Forecast: New types of Clouds

Word clouds have been around for some time already. I've seen them in all sorts of places. Just now I was introduced to Tagxedo (word cloud on the left). I compared Tagxedo with Wordle using the poem The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. I've used Wordle several times and it's great. But I think Tagxedo is going to make the top ten in my list of webtools. What is so great about Tagxedo is that you can make the wordcloud in any shape you want. This allows you to bring extra meaning to the image. It's really worth playing around with it! Have fun!

What is it used for?

This is a very simple idea using videos with VoiceThread. This activity is designed for a lower-intermediate group. It works with the structure It's used for (verb+ing). The students will work with household objects.

Visual Stimuli

          This week I was asked to write a lesson plan. Just like that. No context at all. It was an assignment for the methodology class I'm taking. I could choose the topic, the level, the students. There was no requirement other than being a lesson plan. I chose to plan a lesson about modals of deduction. Modal verbs is a topic that we have to work on over and over.
          For this lesson, I decided to use plenty of visual aid. First a video from cnn.com. The use of authentic material is important, and it is easy to find up-to-date videos. I also use a very nice tool that a friend of mine suggested to me some time ago and I'm finally using it. It is a Flickr gallery.
          As a warm-up the teacher starts with a slideshow presenting a news headline. It says "Airline grounds fleet, stranding thousands." This is a piece of news from cnn.com. Following the headline, students will watch a video in which passengers talk about the situation. The teacher asks the students to think about possible reasons for the situation. Students talk in pairs. After a few minutes the teacher asks for ideas for the whole group and write the most interesting ones on the board.

Modals

This is the video they will watch:

The teacher should choose one reason given by the students and ask: "Are you sure this is the reason for the airline problem?" The student will most likely say no and so the teacher will write a sentence using may, might or could. One possible sentence is The weather may be the problem. The teacher writes some more sentences making sure to use must for the ideas which the students are more certain about. The teacher then explain that must is used to say that you believe something is certain, and may, might, and could, to say that something is a possibility.

Teacher asks the students to work in pairs. They will have to write sentences about the pictures that the teacher will show. They have to use the modals to give possible explanations for the situations in the pictures. Each picture will be shown for around one minute. After students finish, they change pairs and compare their answers with the new partner. The teacher shows the images again and ask for the students' ideas for each picture.

Here are the pictures selected for the activity:

Modals, a gallery on Flickr

          I selected these pictures using a very nice feature of Flickr called add to a gallery. Flickr allows us to create picture galleries and this way we can select the images we want our students to see. It can be used in may different ways. Maybe you can suggest another one!

Voice Tools 1

Last week I had to think of a lesson plan using a voice tool. The topic I chose was culture shock. Part of the lesson plan was to include some kind of authentic material. As I looked for something to use as input I found some studies on cultural adjustment and very often they showed a curve like this:

That made me think about my own experience here in Ohio and also what my students, who are all from other countries, must be going through. I am surely going through these stages, although it feels more like a roller-coaster. There is much involved in the process and how you deal with the opportunities you have can speed up the whole thing. In this sense, what is better than hearing from other peole who's been going through the same things? The activity I proposed asks the students to give tips on how to make the whole cultural adaptation easier. For that they had to use a voice tool called Voki. Aside the fact that using a voice tool was a requirement for the lesson plan, I think it serves very well the purpose of the activity. Listening to real voices sharing their experiences and giving advice is much more comforting than simply reading a text. Here is the Voki I prepared for the activity. Unfortunately, I haven't had the chance to use with one of my groups, but I can't wait for it.

Blogging and Reading in EFL

Blogs in computers in l2 share

View more presentations from Roberto Luiz Arruda

This is a slideshow of a presentation about the article Effectiveness of Blogging to Practice Reading at a Freshman EFL Program, written by Bertha Leiva de Izquierdo and Leticia Esteves Reyes. They bring a very interesting analysis on the reasons to use blogs in EFL/ESL and a very complete study on a one year EFL course in Caracas, Venezuela.

There are countless websites that are useful to teachers. Here are a few I use.

TESOL - Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. Here there are many useful resources and is a good start point for teachers to become part of an educational community.

Super Teacher Tools - Here you can find many tools that help during class. From classroom management to Jeopardy.

Wordle - This tool is very easy to use. In just a few clicks you can make word clouds that can be used in many different ways.

Visuwords - This is a great visual dictionary. I use it very often for brainstorming and vocabulary build-up.

Maniacs!

Are we all maniacs?