EL Teaching and Learning Resources - Angeline

I don't know if there are any copyright issues with suggest a book but here goes...

This is a series of young adult fiction by Darran Shan.
His writings are very descriptive and tantalising in nature.
Basically, the story is about a young boy named Darran Shan.
Although it is a fantasy story revolving around vampires, talking spiders and supernatural stuff, this is what our students will be interested in - at the very least, they will get hooked on Darran's adventure through a world we never know.
It can be used as an example for descriptive writing, narratives and even comprehension/cloze passage.

It will be suitable for students of lower than average ability in EL. I tried using parts of the text for my NT students when I was doing contract teaching and it was a success.

In order to help them understand the content, you can try using the graphic novel version of this story.

Here's page from the graphic novel:




The second resource that I want to recommend - The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.
I'm very much a Magic Realism addict and therefore I would like share the joy of magic realism with the students.

While they might not understand Franz Kafka's original text, there are a few short films and animation created for this novel and this is my favourite version:
Youtube Video for short film

This story can be used as a comprehension exercise. Several debatable topics can be used to hold a debate and students can even come up with their own role play for it.

Check out the story's plot here: The Metamorphosis@Wiki

That's about all from me.

EL Teaching and Learning Resources [Nurhayati]

• Picture books to stimulate reading/comprehension skills

Picture books are powerful tools of instruction for teachers because of their simple and often compact plot outlines which favour students with short attention spans and their emphasis on visual texts to provide contextual clues.

The short sentences found in picture books will not intimidate students who perceive themselves as weak readers.

Students could either pay attention to specific grammatical features of the sentence or infer and predict possible expansions in the plot using the accompanying pictures as clues.

An alternative could include blurbs (for novels) or summaries to feature articles.

• Podcasts to encourage listening for information and critical listening

Personally, I'm a big fan of podcasts from BBC Radio 3. However, the content here may be more suitable for higher-ability students (JC/IP) and are targetted more on expanding content knowledge and critical response rather than providing a grammar focus.

Podcasts that deal with relevant issues or subject matter that are relevant and close to home would work best for students. I recommend BBC World Service Forum and World Have Your Say podcasts.

Local podcasts would work as well as long as they provide clear diction and enunciation as well as relevant issues to expand on in the classroom. 93.8LIVE on podcast.sg is a good start.

http://www.podcast.sg/938_campus.asp
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/forum
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/whys

For a full list of BBC podcasts, click here.

English Resources (Weina)

1. Mindmeister

Free online collaborative tool for one simple objective - mindmapping! Everyone can contribute to one single mindmap, thus allowing for collaborative learning as groups, or as a class. Helps in generating ideas and points for various topics and themes, especially in expository writing.

2. Voicethread

Collaborative tool between pictures, videos and documents where students can comment about what they see in the slide show using voice (oral communication), texts or audio files. Teachers can take up the role of moderators/creators by deciding what comments get published. Some online educators have used it as film to teach text, and to teach vocabulary. Very suitable for visual learners!

3. Visuwords

Wonderful online graphic dictionary which can be added as a search tool into Firefox itself.

A quick search of the word "education" throws up so many different words and relations (if you were to take a look at the accompanying legend) - it shows you things you might have never thought about before! A really good tool for english teachers, budding writers and students.

15.1 Best EL Lesson (Saravanan)

The best lesson I had was the most challenging one I ever had. It was a very interesting one in the sense that students were very excited throughout the whole lesson. But I was raising my voice throughout the whole lesson to keep the noise level down. It Is a Secondary 3 Normal Academic Class and students get very bored if they are given dry lessons. Some will easily fall asleep while a few others will doze off without any regard to the teacher in front. A couple of students tend to fidget around in their seats and chat with the peers beside them. Well, I was surprised to know that the class monitor is the one with serious discipline problems. Nevertheless, I adore the class students because they were nicer compared to some of the Express students I was teaching.
To conduct the particular lesson, I first took their interests into consideration. Basically, anything that doesn’t interest them will not stay in their memory for too long. When I started my practicum, one of the last music legends passed away. Yes, I am referring to Michael Jackson. And out of a sudden MJ was very popular among the students. To make the lesson interesting, I decided to incorporate one of Michael Jackson’s music videos.
The theme of the lesson was preserving the environment and protecting endangered species. According to the scheme of work, I had to cover proposal writing. With consultation from my CT, Mdm Sathiya, I designed a series of lessons, in which students will write a proposal to our school principal to adopt an endangered species from the Singapore Zoological Gardens
The first lesson’s objectives were as follows. Students will be able to understand the structure of proposal writing.
As a trigger, I used the ‘Earth Song’ music video to introduce them to the topic of protecting endangered species. Students took down details from the music video using a worksheet template that I gave them. After the video, students will write what they know and what they need to know about endangered species using a KWL worksheet. After which during the main lesson, I taught them the structure of proposal writing using the model of the burger. These activities took up the 2 periods.
One of the things that went well with the lesson was the music video. Students interests were aroused with the captivating images it presented and it really set them thinking. The KWL worksheet also made it easier for them to know what they had to research on and it was easier to transit to the next lesson, where they will do research on the animal assigned to their group in the computer lab.
As to the structure of the proposal writing, students were able to understand it easily because I made a comparison to letter writing, which I covered in the earlier lesson and the use of burger model once again aided their understanding. The problems according to my CT were that I could have used made good use of the slides as I rushed them slightly. The model that I showed them for proposal writing could have been improved.