes and beliefs by replacing deficit perspectives with asset-based perspectives.
2. Understand and resist opposition to asset-based approaches in educating linguistically, culturally, and ethnically diverse students.
3. Make culture a central focus and understand the ideologies, characteristics, and contributions from all groups in society.
4. Connect instructional practices to the sociocultural characteristics of students and teachers.

Django Paris (2012) further expanded these approaches to move beyond using the culture and language that students bring to the classroom as bridges to schooling success. He collaborated with H. Samy Alim (Paris & Alim, 2017), to claim that practitioners need to think of using schooling to support young people in sustaining the cultural and linguistic practices of their communities and build positive identities, while simultaneously granting them access to the dominant cultural competence of the society. They called this broader, more holistic approach culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP). Ladson-Billings (2014), who initially proposed culturally relevant pedagogy, lauds CSP as a “remix” of her approach with an added focus on sustaining the static and evolving cultures of students to better prepare them for pluralistic, multicultural, and multilingual societies.

While CSP is a broad approach that can be applicable to all groups and communities in a society, scholars working within the field of indigenous education have reframed CSP as culturally sustaining/revitalising pedagogy. They maintain the premise and components of CSP, but interlace these with a focus to revitalise the indigenous languages and cultures that have suffered and continue to suffer under settler colonialism.

These asset-based pedagogies decentre Whiteness and reframe English-monolingual xenophobic gazes to move beyond empowering individual students to build a sense of collective empowerment for minoritized communities in society. In the instruction to their 2017 volume on culturally sustaining pedagogies, Paris and Alim (2017) ask us to “reimagine schools as sites of diverse, heterogenous practices [that] are not only valued, but sustained” (p. 4) and to critique oppressive systems that view success “in terms of a unidirectional assimilation into whiteness” (p. 3).

But Does It Work?

You might think that in an age where calls to rebalance racial, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural inequities have reached a tipping point, these pedagogical proposals are to be expected, but how do we know whether they actually work?

Many studies that have investigated culturally relevant, responsive, and sustaining pedagogies have highlighted their benefits. For example, studies in cognition and education have found that drawing on the funds of knowledge that students bring into the classroom builds on their worldview and prior understanding, which helps to shape comprehension of new information. Research in classroom practice indicates that when instructional resources reflect students’ backgrounds and experiences, students are more likely to engage in deep and meaningful learning. Though this is true for any student, studies that have focused on minoritized students show that with the use of CSP, positive changes can be observed in students’ academic achievement and attendance. Students are also observed to show greater interest in school and have higher levels of persistence in academic and social activities.

At a broader level, CSP can help to establish intercultural competence and develop an inclusive school culture that values diversity and recognises the strengths and contributions of all students and communities. Studies have shown that when young people develop strong racial, ethnic, and cultural identities, they

• show positive academic attitudes,
• have higher levels of self-esteem,
• are better able to navigate discrimination, and
• are more interested in befriending people from all backgrounds.

Globalisation has created increasingly diverse societies everywhere across the world. CSP offers a way to support all students to learn in ways that honour their own and others’ cultural heritage and lived realities.

References

Gay, G. (2010). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice. Teachers College Press.

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465–491.

Ladson-Billings, G. (2014). Culturally relevant pedagogy 2.0: a.k.a. the Remix. Harvard Educational Review, 1.

Paris, D. (2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational Researcher, 41(3), 93–97.

Paris, D., & Alim, S. (2017). Culturally sustaining pedagogies: Teaching and learning for justice in a changing world. Teachers College Press.

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/understanding-culturally-sustaining-pedagogy/

(Re)Exploring Flipgrid: 3 Underutilized Features

One of the biggest frustrations for teachers who have moved online is the seeming disappearance of opportunities to have students walk us through their thinking. In a face-to-face class, we can quickly check in when we pass by students struggling with a problem, but now many of us are seeing submissions with no understanding of where they came from.

One way to help us see what students are thinking when we can’t just swing by their desk is to create a low-stakes check in system with Flipgrid.

Flipgrid has been discussed here on the TESOL blog for its great uses in teaching speaking, and it has a huge community of die-hard advocates online. One of the great potential uses is to have students show us their thought process as they are working through a problem. Over the last year, Flipgrid has announced a number of amazing features, including the use of a whiteboard with live inking, stickers and custom backgrounds, and my favorite, screen recording! Let’s look at these and see if it might be time to explore some of the features you may not have known about.

1. Whiteboard

We can use the whiteboard feature much like we do the whiteboards in our own classrooms. Teachers can provide students with challenges to draw on the whiteboard and explain the drawing as they’re going through it. In lower level classes, you might ask students to draw a circle and a square and to explain locations using prepositions. As students draw, they can talk through their understanding by speaking what they’re drawing, for example “The circle is next to the square,” or “The circle is in the square.”

Using the whiteboard is easy, too! Students simply click on “Effects,” then “Board” and choose the whiteboard. They will then use the “Ink” tool, also under “Effects.” Students can practice as much as they like before they record, and they can record in segments if they want to practice mastery!

2. Annotations

For a higher level activity, teachers can provide students with an image of text to annotate. Simply take a screenshot of a sentence or paragraph with any number of mistakes and send it to your students. When they’ve created their whiteboard, they can click on “Photo” under effects. Flipgrid will prompt students to “Add custom sticker,” where they can drag the file you’ve sent to them. From here, they can use the same “Ink” feature to annotate the image, pointing out mistakes and explaining how they would fix them. Encourage your students to talk through the changes they’re making as they annotate, allowing you and classmates to see not only their final results, but also their reasoning behind their choices.

“How do I make the text for the screenshot?” you may be asking. The easiest way is with Google Slides or PowerPoint. Simply make a slide (the default dimensions are the right size, so nothing to worry about there!), then either export the slide as an individual image or screenshot it as a .jpg or .png. I recommend using a large size font (36 pt is good) so that it’s easy to read even if the image gets resized.

3. Screen Recording

I love the screen recording feature because it allows students to show their work outside the confines of Flipgrid. As teachers, we all pull from any resources we can find that help to get the job done, so having students show their work through the unlimited depths of the internet only makes sense. One activity that allows students to feel at ease is to have them give a “walking tour” of their favorite neighborhood in their hometown by talking us through a Street View version of Google Maps. When students share their favorite cafés and stores with each other, it helps build community and cultural understanding, too, letting us travel the world at a time when we might not be able to do so physically.

To turn on Screen Recording, simply click on the “Six Dots/Options” and then click on “Record Screen.” Students can choose from sharing the whole screen to an application’s window to a single tab from their browser—whatever fits their needs!

There are endless activities you can create to use the screen recording option, but one of the true joys is when students start to develop autonomy and begin to use it to teach their classmates how to complete activities for the class. This is where the true learning begins!

Flipping to Formative Assessment

All of these activities allow for complex language processing, and I suggest using them for low-stakes formative assessments. Flipgrid lets students re-record over and over again until they’re satisfied with their work, before they even turn it in. These are great activities to give an easy “complete” or “incomplete” and spend more time giving constructive feedback by responding to their videos, or better yet, having their classmates do so!

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If you haven’t tried these underutilized Flipgrid features, give them a try! You’ll be amazed at what your students create!

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/reexploring-flipgrid-3-underutilized-features/

4 Tips for Building Background Knowledge in ELT

Why is background knowledge so important for reading comprehension? Background knowledge, the information and experiences we already have about a topic, helps us make links to new information. It’s a key reason we can comprehend text written at a higher reading level than what we might normally be able to read. Prior knowledge in any language can help compensate for poor second language reading skills. It’s why a graduate student can easily comprehend a research article in her field of study written in English, her second language. Lack of background knowledge is also why an undergraduate student with similar English proficiency might struggle to read and understand texts in English, his second language.

Graduate students benefit from their deep background knowledge on a specific topic. Undergraduates, on the other hand, must read on a wider range of topics in their general education courses. Background knowledge is even more critical for younger students. They have less knowledge of everything—in any language—compared to adults. English learners in an English-speaking classroom may also be less likely to share common knowledge with their native speaker classmates.

The Importance of Background Knowledge in Reading Comprehension

Some experts feel lack of background knowledge is one reason for the relatively flat reading scores of K–12 students in the United States since 1998 on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). A panel of experts in 2018 concluded building general background knowledge has been given short shrift, crowded out by a narrowing of the curriculum and too much instructional time spent on teaching reading strategies (O’Donnell, 2018). One panel member (Willingham, 2006/07) pointed out many studies show good readers use reading strategies, but far fewer studies show using reading strategies causes good reading comprehension.

To make good readers, teachers should spend more time building students’ knowledge and vocabulary. Well-known educator E.D. Hirsch noted in his 2006 book, The Knowledge Deficit, that schools do a good job of teaching the mechanics of reading, but blamed insufficient background knowledge for the far-too-common slump in reading comprehension beginning in the upper elementary grades.

I saw for myself how this played out at my school’s data intervention meetings for at-risk students, many of them English learners. Lower elementary classroom teachers often noted students needed more phonemic awareness skills. In the middle grades, after their students had mastered the mechanics of reading, teachers said comprehension was the issue. This isn’t exactly a new “problem.”

Research by Recht and Leslie as long ago as 1998 suggested building background knowledge may help with comprehension. (Here’s a short video summary of their well-known “baseball study.” They preassessed seventh and eighth grade students for reading comprehension ability and for prior knowledge of baseball. Then students read a passage describing a half inning of a baseball game and performed various recall, retell, summarizing, and sorting activities. Students with high knowledge of baseball and low reading ability performed as well as students with low knowledge of baseball and high reading ability. In other words, prior knowledge made up for poor reading skills.

Background knowledge helps students more easily understand difficult concepts and use higher order thinking skills than they might normally be able to do. It helps English learners learn things while they’re still learning English—a win-win.

Tips for Building Background Knowledge

What can individual teachers do to build background knowledge for their students? Here are four tips:

1. Frame Your Lessons

“Frame” your lessons by recapping what went before when starting a lesson and reviewing what has happened when finishing a lesson. For example, before beginning the next chapter in a text, have students in pairs retell what happened in the previous chapter. This “catching up” may seem boring to you, but it’s valuable recycling for English learners.

I once had a helpful principal who always began explanations in staff meetings with “I realize some of you may already be familiar with this, but for the new people on staff…” Invariably, people who were “already familiar with this” ended up asking as many questions as the new people. The teachers with prior knowledge had more ways to view the already familiar information. That generated more sophisticated questions. It can work the same way in your classroom as it did for the teachers in my school’s staff meetings. The review, revisiting, and recycling you do to improve comprehension can also benefit other students who are already familiar with the content.

2. Connect Everything

Connect everything to something else. Avoid one-off lessons or presenting something “cold.” A teacher once told me he hadn’t done any preparation for his students before a field trip to see a play because he wanted the students to be “surprised” by the end. When teaching, surprises aren’t good. If your students are reading about a topic, make sure they also read additional selections, listen to a lecture, or view a video about that topic.

3. Create Shared Experiences

This helps level the playing field because everyone starts with a similar background knowledge base. A shared experience can be as elaborate as a field trip, or something as simple as a video clip, a book read aloud, or a class demonstration. Many things can suffice as long as students experience them together. Then, teachers can use these shared experiences as springboards to other reading activities.

I once saw a powerful example of the effectiveness of a shared experience in a second grade class. A key vocabulary word in the reading selection was factory. As a visual example, the teacher showed the students a short video clip about a chocolate factory. Several days later, when students were discussing the key vocabulary in small groups, students in every group referenced the video when defining factory. The short video clip proved to be a valuable anchor point for understanding this key term from the unit—for all students.

4. Become a Background Knowledge Ambassador

English language teachers are less likely than their general education colleagues to assume students’ common background knowledge simply because English language teachers so often teach diverse classes in varied settings. Still, don’t allow teachers to simply bemoan their students’ lack of background knowledge. Remind your counterparts that they can fix it; in fact, help them fix it by offering tips, including the ones I’ve just given you!

If you have any other tips for background knowledge–building that have worked well for you, please share with us in the comments section, below!

References

Hirsch, E.D., Jr. (2006). The knowledge deficit: Closing the shocking education gap for American Children. Houghton Mifflin.

Recht, D., & Leslie L. (1988). Effect of prior knowledge on good and poor readers’ memory of text. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80, 16–20.

O’Donnell, A. (2018). Key takeaways from this year’s NAEP results. International Literacy Association. https://literacyworldwide.org/blog/literacy-now/2018/04/13/key-takeaways-from-this-year-s-naep-results

Willingham, D. T. (2006/07, Winter). Ask the cognitive scientist: The usefulness of brief instruction in reading comprehension strategies. American Educator, 39–50.

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/4-tips-for-building-background-knowledge-in-elt/

5 Things to Talk About in ESL Class

Sometimes the biggest challenge in a speaking class is running out of things to talk about! This month, I’d like to share some ideas that get the conversation going. These activities are all appropriate for online or in-person classes.

1. A Photograph

One way to use a photo is have each student bring in a picture they have taken of something—or someone—that is important to them. It could be anything: a place, a family member, a pet, a building or an event. Students share their photos with classmates, describe what’s in them, and explain the stories behind them. This can be followed by questions from other students.

Photo credit: “Lurking Danger” by Ashok Boghani (CC BY-NC 2.0)
What is happening? What happened before? What will happen next?

Another possibility is to use photos of people doing activities that you bring to the class. Give each pair of students a different photo, and ask them to build a story about it:

• What is happening in the photo?
• What happened before the photo was taken?
• What will happen next?

You can also give all students the same photo and see how their interpretations differ.  If you don’t have a collection of interesting photos already, you can find images of people in interesting situations online. Try searching Google Images or flickr.com for people in specific locations (e.g., “park people” or “campground children”) or for particular activities (e.g., “women working” or “people dancing”).

2. A Newspaper Article

There are several ways to use newspaper stories for speaking activities. First, each student could report on a different news story they read outside of class, which is a great way to practice tenses. Second, you can create a role play for students based on an article they have read, asking them what they might do in the same situation. That also offers students the opportunity to practice using the conditional (if…would) statements. A third option, if your students have a flair for drama, is for them to work together to re-create an article they have all read, taking the parts of the people involved.

3. A Person

Some of the most interesting people are the students in your class! Ask students to interview each other about a personal story, then report on what they have discovered. Be sure to give students guidance on what to ask, and be specific—it could be a vacation they took, their best day ever, or how they became interested in their favorite hobby.

4. An Event

Typically, we ask students in ESL classes to talk about holidays in their country, and for good reason! Do they have similar holidays, such as harvest festivals? How are they different? What is each student’s favorite holiday and why?

But don’t limit yourself to holidays—students can discuss an event they’ve attended together, such as a class session, field trip or party. Who was there? What happened? Alternatively, students can take turns playing television society reporters and interviewing their classmates about the event.

You can also make an exciting event happen in the classroom! Before class, secretly ask two students to act out a sequence of several unexpected behaviors midway through the class, such as dancing with each other, singing, reading from a book, jumping up and down, or leaving the room suddenly. After the impromptu event is finished, ask the other students to work together to reconstruct what happened.

5. A Video

The most common speaking activity—if your students have watched a video for homework and have already answered comprehension questions—is to have them participate in an open-ended discussion. Ask questions that start with how and why. (E.g., How do you feel about the video contents? Why do you think people made the choices they did?)

However, if you’re showing a narrative video in class, a fun alternative is to stop in the middle of the action and ask students to finish the story. This can be a discussion, or you can assign roles for a prepared or impromptu dramatization.

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These are a few things I use in my classroom to facilitate speaking practice. What do you do in your classroom? Please share in the comments below.

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/5-things-to-talk-about-in-esl-class/

An Inspiring TESOL Convention, A Celebration of Success

TESOL Ambassadors are English language professionals and students who have agreed to share their Convention experiences with other attendees. Hind Elyas, English Instructor in Saudi Arabia,  is a 2021 TESOL Ambassador. 

I have always wanted to attend the TESOL International Convention & English Language Expo. I have been following TESOL in the past years, connected with many TESOLers, and attended events such as myTESOL Lounge Live discussions, webinars, and PLNs, and this all made me want to get more involved.

This year, the Convention was such a rewarding experience for many reasons.

1. The Virtual Convention

Living and working in another country and work commitments made it difficult to travel to attend the Convention. I was thrilled when TESOL announced that the Convention would be online. It allowed me to attend the entire event in the comfort of my living room, and it was indeed an unforgettable experience.

There were so many things I loved about the convention. First, the topics were stimulating, and the presenters were inspiring! The information was relevant and well presented, and there was a good mix of different topics. I learned so much from the sessions, and the level of expertise and knowledge of the presenters were excellent! I loved the fact that participants are given the opportunity to listen to the recordings for 90 days! That was very helpful, and it is a valuable source of information that can be used for months to come.

There were several opportunities for collaborating, connecting, and learning. It was a fantastic opportunity to meet different TESOLers from so many other countries and explore new cultures, using the Attendee Connection function. It was so much fun looking for registered friends and connecting with them.

The roundtables feature was very exciting. It was great to pop in and out of rooms, meeting colleagues and inviting others to join, too! It gave participants a sense of ownership and belonging. It was also an ideal platform for networking and such an energizing and fun experience!

2. Convention Ambassador

Another wonderful experience was being selected as a TESOL 2021 Virtual Convention Ambassador, and I was thrilled.

This role allowed me to become more involved, and I learned so much. I was honoured to represent TESOL before the Convention, during the event, and after it was over. Before the event, I enjoyed sharing exciting information and updates about the sessions.

As a passionate believer in the association and its vision and mission, I wanted to share my excitement about the Convention and get other people excited about it, too! It made me feel that I was part of something great, and I was happy to answer questions, share important updates, and encourage people to attend the event.

It was also a chance to learn more about the presenters, sessions, platform, networking opportunities, and so much more. I was incredibly excited and motivated by the game leaderboard, and I really enjoyed the competition. It was so much fun!

3. Leadership Mentoring Program Recipient

Another aspect that made this year exceptional was that I was selected as a TESOL Leadership Mentoring Program Award recipient. It was such a great honour for me to receive this award, and I am grateful to TESOL International Association for this recognition. The award ceremony was very exciting. It was a great evening, with so many familiar faces, and there were vibes of positivity, excitement, and anticipation in the room, which was amazing! It was very inspiring to meet all the mentors and mentees during the ceremony, and I was delighted to be part of it.

Without a doubt, the Convention was a memorable event, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank our fantastic TESOL International Association for this great Convention and all the wonderful opportunities the association provides for its members all over the world. I cannot wait for next year’s Convention, which will hopefully be face to face.

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/an-inspiring-tesol-convention-a-celebration-of-success/

One-Pagers: Teaching ELs to Review Content

What is a one-pager? It is an activity for students to demonstrate the highlights of what they have learned from listening to a podcast, viewing a film, reading a novel or a poem, or completing a unit of study in any content area. To complete a one-pager, English learners (ELs) draw and write the highlights of what they have learned on a single piece of paper.

Here are some samples of one-pagers that teachers have shared. As you can see, students can include the following in their one-pagers:

• drawings or other images
• key ideas or theme
• character development
• quotes
• the basic facts or plot line
• major events and dates

You can use one-pagers as a final project or as the introduction of a major paper. It is important that ELs receive clear directions to complete their one-pagers. Suggestions for template directions can be found here. Following are some tips for making the most of one-pagers with your ELs.

Benefits for ELs When Creating a One-Pager

When ELs (or any other student) mix visuals and writing on a one-pager, the information that they put on the page becomes more memorable. They are involved in creating content rather than memorizing facts. They are making connections to their own lives and learning to synthesize what they have read, viewed, or heard. According to the Dual Coding Theory,

Human cognition is unique in that it has become specialized for dealing simultaneously with language and with nonverbal objects and events. Moreover, the language system is peculiar in that it deals directly with linguistic input and output (in the form of speech or writing) while at the same time serving a symbolic function with respect to nonverbal objects, events, and behaviors. (Paivio, 1986, as cited in Culatta, 2021)

A One-Pager Stumbling Block

One of the stumbling blocks for ELs when creating one-pagers is that students who are not good artists feel that they can’t compete with those who are artistic. Let students know that they don’t have to be great artists to provide a visual representations or their content. Emphasize to students that their work won’t be judged on the quality of their artwork but on the content, originality, and organization of the page. To address this problem, a former English teacher, Betsy Potash, has created templates that include very specific instructions to help students complete their one-pagers. If you go to the website you’ll see her offer to provide you with some free samples. She also has a podcast that features one-pagers.

Give ELs an Audience for Their Work

After the assignment is completed, find a way that your students can share their final product with an audience. Many ELs will not be comfortable sharing their work in front of the whole class, so you can have them share in small groups. I was in a third grade classroom where each student invited a family member to come into the class so that they could share their work.

If you have experiences with teaching ELs to create one-pagers, please share them in the comment box, below.

Reference

Culatta, R. (2021). Dual coding theory (Allan Paivio). InstructionalDesign.org. https://www.instructionaldesign.org/theories/dual-coding/

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/one-pagers-teaching-els-to-review-content/

Building Language Learning Games With Scratch

Welcome to another edition of the TESOL Games and Learning Blog! Last month we explored Twine, a text-based interface for creating interactive stories. Twine is a great tool for older students or more advanced language learners, but perhaps not the best choice for younger learners. Younger learners can still engage in the creative process of making games by using Scratch—a visual programming language for making games and animation.

I first discussed Scratch in my “7 Game Design Tools for the Classroom” post from December 2019, but its robust feature set makes it worth exploring in a blog post all its own. Scratch can be used to create language learning games for students to play or introduced into the curriculum so that students can learn to make their own games to share with the class.

Scratch introduces students to the basics of game development through a color-coded drag-and-drop interface. The fragments of code are color-coded based on the purpose of the code, such as moving a character, changing the look of the game, or adding sound. Students can select the type of code they want to work with then drag it from the left-hand menu into the center coding column, and then test out their code by watching it run in the right-hand column, known as the stage.

Figure 1: The Scratch interface with a pop-up tutorial video series at the bottom center of the screen.

Scratch was developed by the MIT Media Lab as an educational tool. As such, it comes with a wealth of educators guides that can be used by teachers with limited coding experience. Students can find a variety of resources as well to help them in their coding process, including step-by-step resources for making short movies and simple 2D games. Scratch also features a comprehensive video series on YouTube that can be provided to students for self-study or as part of a larger course curriculum.

Scratch also includes a Creative Computing Curriculum. The curriculum is a six-unit course that introduces students to the foundations of Scratch and guides them in coding, animation, making stories, and building games, until finally they are ready for an open-ended project as part of a classroom hackathon. This course could be combined with Google’s free-to-use CS First computer science curriculum that used Scratch as a core component. This includes some interesting 1-hour lessons on creating dialogue, narration, and figurative language that could be implemented into the language classroom.

Scratch has been used to create more than 50 million projects with over a million new projects added every month. This has resulted in a wealth of resources available both on the Scratch website and online that educators can lean on to develop a Scratch curriculum tailored to their students’ interests and abilities. The goal of Scratch is to promote the creative aspects of coding over the technical details of programming. It does so in an inviting, easy-to-use design that teachers and students can use to quickly make their own games.

If you or your students have made games in Scratch, be sure to share them with us in the comments below.

Until next time, make more games!

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/building-language-learning-games-with-scratch/

A Unique Convergence of Networking, a Great Learning Experience, and Fun-Filled Conversations

TESOL Ambassadors are English language professionals and students who have agreed to share their Convention experiences with other attendees. Cheryl Casapao Matala, English Instructor in Manila, the Philippines,  is a 2021 TESOL Ambassador. 

The TESOL International Convention & English Language Expo is one of the most prestigious events worldwide. It is the most awaited convention and language expo, attended by thousands of professionals, particularly English language educators. It is my second time attending the said event. But last year was different from the previous event since the unexpected pandemic occurred.

Although the event does not happen in a face-to-face setting, the virtual communication was an incredibly wonderful experience. I enjoyed listening to various plenary talks, keynote speakers, and advocacy presenters who are experts in their field of specializations. I acquired new knowledge and skills, which I can use in my teaching career. Also, I listened to presentations relevant to the present need in society that must be heard and understood. This year was the second time that the Virtual Convention happened. But these key takeaways grabbed my attention:

• “The importance of striving for a dream”
• “Believe in something. Even it means sacrificing everything. Just do it.”

These two statements from the keynote speakers help me to believe in myself more. I remember the times that I was still clueless about this event. But luckily, I did not only gain understanding of what it is; instead, I got more involved in the organization, which is now really close to my heart. I am forever grateful to the sponsorships and grants for their continuous support and immense generosity. It was only a dream that turned into a reality. I only believe in something even in the slightest way that I can. The impossible will become possible if we exert an effort and focus on our primary goal and objectives in life, leading to success.

Moreover, the virtual event is an application of the teaching forum to the teaching-learning process and a research application that is essential to the pedagogies of the educational system. Hence, we all have differences: cultures and experiences from different parts of the world. Let us all emphasize how important it is to live in a world that allows us to continue growing and learning. Let us also understand the different frameworks of a diverse society. We need to be culturally responsive.

Truly, TESOL International Association is the best avenue because it provides a unique convergence of networking, a great learning experience, and fun-filled conversations that improve your personal and professional development. Thus, let us connect and reconnect as the Convention provides ample opportunity to become a better individual, an excellent educator, and a lifelong learner.

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/a-unique-convergence-of-networking-a-great-learning-experience-and-fun-filled-conversations/

Writing-Related PD Through MOOCs

With summer holidays approaching for many of us in the northern hemisphere, you may be looking for professional development (PD) opportunities to improve your own writing or increase your knowledge of how to teach writing. In most of the world, however, we are still stuck at home and not able to travel to conferences or workshops. In this post, I discuss one form of online PD, MOOCs.

What Is a MOOC?

MOOCs have been around in one form or another for more than 20 years, but have really only taken off in the last decade. The acronym stands for massive open online courses, and each of these words reveals an important characteristic of the format:

• Massive: There are usually thousands of students enrolled in a single course.
• Open: Anyone can enroll without applying for admission to an institution.
• Online: The courses are entirely delivered over the internet, almost or entirely asynchronously.
• Course: No matter the topic, these are all designed for learning purposes and include traditional features of academic courses, such as readings, lectures, and quizzes.

MOOCs are usually designed by academic or professional institutions, though some courses are designed by individual teachers. Though they are technically open to anyone who wants to enroll, most are also designed for a particular student audience, such as high school age English language learners or experienced language teachers. Because courses are massive, there is minimal interaction between the students and the instructor, although discussion boards allow students to interact with each other, and instructors or facilitators may post from time to time. The primary means of instruction are video lectures and reading texts, followed by auto-graded activities and quizzes.

Platforms With Writing-Related MOOCs

The following list includes links to some current writing-related MOOC courses that look relevant to English language teachers and their students. I cannot speak to their individual quality or content. Check out the tips at the end of this post for selecting and persisting in MOOCs.

• Online Professional English Network (OPEN) is run by the U.S. Department of State as part of their English language teaching outreach. Courses in the OPEN series are all free of charge and run regularly and use entirely open educational resources (OER) resources, which means that you can reuse and modify them to suit your own context. One upcoming course of interest to college and university teachers and administrators is “Establishing Academic Writing Centers at International Higher Education Institutions.” There are also OPEN courses aimed at learners, such as “English for Journalism” and “English for Business and Entrepreneurship,” both of which include instruction in writing.
• The British Council also runs MOOCs about English language teaching, although it appears that there are no courses specifically about teaching writing. Nevertheless, they do cover language assessment and teaching in specific contexts (young learners, workplace, university), which probably include writing. Courses are hosted on Futurelearn and include fees for premium access.
• Futurelearn hosts courses mostly developed by British and Australian universities, as well as other institutions. Basic course access is free, but there are charges for tests and permanent access to materials. Writing-related courses for English learners include “A Beginner’s Guide to Writing in English for University Study” from the University of Reading and “How to Succeed at Writing Applications” from the University of Sheffield.
• Coursera courses are designed by faculty from major universities around the world. Free audit enrollment does not allow participation in graded tests and quizzes, which can be accessed for a fee. Writing-related courses include “IELTS Writing Section Skills Mastery” from the University of California, Irvine and “Writing in the Sciences” from Stanford University.
• EdX is similar to Coursera, with courses designed by faculty from major world universities. Free auditor enrollment allows participation in graded quizzes but not unit tests, and you only get a few months access to the course materials (vs. unlimited access for paid enrollment). Just a few of the EdX courses that appear in a search for “writing”:
  • “English for Doing Business in Asia” by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
  • “Academic and Business Writing” by University of California, Berkeley
  • “Writing, Presenting, and Submitting Scientific Papers in English” by Tsinghua University
• Udemy has hundreds of writing-related courses for English learners at all levels, including courses specifically about preparing for the writing section of the IELTS exam. Other courses (not specifically for English learners) focus on writing for business and writing fiction. The platform charges for access to all courses. Instructors are not necessarily affiliated with any universities or other institutions.

Tips for Choosing a MOOC

Not all MOOCs are created equal, so it is worth shopping around unless you are looking for a very specific course. Here are some things to think about as you browse:

• Are you willing to pay?
  • No: Most platforms like Coursera and EdX allow auditing, which means you get access to the course materials but may not have the option to take tests. OPEN MOOCs are entirely free.
  • Yes: You can get complete access and a completion certificate. Depending on how much the platform charges, however, you may want to consider taking a smaller access course such as those offered by TESOL, where you can get more personalized feedback and access to the instructors.
• How much time do you have?
  • MOOCs vary in length from a few modules that may only take a week or two to nearly semester-long courses. The syllabus or overview is usually available on the course information page. The page may indicate approximate time commitment per module or week.
  • Some courses have set due dates for assignments, whereas other courses allow self-pacing within a total time frame.
• Who do you want to interact with?
  • Some MOOCs are intended for learners at a particular level. If you are not at that level, you may find the discussions and peer feedback unfulfilling.
  • Some MOOCs have established facilitators (e.g., OPEN MOOCs have alumni facilitators) who monitor discussions and provide additional resources.

Tips for Making the Most of a MOOC

Once you’ve chosen a MOOC, think about how you can make the most of the experience. Like any course, you may be able to coast through, but if you increase your commitment, you will likely feel more satisfied.

• Set up a study plan. Make to-do lists and schedule time to engage with the course.
• Establish goals for yourself. Based on the course description, decide what you hope to get out of the course and monitor whether you are making progress toward those goals.
• Participate in discussion boards. This is usually your only opportunity to interact with other people in the course and to get human feedback.
• Share what you are learning with colleagues or friends. Because MOOC design is primarily unidirectional (information is delivered to you), it can help to set up a study group where you can talk interactively about the course content. For PD, you may want to take the course with colleagues and apply what you are learning to your own context.
• Download as much as you can for future reference. Even in cases where your access isn’t cut off on a date, the course may disappear from the host platform. Save your own posts and writing as well.
• Don’t be ashamed to quit if the course is not meeting your expectations. Especially if you enrolled for free, you are better off quitting than wasting your time if you don’t see value in the course. If you did pay but have just gotten started, you may be able to get a refund. (Carefully review each platform’s policies before paying!)

Have you ever taken (or taught) a MOOC? What was your experience like? Do you have additional tips for MOOC students? Share your thoughts in the chat!

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/writing-related-pd-through-moocs/