Reading Treasures Show

This is a wonderful recording of an Alado session which took place some time in August 2007, called "Reading Treasures Show". Teachers from various countries talk about what they do to create reading opportunities for their students. I'd like to congratulate all of them on this wonderful work!
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THEIR DISCUSSION

Developing Reading Skills

This month in Learning with computers we'll be sharing links to develop reading in English.

http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/ttpbooks.html (Gladys's suggestion)(Enchanting!)

Some of Larry's links:

http://professorgarfield.org/pgf_ReadingRing.html Put cartoon strips in order and answer comprehension questions. (Great!)


http://reading.ecb.org/student/index.html It's not fully ready yet but focusses on reading strategies.

http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/interactive/onlinestory.htm#talk a collection of online reading stories.

http://www.harcourtschool.com/activity/book_buddy/gr1_4lily/skill_ae.html Drawing conclusions. (simple but interesting)

http://www.dfes.gov.uk/readwriteplus/learning_material/portal/predicting-meaning_lit_e2/m01/t08/index.htm Predicting meaning

http://www.dfes.gov.uk/readwriteplus/learning_material/portal/checking-the-meaning-of-words_lit_e3/m01/t24/index.htm Using a dictionary

http://www.studyzone.org/testprep/ela4/i/enviroprintp.cfm Reading Street signs

http://www.learnenglish.org.uk/stories_poems_archive_frame.html a collection of stories from BBC

http://www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglish-central-stories-archive.htm collection of stories

http://www.britishcouncil.org/kids-stories.htm stories for kids

http://www.stories.org.br/ the same TRUE story in English and portuguese side by side.

http://www.indianchild.com/short_stories.htm SHORT stories.

http://www.englishclub.com/reading/short-stories.htm short stories graded by level.

These ones I found in Libardo´s blog:

http://www.zapdramatic.com/mod1.htm You can read, listen and watch a very exciting story. You are even asked to interact with the events. SUPERB!
http://www.3xplus.com/pasnet01/scrpasnet01US.htm another interactive DETECTIVE story.
http://www.kizclub.com/Sbody.html Different stories to read and listen, 3 different levels.
http://www.nwlg.org/pages/resources/owl/OWL3Book1/Book01/default.htm this story explains about opposites in an interesting way.
http://www.go4english.com/ffk/archive.php?lang=en&cid=10041002 Great stories.
http://americanhistory.si.edu/onthemove/games/game2/game2.html The time machine. I had great fun travelling in time!

Using Computers To Teach Reading

I wanted to share a few of the favorite sites I use to help my English Language Learner students develop their reading skills.

They are basically divided into two categories -- sites that explicitly teach reading strategies and test comprehension, and sites that offer fiction or non-fiction stories that have text with audio and visual support.

For the former, my favorites include:

* Reading Ring, an activity on the excellent Professor Garfield site. In this game, players have to correctly unscramble a comic strip and then answer questions about it.

* Into The Book is a work-in-progress that will eventually have interactive exercises helping students learn multiple reading strategies. Right now only the one of "visualizing" is complete. It's extraordinarily well-done.

* There are two sites that have multiple activities to help teach reading strategies. I have links to many of these specific activities, and the ones I mentioned earlier, under the English For Beginners -- Reading section of my website. However, it's worth checking-out the two sites that host them all, too. They are Study Zone Test Prep Center of New York and the United Kingdom's Embedded Learning Portal.

I have links to thousands of online stories that offer text with audio and visual support on the English For Beginners- Stories and English For Beginners Non-Fiction sections of my website. My favorite, though, is:

* Woodlands Junior School in the United Kingdom. They have many of the same stories I have on my pages. However, there's is much better-designed and attractive.

Finally, I'd encourage people to read here about my school's use of computers to teach reading to English Language Learners, which was awarded the 2007 International Reading Association Grand Prize Presidential Award for Reading and Technology.

Larry Ferlazzo

Favorite Vocabulary Activities

I've sent an email to the group pointing-out the two links to hundreds, if not thousands, of vocabulary sites that I've linked to my website. In case you missed the email, the links are:

Vocabulary Sites For Beginners and Early Intermediate

Vocabulary Sites For Intermediate and Advanced

I'd also like to highlight a few of my favorites.

Learning Vocabulary Can Be Fun has numerous games, including many with audio, which are fun and effective with my ESL students. Students don't learn the words in context of sentences, but you can't necessarily expect everything from one site.

The Language Guide is an extraordinary picture and audio dictionary that is organized well and covers the basics.

Basic Sight Words covers the most commonly used words in the English language. On particularly great element of this site is that words are taught in the context of sentences. You won't find this link in my Vocabulary sections, though. I have a completely separate category called Sight Words that has a zillion links about.....Sight Words.

Finally, I love a site called Willing to Try. It's hard to explain what it is. Try it out (be sure to have your pop-up block turned-off, though). I think you, and your students, will enjoy it.

Summary: "Teaching Grammar".

A SUMMARY OF THE ARTICLE "Teaching Grammar" by Larsen-Freeman.

To watch this presentation, FIRST click on the audio and THEN click to change the slides.



The original article can be found in the book "Teaching English as a Foreign Language" by Mariane Celce Murcia.

Grammar For Beginners

I've been asked to provide a "guest" post once a month. I understand that June's focus will be on grammar. Since June is going to be a bit crazy for me, I'm getting a little bit of a head start....

There are a ton of sites that focus on grammar. Many of them are mind-numbing lists of exercises and are almost as bad as the useless grammar worksheets that many textbook publishers put out.

Today I'd like to highlight two sites that I think are the best, especially for beginner English Language Learners. They stand-out for both providing text with audio support, and also provide a variety of different activities. My high school students here in Sacramento, California, seem to like them, too.

One is Grammarman Comics, which teaches grammar through the use of attractive online.........comics.

The other is Grammar Gold, which provides a series of fun exercises that teach and provide opportunities to practice English grammar.

For more grammar sites accessible to Beginner students, you can go to the Grammar section on my website's Beginner's page.

For grammar sites appropriate for Intermediate or Advanced English Language Learners, check-out the Intermediate Grammar category on my webpage.

I hope these are helpful links.


Larry Ferlazzo

PROJECT: Listening Sites

This is an e-mail written by Mary Hillis suggesting a project we could develop with our students. Read her e-mail and leave your comments.


Hi LwCers!Jen made a good point that many schools don't have the necessaryequipment to do activities with online listening sites. As this is often the case, I would like to propose two assignment ideas:

Extensive Listening Journal Students choose an appropriate listening site, then create a journal about their experience. For instance, they should write a short report detailing the name of the site, the date, the topic of the listening, a summary of the listening, a list of new vocab plus meanings, and a reaction to the listening. I've done the extensive listening journal before, then had students share their reports with others, discussing listening sources, etc. It was a good way to encourage students to listen to materials of their choice outside of class.

Oral Presentation on an online listening site. Students choose an appropriate listening site, analyze it, and give an oral presentation on their findings. Analysis of a listening site can be based on criteria such as interest, difficulty level, visual appeal of the site, available exercises, links provided, etc. (In this way,evaluating a listening site is kind of like writing a movie review,which many students are already familiar with.) Another plus-- after finishing this assignment, you'll have a clear idea about which types of listening sites are useful and interesting for your students!!

Sorry for the long post! I'm looking forward to hearing other members' ideas on how to use these fabulous listening resources we've found!!

Hugs,
MaryH

LWC YACK PACK group

Would you like to join our Yack Pack group?

With Yack Pack, Learning with Computer members will be able to have synchronous meetings and also leave each other written or voice messages. We know there are other tools that offer the same thing but this time we´re trying Yack Pack. If you´d like to join us, post a message in the Yahoo LWC community and we´ll send you an invitation. Hope you can join us.

TEACHING LISTENING

We´ve barely started the topic and we already have a long list of suggested sites in our WIKI. Wow, it´s sure overwhelming! We´ll try to organize a list of special features from some of the sites in order to guide us through this discovery.

Let´s start with ELLO, my favourite. It offers interesting activities I haven´t found anywhere else, for instance:

• Interviews : The interviews integrate image which is known to help understanding.
  
• Mixer: Six different people talk about the same topic. It also offers comprehension questions at the end.
  
• News game: A news programme in cartoons.Great for beginner levels!
  

Free online EFL listening exercises has other interesting features:

• Beginners Dictations
  
• Video Dictations ( elementary to intermediate)
  
• TV commercials (ads from the 60s/ intermediate level)
  
• Movie trailers + dictation (advanced level)
  

Manythings.org is also interesting.

• Listen and read along (interesting lay-out)


• English Listening room (cloze exercises)
  

Breaking News English

• lesson plans for current events . (Fantastic!)
  

Literacynet.org

• news stories (advanced level)
  

Wordchamp

• Verb DRILLS


• Picture FLASHCARDS (picture + sound)
  

Lingual.net

• Learning English through MOVIES (check out the tri-view method clicking the "How to use button")

Anglesonline.org (wonderful template) (beginnners/ intermediate)

• lessons, movie trailers and music clips with activities.

Carla Arena´s del.icio.us page for listening activities.

Let´s leave our impressions in the comments area.

Larry Ferlazzo´s blog is amazing. These are some of the sites I selected from his suggestions.
LISTENING DICTATION (movie sounds and clips) (really good!)
Listening to different speakers This is from Tokyo International University and has faculty members talking about themselves, followed by questions that need to be answered by students.(very good!)
ESL VIDEOS is incredible. Not only does it offer video with quizzes at various levels but also offers us the opportunity to create quizzes for videos of our choice.

One Thing You've Learned from LwC

This week as we "Look Back, Look Around, and Look Ahead", let's reflect on what we've learned over the past month and throughout our experiences at Learning with Computers. How have the tasks, discussions, and fellow members impacted your teaching or other areas of your life? Please reply by posting at least ONE thing you've learned from the group!

FEEDblitz email subscription added!

Elizabeth picked the idea from one of Gladys' posts. I saw it in her blog (Virtual=Real: FEEDblitz email subscription added!) and decided to add e-mail subscription to this blog and my own. Now you can enter your e-mail address and be notified every time a new post is added. You can also open an account with FEEDblitz and add as many subscriptions as you like, by simply entering the URLs of all the blogs you would like to get an update from.
So have a look at the sidebar and subscribe to Learning with Computers blog NOW!

Adding multimedia content to your blog

• Now that you have created your blogs, you will want to explore different tools to make them more attractive. You've seen some webtools that allow you to create slideshows. Some other sites provide videos that you can post in your blogs. Let me introduce now a couple of websites where you can create voice posts.
  
  powered by ODEO

While Odeo provides a choice of some different players, this other tool, Podomatic, gives you a link to your recording.

Both tools are free and easy to use. So why not trying them?
http://odeo.com/
http://www.podomatic.com/

Blogging safely

Why are netiquette and security important issues for teachers dealing with blogs? How can they be dealt with?
Students should be warned against using offensive language or content and should become familiar with basic netiquette rules. They should be aware about cultural differences. Anonymous posting should be banned. On the other hand they should be aware that anonymity is not absolute on the web and that they may be held responsible for whatever they write.
These are some of the things teachers can do to keep their blogging environment safe:
Set yourself as blog administrator for your students' blogs. This way you can edit or delete offensive content.
Enable comment moderation in the class blog and encourage your students to do the same in their own blogs.
Set up a "comment notification address" to be sent comments by mail as soon as they are posted. (Comments tab)
Set up a BlogSend Address (E-mail tab) to be notified when someone writes a post in your class blog.
There must be other tips more experienced bloggers can suggest.

by Claudia

Are blogs similar to portfolios?

Why can a portfolio be compared to a blog?
A student's work can not only be collected, edited and assessed in a blog (the same as in a student's portfolio), but it can be instantly published.
The blog develops reflectivity in learners through peer- viewing because peers' comments and criticism can foster students' revision of their own work.
by Claudia

The Blog Audience

Can you explain why the article refers to the blog audience as anticipated, expected, multicultural and responsive?
Someone who writes a blog is conscious of his/her target audience and not only presumes his/her writing might be read, but expects it to be. This presumption affects the blogger's writing style.
Blog writers are at the same time blog readers. This duality pushes them to write comments to other people's blogs.
by Claudia

The Filter Style Blog vs The Journal Style Blog

Comparing the filter style blog to the journal style blog
A filter style blog is based on creating links with interesting websites and other blogs, thus building a network of multiple voices and perspectives.
A "journal style blog" is motivated by a need of self-_expression.
by Claudia

The pros and cons of blogs by Illya

The Pros...
- blogs offer real reading material from real writers, thus reflecting the language actually used
- blogs reflect current topics and there will certainly be a blog for every interest group
- Ts and Ss can negotiate choice of blogs to read for discussion, written work, etc
- Blogs can offer access to the culture(s) of the countries where the language is spoken
- Writing for a real readership may motivate learners to edit and rewrite their work, thus improving their writing skills
- Some learners may find the technical aspect motivating and inspiring

The Cons...
- The level of writing is often not a good model for language learners to read
- Reading on a screen while scrolling does not help to develop some of the reading skills
- Texts are not graded to readers’ levels
- May be difficult to filter out useful material from the huge bank of blogs
- Some learners may feel intimidated when writing for a public readership
- Most blog-types cannot be corrected by teacher, thus bad writing habits may be developed
- Without broadband, viewing or publishing blogs may be extremely time-consuming
- Technological aspect may frighten some learners


Take you time to share your comments and reasons to support your views on this topic

Silvana

What is a blog? by Illya

What is a blog?

“… a blog is a dynamic place which is updated regularly (hopefully) and with ease, it is organized chronologically, and its moderation access rights allow multiple authors”

Moving on to Week 2:

What was your choice?

After reading the article called Blog-assisted Language Learning (BALL) at
www.teflweb-j.org/v3n1/blog_ward.pdf , which task have you chosen?

You could choose to do at least one of the following tasks:

1- Try to complete the following paragraph.

“… a blog is a dynamic place which is updated ………………………, which is organized ……………………….. and its ………………………….. access rights allow …………………….. authors”

2- Compare a “Send to all email”,a discussion board, a website and a blog as regards audience, voice and content
a-Explain the difference between the filter style blog and the journal style blog
b-Explain why the article refers to the blog audience as anticipated, expected, multicultural and responsive?
c-Compare a portfolio to a blog
d-Explain why the blog develops reflectivity in learners through peer- viewing

3- Make a chart with the pros and cons of blogs for the development of reading and writing skills

4- Explain why netiquette and security are important issues for teachers dealing with blogs


Feel free to share the results of your reading here.

Silvana

Ready for week 2? Let's continue with our trip

Week 2:
Task 1:
Just a quick review to start the next step of our blogging journey
Considering some of the reasons for using blogs in ELT given by the article you have read by Stanley, I would like to ask those of you who have had a try at creating your own blogs to share with us the purpose you had in mind when doing so by writing a comment in our blog at:
http://learning-with-computers.blogspot.com/
I also want you to post the blog address to the group so that we can visit it and see how it fits your goals.
If you have not created your own blog yet, start by taking a tour through those already created and see if you can dicover both the purpose and target audience of the creator.

Hope to read your comments soon

Silvana