Lesson/Review 1

Website review:

The websites I might use for next week's activities are Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab and Starfall. Randall's ESL website has many activities that help adult learners when they are first coming across the language and to understand and become more familiar with English as their new language. It helps learners with listening comprehension and discrimination as well as with producing oral language/conversation starters/skills. The activities are very simple and straight to the point and are able to be used in their daily lives. Starfall can help me with early learners such as those I will have next August in school (Yay! I got a position as an elementary English teacher, first grade). This website will help me re-inforce what the children learned in kindergarden (reading and phonics) as well as teach them how to read stories by themselves.

Randall's ESL site is a little complicated for students to use at first because it lacks a little more organization and because of ads in the page. Starfall seems pretty easy for students to use with the help of the teacher or the adult since children nowadays are pretty technological.

Lesson/Blog Review:

The Lesson I chose to review was EL and English Teaching. I found Bill Hozza's activity to be very technological and a switch from the traditional introductions produced in traditional classrooms.  I have never used VoiceThread and I think the way he incorporated an oral and visual introduction of himself and his family was really fun and different. Whenever I start a new class with my "adult" students I always introduce myself, talk a little bit about my background, and relate to them via a power ppint presentation. I really do not use pictures of myself or what I talk about so his activity makes me want to change this. After I introduce myself I ask my students to introduce themselves to the class. The ones who are a little more fluent do this orally, and the ones who are less fluent write their introductions on a piece of paper with the help of the more advanced students and then they give their oral introduction.

The idea of doing the activities the way Mr. Hozza does it gives the students a little bit more time to prepare themselves and gather the necessary materials to do the activity, which is what we, as language teachers, want from our students; to be producing language since they arrive in the classroom.

I see a complication with the format of the activity. Not all colleges or language institutes provide students with digital cameras to do or complete the assignment. As Mr. Hozza said, some students might not feel comfortable showing pictures of their family members, especially putting them up on the interner (I am one of them), so this can be a downside of the activity. But aside from that I think the point is good and the activity is achievable. I found it interesting, although creating a VoiceThread might also be a challenge for beginning students.