Micro Is Mighty: Can Micro-Credentialing Work for You?

It’s a new year and, yet, given the ongoing challenges of COVID-19, we may feel fatigue and even trepidation about moving forward with our professional development (PD) goals. Instead of committing to a longer term course of study, this might be a great time to investigate shorter, more “bite-sized” PD, known as micro-credentialing.

“Bite sized pieces of Strategy (cc @amelia_torode @adliterate)” by smithery.com is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

What Is a Micro-Credential?

Micro-credentialing was popular before COVID-19 because of its flexible, online approach, which made professional learning more accessible, affordable, and individualized for working educators. Some of us who are familiar with the term may immediately think of electronic badging—but micro-credentialing is much more than earning digital badges (although those can look really fun!). Willis (2021) defines micro-credentialing as a

competency-based approach to professional learning. Through this approach, teachers are recognized for their growth and mastery of a specific, stated goal. The goal is narrow in focus (e.g., using primary sources in the elementary classroom) and measured by the evidence submitted to the certified reviewer…Opportunities are on demand, providing teachers with the flexibility to choose their own topic of interest, progress at their own pace, and determine when and where they wish to learn. Many micro-credentials are now available from a variety of providers.

Essentially, micro-credentials can be completed in less time than a graduate degree and are generally focused on the skills gained rather than seat-time. In a report titled “Seven Lessons Learned from Implementing Micro-Credentials,” the author emphasizes that micro-credentials are truly self-paced and job-embedded, and due to their short length are intense and key professional learning opportunities.

The developers of MOOCs such as edX, Coursera, Udacity and FutureLearn foresaw the need to recognize completion of their courses, and MOOCs are one of the biggest providers of micro-credentials. A comprehensive listing of MOOC-based micro-credentials is maintained by Class Central.

Micro-Credentials for English Language Educators

Educators can now find many providers who offer micro-credentials, and through these micro-credentials they can develop expertise in educational technology, universal design for learning, and other important and trending areas. For those focused on deepening their practice working with English language learners, the following three providers are a great place to start your micro-credentialing journey.

Digital Promise

As reviewed in an earlier TESOL Blog post, Digital Promise is a database which hosts a huge variety of free micro-credential courses, curated from a large array of providers; essentially, it is a portal site for 450 discrete micro-credentials. Choose an issuing organization or theme (called a “stack”), or search for a topic. The format, length, and assessment cost vary based on the organization and the micro-credential sought. According to Marcotte,

This database aims to provide a variety of competency- and research-based PD opportunities to help educators develop their skills. This database shares opportunities from its own offerings and from various universities and organizations (e.g., PBS, the Center for Collaborative Education, National Geographic Society, and various school districts and universities), which makes it easy for educators to find the PD they are looking for.

The micro-credential courses they share are reviewed for quality and research-backing, and they are linked directly from the Digital Promise platform’s explorer platform. The concept they base their platform on is called “stacking”—adding credential to credential in a linked series to arrive at a new level of mastery in a particular area of education. Their explorer tool can also be filtered as a web of interconnected nodes, revealing many options based on the user’s role and topic of interest, as seen below.

Digital Promise. (n.d.). Micro-credential explorer [Screenshot]. https://digitalpromise.org/initiative/educator-micro-credentials/micro-credential-explorer/?a=Audience&b=Classroom%20Educator&c=English%20Language%20Learners

Center for Learning in Practice

The Center for Learning in Practice at Childhood Education International offers facilitated courses, live webinars, communities of practice as well as self-paced, modular learning leading to micro-credentialing in the important area of working with refugee students. Facilitated courses are about US$150, while many self-paced courses are free. For instance, educators can sign up anytime for “Teaching Refugees: Building Knowledge” or “Supporting Refugee Students with Limited/Interrupted Formal Education”, which consist of six short modules for no charge, and these prepare educators to earn micro-credentials focused on core teacher competencies in refugee education.

A Few Other Options

TESOL International Association

Similar to micro-credentialing, TESOL is now offering shorter and more focused training and badging through its Modular Education (ME) initiative. Here, educators can follow a thematic strand, such as “High-Leverage Teaching Practices,” within which topic areas like designing lesson objectives are differentiated by teaching context: K–12, higher education, or adult education. Currently, there is introductory pricing: TESOL members, US$59/module; nonmembers, US$79/module. As modules are completed, educators may earn digital badges that can accumulate toward a completed series badge in that topic area.

National Education Association

For those U.S. educators who belong to the National Education Association, there are dozens of free micro-credential courses, and a stack of eight 15-hour courses focused exclusively on English language learners.

Bridge

There are also commercial micro-credential courses offered by for-profit companies, such as Bridge, which provides content for free, with the option to pay about US$30 for certificates of completion and badges. Bridge’s modules are narrowly targeted to address particular areas, from using podcasts to teach English learners to teaching very young learners online. Once these courses are completed, they can be added to your résumé, and digital badges can be included on your LinkedIn and social media profiles.

Micro-Credential Trends Around the World

In Canada, eCampusOntario developed a framework for micro-credentials, which is being used to shape policies in the region as to how to offer high-quality micro-credentials that are industry recognized and potentially added to university transcripts. In Europe, the EU Commission proposed this draft definition of a micro-credential in order to better understand and regulate their use.

A study by Northeastern University found that 64% of companies viewed micro-credentials as demonstrating a commitment to lifelong learning, and 55% saw micro-credentials gradually diminishing the emphasis on degree-based hiring. Micro-credentials are increasingly seen as key to the future of work and learning in an evermore “gig” economy, and they can be seen as providing greater equity and access to the workforce.

In the comments, share any experiences you have had with micro-credentialing!

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/micro-is-mighty-can-micro-credentialing-work-for-you/

Using Picture Books to Teach Multiculturalism and Challenge Bias

As classrooms become more culturally diverse, culturally sustaining pedagogy is instrumental to fostering feelings of inclusion among all students. Students should be prompted to examine their own racial, ethnic, and cultural identities and their relationships with others who share different identities in a nonthreatening manner.

One vehicle to address issues of inclusion is the use of multicultural picture books. Whether these picture books are used with young children in early childhood or school settings, well-designed books provide cross-cultural experiences, promote empathy for minoritized people, and help to generate the kind of critical dialogue that Freire believed could lead to critical consciousness and opportunities for reflection. Through picture books, teachers can create awareness of diversity, promote acceptance of difference, and prepare students to be advocates for inclusion.

Children and young people should be exposed to a range of books about people like themselves as well as about people who are different from themselves and their families. Reading about people—whether real or fictitious—gives students the opportunity to try on a world view that is different from their own. This engenders empathy and eventually helps to encourage social change.

Of course, not all books are the same. Some may even undermine efforts to teach accurate information about people and societies. It is important therefore, to know how to select picture books for children, and carefully consider the range of options, before making a decision. Here are some things to consider when evaluating picture books.

Illustrations

Are there oversimplified generalizations of particular identity groups? For example, are Asians depicted with slanted eyes or excelling at mathematics? Are Muslim women meek and submissive? Are South Asians shown to speak bad English or eating only curry? Are Latinx/Hispanic people depicted as being impoverished? In her 2009 TED talk called “The Danger of a Single Story,” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie addresses the harm in reducing the diverse experiences of an entire racial or cultural group to a singular portrayal, warning us that if the same story is told over and over again—regardless of its accuracy—it becomes the one that people believe and remember.

Just as stereotypical characters are harmful, invisible groups in picture books can also reinforce prejudice. When children do not see themselves in the books they read, it undermines their identities and creates a sense of being less important in society. According to Derman-Sparks, single-parent families and families of Middle Eastern origin are typically absent from picture books.

Storyline

Often, cultural prejudices are portrayed not just through the illustrations, but also through the storylines and the implicit messages embedded in the relationships between characters. Evaluate each story for the power relationships it depicts and the unspoken messages presented through the different lifestyles of the characters. Some questions to ask about the story:

• How are problems presented, conceived, and resolved?
• Who typically is shown to cause a problem and who resolves it?
• Whose story is being told?
• Whose story is missing?
• Are value judgements implied about how certain characters live?
• Are comparisons made between the life of an individual character and the mainstream culture shown in the book?

Try and select books that present a range of relationships and a balance between the main characters so that children can be exposed to a variety of characters and role models.

Age Appropriateness

For a book to be appealing to young children, the story and the illustrations must hold their interest. However well meaning a book may be, young children may find that didactic stories that have little visual appeal are boring. Be guided by the age range recommended by the publisher, but be aware that books that may be pitched for an older or younger audience may work for your students, depending on how you intend to use them.

Balance

To offer children a good range of picture books, ensure that your classroom library has a balance of styles, genres, and representation of cultures, identities, and time periods. Some folk and fairy tales can be used mindfully to talk about moral values. But these must be balanced with selections of more contemporary stories that children can relate to better. Similarly, a balance between animal and people characters, as well as between the gender of main characters should be considered. You may also like to consider including some dual language or multilingual books.

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Books are powerful sources of nurturing or suppressing identities, both through their stories and illustrations. They help children to learn about themselves and others, as well as inspire action for change. You may find this list of recommended books for young children helpful.

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/using-picture-books-to-teach-multiculturalism-and-challenge-bias/

Travel Writing Activities: Escape From Cabin Fever

Every new year holds much promise as we look ahead: 12 months of possibility for learning and adventure. Sitting in my house in the middle of a week of pouring rain, however, after nearly 2 years of staying close to home because of the pandemic, I am suffering from a bout of cabin fever. I frequently pull out my passport and gaze wistfully at the stamps from countries across the globe, remembering the days when I could hop on a plane to meet up with friends and attend conferences while exploring new cultures, cities, and foodscapes. This month’s blog post is an attempt to give our students the thrill of adventure even if they continue to be stuck at home and learning on Zoom.

This post offers you some general ideas for developing a lesson or unit around writing travel guides. It can be adapted to meet the needs and proficiency of your students and to address any writing, reading, or other standards your program requires.

Depending on your students, you may choose to have students work individually, in pairs, or in small groups. How much scaffolding you provide also depends on your students and your goals for the activity—you may want to create templates and provide a set of resources, or you may want to leave them to research the genre and explore the internet to find what they can on their own.

Getting Started

Activate students’ schema through a discussion (supported perhaps by an assigned reading or video) about travel: Why do people travel? What kinds of activities do people do when they travel? Where would they like to visit? How could they find out more information about those places?

Start the project by selecting the destinations. While students could choose a place they already know something about, it might be more fun to try spinning a globe and pointing randomly at a location. (For a virtual try at globe-spinning, check out GlobeBop.) Another option would be to choose from among a list of recommendations, such as AFAR magazine’s “Where to Go in 2022.” These methods can push students toward new and unfamiliar travel destinations.

Research

Encourage students to investigate their chosen destinations broadly. Wikipedia is a good place to start, as most cities and countries have extensive entries with numerous subpages about history and geography, but they should also check out pictures from the place (searching for a variety of place names and keywords can turn up different images), tourist information, and other websites about the location. Some key information that can spice up a tour guide:

• Important buildings and historical sites in the region
• Traditional and famous foods of the region
• Famous people (living and dead) from the region
• Folk and popular music from the region
• Movies and TV shows set in the country
• Things to do for fun in the region

Good websites for finding additional travel information about places around the world:

• Lonely Planet
• Rough Guides
• AFAR
• Condé Nast Traveler
• Travel + Leisure

If you want to make the research process more complex, consider asking students to find and interview a person with experience in their chosen country or region. Questions for their interviewee might address recommendations for what to see, eat, and do, as well as advice on how to visit the place safely and how to act appropriately within the culture. This approach can also add more speaking practice into the process.

Drafting

Decide on the modality for students’ travel guides and provide them with some parameters for the project. An easy digital approach is to use Google Docs or Slides, which allow multiple people to edit at the same time. Students can also include hyperlinks to relevant websites or embed pictures and videos. If you want to make the students’ projects public, they could instead design pages for a class website, which would also allow for hyperlinks and embedded information. Alternatively, students could design a print brochure or magazine article about their destination. (Here’s a free brochure template that could be used with younger learners.)

One focus could be to design itineraries for visitors to the country or city. They might model their itineraries after the “Three Perfect Days in…” series in Hemispheres magazine, for example. Such guides often include recommended hotels and restaurants, advice on where to shop and what souvenirs to buy, and off-the-beaten-path activities that give visitors a taste of what the destination is like for local residents. Designing an itinerary also requires investigating maps and transportation options for getting around the region.

As students design and write their travel guides, incorporate peer feedback into the process. Because this is a real-world genre, students should read their classmates’ guides from the perspective of someone who wants to know more about the place. If a description of a city is unclear or they wouldn’t be able to follow a self-guided tour, for example, their feedback can help the writers improve both the text and the overall guide design.

Publishing

Once students have revised and polished their travel guides, they should have the opportunity to share them with an interested audience. Although this could just mean their classmates, if they are comfortable sharing the guides more widely, they could publish them on a website or send them to friends via social media. (Note that both Google Docs and Google Slides allow writers to publish their projects as web sites, which generates a URL that can be viewed by anyone but not edited. This approach protects students’ work while still letting them share it on the internet.) In a four-skills class, students could also give family and friends an oral presentation about their travel guides.

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Just the process of looking at travel websites while drafting this blog post has helped a bit with my cabin fever, although it has also made me even more hopeful that I will be able to travel again in the coming year. What travel-related writing have you tried with your classes? Share your ideas in the comments below.

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/travel-writing-activities-escape-from-cabin-fever/

Are Your EL Expectations High—or Hurried?

January brings the beginning of a new year and an opportunity to start fresh. We make resolutions and hold ourselves to high expectations. After a few weeks, however, resolve dwindles. Why? Experts say we need to set achievable goals and hold reasonable expectations for ourselves.

We need to do the same for our English learners (ELs). Slow and steady worked for the turtle in the classic tortoise and hare fable, and it works for reading too. As we begin a new year, let’s take a fresh look at our reading expectations for our ELs. Are we aligning them to our students’ developmental needs as well as to the curriculum? In other words, are we holding students to high expectations or just hurrying them?

Here are some examples of hurried reading expectations and more appropriate alternatives:

Hurried Expectations	High Expectations and Considerations
Why doesn’t this entering kindergarten student know his letters and sounds?	Is this student comfortable coming to school?
Why aren’t all of my kindergarten students reading at the end of the year?	Are all of my developmentally ready students reading by the end of kindergarten?
She hasn’t progressed this year.	Compile and use longitudinal data to determine this student’s progress for the past 5 years. Students rarely progress on an even upward trend.
Feedback to a parent: “He’s not reading at grade level.”	Feedback to a parent: “He’s not reading at grade level, but he came to the United States just 2 years ago. He’s been making steady progress since then and is on track to catch up completely in a few more years.”
High school ELs with limited or interrupted formal schooling should graduate in 4 years with their cohort.	Four years isn’t enough. High school ELs with limited or interrupted formal schooling should have the time and supports they need to graduate. High schools shouldn’t be penalized for giving them the time to do so.
ELs should be reading at grade level by third grade.	Third-grade ELs have had just 4 years or less of EL instruction, still not long enough, since it takes 5–7 years, on average, to reach proficiency. Third-grade reading laws should allow retention exemptions for all ELs.
Beginning level student in a college intensive English program: “I’ll only need one semester of English before beginning regular classes!”	Mastering academic language is more difficult than simply learning social English. It will take more than a few months.
This student will never finish our community college’s sequence of English courses.	What is this student’s purpose for learning? Perhaps the student has an intermediate goal, not necessarily obtaining a degree or completing a course of study.

A final example of how high expectations can morph into hurried ones is this “goals of kindergarten” from the 1960s:

It’s telling to compare these goals from nearly 60 years ago to this kindergarten language arts standard typical of many states now: “Read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding.” Expectations for kindergarten have changed, but children haven’t. A wise kindergarten teacher once pointed out to me that some of her kindergarten students were ready to learn to read in kindergarten, just not all of them. Holding children to hurried expectations before they may be developmentally ready is akin to thinking children can grow permanent teeth faster if they just try harder and their parents work with them more at home.

One of the hottest must-have kitchen items a few years ago was the Instant Pot. It’s symbolic of many of our hurried expectations. The Instant Pot is a slow cooker, but it’s also a pressure cooker. That’s not what we want for our English learners. They need both patience as well as rigor. They can meet high, realistic expectations with time.

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/are-your-el-expectations-high-or-hurried/

Teaching Math Vocabulary with Success to ELL and At-Risk Students

Math Vocabulary

Hello Teachers and welcome to 2022!

To get set for this year let’s talk about Math vocabulary.  Are you ready?

Math feels so overwhelming some days for our students, doesn’t it? Especially, if like me, you work with ELL students or any other student who may be at-risk of academic challenges. We know that math is about so much more than numbers, there is vocabulary involved that tend to trip up even our best. In math, words often have multiple meanings or mean something else entirely from their “normal” use. Suddenly words like face have nothing to do with where we wear our smiles. So how do we teach math vocabulary to ELL and at-risk students? 

Pre-Teaching and Graphic Organizers

Just like with ELA vocabulary, the best place to start with math vocabulary is at the beginning. This means pre-teaching any words that we know are going to cause a struggle. I love to use a graphic organizer during this time. My students make a notebook as we add definitions, examples, and even pictures of our new words. The organizers become a learning tool that my students can look back on throughout the lesson and as a review at the end.

Modeling and Visual Cues

I’ve already mentioned some visual cues, but I like to take it a step further than just my students’ individual notebooks. I place visual cues for our most challenging words around the classroom when teaching math vocabulary to ELL and at-risk students. We move from spot to spot and I model the meaning of the word specific to our math lesson. This gives me the perfect opportunity to talk about how some words have different meanings in different contexts. 

Vocabulary Banks and Student Friendly Definitions

After we have reviewed the words together and talked through each meaning in math, my students will start to build a vocabulary bank. I like to use index cards with a ring for this. Students will have the words written on one side and then a student-friendly definition on the other side. This definition needs to be anchored in skills that our students already have. Luckily math lessons build naturally.

I realize that the vocabulary bank is very similar to their notebook, but I also know that writing the words and definitions multiple times in multiple ways is an excellent reinforcer.

Math Journals

I usually break teaching math vocabulary to ELL and at-risk students into chunks…pre-teaching, the lesson, and the review. At the end of each of these chunks, I have my students complete a math journal page. This varies depending on grade level but typically looks something like completing this prompt, “Today in math I learned…”. This is just one more way that students are able to think through their vocabulary, explain it in their own terms, and reinforce written expression and understanding.

Teaching Math Vocabulary

Math vocabulary does not have to feel overwhelming to our students. If we do small pieces leading up to the big event, build on prior knowledge, and make sure our students have multiple ways to show what they know then teaching math vocabulary to ELL and at-risk students can be fun. As your students make progress they will feel proud of the words and knowledge that they gain on this journey.

             

                  

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from Fun To Teach – Grammar, Language, Math, ESL/ELD, Spanish, Reading, Writing, Centers and more! https://esleld.blogspot.com/2022/01/teaching math vocabulary.html

5 Ways to Use Padlet as an Icebreaker

As we settle into January, many of us are starting a new semester with new students, and maybe our old “Find Someone Who” icebreaker is just feeling a little stale. There are lots of ways to mix things up, and if you have access to Padlet, your students can have a lot of fun sharing about themselves.

Padlet has settled itself into the edtech community as a solid and reliable virtual bulletin board. It allows anyone to access a page (or you can set privacy controls) and share their thoughts, ideas, and experiences on a collective board. Because it’s virtual, students can share in multiple modalities to showcase their thinking. There’s text, of course, but also students can insert gifs, add screen recordings, record their voice, draw pictures, and much more. Teachers have come to love its flexibility and collaborative nature, along with the fact that we can see everything the students are doing from a bird’s-eye view.

Padlet has come up a number of times on the TESOL blog,* and even once before as a recommendation as an icebreaker. Today we’ll take that broad concept and dig deeper into some specific ways you can get started.

The Map

The map padlet is a favorite for many teachers, especially when they’ve got students from all over the world. Students can pin their hometown, then using the image search function, add an iconic picture that all the locals recognize. If you need a little more, you can ask them to share one or two tidbits about their town. For those teachers who have a more homogeneous class, consider having students share “Dream Vacation Spots,” or you can zoom way in and keep it local with “Favorite restaurants in town.” With a little creativity and knowledge of your class make-up, you should see endless possibilities working with the map padlet.

The Timeline

The timeline padlet is a great way for students to see what was happening and when it was happening in each other’s lives. If the class is full of kids, you might have them share their birthday in the title box, and a baby picture in the content box. Then classmates can guess who is who, and have some fun with who’s oldest and who’s youngest.

For adults, who may not want to share the year they were born, you might instead prompt them to share a significant date in their life: the day they got their first job, a favorite vacation, the birth of their first child, and so on. In the content box, they can write a brief paragraph explaining why the date is significant to them. As a bonus, you can check their accuracy with writing in past tense!

The Class Vote

Using the Stream Padlet, you can set up a simple class voting mechanism that’s sure to get students talking. You can arrange a padlet ahead of time with simple pictures, then use a Reaction function (thumbs up/down or stars) to have students vote on what they think.

Some possibilities you could include: Best fast food restaurant, Strongest Avenger, Who will win the Oscars?, How many medals will each country get in the Olympics (using the “Grading” reaction). When students are done voting, project the final results and let the arguments begin! (Pro tip: This may be a good time to introduce how to disagree politely.)

The Photo Contest

The Shelf Padlet is one of my personal favorites, allowing teachers to set up columns as categories that students can post in. One powerful way to flip this is to name a column after each of your students, then have them share photos under their name.

You can either have them post pictures that are already in their phones by giving them categories, like “Best picture from your winter break” or “Can you guess what this is?”, or you can send them out the door to take pictures of thematic categories, like “Green” or “Reflection” or perhaps a less abstract choice, like “take a picture of another teacher smiling.” Though you can turn on the voting for the photo contest, please consider carefully if the goal is really a contest, or just a way to get students talking and sharing. If it’s the latter, they’ll provide plenty of content without the need to feel ranked and possibly judged.

The Playlist

One thing I like to do at the beginning of the semester is to ask students to share their favorite song with me, and a link to it on YouTube. Then, I collect the songs into a playlist that I can play before class and during break time. Many times students forget that they shared this and are impressed with my impeccable taste in music. If you use the Wall Padlet, you can bring this playlist together in a visual way that lets classmates see each other’s favorite songs. When you open the padlet, tell students to click on the “More” icon (three dots), and then choose “YouTube.” They can search for and share their favorite tune without leaving the Padlet, and then you can challenge them to listen to three classmates’ songs and share their thoughts.

With a little exploration and creativity, you can see that there are endless ways to help students break the ice, feel more comfortable with each other, and start to create a classroom community. Padlet’s flexibility allows you to make adjustments to any of the ideas here to better fit your needs and the needs of your students. Check with your school to see if have an institutional account. If so, you’re set, but even if you don’t, you can still make up to three padlets for free, so setting it up for a temporary assignment like an icebreaker is perfect. When your class is done, you can just delete it and start over! (Pro tip: Before you delete anything, click on “Share>Export” and you can save a screenshot of the work your students did.)

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Have you used Padlet as an icebreaker? I’d love to hear what’s worked for you, whether it’s something similar to the ideas I’ve shared here, or something completely different! Please feel free to share in the comments section, below, so everybody can benefit from your experiences and ideas.

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*7 Virtual and Face-to-Face Activities for the First Week of School
Online Teacher Education Resources in ELT: Cultivating Positive Dispositions With Multimodal Resources
3 Tech Tools for Teaching Vocabulary
Digital Wanderings + Padlet

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/5-ways-to-use-padlet-as-an-icebreaker/

4 Reasons to Celebrate “Random Acts of Kindness Day”

Multilingual learners’ (MLLs) well-being, as they return to school at the height of the spread of the Omicron variant, is at risk. Our MLLs spent 17 months of isolation during virtual learning. Many of them returned to school last fall demonstrating the effects of trauma from that seclusion. Teachers reported fatigue, lack of focus, anger, and depression in children that have been quarantined during the pandemic. Students also had difficulty relating to each other socially, and MLLs struggled to fit into their classrooms. As they return to school in January, they feel like they are starting all over again. What should teachers do?

What Should Teachers Do?

Teach students to be kind to each other. Think about having a school-wide celebration of Random Acts of Kindness on 17 February. Some schools celebrate Random Acts of Kindness Week from 14–18 February.

Fred Rogers, host of the preschool television series Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, says the following about kindness: “Imagine what our real neighborhoods would be like if each of us offered, as a matter of course, just one kind word to another person.” According to Wikipedia, a random act of kindness is “a selfless act performed by a person or persons wishing to either assist or cheer up an individual….There will generally be no reason other than to make people smile, or be happier.”

I think that elementary age students need to be taught about being kind to others. Our MLLs will benefit from a school-wide celebration dedicated to treating each other with kindness. At the very least, students can learn to be the giver of kind acts and talk or write about what they did and how it made them feel. In turn, they will also be the recipient of kind acts.

Benefits to Teaching Kindness

Here are four benefits to MLLs if schools teach about and encourage random acts of kindness.

1. Learners Feel a Sense of Belonging in the Classroom

MLLs will feel more accepted into the classroom culture and benefit from closer interactions and relationships with their peers A teacher who puts kindness at the forefront of their classroom culture supports a stress-free environment. If students play a role in brainstorming the activities for a Random Act of Kindness Day or Week, they will feel more invested in the campaign. Additionally, when students work in groups to come up with ideas for activities for the Random Act of Kindness campaign, they learn how collaborate with one another and forge relationships with classmates.

2. Students Learn Strategies to Alleviate Stress and Anxiety

Students who are living with trauma from the pandemic need activities in the classroom to help them deal with stress. They benefit greatly from being in school and have structure for their day. During the isolation of the pandemic, the future felt uncertain for many MLLs. They often had no structure for their day, especially if they weren’t able to regularly participate in virtual learning. An activity such as Random Acts of Kindness allows them to focus on working on a group project that gives purpose and shape to their school day.

3. Learners Gain New Vocabulary and Oral Language Skills

Students have real reasons to communicate with their peers during group activities. They have the opportunity to acquire and use new vocabulary and practice speaking skills as they share ideas. They build social skills and the language to support those skills in small groups. Because the focus of these activities is on kindness, this gives students the self-confidence to participate during this day and in other, future classroom activities.

4. Students Gain Social Skills

Random Act of Kindness activities allow MLLs to participate in events that focus on making other people happy. By doing random actions of kindness to others, MLLs will learn the joy of making other other people happy and receive happy thoughts from their classmates; this enables them to gain social skills they may not have had the chance to develop during the pandemic.

If you celebrate Random Acts of Kindness Day on February 17th or any other day of the school year, please let us know how it worked out.

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/4-reasons-to-celebrate-random-acts-of-kindness-day/

Game-Based Learning With Electronic Village Online 2022

Hello, Happy New Year, and welcome to another edition of the TESOL Games and Learning Blog. It’s January, and that means it is time once again for the Electronic Village Online (EVO).

From the EVO homepage, the mission statement of the community is: “For five weeks in January and February, TESOL experts and participants from around the world engage in collaborative online discussions or hands-on virtual workshops of professional and scholarly benefit. These sessions bring together participants for a longer period of time than is permitted by land-based professional development conventions and allow a fuller development of ideas than is otherwise possible”.

All EVO sessions are free to join, and there is no requirement to be a member of either TESOL or IATEFL. This year, 19 different courses are being offered on topics ranging from mindfulness to Moodle to grammar for TESOL. You can see a description of the courses offered by visiting the call for participation homepage.

This year’s EVO is especially interesting for those looking to learn more about using games and virtual environments as there are three courses being offered by some incredibly talented people. Check out the descriptions below and click the links to sign up!

EVO Minecraft MOOC 2022

This session invites interested teachers to join us in playing Minecraft. Through meaningful play, we will learn all we can about playing Minecraft alone and together. We will learn and understand through play how Minecraft can be used effectively in language learning. We’ll learn by doing and from one another.

(Disclaimer: I started the EVO Minecraft MOOC with Vance Stevens, and I am one of the moderators)

Immersive Building in Virtual Worlds and Virtual Reality

During the 5-week EVO session “Immersive Building in Virtual Worlds and Virtual Reality,” participants learn to build a home, create and add 3D objects, and customize avatars.

Experience with navigating in Second Life, OpenSim, Minecraft, VRChat, AltspaceVR or similar is advantageous but not required.

Ludic Language Pedagogy: How to teach with any game in your language classroom

In this session, participants will consider their LUDIC, LANGUAGE, and PEDAGOGICAL (LLP) literacies. Moderators will show how they are teaching with games, providing frameworks, worksheets, and other materials including examples of student work. Teachers will also design their own lesson plans under the feedback and guidance of moderators.

Each of these 5-week courses is sure to level-up your games and learning knowledge, so pick the course that best fits your interest and join us in the fun and learning.

Until next time, play more games!

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/game-based-learning-with-electronic-village-online-2022/

STEM and ELT: How to Build Background and Prior Knowledge in STEM

Happy New Year! May 2022 bring you health, joy, and peace.

Sir Isaac Newton said it best: “If I have seen further, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.” I like to interpret this as meaning he gives credit for his successes by building upon his prior knowledge, which he learned from those before him. In other words, new learning is built on the foundation of previous learning. If building upon prior knowledge works for Sir Isaac Newton, imagine what it can do for struggling students and English learners!

True, building background knowledge and assessing prior knowledge are challenges for teachers who teach students whose first language is not English because the students come to classrooms with varying degrees of prior knowledge, academic experiences, and language proficiency, but it can still be done. Our English language students, regardless of prior knowledge and language proficiency, need activities that activate deep thinking and set the stage for the lesson that is to follow.

Here are three easy and effective strategies that you can use to build and assess your students’ background knowledge in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) content classes. These strategies may still require scaffolds that align with the students’ level of language proficiency.

All lessons should begin with a warm-up activity that will:

• provide a way to assess prior knowledge for the lesson,
• be aligned to the unit, and
• get the students engaged and ready to learn.

It should be interactive and promote discourse or an action by the student to demonstrate or provide insight into what they know about the topic. One way to do this is to find an activity that you feel all students can relate to that aligns with the topic you will be teaching. For example, say that you will be teaching a lesson on the water cycle and you need to know if the students understand the following vocabulary words: evaporation, condensation, and precipitation. Here are two warm-up activity ideas for vocabulary assessment:

1. Picture-Word Match

This was one of my favorite activities that I used to use in the classroom. I would greet the students at the door and hand them an index card that either had a vocabulary word on the card, or a picture representation of a vocabulary word. The students had to move around the room and find the person who had a complement to their card (the vocabulary word to match the picture or vice-versa). When all the students found their match, they would have to discuss why they felt they were a pair.

Scaffold Idea 1: You may want to make sure that students whose language proficiency is Level 1 or 2 (newcomer/beginner) receive the picture card and that the student who has the vocabulary card has a higher level of language proficiency. If that person can also speak the same language as the beginner student, that would be ideal.

Scaffold Idea 2: Provide the students with sentence frames. For example, “my card is a picture of…”, “your card has the word ____, which matches my picture,” or “our pairs match because…”

While all of this is occurring, walk around the room listening to the students converse with each other while assessing their knowledge. This will help you know which students will need more scaffolds and assistance as you teach the lesson. Once the students have presented their matches to the class, you can project the correct answers on the board and review the vocabulary words that the students will be learning and how they will connect to the lesson that they will be learning. This is not the time to teach the vocabulary. This is just to let them know the objective and goals of the lesson/unit. Students should always know what they are expected to learn and the goals of the lesson.

2. The Slow Reveal—Notice and Wonder

This warm-up activity uses a picture that is slowly revealed to the students. It reminds me of a great math activity called 3-Act Tasks by Dan Meyers, where students are presented with information in three distinct parts. In this activity, the three parts are as follows:

• Part 1: Engaging and perplexing introduction
• Part 2: Additional information
• Part 3: The reveal of the solution

In the Slow Reveal—Notice and Wonder, a photo (in this example, an image of the water cycle) is revealed in three stages, with each stage revealing more of the photo. The students list or state things that they see and make predictions as to what it is. You list the student ideas on the board and use prompts or clarifying questions. On the final reveal, where the photo is fully shown, you could ask questions of the students, such as “who has seen this before?”, “what does it represent?”, and so on.

Allow the students to explain what they know about the picture/vocabulary words in small groups, then to the whole group, keeping in mind the characteristics of each level of language proficiency. Then, connects the picture to the unit and explain what they are going to be learning about (in this example, the water cycle, or how water continuously moves from the ground to the atmosphere and back again).

Picture 1: What do you notice?	Picture 2: What more do you see now? What do you think this is a picture of?	Picture 3: What is this? Have you seen this before? What questions do you have?

 

 

 

3. Pose, Pause, Pounce, Bounce

The third strategy is more about building background knowledge than assessing it. In this example, the unit is still on the water cycle, but the conversation is initiated using “rain” as the avenue to engage the students since most, if not all, kids have experienced rain. The dialogue can begin with one student but “bounce” to the other students in the class. “Bounce” means to take the statement of one student and select another student to elaborate on it or to add to what the previous student said. This type of questioning is called, Pose, Pause, Pounce, Bounce. Here is an example of how to use the 3rd strategy:

Teacher: So, have all of us have seen or felt rain? What about downpours?

Rafael: My family lived in the tropics. We would get a lot of rain. Sometimes there would be so much rain, it would look like rivers running down the streets.

Teacher: Has anyone else experienced this type of heavy rainfall? [Bounce this question to a specific student and listen to their response.] Bremen?

Bremen: Yes. I have also seen this, especially during a hurricane. There is a lot of rain and it is very scary.

Teacher: But after the downpour, does the rain remain on the streets and roads forever?

Lindsey: No. The the roads dry up.

Teacher: [Bounce to another student with a follow-up question] Pieter, do you notice this as well? Tell me what you notice when the roads dry up.

Pieter: I notice that when the sun comes up, the roads dry up faster than when there is no sun.

Teacher: Well, the drying up of the rain in science is called evaporation. Water never really goes away. Heat from the sun causes water to evaporate from oceans, lakes, streams, and even from the streets. Evaporation occurs when liquid water on Earth’s surface turns into water vapor in our atmosphere.

You can use this strategy when introducing the other phases of the water cycle as well. The key is to use something all students can relate to or have experienced in order to build background knowledge. The students will be more engaged if they can relate and even students at the lower levels of language proficiency can make a connection to the content.

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What strategies do you use to build background knowledge or assess students’ prior knowledge?

from TESOL Blog http://blog.tesol.org/stem-and-elt-how-to-build-background-and-prior-knowledge-in-stem/

Past Tense Demystified for the ELL Classroom

Hello everyone and Welcome to 2022 ~ it’s going to be a great year.

2021 is now in the past so what better time to talk about the past tense!

We all know the struggle that comes with introducing English learners to new verb tenses – the uncertainty, stress, and difficulty keeping everything straight can overwhelm the brightest child. As they progress past the basics, ELs can become downright anxious. So how can we help them succeed?

In my experience, simple examples coupled with fun activities offer ELs the best opportunity to gain real mastery of any English language concept.

CLEAR, CONCISE LANGUAGE & EXAMPLES

It’s all too easy to get bogged down by complex explanations when it comes to teaching the differences between past continuous, past perfect, and past perfect continuous. This is where examples come in handy:

The past simple is something that was completed in the past; the verb probably ends with -ed.

The past continuous describes something that was happening over a period of time in the past; it uses the formula “was ____ing.”

The past perfect describes a completed action earlier (or farther) in the past; it uses the formula “had ____ed.”

The past perfect continuous describes what was happening over a period of time earlier in the past; it uses the formula “had been ____ing.”

Past simple I put up lights.

Past continuous I was putting up lights.

Past perfect I had put up lights.

Past perfect continuous I had been putting up lights.

For more advanced English learners, you can combine the different past tense forms into sample sentences for them to complete with you or on their own:

Steve _________ (to wait) for Nyla for 40 minutes before she __________ (to show) up at work.

Steve had been waiting for Nyla for 40 minutes before she showed up at work.

ENGAGING PRACTICE

I don’t know about you, but I LOVE playing verb games with my students! They can’t get enough of it and are acquiring deeper knowledge with every minute they play. That’s a win-win for sure!

I’ve had tremendous success with the Past Tense Verbs Games in particular. They feature rules that are easy to learn along with materials that work at multiple levels of English mastery. That’s a win-win if there ever was one!

How do you tackle verb tenses with ELs? Comment below with your favorite tips, games, and ideas!

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from Fun To Teach – Grammar, Language, Math, ESL/ELD, Spanish, Reading, Writing, Centers and more! https://esleld.blogspot.com/2022/01/ELL and past tense verbs.html