VoiceThread Minimal Pairs

VoiceThread allows slideshows, pictures and video to be uploaded, narrrated and commented on by other users. It is a wonderful way to publish student's work or provide additional support and lessons in a colloborative and interactive environment. See full VoiceThread post for more information.

I chose to create a minimal pair slideshow focusing on the pronunciation differences between 'short i' as in lip and 'long e' as in leave. The exercise allows users to listen to the pronunciation of various words and record their own pronunciation as many times as they like. Please feel free to check out my minimal pair exercise and add your comments.

PBL Checklist

PBL Checklists- provides teachers with the ability to generate custom made, age-appropriate checklists for a variety of project based learning tasks such as written reports, multimedia projects and oral presentations. Students can use these checklists in self and peer evaluations to become more antonymous learners as they take responsibility for their work.

The site offers a ThinkTank activity that helps students narrow down and brainstorm topics; it also offers teachers the ability to use QuizStar to generate quizzes and WebPoster Wizards to create online worksheets. You must register for a free account.

Using PBL Checklist I created a checklist for a paragraph writing assignment.

Quizlet

Quizlet is a flashcard and educational online gaming site that allows you to create your own flashcards or use the wealth of flashcards already available. If you want to create a set of flashcards you must register for a free account.

The site has several functions and once you have created a set of flashcards or chosen to use one of the many already on the site, you can get familiar with the vocabulary, learn/study,  play two online games and take a test.

The familiarize section allows you to review the vocabulary "flashcard style" by sliding through the flashcards; you can choose to see the word and definition at the same time or only the definition or only the word. This is a wonderful way to learn the word or see how many you already now.

The learning/studying section gives you either the definition or word and prompts you to type in the correct response. Quizlet keeps track of your responses so you know what word(s) still need some work.

Games:

Space Race a variation on matching that has the student type in the correct word as the definition scrolls across the screen; the player must type the word in quickly before the definition disappears off the screen. A great game for quick recognition, but the player must also have quick typing skills (another electronic literacy skill that can be simultaneously worked on).

Scatter an online matching game were the definitions and words are randomly scattered across the screen and the user must drag and drop the matching word and definition together. Once the correct definition and word are placed together they disappear. This is a timed game to help with quick recall and recognition.  

Finally, the test section will generate a 10 question quiz from the flashcard set. The questions range from short answer, multiple choice and true/false; each time the test button is selected a new test is generated allowing students to take multiple tests.

Check out the environmental flashcards I created using Quizlet.

Rubrics

Why use a rubric?

Rubrics provide students with the expectations of a project and enable teachers to give an objective assessment of student performance. See the website CARL- Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition for a wonderful review of the rationale of rubrics.

RubiStar-a site to help teachers build quality rubrics; you can customize the rubrics to fit your project dimensions and required elements. Rubric starters are available on a variety of topics: oral projects, multimedia, math, writing, reading, art, science, music, and work skills. RubiStar requires you to set up a free account to use the site. Check out the rubric I created for a poster project for a unit on environmental issues.

Word in my Head

Word in my head! (Use this activity as a writing prompt)

       
What is the first word you thought of as you watched this video?

• Think about why you thought about that word? 
• Now turn that reason into a paragraph explaining why you chose that word.
• Post your paragraph in the comment box and make sure to write your word at the top.

PowerPoint Lesson

PowerPoint (PPT) can be used by teachers to create lessons or guide their lectures (with handouts for note taking by students). Additionally, students can use teacher-created PPT lessons to review concepts and content at their own pace and leisure; furthermore, PPT can be used by students to create a multimedia slideshow and presentation of what they have learned.

Students and teachers can add narration to any slideshow and open it up for viewing and comments by using VoiceThread; yes, another plug for VoiceThread because it is a wonderful tool that provides many ways for interaction.

I created a PPT slideshow about writing using discourse markers (transitions) and avoiding run-on sentences and comma splices. Check it out. Also, check out the additional worksheet to accompany this PPT lesson. 

Collaborative Web Site Review

The collaborative web site review was an interesting assignment and a new take on group projects for me because all the meetings, collaboration and comments took place solely on the computer using both asynchronous and synchronous communication. Google docs and Skype served as our means of synchronous communication as each partner uploaded their section and made comments on other participants sections. The use of Skype was a wonderful means to narrow down the topics, assign tasks and clarify miscommunication; whereas, Google docs allowed us to share our comments and also clarifying information using the instant chat feature. We then used email to finalize and confirm the final project for submission.  Below is a brief description of the process and a link to the complete evaluation.

Three websites, Voice of America’s Special English (VOA), ESLvideo, and English Listening Lesson Lab Online (ELLLO) were evaluated for their appropriateness for CALL-based classroom language instruction. The following reviews are based on the Evaluating Web Resource Checklist from Alberta Libraries, which provides basic, but core guidance for choosing the right websites for both English learning and teaching. The criterion for evaluation includes six categories: authority, scope, currency, purpose, accuracy, and usability. The reviews also explore the extent to which the contents of the three websites apply TESOL pedagogy and are useful for ESL classroom activities. Click to view the complete web site evaluation.

Picture Poem

Create a haiku poem about this picture and post your poem in the comment box.

A haiku poem is a three line poem where the first line has five syllables, the second line has seven syllables and the final line has five syllables.

Check out my example:

Oh, so cold and white

Icy chills my heart does ache

For rays, sunshine, Spring.

After you have created your poem, check out these different types of  poems at 25 Types of Poetry. Choose a type of poem and any picture then let your imagination go wild.

Also, visit VoiceThread.com to see Mrs. Matteson's wonderful class project that combines poems, art, speaking and multimedia presentations.

Describe It (Writing practice-Adjective practive)

Can you choose one adjective (a describing word) to describe something about this video. Think about what you saw, what you might hear, or smell and then choose a word. After you have your word/adjective, use that adjective in a sentence to describe the video; post your sentence in the comment box.

Writing Websites

Ms. Sanchez' Class is a wonderful site with many downloadable graphic organizers. Ms. Sanchez' Class also has a Teacher’s Corner with an abundance of resources from teacher ideas and thematic units to website links with printable worksheets and much, much more.

The wonderful thing about this website’s graphic organizers is they are downloadable and ready to use. There is a wide selection from KWL charts to Venn Diagrams. Also, in the Download Café you can find language art’s posters dealing with many elements of writing from similes and metaphors to transitional phrases.

WritingDEN's Tips-O-Matic is a site with quick-tip guides to help students quickly review the mechanics of writing from grammar tips to paragraph formation. There are three categories to choose from: sentences (punctuation, verbs, commonly confused words); paragraphs (parts of a paragraph, pre-writing, and types of paragraphs with a list of words typically found within each discourse); and essays (which follow the same set-up as paragraphs). Use Tips-o-Matic for a quick review of grammar points or questions about writing paragraphs.

Tips-O-Matic is part of a larger writing website called WritingDEN’s, which offers a word of the day, teacher's guide with rationale and suggested activities and a variety of picture slideshows with audio on numerous topics in history, science, nature and lifestyle.

ESOL Essayist is a site that offers hands on tutorials for writing a five paragraph essay. It has a library section that addresses writing cohesion, grammar and punctuation. There are peer reviews and mini test exercises as well as a Teacher Resources link with handouts and ways to scaffold.

Grammar Blog- is a blog created by Jane Straus that provides helpful rules and answers to grammar questions; with a link to Grammarbook.com where you can access examples, fun quizzes and grammar videos.

All of these sites offer great resources for students to improve their writing skills and expand their vocabulary. 

VOA Learning English

VOA Learning English website offers students the experience of hearing English being used in authentic purposes while being exposed to American culture and world stories. Due to the nature of exposure to American culture, there seems to be a bit of an assumption placed on having as least a little bit of background knowledge about American culture; some of the articles focus on well-know American figures. However, the sire offers a safe, fun way for students to dip their feet into American culture. In addition, the structure of the site offers a wonderful scaffolding technique by giving students the opportunity to listen to speech as they follow along with the text in written form. The text and speech approach is a wonderful way to build vocabulary using reading and authentic exposure to words in context. The features of this site make use of more scaffolding by using a slower pace of speech and clear concise words from a core vocabulary of 1,500, which can aid students in comprehension and vocabulary. On the other hand, the slower pace may cause confusion in regards to some language features such as intonation and rhythm.

In addition to offering audio broadcasts, a link called “The Classroom” has a wealth of online actives for students to use and practice their reading, listening and comprehension skills; some additional activities are arranged by topics from tenses to parts of speech and grammar. Another interesting feature is the use of selected articles, where target vocabulary words are bolded and online exercises are available that focus on these words and ask the user to watch video clips and match the words and definition. Other activities focus on providing pictures and asking comprehension questions and questions about the main idea. A wonderful exercise titled “Expand Your English” makes use of critical thinking by posing questions that ask for opinions and reasoning.  

Furthermore, "The Classroom" link offers interactive learning through the use of several wordbooks (a.k.a dictionaries): health, business, general wordbook and idiom wordbook. Each entry comes complete with the definition, pronunciation of both the word and a sentence that uses the word in context along with a picture. Take a look at this entry in the health wordbook for the word 'germ.'




To my CALL classmates

Hello Classmates,


I have just added a new feature to my blog called audio dropbox; this feature should allow you to use a microphone and record a short audio comment for me to hear. I am curious if this is functional, so I would love any feedback via the audio dropbox if you have a moment. You can find the audio dropbox on the lower left hand side of my blog pages.


Thanks

VoiceThread

Voicethread.com is a site that allows you to create a VoiceThread, so what is a VoiceThread? A VoiceThread is a multimedia slideshow production that allows collaboration and comments to be posted to any slide. Someone can leave a comment on a VoiceThread using five methods: a microphone, cell phone, web cam, mp3 or by typing in a comment. You can upload a slide show and narrate it and share with others.

This site offers a wonderful way for teachers to display student projects. In addition, students can expand their projects into presentations by recording a narration for any picture, project, poster or writing assignment; then each VoiceThread can be open for collaboration and sharing. Check out this innovative way a teacher expanded a haiku poem project into a full blow multimedia affair.

Word Newsletter

Microsoft Word, I have used it a thousand times to write papers, but this week in my CALL course we were asked to create a Newsletter using many of the Word features we have been discussing (i.e. callouts, text effects, text boxes with background colors and a whole lot more). A wonderful activity for students to incorporate language learning with electronic literacy skills (not to mention content because the newsletter could be about anything they are studying in their science class, social studies or whatever!). Also, it’s another way students can collaborate with each other to create a newsletter together. You could even incorporate the comment and track changes features in Word for peer-editing and then share on a class blog or web site. Check out my CALL Newsletter about blogging.

Sharkboy Sings Writing Activity

Sharkboy Sings (Use this activity to supplement learning about the discourse of dialogue)

• Have students turn off the speakers and watch the video clip.
• Tell them to imagine what the people are saying or singing.
• Have them use the dialogue discourse with quotes to write a short skit.
• Have them post their skit in the comment box in a class blog or upload it to a class wiki for review. Afterwards they can listen to the video with audio and see what Sharkboy is singing about.

 Try it out yourself: post in the comment box a few sentences of dialogue.

Listening and Writing

Listen and Write is a web site that offers practice with listening and typing. It has leveled (1-28) video and audio clips from movie trailers to current news events. The exercises allow students to listen to texts or videos and type the words with immediate feedback. Some of the videos come from YouTube while a large portion of the audio texts come from voanews.com giving the teacher a great wealth of current and relevant events for further discussion and writing. There is also a function that allows you to upload your own recorded videos or narrated text (you must have the full transcript to upload as well).

Word Processing and CALL tasks

The word processor offers teachers a variety of ways to create interactive CALL tasks. A very common and useful feature of Microsoft Word is the add comments feature which allows someone to insert a comment within a Word document that can be saved, sent via email or posted on a site for the original author (i.e. student) to open and view suggestions and comments. The student then has the ability to incorporate these comments into his/her editing and redrafting process. In addition, a similar feature allows changes to be made and sent back and the original author has the ability to accept or reject these changes. The editing portion of the writing process is facilitated by the comments feature of Word. The comments can be generated by the teacher or by other students in peer-editing; the document can be sent via email or posted on a wiki or blog to be copied and pasted. Let’s look at a document that has comments added.

Interesting Online Vocabulary Games for ESL

ManyThings.org's Online Word Based Games for ESL students that offer three games: matching, speed games and jigsaw for practice in irregular verbs, homonyms, opposites, time words and cardinal words. In addition this site has a vocabulary section called English Vocabulary Word Lists with Games, Puzzles and Quizzes , which provides word lists and an online activities that use those words. Activities include hangman, scrambled words and matching.


vocabulary.co.il is another great site for enjoyable vocabulary games. The age for this site is K-5th grade and it has a variety of games from audio word matching to crossword puzzles. It includes topics such as the Dotch word list, sight words, suffixes and idioms. It also includes phonics games and some foreign language matching games.

Merriam Webster's Learner's Dictionary

Merriam-Webster's Learner's Dictionary
This online dictionary is geared toward ESL and EFL learners. It allows you to search a word and not only receive a definition, but also see multiple meanings and the use of the word in a variety of sentences; a recorded pronunciation; and a list of common idioms. The site also offers pronunciation practice with Perfect Pronunciation Exercises, a list of common words to know, a subscription to Word of the Day and the ability to create your own vocabulary flashcards with My Learners Dictionary (must set up a free account).

Ex. When asked to search the word 'cat', the site pulled up two definitions 1) a small animal related to lions and tigers and 2) old fashioned use: a man as in "you crazy cat". It gave 9 idiomatic expressions (i.e. "let the cat out of the bag"). It also provided a picture of several types of cats.

To my CALL classmates

Hello Classmates,

I have sent you an invite to my blog and once accepted you will have the ability to make posts that can include pictures and videos. Please feel free to make any relevant posts and add any video clips or photos.

Enjoy