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READING STRATEGIES FOR ESL LEARNERS

Hello everybody!

 

     Today we are going to talk about reading development and some strategies we can use to enhance children opportunities for success. Below, we attach a chart that shows some strategies and some advice as when to implement them:

 

     We would like to emphasize the entire pre-reading task as teachers we should go through;

 

     1. Create a good attitude towards the reading providing the children with a mental scheme of what they to expect while reading.

 

    2. Choose a levelled text that can also be challenged by the students, an adequate reading should also take into account the children interests, their previous experiences and cultural background.

 

    3. Strategies and methodology used; choral reading, multicultural literature, language experience and others.

 

     We have linked an article that tell us in more detail about these strategies and how to put them into practice.

 Druckner's article:  What Reading Teachers Should Know about ESL Learners

 

     Drucker’s article perspective of teaching is quite interesting; she shows strategies to teach ESL to children that acquire the language in a specific context: a class with English native speakers. Despite we believe that most of the strategies she speaks about can be applied in own classroom (not to mention the useful those strategies could be if implemented with foreigners who are studying in Spain among other natives).

 

    We hope you enjoy the reading!

more games!

A webpage we found:

http://www.funenglishgames.com/

With  many games and activities, for example:

Who Wants to be a Millionaire? You can probably guess from the title what this ESL activity is all about. Split your classroom into groups (I use 4 groups of 10 but it can be easily changed to suit how many students you have) and then have them take turns answering true or false questions until they choose to stop and 'bank' their money or until they get a question wrong and lose everything. If you have a full class of 40 (4 x 10) then write the following prize money scale on the whiteboard (if there are only 32 (4 x 8) then take out maybe the $500 and $500000).

$0 $500 $1000 $5000 $10000 $25000 $50000 $100000 $250000 $500000 $1000000 Ask the first student a question (usually very easy) and if they get it right then move on to the second student in the group and ask if they would like to continue or 'bank' the $500, the questions I use slowly get harder but in general they are relatively easy (it's more fun that way, plus they're 50/50 so they always have a chance). During these questions they aren't allowed any help from other students (unless they're using a lifeline, which I'll get to soon). A few examples of the easy questions I use (for Japanese students learning English): Doraemon has no ears - True There were 5 members of the Beatles - False Anpanman's weakness is water - True I have 4 arms - False We live on the moon - False The sun is hot - True I have around 50 ready to ask them but I don't find it hard to think of new one's on the fly if I run out during the lesson. To add to the fun, give them 2 lifelines that they can choose to use at any stage during their team’s turn (they can only use each lifeline once per round). Phone a friend - Call someone else in the team and ask them for help (feel free to make them pretend that they're actually talking on a phone for laughs). Ask the group - Let the team discuss what they think is the best answer. That basically wraps it up, with 4 groups it takes around 15mins to get through 1 round. Keep track of how much money each team puts in the bank and you can add it up to see which team wins. I've had a lot of fun with this game as the students really get into it, they put pressure on each other to try just one more question and it’s always funny when they play it safe and 'bank' money rather than taking a risk. Have fun and enjoy this ESL classroom activity!

the activity can be played in groups, for a greater efficiency.

An activity we watched, developed and adapted  for classes :

Original activity: Rhythm

The children make sentences without pausing. For example, one child touches her bag and says this is my bag, and the next child touches her hair and says, this is my hair, while keeping a natural rhythm. The children continue to make sentences without pausing. Individual children who lose the rhythm are out. If the game is played in teams, the team is out.

-Adapted Activity:

The teacher begins talking about the rhythm and music. The game can be played with music and dances, so the children must keep the rhythm while they say their sentences.

If a word is repeated, the person who said it is out. The teacher plays too.

If a player delays saying the sentence, he/she is out.

An assistant writes the words which are said in the blackboard.

The winner chooses the next song.

Later, the class makes sentences with all the words, written in the blackboard, trying to link, if possible, the sentences in verses which will create a poem. That poem shall be sung and danced in class by the children, with a music chosen by them.

For example:

Words: head, eyes, arms, nose, mouth

The head has two eyes

The eyes are over the arms

With my arms I use my hands to scratch my nose

My nose smells the food which will enter in my mouth.

Anyway, if it is too difficult, the main objetive is to create phrases, using the words in their context and imagining.

-Level: fifth grade of primary; where the vocabulary is more extensive (for speaking and writing), children are able to create sentences and even rimes with the words.

-Learning objectives:

-Listening and understanding messages in different verbal interactions, using information for making tasks of their level and experience.

-Speaking and talking in simple situations, with known contents

-Identify phonetic aspects of rhythm, accentuation and linguistic structures.

-Outcome-based learning objectives:

At the end of this exercise the children will be able to:

-Improvise word and simple sentences

-Acquire new vocabulary

-Improve the rhythm and action

-Being introduced in rimes, poems and creations

-Using the Bloom Taxonomy:

Remember: A previous overview of the vocabulary

Understand: Making a previous testing of the activity, with examples.

Apply: Making the activity

Analyze: Observing the class and the development of the exercise, anticipate and correct errors; note improvements for future sessions

Evaluate: Seeing the vocabulary, speed, improvisation, imagination and creativity

Create: The last part of the activity, where children make sentences and rimes.

-Time:

Allocated time: One session (45 min.)

Instructional time: Explaining the exercise (10 min.)

Engaged time: Do the activity (20 min.)

Academic learning time: participate actively in creation of the phrases and being successful in learning activities (15 min.)

still with fairy tales

In the previous poll we talked about fairy tales, in particular, about the talle of the "little red hen" in which Disney inspired to create his short film from 1934 "The wise little hen", where Donald Duck appeared for first time.

We know about how interesting and useful is using tales in class. In the exercise where we had to tell a story in voxpop, most of us used fairy tales.

In this webpage http://storynory.com/archives/fairy-tales/ we can find a lot of stories with their lyrics, from different books and writers.

About the main page: http://storynory.com/ we find there many material in audio and writing.

As they say about them:

About Storynory

Storynory has published a free audio story every week since November 2005. All our stories are delightfully read by professional actors.

In the section "educational stories" http://storynory.com/archives/educational-stories/ we find many didactic material for class and exercises.

The Wise Little Hen

We have talked about the usefulness of fairy tales in elementary education, and even had a conference by a swedish teacher about it.

In that conference, we talked about how the tales are a good way to give children vocabulary, use of the languaje and feedback in which they talk and repeat from the very begin.

And we saw some examples of tales: one of them was the performance of Pie Corbett telling the tale "The little red hen" to children:

There we saw how he, using his particular tones and with the help of a map, made the children enter in the story and living it. Tales with repetition of action sequences are very good for little children because reinforces their previous knowledge and introduces new vocabulary and sequences.

About the tale of "the little red hen" we take this opportunity to provide a historical curiosity about animated cinema which will like the children: "The wise little hen" a 1934 short cartoon by Disney where Donald Duck makes his very first appearance:

The character the character was not yet configured or had defined their personality traits but we can see his classic sailor suit and his particular voice, created by Clarence Nash, who provided Donald Duck's voice in original english and in spanish doubt till his death in 1985.

Donald's function is only to play the role of one of the lazy friends of the hen, with the final lesson about the importance of working.

The character became so popular than appeared in next Disney shorts, like "The band concert" (1935):

His personality was redefined and his physical appearance evolutioned to the actual character we know. But the begining was "The little red hen" whose lyrics are this:

Wise Little Hen Lyrics

Chorus:
There once was a wise little hen
Who worried now and then
For fear that she'd be found in need
When winter came again

With a basket full of corn
She started out for more
She could go get the friends she met
to help her plant her corn

Who'll help her plant her corn?
Who'll help her plant her corn?
Gay Peter Pig who's strong and big
Might help her plant her corn

Wise Little Hen:
Will you help me plant my corn?
Will you help me plant my corn?

Peter Pig:
Who, me? Oh, no
I have a bellyache

Chorus:
Who'll help her plant her corn?
Who'll help her plant her corn?
If Donald Duck has any pluck
He'll help her plant her corn

Wise Little Hen:
Will you help me plant my corn?
Will you help me plant my corn?

Donald Duck:
Who, me? Oh, no
I got a bellyache

Chorus:
Who'll help her plant her corn?
Who'll help her plant her corn?
She might have known that she alone
Would have to plant her corn

Who'll help her harvest corn?
Who'll help her harvest corn?
Perhaps her friends will condescend
To help her harvest corn

Wise Little Hen:
Will you help me harvest corn?
Will you help me harvest corn?

Peter Pig:
Who, me? Oh, no

Donald Duck:
We got a bellyache

Chorus:
Who'll help her harvest corn?
Who'll help her harvest corn?
She might have known that she alone
Would have to harvest corn

Oh me oh me oh my

Just look at what that little hen's got
Mmm, does that look good
There'll soon be muffins and cakes galore
Cornpones and fritters by the score
More cornbread than I've seen before
Mm-mmm do I feel hungry
Yum yum yum
Oh me oh me oh my

Corn on the cob with gobs and gobs of melted butter oozing round and round
Corn soup enough to feed and stuff an army
Boy oh boy

Who'll help her eat her corn?
Who'll help her eat her corn?
Perhaps her friends will condescend
To help her eat her corn

Wise Little Hen:
Will you help me eat my corn?
Will you help me eat my corn?

Peter Pig:
Who, me?

Donald Duck:
Oh boy oh boy oh boy
And how

Chorus:
She'll eat the corn herself
She'll eat the corn herself
Fa la la la la la la la
She'll eat the corn herself
She'll eat the corn herself
Although her friends now see the light
They've nothing but an appetite
While they repent with all their might
She'll eat the corn herself
She'll eat the corn herself
She'll eat the corn herself

........................................................................................................................

We can use this material to class, giving children the lyrics and using short cartoons to teach them, making the class more funny and interactive, and using media and different exercises to it.

ABOUT RECONCEPTUALIZATION IN CURRICULUM

Hi group! I’ve found this interesting article. It’s about reconceptualization in Curriculum Studies. It explains the meaning of this concept and the influence of history by shaping what is thinkable or not. Reconceptualization does not end; it is fluid, ongoing, situational, it disarticulates static forms and it’s directly linked with the cognition process.

I wish you enjoy with it. 

Reading the Work of Elliot Eisner and the Idea of Reconceptualization in Curriculum Studies

ERIK MALEWSKI

Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA

Thinking  over  the drive  to codify  in curriculum studies, I speak to what  it means  to contextualize the work  of Elliot Eisner within  reconceptualization as both idea  and movement. As an education scholar  interested in post- discourses within  curriculum studies, this involves reading with  and  against efforts to constitute a field of study,  in ways  that speak to our not knowing and the constraining effects of the categories we use to undertake our work. My challenge in this short essay  is to explore how  what  is remembered is “a function  of the cultural  categories that shape  what  is thinkable and  what  is not” (Atkinson  & Coffey, 2001, p. 810) and thus invite surprise, novelty, and the unknown as a way  of knowing history  within  the spaces where we find ourselves today.

WHAT IS RECONCEPTUALIZATION?

Reconceptualization means to form a concept or idea again; to offer up a new perspective or angle on a concept or idea.  As William  Pinar notes in relation to the reconceptualization of the curriculum field,  “What became clear  was that while  the themes  of 1970s scholarship echoed earlier  ones,  the function of the new  scholarship was  not to change curriculum practice; it was  to understand curriculum as political” (Pinar, 2010, p. 736). Reconceptualization as  an  idea,   then,  suggests the  necessity of  reading with  and  against   the histories  we  inherit  to think  the concept and  practice of curriculum anew, while  acknowledging that history  shapes what  is thinkable and what  is not.

Some paramount examples of reading with and against can be found in Eisner’s work on connoisseurship, criticism,  and cognition. Connoisseurship highlights how education can  use  the arts to see  the world  in complicated, nuanced ways  and  draw  connections between seemingly disparate realities and  experiences. Criticism  speaks to how  the  arts  can  enhance the  peda- gogical capacity to disclose ideas  to others,  to help  with  the refinement  of perceptions and  ideas.  In the last,  at the 2002 John Dewey  Lecture at Stan- ford University, Eisner explains how  his work  challenges what  he calls  the “increasingly technicized cognitive culture  in  which  we  operate”  with  the idea  of education for “the preparation of artists” conceived of as “individuals who  have  developed the  ideas,  the  sensibilities, the  skills,  and  the  imagi- nation  to create  work”  (Eisner,  2002,  p. 8).  Here  Eisner reads with artistry to read against recent effort to import the hard sciences into the teaching enterprise, promulgating more expansive forms of literacy that include visual and auditory forms of representation.

HOW MIGHT RECONCEPTUALIZATION BE PUT TO USE?

Reconceptualization does not end; it is fluid, ongoing, situational, and it dis- articulates static forms. I think of Eisner’s work on becoming when he writes “cognition is a process that  makes  awareness possible. It is,  in a sense,  a matter  of becoming conscious, of noticing, of reorganizing, of perceiving” (1981,  p. 49). Here proliferation and policing intersect in an effort toward  a renewed language of emergence and imagination, as well  as an understand- ing  of sensory capacities, such  that we  gain  frameworks for understanding sensation, conception, and forms of representation.

This  brings  to  the  surface  another  aspect  of reconceptualization that might be useful:  an opportunity for critical  interpretation and unpacking the problem  of interpretation and translation such that the work  gets positioned historically. Take,  for example, the  sub-sections of Eisner’s,  The  Arts  and the Creation  of the Mind (2002):   “The  Role  of  the  Arts in  Transforming Consciousness,” “Visions and  Versions  of Arts Education,”  “What Education Can Learn from the Arts,” and  “An Agenda  for Research  in Arts Education.” Here Eisner’s work is not so much an expose´ on core precepts or one-right- way  strategies as it is a framing  from an invested positionality that unpacks the problematic of our inherited technicism and how power  and knowledge play  out in arts education.

WHAT SHOULD BE MADE OF RECONCEPTUALIZATION IN POST-TIMES?

Elliot Eisner shares with curriculum scholars  of the reconceptualization movement a focus on aesthetics, arts, and humanities, and a suspicion of curriculum development and  the full-tilt  infiltration  of instrumentalism and technicism into schools. Eisner was involved in arts focused associations and meetings for much of his career, ones that were  beyond the spaces where the reconceptualization movement took root. Bernadette Baker  (2009)  aptly notes that, positioned by some  as sorts of liberators, the arts and humanities are, quite  antithetically, overwrought with venerable objects  to be recovered from the past,  restored  to their previous glory,  and centered within  the field of education. Eisner’s scholarship illustrates these sacred stories can have oppressive effects in spite of liberatory intentions. There is an inclination to evade difficult  stories—of  colonization, elitism,  racism,  and  heterosexism in art and curriculum fields—out of the desire  to restore  the good  name  of ed- ucation  with more holistic  and comprehensive approaches to teaching. Yet, education seems to be left wanting, to continually fall short of its promise. Eisner’s  work  exemplifies the  need  to provide  counternarratives to taken- for-granted storylines and  also  highlights the  issues  that  arise  in replacing one set of truths for another.

In light of Elliot Eisner’s contributions, the reconceptualizations most helpful  are  those  that address the  promise  of art and  aesthetic curriculum studies  after the end of a belief  in uncontaminated, non-complicit humanism and the corresponding lessening of confidence and enthusiasm for aesthetic projects:  an art education post-truth  and beauty.