How are you using online sites and other technologies to help your ELL students?
Please share your ideas for using online sites, collaborative/project sites like ePals, and other technologies for helping ELL students, both in and out of the classroom.
As one example, teachers go to www.epals.com to find a classroom of English speakers. Two classes can team up as a class, or better yet, individual students can each have a pen pal to write to.
When you are doing the unit on "my home" and students learn the words for various rooms of the house and desk, chair, table, sofa, etc., almost everyone has them write a paragraph about their house. Instead of writing that paragraph to turn in to the teacher, the student can write the paragraph and then send it to the pen pal. The pen pal can write back can comment, ask questions, or write about his own home. This is authentic language practice.
If you have more technology available, your students could record their voices to send to another class, or make a video, etc.
Another recommendation is to have students look at particular movies at home, and to turn on "closed captioning" so that the English words also appear on the screen.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Denise Stewart on -
In class whenever we watch a film, I always have the closed captioning option active. It not only helps their listening skills, but also adds more vocabulary for the writing activities that will follow.
I also use News For You (www.newsforyouonline.com) which has an online option to hear a news story read to them as they read along. This is not a free service, but it is very inexpensive. Those with internet at home use it with their parents and therefore become "language teachers."
In the classroom, we also use document cameras which allow every student to share work if they wish to (for points). Even the shy ones don't mind putting their work under the camera since our classroom has a safe risk-free environment.
There are also many websites they work with which are free and highly engaging (www.ellteacherpros.com). Bottom line is that we need to use the tools that students like otherwise they won't fully benefit from any lesson we deliver.
Denise
www.ellteacherpros.com
www.teachingsuccesseswithells.blogspot.com -
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Permalink Reply by Dr. Rita Oates on
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Denise, thanks for the great thoughts and suggestions!
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