ESL Activities

This is an explanation of an ESL activity that provides communication. The students have to explain what they have on their sheet (they all have different sheets) and the others have to draw on their sheet what they hear. Thus, they have to communicate accurately and also it demonstrates if the students understand their peers and see if the communication between them is accurate. Of course, this is the presentation of one teacher, but this approach could be used differently, modified and adapted for your own class. If it needs to be improved, what would you change in this activity to improve it?

Communication Activity: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6ZFHABP83U

And this is an interesting and also funny video about prepositions. After watching it, do you think it would a good idea to present it to young students, would it be appropriate? I'm not sure if it is really pertinent even though it is fun, the students may have difficulties to learn from this kind of video. but may be I am wrong, that's why I'm asking.

Preposition video: http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=t6W0mVxrvP4&feature=related

Culture and Hockey

I read on canoe's sites this morning an article entitled “Culture et Hockey – En attendant les series”. It is first introduced by claiming that even if you like hockey or not, you won't escape the mood the hockey playoff that's comming soon, and it’s true. The Montreal Canadiens finished first in the east conference of the NHL and we are talking a lot about that, in the news, news paper, on the net, everywhere.

In the article, there is also a mention about the fact that hockey is really part of the culture. We all know that there are certain songs that are related to sports in general and obviously hockey. We are the champion by Queen is a good example, when a team wins an important game. There is also the song Vertigo from U2 that is played every time the Montreal Canadiens scores a goal at the Bell Center. If you’re a fan of this team, you’re really happy when you here it. Music is then part of the hockey culture.

Television and cinema also provided this cultural aspect of hockey in Quebec. We just have to think of movies like Slapshot, Les Boys, and of course Maurice Richard. All good movies about hockey that were made in Quebec (except for Slapshot) and that were very popular in our province. There is also the new TV show Les Boys that is a continuation of the four movies. If we are talking about TV shows, we cannot forget this series, Lance et Compte, which just came back on the screen two years ago. That old show which everybody saw, knows or heard about, for sure. In that field we can also mention the DVD of Alex Kovalev (star player of Montreal Canadiens) who basically teaches how to play hockey in it. This DVD is already sold out everywhere, they have the reorder a big quantity, they didn’t thought it would be so famous. There is also tones of books about hockey.

We can definitely say that hockey is part of our culture. Good playoff everyone,

Go Habs Go!

Christmas

Here is a post touching the culture from another part of the world that I have made in my previous blog for my written communication class explain in the last post I made.

Christmas Holidays in Australia

The people in Australia have similar ways to celebrate the Christmas holidays, but there are little interesting differences. In Australia, Christmas also take place on December 25th, but for the people who are living there, it is during the summer. People spend there Christmas day in family just like us, but they spend it at the beach. They eat salads, cold meat and sea food, but they also eat the traditional meal which is turkey. A funny thing in that culture is that there is a song that says that six white boomers or large Kangaroos pull Santa Claus' sleigth.

If you want to know about many other Chritsmas traditions in the world, go on that web site, there are also many interesting Chritsmas recipes from other culturs.

http://www.californiamall.com/holidaytraditions/

Using Blog with ESL Students

I experimented a writing blog as a student at university. The teacher had every students create their own blog in the purpose of using it for her course. She also had a blog where she put information and directives about our homework and writing projects. Every week we had to make an entry, it had to be an academic one or a free one depending of the directives of the teacher. Sometimes it had to be related to our readings and sometimes we could talk about subject that we wanted to share with other people of our class such as our favourite movie, sport, hobby or personal interests. The teacher was visiting every blog to see the work done and give feedbacks on our subjects and mistakes, since it was a writing class. We were encourage to visit the blogs of all our classmates too and give them feedback, at least to five other students. Having a blog in this class gave me the opportunity to know a bit more about my classmate and it gave me computer knowledge.

This blog project was done in a university course but it would be doable with secondary students as well. These students will get writing and computer skills. I would be less willing to use blogs with elementary students even though I know some teachers who are doing fine with that level of students. If you have the resources and the technology at your school it is great project to try with your ESL students.

Here is the link of the blog I have made for my written communication university course:
http://olligator-writtencommunication.blogspot.com/

Immigrants

We often talk about ways to share cultures and have students learn about other cultures and their own too. We frequently mentioned travelling, exchanging with people from other countries, doing activities on the subject in class but rarely mentioned that there were may be people from other culture in your own class.

This semester I was taking the course “Aspect sociaux de l’enseignement” with few students from our program. There was a chapter on the fact that immigrants were more and more numerous in our school systems during the 80’s and they had difficulties to adapt to our culture and teaching methods. Their parents were often against the teaching methods which helped the students to develop their critic senses. They thought school should be a basic place to learn about basic things(maths, sciences), not about life, that was their job. Obviously, those parents had different views than Quebec schools on how to teach about life to children regarding their own culture. Integrating the students from other culture to our society is part of the job of a teacher. However, this does not mean that the immigrants have to ignore their own culture. This is still an actual subject as we saw in the news this year about the religion, the Muslims and all these debates.

Teacher may take advantages of these situations by having those students share their personal culture to the rest of the class. If they were born in Quebec, their parents might be able to tell them or came in class and make a small presentation of their culture with typical meats and clothing. Of course you always have to be careful in this type of situation, especially in our position, as teacher. Even in this text, the words were difficult to choose since it is a very controversial subject.