I'm really, really pleased with my service learning. I'm working with two Americorps VISTAs at Catholic Charities to write the curriculum for a new Vocational ESL (VESL) program they're instituting. When I arrived, they were so excited to have an "experienced teacher" to help them as they worked toward their goal, and I was afraid at any moment I would be discovered as a complete sham, that I'm no expert at all, just a teacher who finds herself plugging along by trial and error 90% of the time. As it turns out, the ginormous amount of Education classes I've taken (and loans, as it turns out), have been worth it!
So far, I'm writing what we call "Activities Plans" for each day, which are the lesson plans for each curriculum day. The 15-day curriculum has been written, we just have to create the road maps for the instructors now. After this phase, we'll be completing any necessary materials like worksheets--one of the girls I'm working with has been illustrating them all by hand! I haven't seen them yet, but I'm really looking forward to that.
The learners will be getting training and learning language related to jobs in the hotel/hospitality industry. I've been integrating some reading and writing into the activities plans, especially with safety and emergency procedures, scheduling, and reading documents. The focus isn't so much on reading comprehension or creative writing, but rather being able to fill out forms and understand instructions/procedures. The majority of activities are listening and speaking, as this will be the primary modes of language usage in this field. There are a lot of conversation and role play elements involved. I've just started, so I'm sure I'll have more details on these activities as we progress.
General Summary: In general, it is going well. It is quite different than my previous ESL experience. I am getting my service learning hours out of it as well as vastly different reactions from my lessons.
Most all lessons involve letters and sounds. They must practice their letter identification, sounds that the letters make, and the difference between uppercase and lowercase. It is difficult to always have their attention, but it helps to change activities every 15ish minutes.
I think I'm doing good both with my conversation club and with my conversation partner time. I'm not saying that I have no problems but saying that I'm doing my best to teach my students and help them improve speaking skills. Of course, I had some problems as I mentioned in my reflective papers. I became more and more humble whenever I had problems.
In my conversation club, I function as an assistant to make my students talk. That is what I am there for. I don't and can't focus on other skills because there are many students. On the other hand, in my conversation partner time, I am able to target more than one skill. I basically try to make my students initiate oral communication. At the same time, if they can't understand what I say, I speak slowly to let them understand better; namely, I believe it can help their listening comprehension. Sometimes, I help their reading comprehension HW assignments such as finding topic sentences or differentiating opinions from facts. Moreover, I sometimes let them look up the dictionary when a new vocabulary comes to our conversation so that they can actually use the vocabulary in their writing assignments.
I'm thinking about a role-play activity for my conversation partners.
I am really enjoying my service learning opportunity with the blind student, Seong Min. Of course, I am also struggling a little bit, because I cannot easily read his responses on his laptop. I practically have to sit in his lap! Unfortunately, I have only had two sessions with him, as I had to miss yesterday’s, but I am looking forward to helping him tomorrow for 2 hours.
Tomorrow after our session, I will ask the class teacher, Clint, for any other suggestions that may make it easier for both me and Seong Min, as well as any other opportunities to make up the time I missed yesterday.
My service learning project has been fruitful for my student and me. I’ve been reflecting on class discussions and readings, which have enhanced my understanding and perceptions of the experience.
During my service learning project, I often feel that my instruction is content based given I often act as a tutor with the student providing the subject matter he wants to cover. Sometimes the content is theme based, centering on a particular topic. W, R, S, L are all targeted. I’ve been asking my student more questions than I did the first week we met. I felt that during our first week I basically answered his questions, which I realize now, did not always help him ultimately.
Now that I have a better feel for my student’s learning style, I am 99% sure that he would like to try an experiential learning activity. Cooking is his hobby. He has expressed a desire to visit my home and make a dish from his home country. I could have him demonstrate how to make this dish, noting ingredients and directions. He could then write a summary of his demonstration. This “learner-centered experiential technique” is mentioned on page 292 as a “hands-on project”. I believe this could be a very memorable activity for both of us.
My service learning is going pretty well. I am enjoying spending time with Adil and getting to know about the Saudi Arabian Culture as well as see all of the concepts I am learning in class in action.
In terms of skills integration I think the primary skills that are being targeted are speaking and listening. Most of the time we are talking and listening to each other speak. However, I have had a couple of conversations with him on a chat program which defiantly counts as writing and reading. I am not sure what other materials I could use more effectively at this point in time. As he is a conversation partner, I think the primary thing he wants to do is use language. To that end, I am trying to give him the most opportunity to use that language.
My service learning with conversation club has been going well. Sharon (main leader), Yilmin, and I meet with ELI students every Monday and Wednesday after their regular class hours. Since it is not a mandatory activity, we have a different number of students per each session. We normally do group activities (three groups with three leaders) to give students more chance to talk.
Our main goal is to lower feelings of anxiousness in students and get students to talk more in class. Through experience with conversation club, I can obviously see the advantages of group activities with the purpose of improving students’ speaking skills.
My service learning is going good. I meet with David [Kyung] every Wednesday at 2pm and we meet for two hours. I'm having a good time practicing conversation with him. We basically just look at a list of questions, I ask him questions like, "How many pets do you have?", "What do they look like?" So, that's our whole two hours. I feel good about the way we are doing things. I think it is a good help to him, and I leave it very open for him to ask any other questions or concerns he may have. He watches an american tv show to help him with his english so he always comes in with a question about some statement or word phrase so I'm glad I could help him with that. All in all it has been a very good experience so far.
I am really enjoying my service learning. I have been meeting with an ELI student, Yu-deok. We have a symbiotic arrangement- I help him with learning English and he helps me teach it.
We've had only a couple formal meetings where the purpose was my service learning hours. But we have had lots of informal gatherings where we work on his English, understanding American culture, and other similar things.
I am really excited about the listening/speaking section. I have found some cool things to apply to my service learning.
I missed the 2nd part of this assignment, so here goes:
I am working with only one student, within a class of 6. Since I am not the teacher, but merely a facilitator, I will tell about the teacher's skills integration. Clint uses a lot of content-based instruction, but only as it can give a real-world flavor to the grammar points he wants to convey. He is all over the place, topic-wise, so I would say that he is not using theme-based instruction at all. Sometimes he incorporates games into the lesson, just to change things up.
The other day, he used the internet to have the students listen to Elvis Presley singing "With All My Heart." This was to give them a real-world example of SVO (subject verb object) grammar. The lyrics are "I want you, I need you, I love you." Perfect, and they enjoyed it a lot. This was after he had taught the concept using the chalkboard.
I was very impressed with how many ways Clint uses to get English grammar across to his students, and I fully intend to copy his style whenever I may be teaching a class.
What I left off was, I have been incorporating (unintentionally, but now I am aware) writing along with listening and speaking. My partner will sometimes take notes of what I say to see it and process it visually. Would you count reading since he reads his notes? Haha
I might incorporate reading by writing sentences with slight differences, either showing how slight syntactic changes change the meaning of an utterance and how the same meaning and look different ways.
I think I mentioned several parts on "skills integration" above. Basically, in my conversation partner time, I try to encourage my partners to exercise 4 skills together. Now, I'm going to briefly talk about an activity for this coming Monday.
I found a paper illustrating Chinese Zodiac system. My two conversation partners and I will do a role-play activity. A person will be a fortuneteller and another person will be a customer. Since we are not familiar with the Zodiac, a fortuneteller has to read the paper. A customer-role person has to ask about Zodiac and listen to the fortuneteller's comments on his/her destiny. I believe that it will be an activity of integration of reading, speaking, and listening.
Since the purpose of conversation club is to get students to talk in a safe learning environment, the program is more focused on speaking skills.
However, last time we used an interview-questions form so that students can read interview questions from the form, ask questions to their partners, and write down interview responses. The tasks allowed students to simultaneously use speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills.
I'm really, really pleased with my service learning. I'm working with two Americorps VISTAs at Catholic Charities to write the curriculum for a new Vocational ESL (VESL) program they're instituting.
ReplyDeleteWhen I arrived, they were so excited to have an "experienced teacher" to help them as they worked toward their goal, and I was afraid at any moment I would be discovered as a complete sham, that I'm no expert at all, just a teacher who finds herself plugging along by trial and error 90% of the time. As it turns out, the ginormous amount of Education classes I've taken (and loans, as it turns out), have been worth it!
So far, I'm writing what we call "Activities Plans" for each day, which are the lesson plans for each curriculum day. The 15-day curriculum has been written, we just have to create the road maps for the instructors now. After this phase, we'll be completing any necessary materials like worksheets--one of the girls I'm working with has been illustrating them all by hand! I haven't seen them yet, but I'm really looking forward to that.
The learners will be getting training and learning language related to jobs in the hotel/hospitality industry. I've been integrating some reading and writing into the activities plans, especially with safety and emergency procedures, scheduling, and reading documents. The focus isn't so much on reading comprehension or creative writing, but rather being able to fill out forms and understand instructions/procedures. The majority of activities are listening and speaking, as this will be the primary modes of language usage in this field. There are a lot of conversation and role play elements involved. I've just started, so I'm sure I'll have more details on these activities as we progress.
General Summary: In general, it is going well. It is quite different than my previous ESL experience. I am getting my service learning hours out of it as well as vastly different reactions from my lessons.
ReplyDeleteMost all lessons involve letters and sounds. They must practice their letter identification, sounds that the letters make, and the difference between uppercase and lowercase. It is difficult to always have their attention, but it helps to change activities every 15ish minutes.
I think I'm doing good both with my conversation club and with my conversation partner time. I'm not saying that I have no problems but saying that I'm doing my best to teach my students and help them improve speaking skills. Of course, I had some problems as I mentioned in my reflective papers. I became more and more humble whenever I had problems.
ReplyDeleteIn my conversation club, I function as an assistant to make my students talk. That is what I am there for. I don't and can't focus on other skills because there are many students.
On the other hand, in my conversation partner time, I am able to target more than one skill. I basically try to make my students initiate oral communication. At the same time, if they can't understand what I say, I speak slowly to let them understand better; namely, I believe it can help their listening comprehension. Sometimes, I help their reading comprehension HW assignments such as finding topic sentences or differentiating opinions from facts. Moreover, I sometimes let them look up the dictionary when a new vocabulary comes to our conversation so that they can actually use the vocabulary in their writing assignments.
I'm thinking about a role-play activity for my conversation partners.
I am really enjoying my service learning opportunity with the blind student, Seong Min. Of course, I am also struggling a little bit, because I cannot easily read his responses on his laptop. I practically have to sit in his lap! Unfortunately, I have only had two sessions with him, as I had to miss yesterday’s, but I am looking forward to helping him tomorrow for 2 hours.
ReplyDeleteTomorrow after our session, I will ask the class teacher, Clint, for any other suggestions that may make it easier for both me and Seong Min, as well as any other opportunities to make up the time I missed yesterday.
My service learning project has been fruitful for my student and me. I’ve been reflecting on class discussions and readings, which have enhanced my understanding and perceptions of the experience.
ReplyDeleteDuring my service learning project, I often feel that my instruction is content based given I often act as a tutor with the student providing the subject matter he wants to cover. Sometimes the content is theme based, centering on a particular topic. W, R, S, L are all targeted. I’ve been asking my student more questions than I did the first week we met. I felt that during our first week I basically answered his questions, which I realize now, did not always help him ultimately.
Now that I have a better feel for my student’s learning style, I am 99% sure that he would like to try an experiential learning activity. Cooking is his hobby. He has expressed a desire to visit my home and make a dish from his home country. I could have him demonstrate how to make this dish, noting ingredients and directions. He could then write a summary of his demonstration. This “learner-centered experiential technique” is mentioned on page 292 as a “hands-on project”. I believe this could be a very memorable activity for both of us.
My service learning is going pretty well. I am enjoying spending time with Adil and getting to know about the Saudi Arabian Culture as well as see all of the concepts I am learning in class in action.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of skills integration I think the primary skills that are being targeted are speaking and listening. Most of the time we are talking and listening to each other speak. However, I have had a couple of conversations with him on a chat program which defiantly counts as writing and reading. I am not sure what other materials I could use more effectively at this point in time. As he is a conversation partner, I think the primary thing he wants to do is use language. To that end, I am trying to give him the most opportunity to use that language.
My service learning with conversation club has been going well. Sharon (main leader), Yilmin, and I meet with ELI students every Monday and Wednesday after their regular class hours. Since it is not a mandatory activity, we have a different number of students per each session. We normally do group activities (three groups with three leaders) to give students more chance to talk.
ReplyDeleteOur main goal is to lower feelings of anxiousness in students and get students to talk more in class. Through experience with conversation club, I can obviously see the advantages of group activities with the purpose of improving students’ speaking skills.
My service learning is going good. I meet with David [Kyung] every Wednesday at 2pm and we meet for two hours. I'm having a good time practicing conversation with him. We basically just look at a list of questions, I ask him questions like, "How many pets do you have?", "What do they look like?" So, that's our whole two hours. I feel good about the way we are doing things. I think it is a good help to him, and I leave it very open for him to ask any other questions or concerns he may have. He watches an american tv show to help him with his english so he always comes in with a question about some statement or word phrase so I'm glad I could help him with that. All in all it has been a very good experience so far.
ReplyDeleteI am really enjoying my service learning. I have been meeting with an ELI student, Yu-deok. We have a symbiotic arrangement- I help him with learning English and he helps me teach it.
ReplyDeleteWe've had only a couple formal meetings where the purpose was my service learning hours. But we have had lots of informal gatherings where we work on his English, understanding American culture, and other similar things.
I am really excited about the listening/speaking section. I have found some cool things to apply to my service learning.
I missed the 2nd part of this assignment, so here goes:
ReplyDeleteI am working with only one student, within a class of 6. Since I am not the teacher, but merely a facilitator, I will tell about the teacher's skills integration. Clint uses a lot of content-based instruction, but only as it can give a real-world flavor to the grammar points he wants to convey. He is all over the place, topic-wise, so I would say that he is not using theme-based instruction at all. Sometimes he incorporates games into the lesson, just to change things up.
The other day, he used the internet to have the students listen to Elvis Presley singing "With All My Heart." This was to give them a real-world example of SVO (subject verb object) grammar. The lyrics are "I want you, I need you, I love you." Perfect, and they enjoyed it a lot. This was after he had taught the concept using the chalkboard.
I was very impressed with how many ways Clint uses to get English grammar across to his students, and I fully intend to copy his style whenever I may be teaching a class.
What I left off was, I have been incorporating (unintentionally, but now I am aware) writing along with listening and speaking. My partner will sometimes take notes of what I say to see it and process it visually. Would you count reading since he reads his notes? Haha
ReplyDeleteI might incorporate reading by writing sentences with slight differences, either showing how slight syntactic changes change the meaning of an utterance and how the same meaning and look different ways.
I think I mentioned several parts on "skills integration" above. Basically, in my conversation partner time, I try to encourage my partners to exercise 4 skills together. Now, I'm going to briefly talk about an activity for this coming Monday.
ReplyDeleteI found a paper illustrating Chinese Zodiac system. My two conversation partners and I will do a role-play activity. A person will be a fortuneteller and another person will be a customer. Since we are not familiar with the Zodiac, a fortuneteller has to read the paper. A customer-role person has to ask about Zodiac and listen to the fortuneteller's comments on his/her destiny. I believe that it will be an activity of integration of reading, speaking, and listening.
Additional comments:
ReplyDeleteSince the purpose of conversation club is to get students to talk in a safe learning environment, the program is more focused on speaking skills.
However, last time we used an interview-questions form so that students can read interview questions from the form, ask questions to their partners, and write down interview responses. The tasks allowed students to simultaneously use speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills.