I came across this wonderful site over the weekend and it struck me how this can be used with students as an authentic motivation for writing.

The site provides an opportunity for the nature-loving civilian scientist to contribute to an online catalogue of sightings of plants and animals.  You simply upload your photo, say where the ‘sighting’ happened via a Google Map, and write up a short description or note to accompany your picture.

Young learners can get outside in their wellies and snap pictures of minibeasts and adult students may take more of an interest in pictures from their home country or in the differences in wildlife we have here in the UK.  Either way, there’s a lovely opportunity for the development of productive skills in the form of writing notes and discussion about the site content, and receptive reading skills as students browse the vast catalogue that is already online.

Enjoy, and as ever, leave your comments on how you would use or (even better) have used Project Noah with your learners.

Keeping with my wish for my blog to be a place where classroom experiences and ideas are shared, I wanted to share some ‘authentic’ motivations for writing with students which I’ve come across this last week.  Today it’s the Million Disney Memories campaign.  Raise money for a good cause and get people writing – bonus!  I’ll be uploading some worksheets over the next few days but please feel free to share how you might use with your students.

The Million Disney Memories is a campaign being run by Disney and Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH). The idea is to collect, via the Disney Junior Facebook page, one million memories from the public about their first ever Disney experience. For every memory collected, Disney will donate £1 to GOSH. Even the Disney-cynical humbugs out there can see it’s for a good cause – there’s nothing on the terms and conditions which stipulates your memory has to be sickly and positive, although I’m not sure a diatribe on the spooky undertones of “It’s a Small World” wouldn’t really be entering into the spirit of the project.

In my mind this could work in so many ways as a real writing activity with English learners. I’ve linked below to a number of sources such as celebrities sharing their own Disney memories in short video clips, newspaper articles publicising the project and of course the Facebook page itself where the memories are being collected.

Great Ormond Street website gives more information about the hospital as well as the basics of the partnership with Disney and the Million Disney Memories campaign.  There are also some heartwarming reports on special Disney in-hospital screenings of new films so the little patients do not miss out. For children unable to make it to the screening room, films are shown at the bedsides too – just awesome.

The Disney Junior (UK) Facebook page where the memories are actually being recorded. Looking at other people’s memories could form the basis of a reading activity in itself.  Many students will quickly notice some patterns in language and register which they can emulate when writing their own memories.

London Evening Standard newspaper’s short write-up on the campaign. Contains some nice set expressions and collocations to do with fundraising and emotions.

Daily Mail piece containing a number of video clips of celebrities sharing their Disney memories, as well as quotes of many more famous people talking about their childhood experiences of beloved characters and films.

Topics could include Childhood Memories, Films, Charity – I’m sure there are many more. Language areas are huge: recounting memories (and the set patterns of language that we use to do so e.g. “I remember + …ing”), telling anecdotes, positive/negative emotions,  dealing with the often ambiguous nature of memory (I think I was about six; I guess I must have been…etc.).

Be sure to familiarise yourself with the terms and conditions regarding privacy and any age limitations. If students don’t have a Facebook account for example, they could write up their memories and email it to a friend or teacher for them to upload. I believe however it’s only one memory per person.

I’m really looking forward to hearing more suggestions on how you might bring this to life. Go-on. Comment. It’s easy

I teach mainly Business English and like many of my colleagues I know online, we are freelance. There isn’t a staffroom, observed lessons, developmental sessions (although some might think this sounds great). Whilst the obvious freedom that this brings is an advantage, the negative can be that one can feel a little lost at sea on those days when you need support or have a lesson which didn’t quite go to plan. Reflective Practice for some is very literally a personal exercise.

So following the plenary session I mention above, I have been wondering if some of our online community might benefit from a regular teacher development session. This could be in the form of a regular, scheduled slot similar to #eltchat, or it could simply take the form of a dedicated hash-tag on Twitter to which people can post their suggestions, reading suggestions on a questioned topic or offer advice for a troubled teacher.  It’s not an easy thing to come out and say that something didn’t got as your planned, or you are not sure what to do with a particular problem. Equally, some people are uneasy about coming online and ‘boasting’ about a great lesson.  Do you think such a forum would be of help?

I’ve embedded a poll below to get an overview of your thoughts. Please feel free to use the comments section to give me detail or your further suggestions. They would be very much appreciated.

I know for one, I would greatly value the opportunity to share, help and develop in a focused and dedicated space, rather than simply randomly throwing it out to the interweb!

Aga is a Polish student who recently spent ten years living in Germany where she met her Welsh now-husband. Now they are settling in the UK and I have been lucky enough to be one of Aga’s English teachers.  She is one of those students who always makes me happy to be going what I’m doing – I hope you know the ones.

Aga is a very visual person. For example, she sees time in shapes and pictures. We’ve had many an interesting conversation about this.  So, I thought we should tap into this visual preference and use it to help remember new vocabulary.  English is Aga’s L3 so remembering and separating is particularly important for her.  I asked Aga to draw a picture incorporating the following items of new vocabulary:  volcano; earthquake; a bolt (of lightening); eruption; a fence; common land; series; to make a good impression; soporific.

These lexical items came up during some work we were doing on describing photographs of natural disasters, so much as they might sound it, they’re not totally random.  I did want to ensure we had some unusual words in there however so that we can assess later whether there is any pattern as to what sticks in the mind.

These are the pictures that she did – I just love them!

I think the trick here is to revisit these pictures on a regular basis, frequently at first and then over longer periods of time to commit the lexis to memory.

Have you had any experience using drawing in the classroom to help remember vocabulary?  Did it work?

I would like to gather, for the greater good, a series of posts concerned with learning, and teaching vocabulary.  Consider some of the following factors:

• Are you a language learner? If so, do you use any techniques  to notice and remember new vocabulary?

• As teachers, how can we best advise students on this important area of language learning and encourage greater learner autonomy and vocabulary retention?
• Have you had particular success with any memory techniques in the classroom and how did you use them?
• Should this be an area we encourage our students to experiment with in the classroom and if so, how?
  

You could blog your thoughts and link back here so all contributions are in one place.  If you don’t have a blog, but would like to contribute, do feel free to contact me via the comments section below and I can post your entry here as a guest post on my blog.

Happy blogging my friends and I can’t wait to hear your thoughts, advice and experiences!

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Here are the posts related to The Vocabulary Blogging Challenge:

• Vicky Loras: “Word of the Week – From my Adult Classes”
• Leahn Stanhope: “Recycling Vocabulary in Primary ELT”
• Karenne Sylvester: “PowerPointing My Office”
• My own response: “Drawing to Remember”
• Sandy Millin: “Vocabulary box-ing”
• Kathy Perret “A Vocabulary Journey”
• Tyson Seburn “Vocabulary profiles & memorisation”

Voting for the finalists is open until 17.00 GMT on Tuesday December 14th…and the winners will be announced at the Edublog Awards ceremony (more on that to come soon).

Click on the badge below to be taken to the ‘New Blog’ catagory site to cast your vote.

*fingers crossed*

Voting is now open for the 2010 Edublog Awards!

Dec 5th, 2010

by Ronnie Burt.

The nominations are up and voting is now open in the 2010 Edublog Awards.

Voting is open until 12 PM US Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday December 14th…and the winners will be announced at the Edublog Awards ceremony (more on that to come soon).

When and where can I take the CAE exam in the UK?

The 2011 exam dates for CAE can be found here. Please see the Cambridge ESOL exam centre list for more details on your nearest centre.

Cambridge University CAE Microsite

Tons of useful information about who the exam is suitable for, the format of the exam and where to find more information.

Cambridge CAE Exam Format

Learn more about the structure of the paper and what the options are for sitting the exam.

Cambridge CAE Candidate Support

Links to top tips documents, sample papers and online practice tests.

Flo-Joe – The place on the web for Cambridge exam preparation

Advice, forums, newsletters, practice papers and more.  Lovely site run by friendly people.

The Times newspaper

Unfortunately now only available through subscription (broadsheet)

The Independent newspaper

Relatively politically un-bias daily newspaper (broadsheet)

The Sun newspaper:

According to the paper, it’s “the best for news, sport, showbiz and celebreties”.  Debateable. (tabloid)

Online News:

The BBC website:

News, weather, travel, entertainment and much more from the BBC (online)

Children’s Publications:

BBC Newsround:

News and current affairs aimed at the younger generation. Simpler language than the ‘grown up papers’. Also has video section where you can watch the Newsround broadcasts online.

National Geographic Kids

Award-winning kids’ version of the well-known publication. Many videos, articles, games and fun stuff for curious small people.  Thomas gives this site a big thumbs up!

First News Children’s Newspaper

Online children’s newpaper

An enthusiasm for compartmentalization, inherited from grammars of classical languages, has given rise to the elaborate architecture of the so-called tense system – including such grammar McNuggets as the future-in-the-past, and the past perfect continuous, not to mention the conditionals, first, second and third – features of the language that have little or no linguistic, let alone psychological, reality.

I like Scott’s analogy of easily-consumable, neatly-packaged bites of grammar.  I also enthusiastically agree with the notion that such nuggets bear little resemblance to the process of real life language acquisition.  However I can’t help but wonder, much as it goes against my usual cautious approach to grammar-heavy course books, whether our hatred of the breadcrumb coating isn’t causing us to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Allow me to, perhaps tenuously, refer back to Scott’s Grammar McNuggets namesake.  The entire Grammar McNuggets comparison seems to work as long as one accepts that Chicken McNuggets are the food of Satan. Of course I cannot argue that Chicken McNuggets are a nutritious, vitamin-packed snack, but I must argue a little in their defence and I hope that the grammar comparison will be obvious to you.

The problem surely comes when you expect your entire sustenance to come from breaded chicken. If this is all you eat, expect problems. You will be left malnourished, missing vital elements of your diet essential to your growth and well-being.  A linguistic diet of just Grammar McNuggets surely leaves the language learner verbally constipated (I’m not going any further with that particular analogy!) and lacking in essential other language food groups.  I wonder if vocabulary is the carbohydrates or the fruit and vegetables?  I’d be interested to think further how language learning could be compared with diet – I love this train of thought!

Nuggets, be they chicken or grammar are not, I believe, inherently bad.  Their real damage comes from how they are consumed. Don’t expect a healthy language body if this is your primary source of input.  However, ‘eaten’ with other food groups, they can be part of a balanced diet with no real damage done.

Everything in moderation.  If you’re students demand a nugget here and there, try not to beat yourself with a stick. Just feed them some fruit and veg next week.

…I feel this urge to encourage more ELTers around the world to show us their boards. It doesn’t need to be in response to a specific methodology/activity/technique challenge. I don’t particularly care what you are teaching or how, I just reckon I and a lot of other teachers could learn a lot just by getting a quick look at your board!

This is my ‘sort of board’ from a lesson with Amanda, a pre-intermediate student from Brazil.  We were looking at some future thoughts and following Global (Pre-Intermediate) Unit 4, ‘Hopes and Fears’.  I like to use Post-It notes on my boards so the elements can be taken off and moved around.

As you can see, we started with a number of jumbled Post-It notes.  The lovely Amanda needed to make four sentences about future hopes or fears.
This exercise actually produced a pivotal moment of my own in the classroom.  As Amanda played around with the stickies, I noticed that actually a correct outcome was in some ways, secondary. Of course it’s great when they get it right, but it was what happened next that was my light bulb point.  Look at how Amanda approached the task…

She began by isolating chucks of language she recognised. When Amanda created “lots of money” I began bouncing around the room, snapping picture after picture and rabbiting on about what the perfect student she was. She stared at me a lot with her puzzled face on.  This cognitive process however just seems textbook.  No, it wasn’t textbook, it was real life – the classroom came first and the textbook second, and it was going on in MY classroom.  I hope I’m not alone here in appreciating my excitement. Maybe I am…

And so the chunks became larger as Amanda recognised more words that she had either heard together before, or that she deduced could exists quite happily together. Resulting in…

…one very happy lady!

In fact the sentences were not quite the same as those in the book, but it really didn’t matter. This was a really simple, non-event of an exercise to be honest, but I saw Amanda’s cognitive processes at work and had a lucky peek at how her brain arranges and recalls chunks of language when needed. Exciting stuff…I thought anyway.  You might well disagree.

Have a look back at Jason’s blog (link above) for links to other teachers who have shared their board work.