May 2, 2016

Week 2

Shopping

GOOGLE HELP

Thinking about starting a wiki, a digital portfolio, a digital filing cabinet, a blog, or website for your class? The Free Technology for Teachers website can get you started with 5 Ideas for Using Google Sites in your Classroom: Google Sites 

Our NYPL Tech Connect division offers plenty of classes in using Google. I attended this one on creating your own Google Site at St. George: Tech Connect: Create Your Own Google Site. It was fantastic and it's given me a lot of great ideas for interacting with students beyond the classroom.  Have a look around Tech Connect's portion of the website for other sessions you might want to attend. 

Here's a sneak peek of my site in progress. It needs a ton of work, of course, but I managed to get all of this done at the Tech Connect session. SI ALC Book Club  
-Elizabeth


TEACHING RESOURCES

Pardon the pun, but there are a wealth of resources on our Money Wiki. The units covering shopping from Ventures are even there in PDF form for you to print out. Take a few minutes and look around!

We like the Voice of America Learning English website. Here is a nice video piece on making too many returns in stores: Too Many Returns on Amazon.

 VENTURES RESOURCES 

Ventures has some projects on shopping that look like fun here: Ventures Shopping Projects and a whole bunch of Add Ventures activities here: Add Ventures Shopping

MOBILE APPS

Thinking about using mobile apps in your classroom but don't know where to start? Even if you already use mobile apps, check out this webpage full of resources: Mobile Apps for Education. Put together by Christine Bauer-Ramazani, it's an excellent reference point. For example, maybe you want to use a mobile app to teach speaking- there's a nice list of apps you can try out. 

TESOL 2016

Our colleague, David Fobair (davidfobair@nypl.org), also attended the conference. Here is his contribution:

Something that I can share from the Baltimore TESOL was this awesome workshop entitled: Building Bridges to Higher Learner: Metacognitive Skills for Low-Levels by Sarah Lynn.  I'm attaching the handout here.  It was a number of practical and useful stategies or systems that can be implemented in the classroom.  The are straight forward and easy to do and understand.  Even thought the titles says Low-levels, I think the activities can be easily adapted for other levels.  I plan on using a few of them with my NRS 3,4, and 5 level ss.  My particular favorites - Pictures and A Contract, Using a Class Agenda (how and why), and Ticket to Leave.  There are others, but I plan on using these 3 beginning next week.  

I'd be happy to provide additional information if there are any question on the attached handout: Building Bridges to Higher Learning 

TESOL 2016 - RECORDED SESSIONS

Would you like to watch some sessions from the convention? TESOL has provided some here: TESOL 2016 Recorded Sessions

PRESENT AT THE 2017 TESOL CONVENTION

The 2017 TESOL convention will be held in Seattle, Washington on March 21-24, 2017. It's already time to start submitting proposals. Learn more here: TESOL 2017 Proposal Guidelines

SPRING CLEANING

We don't know about you, but we have the urge to purge. Here's a quick little article for teachers about what to throw away and what to keep: Declutter Your Classroom

WEBINAR OF THE WEEK:
Getting Them to Talk in English (When they Don't Want To)- Penny Ur

Getting learners to talk in English is one of the most difficult challenges facing the teacher. One of the major reasons for this is that speaking – unlike listening, reading and writing – can only normally take place directly in interaction with an audience, in real time: so if you express yourself badly, hesitate, make mistakes – such failings are immediately exposed to the listener(s). Many learners feel uncomfortable and stressed in such a situation, even within a supportive classroom, and often prefer to keep quiet or use their mother tongue.

In this webinar, Penny Ur, author of Discussions and More (http://ow.ly/HL4Hh), discusses these problems and suggests some practical ideas as to how we might get such reluctant students to speak in English and feel good about doing so.

PRESENTATION OPPORTUNITY

Proposals from ESOL educators and program administrators sought for the second annual

Meeting Challenges, Exploring Solutions in the Adult ESOL Classroom

This full-day conference, co-sponsored by The New School and the Literacy Assistance Center, will take place at The New School, 66 West 12th Street, New York City on Saturday, October 15^th.

We invite you to submit proposals for presentations, workshops and panel discussions of 45 or 90 minutes duration. Poster session proposals are also welcomed. Computers and projectors will be available.

To submit a proposal please click here:or paste this link into your browser http://goo.gl/forms/JOsSDIXMf6

Submission Deadline is June 10^th, 2016 at 5 pm.

For further information contact:

Lesley Painter-Farrell painterl@newschool.edu

Judy Trupin judyt@lacnyc.org

SHOW US THE LOVE!

One of the only ways we can know if you like what we are doing is if you make a comment on our blog page. Like our blog? Are there topics you would like us to add? Please comment! 

Would you like to contribute something? A link, teaching tip, other? Any time!

Thank you, we really appreciate your feedback!

Have a great week!
Elizabeth & Elke