Using Podcasts in the Classroom

Using podcasts in the classroom is a great resource for anyone who is learning a new language. Podcasts are audio files or video files that anyone can create on any topic they'd like. I use a Spanish podcast to keep up with my Spanish. I listen to conversations and grammar explanations and podcasts about travel, culture and cooking-all in Spanish. I've noticed I learn more when I'm listening to a podcast in Spanish about a subject  I love. I listen to "News in Slow Spanish" and another podcast for Spanish language learners about travel and culture. These are two topics that I love, so I always anticipate when the new podcast comes out. The more I listen, the more I learn! I want to encourage my ELL's to do the same with an ESL podcast in their free time.




I teach adult refugees and immigrants who have recently moved to the U.S.  For the first time, I started to browse some podcasts for ELLs and so far I've found ESL Pod. This podcast has some great episodes in American English. The topics are great for newly arrived immigrants. One lesson that I found here is about meeting a new neighbor. It is a dialogue between a person who is new to a neighborhood and another neighbor. They speak very slowly and this site also provides a transcript of the conversation, as well. In their conversation, they talk about being new to a neighborhood and how to be involved in a community. They use two word verbs and idioms in this dialogue. My students love to learn idioms and phrasal verbs. So I would use this podcast when teaching phrasal verbs. The topic is relevant, as well because it's about a new neighbor who is settling in to a new place-a perfect topic for newly arrived immigrants and refugees!

Phrasal Verbs used in this episode:

• settle in
• come over
• give you the scoop on..
• give you tips on...
• take a rain check
• stop by

I would pre-teach these phrasal verbs in this conversation and then give students a cloze activity where they would have to work in pairs to put these phrasal verbs into the correct sentence. Then, we would listen to the podcast and students would have the transcript in front of them and they could read it as they listen. I would then have the students work in pairs again and do the dialogue themselves. I would walk around and scaffold where necessary. After, I would ask a couple of pairs to read/act out the dialogue aloud.

Since I teach adult ELLs, I'm using the NYS Adult Ed goals for ESL. The two goals that I based this lesson on are:

Adult Goal 2: Learners will gain control of the system and structure of the English language.

Adult Goal 3: Learners will improve ability to understand spoken English.

Ted-Ed Lesson: History of Halloween

Holidays are always great fun to teach ELLs, especially Halloween! I created a Ted-Ed Lesson about Halloween. I used a short video from the History Channel that described a brief history of the holiday.  

My learning objectives were to teach students about American Holidays, specifically Halloween the origins of the holiday. Halloween can be big culture shock for new immigrants. They see people decorating their houses with pumpkins and scary things. They may see someone dressed up in a scary costume and think that this is an evil holiday. My goal in teaching the origins of Halloween was to teach  students where these scary traditions stem from and how they have carried on and morphed through many centuries. 

To be sure my learning objectives have been met, I may ask students to write a summary of the origins or make a timeline of Halloween based on the video. I would also encourage discussion after the Ted-Ed lesson to allow students to share their thoughts and ask questions and compare it to a holiday or custom in their country of origin. I would walk around and assess as students talk in pairs.

NYS Standards : 

ESL.I.5-8.5.1.2: Students will demonstrate a broad range of U.S. cultural and political referents through institutions, functions, and processes at the local and national levels and compare/contrast these with parallels in the students native community.

ESL.I.5-8.5.1.5: Students compare and contrast oral traditions, myths, folktales, and literature from the United States and international regions and cultures, including the students' own and identify similarities and differences and universal cultural themes.

Flipping the L2 Classroom

Flipped classrooms are genius! If you've never heard of a flipped classroom...here we go!

Flipped classrooms in a nutshell: Teachers post instructional videos online which allows students to watch them at home. Students can watch them as much as they want, pause or rewind as much as they want; they have control over their learning and go at their own pace. They can post questions to their classmates or to the teacher and when they get to class, they spend their time actually doing the work with differentiated instruction from the teacher!

Benefits of using a having a flipped L2 classroom:

According to Helaine Marshall,

• students have control of their learning
• more time for differentiation: the teacher has more time in the class to help struggling students and to challenge higher level students
• it's student centered: class time is spend collaborating with other students and interaction while learning a language is key!
• critical thinking increases because the flipped learning gives ELS a chance to participate at their own cognitive level

After learning about flipped classrooms I'm really convinced this is perfect for high schoolers and adults. I teach adult ELLS and I would absolutely love to try this in my classroom because I struggle a lot with differentiation. I have a few students who are very high and one or two who need extra help. A flipped classroom would solve all my problems! However, I don't know how I would be able to incorporate this in my classroom because my students are low-income students and they don't all have internet access at home. 

I wonder how popular a flipped classroom is? I really could have used a flipped classroom in high school. I needed extra help a lot in science and math and never spoke up because it seemed like everyone else "just got it" and I didn't. So, I really feel for my students who struggle.

My biggest question is, as a teacher with all low-income students who don't all have internet access at home, how do teachers do this if their students come from low-income families?

Twitter Chat

I'm new to Twitter but until recently I was pretty against social networking in general.  After pushing myself on a few social networking sites, I feel I've discovered an amazing new world for educators. After poking around twitter for a couple days, I discovered that it's a great resource for connecting with other language teachers and I realized how great it is for professional development.

One of Twitter's features is something called a twitter chat. They are basically online meetings for people to share something on a topic they are interested in. I've started to follow several other language teachers. I joined a language chat (#langchat ) where teachers get together every Thursday and Saturday. Here, teachers can share resources, ask questions, and "meet" other language teachers.

I attended a Thursday night language chat and not much was happening. I found that one person shared a resource that was a game I can use in my English language classroom. I think twitter chats will be great for my professional development. I searched through #ELLchat and found that teachers shared teaching tips and resources. I look forward to attending more twitter chats and look forward to learning more from other educators. I know that having a wider PLN will help me greatly.

Epals: Where Learners Connect

Epals is a great resource for educators who are looking for project based lesson plan ideas. After browsing through some of the projects on this site, I'm pretty impressed. Many of the science projects that I looked at have students outside collecting various information and then recording it and comparing it to other students' data collection around the world.

I tried to find a simple projects for my students and the topic I chose was weather. There is a project for younger grades that my adult students would be able to do. My students are adult refugees who are learning the very basics of computer and internet skills. This project has students first reading maps to find cities, finding the city's temperature on the internet, and looking at the climate data for that city. They have to decide what the difference is between weather and climate. They also look at the map and compare and contrast different cities.

One of the features of this site that I love is the Educational Resources page, especially Ask an Expert.  I recently did a unit on the Solar System and we could have used this page when questions came up. It's a fun feature and I can totally see my students loving this!

Connectivism through Social Networking: Educator's PLN

The Networked Teacher:

Keeping up with technology is nearly impossible but one way to keep up is to establish a network with other teachers and to explore new technology as much as possible because it changes so often.

It is impossible to know all the answers so it's a great idea for a teacher to network with colleagues to learn from them.

The Educator's PLN is a great social networking site to connect with other teachers. I teach ESL and after a quick search on this site, I found dozens of blogs with teaching tips, lessons, and resources for ESL teachers.

This site can be useful for me if I'm in need of resources on a topic or if I'm struggling with something in the classroom then I can turn to my network for advice. Keeping up with the blogs on this site will help me to get new ideas or to learn from other teachers. This site is great and I encourage you to take a look!