Comic strips

I created a story "Let's go to New York" on Storybird. The website's pictures are beautiful, but I found it hard to save the pictures I wanted and used them for the story. I can use the pictures around the selected one. Students can use Storybird to create their own story. Based on students' level, it can be one sentence or a paragraph on each page. With the lovely pictures, students would be motivated to write compositions and more willing to read others' stories.

Performance Indicator
High Intermediate Language Skills Writing Indicators: Draft, organize, write and edit a short paragraph using a topic sentence, supporting details and transitions.

Assessment
Two students read each other's story and write down the structure of the paragraph and the transitions. Peer helps to revise the paragraph, including correct grammar errors and make the expression more effective. They then exchange their composition and write another paragraph to continue the story.

Photo show video

Let the students use their own photos to create a photo show video is a great way to learn the target language. It can be used to keep a journal, create a story, talk about hobbies and interests, and also learn new words with related pictures. Due to the formal limit of the captions, students need to summarize their ideas in a short sentence, or they would need to add text in another scene. Animoto is a user-friendly tool for this purpose. It has many styles to choose and has further functionality in the pro version.

I created my video to show some photos of my spring break. I used the simple past tense to narrate the story. The teacher can ask the students to write a journal or talk about their interests and give rubric to train certain grammar points such as simple past tense and conjunctions.

Performance Indicator
ESL.I.5-8.1.1.12: Students convey information and ideas through spoken and written language, using conventions and features of American English appropriate to audience and purpose.

ESL.I.5-8.4.1.2:  Students describe, read about, participate in, or recommend a favourite activity, book, song, or other interest to various audience.

Assessment
The teacher gives a rubric before the assignment. In class activities: 1. Randomly form groups with two students. 2. Let them watch each other's video. 3. The creator illustrates the video while playing. 4. The listener gives feedback and helps the creator revise the video based on the rubric. 5. Ask a few students to narrate their partners' video. After class activities: Let the students write a self-evaluation of the task. Including the creating process, difficulties they met, their partner's opinions, what they learned from others' video, etc.

My TEDed lesson: 3 ways to speak English

I created a TEDed lesson called "3 ways to speak English". The presenter is a black girl. She uses three distinct ways to speak English when she talking to different kinds of people.

Objectives:
Students would be able to understand the main idea of the video
Students would be able to express their opinions with others

Assessment:
I give two multiple choice questions to assess whether the students understand the main idea of the video. After letting the students discuss their opinions of the video in class, I will let them watch another TED talk which is related to the issue. The TED talk is the second link in Dig Deeper. The students discuss the main idea of the talk in groups and then I will stop by to listen. Eventually, I will ask one student to talk about his/her ideas in front of the class and then everyone can jump in to give comments.

The flipped classroom

What is flipped classroom? Generally speaking, it has three parts: students watch instructional videos at home, teacher scaffolds students' homework in class, teacher gives feedback and assessment after class. The videos should truely provide the comprehensible input for the students to help them finish the homework. Teacher need to control the time in class to make every minute valuable. In the flipped classroom, teacher does not need to explain everything to every student. Instead, the teacher provide help for individuals based on their own problems.

 

 

Why we want to flip the classroom? Some students may find it difficult to finish the homework by themselves. Although they feel like they understand what the teacher said, and took notes in class, homework can still be challenging. Group study is a way to change the scenario, but it also has many problems. For example, the advanced students may not want to waste their time to help others, or unwilling to help their competitors. The opinions from peers are likely to be wrong also. However, if the students discuss their homework in class, they will have chances to ask for help from the teacher directly. They do not have to write down their questions and struggle all night with their homework. Having a question and receive help right away will surely make them feel less frastrated.

 

According to Three Reasons to Flip Your Classroom, a flipped classroom can (1) increases comprehension of the material; (2) increases interaction with instructor and peers; and (3) increases critical thinking as a natural part of the learning process. The students can control their learning pace by pausing and repeating the videos. Therefore, they can understand the materials better. The teacher, although s/he does not truly teach the class, s/he still need to "lead the class from behind".