Welcome to Communication Skills for Young ESL Learners. In this course participants will explore theoretical and practical issues in the teaching of communication to young (read: elementary school) students).
For this course we have no textbook, and all material is available here on our class webpage as well as on both Gooogle Drive and Dropbox (see the links to the left).
You might be wondering about the course requirements. Not wanting to scare people away, I have wisely included them way, way, way down at the bottom of the page in 2-point font. Actually, you will find them hiding down below, but just not in 2-point font. Let's cover some admin things, just for fun.
Hereafter you will find a reasonably detailed synopsis of the respective classes we will enjoy this term. We will be using a textbook for the first half of the course (Rost, 2013), but in the latter half we will instead utilize a bevy of various (and sundry) readings, which will be available on two loud service—details in class.
Thus, with no further ado, here are the sessions.
Session #1 (October 21, Morning) — Introduction; Theoretical Underpinnings
As often happens on the first day of class, we'll be speaking in somewhat general terms about our course and some of the topics therein.
Let's begin with a schema-activation exercise, good people. First, on a paper, please jot down ...
Having gotten some preliminaries out of the way, we now will dive into a reasonably brief treatment of some of the various theories that help us make sense of what we do.
- ✔ Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)
- ✔ Haptic Learning
- ✔ Total Physical Response (TPR)
- ✔ Distancing
Result(s): In our remaining time this morning I would like to get you started on your final project(s)—does it sound a bit early to be doing so? Didn't we just begin a mere two hours ago?
The primary result of our course (in addition to your grade, of course) will be a written paper (guidelines here) that does at least one of the following:
- ✔ Introduce in detail a method or technique that you already use in your classroom.
- ✔ Explain how something from our class could be incorporated into your own teaching context.
- ✔ Speculate on some innovative method (again, from or related to our class) that could be added to your teaching context.
- ✔ Explore literature about a particular area that interests you.
Second, I invite you to share (even briefly) your idea, plan, or speculation with our class tomorrow afternoon. Note that this is optional, and it will in no way affect your mark. However, it would be a good opportunity for us all to share ideas, and I can envision a short talk, a demonstration, or an oral presentation using PowerPoint.
If you decide to do an oral presentation, you might find the following to be useful. I teach my undergrads to use a particular style of title slide, which I think will stand you in good stead in the future. Incidentally, I'm finding that affiliation logos are increasingly common, so you might consider including the logo of your particular school (as you'll see on my Students page).
Session #2 (October 21, Afternoon) — The Bread and Butter
Our afternoon will be spent looking at and experience a variety of topics which will include (but not be limited to) the following:
- ✔ Skits such as the Three Little Pigs
- ✔ Role play
- ✔ Reading aloud (The Blustery Day)
- ✔ Scavenger Hunt / Treasure Hunt
- ✔ Show-and-Tell
- ✔ Songs: Horsey, Horsey and The Other Day I Met a Bear
- ✔ Use of realia
- ✔ Rhythm (jazz chants)
- ✔ Classroom English
Homework:
- ✔ Read a bit more about one of the theoretical aspects mentioned in today's class and be prepared to talk to a small group about your reading.
- ✔ Watch at least a couple videos about performance, which could include drama, music, puppetry, mime, or any of a host of other arts.
Session #3 (October 22, Morning) — Alternative Activities
Good morning, everyone! I hope our weather holds today so we can do our entire allotted time—fingers crossed, please.
We'll begin with group discussions of two points, your research about a theoretical and then a summary of the videos you watched.
Performance Activities
Next, I would like to devote some time to what I've termed 'performance
activities' that embody some of the theories we mentioned yesterday.
- ✔ Puppetry (my webpage)
- ✔ Drama ideas from Free ESL Materials (dot) Com
- ✔ Mime from Teach This
- ✔ Gestures & Mime from Collins English Language Teaching
- ✔ Hangman
Flat Games
Next, I would like to devote some time to what I've termed 'performance
activities' that embody some of the theories we mentioned yesterday.
- ✔ Jeopardy at Super Teacher Tools
- ✔ Jeopardy Labs
- ✔ Winter crossword
- ✔ Crosswords in Excel
If we have time, we'll take a look at more ideas in the following list. If we don't, I'll leave this for you to check when you have time!
- ✔ Classroom games (Pininterest)
- ✔ Drama Lesson Plans from Theatrefolk
- ✔ Some very useful links from ESL Kids Stuff
- ✔ Interesting games from ESL card games from Fluent U
Session #4 (October 22, Afternoon) — Presentations
Brevity — a fine word, and I'm not quite sure why I'm mentioning it here. Seriously, it's from some long-forgotten syllabus, and it's also apropos since I'd like to pick up our pace just a trifle. Thus, we'll waltz through the final processing unit in the first half of tonight's class and then begin the instruction units in the second half.
- (Optional) A final presentation in the afternoon of Sunday, October 22 (20%)
- Your final paper, which is due by Thanksgiving, Thursday, November 23 (60-80%)
- Active participation in class (20%)
Casual Reading
In case you ever are in need of something to borrow some of your time, there are, of course, many books dealing with technology. A quick list of fiction works off the top of my head would include the following:
- 1984 by George Orwell
- The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling
- The Circle by Dave Eggers