Please take the time to watch the clip on this site. It will be worth your time and hopefully it will inspire you to try some of the ideas in your classroom.
Click here to watch the clip.
Here is some inspiration and some tips on how to get more oracy into your lessons - which greatly benefits all students, not only EAL/D students.
Please take the time to watch the clip on this site. It will be worth your time and hopefully it will inspire you to try some of the ideas in your classroom. Click here to watch the clip. Many EAL/D students rely on visual cues to help them get by and it is very easy to think that a student understands when it may just be the case that they are relying on the body language and visual cues from those around them to get by.
One type of activity that will really help to build receptive language skills, listening skills and aural comprehension skills is to listen to authentic speech and to answer a range of comprehension questions based on that speech. I am often looking for good, authentic recorded conversations that will help my students build these skills. One website I have come across is 'Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab'. These conversations are a mix of easy, beginner conversations with topics suitable for primary school students - to more complex conversations with topics suitable for High School students. Sadly, they aren't sorted in that order so it can take a while to listen to a few to see if the conversation is right for your student. Each activity has a pre-listening exercise, the listening exercise, a related grammar activity, a post-listening exercise and an Online Investigations area - should you wish to take the language further. I usually just do the pre-listening, listening, grammar and sometimes the post-listening activity. If you are looking for good authentic conversations on a range of topics then this site is worth a look. Public speaking can present a real challenge to many EAL/D students.
Beginning English students often don't have enough language to fully participate and students with developing English skills often lack the technical vocabulary needed to write a good quality speech. There are also those students (old Phase 2 and 3 students) who find it difficult to be succinct and end up circumventing the topic (talking around the topic rather than getting to the point). As an EAL/D teacher it is often my job to help a student prepare for public speaking, usually this ends up being an assessable task. In order to make my EAL/D students feel comfortable with public speaking I attempt to warm up with a few 'no pressure' public speaking games. One game I played this afternoon involved writing different nouns on a pieces of paper (words I know the student knows well) and placing them into a bag. The student then takes a piece of paper out of the bag and reads the word. They get one minute thinking time and then I put the timer on for one minute and they have to stand up and tell the group everything they know about that topic. For example a student might pull out the word 'ice cream'. They then think for one minute and tell us everything they know about ice cream: "It is cold, it melts on hot days. It comes in lots of different flavours. I like chocolate ice cream. It is made from milk. You can buy it at the supermarket". When the timer goes off it is the next persons turn. As they become comfortable and confident with this activity I begin to add some rules. 1 point for speaking clearly, 2 points for making good eye contact, 3 points for talking without stopping and -1 point for saying 'ummm'. As the students become familiar with this activity we do it as a warm up before writing speeches, practising speeches and delivering speeches. They seem to enjoy this activity. It is fast paced and the range of topics is fun. My students love this activity. I usually do it at the beginning of a unit based around descriptions and narratives.
Students are broken into pairs. Each student is given two pieces of paper. On the first piece of paper each student draws a monster (without their partner seeing). Once both monsters have been drawn they continue to hide their monster from their partner - however one person in the pair now becomes the describer and the other becomes the drawer. Person A will describe their monster to person B (without showing person B the monster). Person B must listen and draw what they hear - but they do not show person A what they are drawing. Once person A has finished describing their monster in as much detail as possible then person B has a turn to describe their monster. Person A draws (without showing person B) exactly what person B is describing. When both people have finished describing and drawing their respective monsters then the original monsters get compared to the ones drawn from the descriptions. Students, with the teacher, discuss why/why not the monsters look like the original. Students pin point ways they could have better described how their monster looked. They compliment each other on parts that were described/drawn similar and say how they would describe their monster differently next time. I find this activity is useful as it helps the students focus on the importance of accurately describing something in detail - and it allows students to understand that when something isn't described in detail that the person listening to the description might paint a different picture in their mind to the actual thing. This is especially important when writing a character description. Often students picture the character in their mind - and in great detail - but when they come to writing about the character they fail to mention important things about the character. I hope this activity makes students realise that the more detail that is given to the listener/reader, that the more the listener/reader's image of the character will be like their own. As part of my Bachelor of Education I was able to study a large amount of drama. I firstly did a four semester subject called Children's Theatre and the Creative Arts and I also took Drama in Education. Prior to attending University I had not studied drama at all and so I learned a lot from both of these subjects.
One thing I came to understand as I moved into the role of EAL/D teaching is that drama can be a very powerful tool when it comes to understanding a text and as a motivator for reluctant writers (who often are writing a response to a text they haven't actually understood - hence the reluctance). I thought I would outline a few of my favourite drama activities. There are so many wonderful activities that can be used but here are a few I enjoy. Reader's Theatre: I like to initially create the scripts from the text that the students have written and have them read through it on their own first, then listen to me read it and use their imagination to imagine the characters and then have them read their parts. I always let them use actions, although not all reader's theatre calls for actions and I encourage them to use different voices. As they get used to this activity then I allow them to create their own scripts. A very successful 'student written' script I have seen was from my mixed ESL/LA year 5 writing group two years ago. We had read a very dry and boring text on the Eureka Stockade and I couldn't get the students to fully understand what had happened during the stockade, so I began to have them act little pieces out. Then I had the idea that we should write a script. I broke the group up into three and each part took a different event from the text and wrote parts. We practiced it and then made a few basic props and then we went outside and acted it out - we then filmed it on the Ipad and showed the rest of their classs. The students then went on to write a letter as a miner from the stockade and they each demonstrated a greater understanding of the event than I could have hoped for. Character in Role: This activity is especially useful if you are looking at biographies, narratives and recounts. After reading about a person or a character assign one student to be a character or the person from the narrative. They come out the front and sit in the chair and then they are introduced to the class as though they are that character. They can talk to the class about themselves and then the class gets to ask questions of the character. This is a great way to gauge understanding of the main themes, events or thoughts and feelings related to an event. Living Scultpures: Students are put in pairs and they assume different roles. One person becomse the sculpter and the other person becomes the clay. The students get a character or a scene - or a character and a scene and the sculpter's job is to silently move the person's body to portray the way that character is feeling, an event from the text or the scene. Students who are sculpters then move around the room and check out the sculptures and guess what character or scene they are portraying. Another way to do this is to take photos of the statues and then later on the students write a blurb to go with the photo explaining who the character in the sculpture is and why they are modelled that way. Still life pictures: The students are in small groups for this activity. Students are given a chapter or scene from a novel, or from a part of a biography or from a film. Students have to come up with three still pictures (with no sounds) that portray what happens before, during and after the scene. Once students have worked out their parts and where they will position themselves each group is called up to present their still life picture. The class are asked to close their eyes while the group get in their first still life. They open their eyes and look but do not talk. Then they close their eyes while the group move into their second picture and then open them again to look and do the same for the third picture. Each group's actions are then discussed by the class. Tapping In: This activity is similar to the still life pictures activity. It can be used as an add-on to extend the use of vocabulary. In this activity when the students are frozen in their spots the teacher will randomly tap a child on the shoulder and that child gets to speak as the character. The teacher might ask "What is going on?" or "What are you doing?" or "How are you feeling right now?" and the student will respond as the character, using what is going on in the scene. For example if the still life is of a bully taking a ball from a small child and the teacher taps the small child the teacher might ask "How are you feeling?" and the student playing the small child might say something like "I'm feeling scared. I don't want him to take my ball!" and then the teacher might tap the bully and ask "What's going on?" and the bully will reply. I hope you find these activities useful. I don't want to overwhelm people with too much reading at once so I thought just a few activities to start with. Each of the above activities helps to bring the text to life, giving it a physical appearance which will help with a clearer understanding of events, thoughts or feelings of characters and can also be used as a basis for future writing. I hope you find them useful. : Students Every Thursday afternoon I work with a very enthusiastic and creative year 2 teacher. She has some amazing ideas for building vocabulary orally, prior to writing. I am learning a lot from her. She only has one EAL/D student in her class, however the strategy she uses to build vocabulary orally prior to writing is showing dramatic improvements for all students.
The aim of our Thursday afternoon lesson is simply to build vocabulary related to a topic, story, science theme etc. Each Thursday we do something different to stimulate the language. One week we did a role play, another week we watched a short video on Youtube, another week we looked at photos from a science lesson the students had participated in, another week we had a variety of books displayed for the children to look at. Once we have completed the first part of the lesson, the students then have to think of one word that stood out (from either the role play, video, pictures, previous lesson, books etc). The teacher writes the one word onto a strip of paper and the students stand up and hold up their words. As each word is held up they say the word out aloud to the rest of the class. Each student must choose a word that hasn't already been said. The end result of this part of the lesson is a group of words related to the stimulus. These words are then used in different ways. They can be used simply to discuss the word as a group, as a basis for a writing task, to create a Wordle, or to create phrases that go with the stimulus. These can then lead to writing a science report, a narrative, a recount etc. An example of how well this works came from only just last week. During the previous week's lesson the class were split into two. I took half the class outside and we performed a Readers Theatre play of a bible story. The rest of the class stayed in the room and watched the same bible story on the SMART board. When we had finished the teacher took her group outside to do the Readers Theatre and I took my group inside to watch the video. This way the students were exposed to the story twice. The students all came back together as a class and the teacher and I went around the room asking students for one word that stood out. Each student had their word written onto a strip of paper, which they then stood up and read aloud to the class. Once the word had been used it couldn't be used again. That is all I saw.... The following Thursday (last Thursday) I came back into the room and the teacher demonstrated with the students what had happened next in the lesson sequence. Using the single words from the initial lesson the students then came up with a phrase from the story. As each person thought of a phrase it was written onto another strip of paper. Each child held up their paper and read it aloud. Then the phrases were sequenced in order and read aloud again. The following day the students then wrote a recount of the bible story. I was amazed at the amount of detail and understanding the students displayed in their writing. Even those students who would usually struggle to think of something had written pages. All of the students had at least two pages of detailed writing. A variety of ability of students (including my EAL/D student) read aloud their finished recounts and they were so proud as they read. You could see they felt a great sense of achivement. I was very impressed. It just goes to show that if you spend the time building the language prior to writing that it will pay off and the level of effort the students put in will improve. I hope to learn more from this inspirational teacher and share it with you all! This is another fantastic idea that I learned at a PETAA course with Margery Hertzberg. It also features in her book 'Teaching English Language Learners in Mainstream Classes'. It is a wonderful book full of very useful ideas for teaching EAL/D students in the mainstream class. What I love about EAL/D teaching is that the skills and the strategies used are useful for all students - not only EAL/D students. They are activities that expand the vocabulary and the understanding of all students and should be used as such. Communicative Crosswords are not your ordinary type of crossword. They require two people to complete the crossword. Each person is given the same crossword puzzle but with only half of the answers (e.g. one person has the down words and the other has the across). The students must not show their sheet to the other person. Taking turns they need to think of a way to describe the answer to their partner without using the word. Their partner can see how many letters the word has on their own sheet. For example: In a communicative crossword about Transport one person might have a list of words such as 'ship, truck, car, plane, taxi'. The other person might have a list of words on their crossword such as 'canoe, bus, train, cruise ship'. The person with 'ship' might go first. They describe a ship to their partner: "It's a type transport that goes on the sea but it is bigger than a sailing boat. It is used to transport heavy goods. You can see them bringing things into the harbour. They are really big." The other person (hopefully) would guess 'ship' using the letter clues from the words already on their sheet and the number of letters. Then that person would describe one of their words and it would go back and forth until the crossword was complete. This activity could be differentiated for students with limited language skills to include the clue to say to their partner. The ultimate goal is that they build the confidence and language needed to explain the clue independently - but until then I find with some students, especially those who lack confidence, it is easier to give them the clues to say and then 'ween' them off. Here is an example of what a communicative crossword might look like: There are many crossword puzzle makers online. I tend to use the Discovery Puzzle Maker Criss Cross Puzzle.
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Mrs McNamaraI am an EAL/D teacher currently teaching in a primary school within the Newcastle area of NSW, Australia. Categories
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