Cranberry Sauce

Although this is a seasonal dish, I had never made cranberry sauce in my life before. And, neither had my students. For most of them, they had not seen or tasted a cranberry before. We made this sauce from a recipe from the LINC 4 Activities: http://www.moresettlement.org/LINC1-4/LINC4/LINC_4_Classroom_Activities.pdf page 477 Cranberries, A North American Superfruit. 

To sample the sauce, I brought in some halal cheese (no rennet or pepsin) and some crackers. 

As we went through all the steps in the recipe, we described everything using the five senses. This included sampling a raw cranberry and a teaspoon full of pure maple syrup. Yum, yum! This builds concrete experience with the foods that many Canadians take for granted. It was also quite lovely to have this time out of the regular classroom and just to chat while each step was being completed. I will certainly try to do some more recipes in my class in the future. 

Outcomes: reads and understands short instructions, read and understand formatted texts, measure ingredients accurately, give simple descriptions of simple objects

Guess the image

A special thanks to my creative colleague, B.B.,  for sharing this idea with us. She found it at http://www.greatgroupgames.com/zoom-in-game-thanksgiving.htm! She set up several of these sequential photos based on thematic words. Great for including horticulturally related items such as foods. All the food item vocabulary can be pre-taught with realia in class, and followed up by making some delicious recipes or sampling some apple cider.

Thanksgiving Tree

Beautiful Things - Grapes

My next door neighbours have a backyard patio that is fully shaded by trellised grapevines. Green and purple concord grapes. I often peek at them through the lattice at the top of our fence. I often breathe in the sweet, fragrant scent of them as the wind flows through our bathroom window.

The questions for my Phase 2 students:

1. How do they smell?

2. How do they feel?

3. What do you see?

4. How do they taste?

In groups, the students explored the grapes and came up with some sentences.

Aloe, baby!

Baby aloe plants!

The plant pictured here is quite a prolific little mama! It was repotted a few months ago and has now produced 4 off-shoots. Soon it will be time to divide the babies out. What a great project for an ESL Literacy class.

Activities

1. Discuss the plant using the 5 senses. How does it look? How does it feel? How does it smell?

2. Discuss the medicinal uses of this plant. Is it from the students' countries? Break a piece off and discuss some more

3. Outline step by step the procedure for dividing the plants. Follow the instructions as a class. Take photos along the way. Print the photos and have the students tell you what happened at each step. Read. Copy. Cut and sequence the sentences. Match the sentences to the photos. Create a cloze exercise in which students can listen and write from memory or by copying from a word bank.

4. Students take turns presenting a narrative on what they did in this activity.

5. Track the growth of the new plants in class. Create a chart to write the date and measurement weekly or monthly.

Poe-Tree!

My Garden
This is my garden, I'll plant it with care,
Here are the seeds I'll plant in there,
The sun will shine,
The rain will fall,
The seeds will sprout and grow up tall.

Poetry and song are great tools for reinforcing vocabulary and the rhythm of the language. Here is a link to some garden poems (like the one above): http://www.readinglady.com/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=38

How do your gardens grow?

What a great time of year to get your hands dirty! In our community there are loads of opportunities for people to join Community Gardens. People can rent a plot for as little as $10 a year. Or people can volunteer to tend to the local Victory Gardens that grow food for local soup kitchens and food banks. Whatever you choose, there is certainly a lot to dig into to gain valuable language skills!

Perhaps you can rent a plot for your own class to collaboratively sew the seeds of learning. Perhaps you could go on a field trip to observe and describe what is growing in your own community.

Possible language activities are as follows:
1. Go through a simplified seed catalogue that has the picture of the vegetable or herb. Decide as a class what seed you'd like to grow.
2. After choosing the seeds, you could calculate the sum of all the seed packs you'd need and role-play purchasing the seeds from a cashier. Count out the change.
3. Create an LEA (Language Experience Approach) story about how to plant seeds.
4. Measure the growth of the seeds weekly and create a chart. Learners could draw pictures of the growth each week.
5. Get out your culinary hats! Use the veggies and herbs to make your own salads or appetizers to share with the class. Take photos during the process and make a picture story.

Outcomes: Express own preferences, complete simple addition and subtraction, describe own experiences, measure using a ruler, draw basic shapes, listen to and follow instructions, sequence photos, begin to write sentences to describe a photo.

Cold! Cold! Cold! or what I wish the temperature was!

Ah! Reading thermometers! Something that we take for granted everyday involves so many literacy skills that it can really be a challenge.

First we have to understand how to read numbers. Then we need to comprehend that a series of numbers can be read not only horizontally (e.g. in a poster) but also vertically. Then we must make the connection that a small line represents one number. Most thermometers do not have every number marked, they only have lines. My thermometer has numbers marked by 10s (e.g. 0, 10, 20, 30 etc.).  Making the leap from reading a numbered line to an unnumbered line can be quite a challenge. Here is what I recently did to help my students read our outdoor thermometer.

1. Get the numbers down. Read them in order, do cloze exercises with the number sequences, etc.
2. Demonstrate on the board that numbers can be read vertically (upwards) and practice reading this together. Have students present it.
3. Put notches / lines beside each number and read it again.
4. Erase some numbers and have students write the missing numbers.
5. Discuss what a thermometer is. I did this by bringing my thermometer into the kitchen and putting it in the freezer to see the colour move down, and then run it under hot water to see it rise. This demonstrates the concept well.
6. On the board draw a thermometer and explain how the "colour stops" at a number and that is the temperature. Do a few examples and have students read the numbers.
7. I printed off worksheets from here: http://worksheetgenius.com/html/thermometers.php
8. Return to the board and erase the middle numbers and mark it only by 5s or by 10s and draw the temperatures again.

Ideally this would be started in the fall or the spring when the temperatures are not yet in the minus numbers.

You could also create your own paper thermometers for a hands-on practice of reading thermometers. I would suggest write lines for each number.

Outomes: Read numbers, Read temperatures, write numbers, listen and show temperature, follow instructions

Amaryllis Bulbs

There is nothing quit like getting your hands dirty when it comes to learning ESL! 

In November there are endless supplies of forced bulb kits that you can purchase in local garden centres or grocery stores. It is wise to compare prices so that you can get a deal, and do not blow your budget doing this kind of project. 

This year I chose to do one plant for my morning class and one for my afternoon class rather than one plant for each student. At the end of the term, students entered their name in a draw to take the plant home.

To start, I discussed all the relevant vocabulary with my students including soil, a pot and saucer, bulb, water, and roots. This could be done orally only or supported with a diagram to label. I explained the process of what we would do orally. 

Inspired by horticultural therapy workshops I have attended, I had the students dump the soil into a big pot and slowly add nice, warm water from a pitcher to the soil. Students then mixed up the soil with their bare hands. You could provide gloves. It is always best to start with moist soil.

Then we poured about three quarters of the soil into the pot, nestled the bulb in, and filled in the space with the rest of the soil. Finishing up with a thorough watering, we were set to let more language learning happen. 

At this point you could have the students describe the the process to you and write the simple directions using a Language Experience Approach.

This year, we started a measurement chart. Each Monday we would write the date, and measure the growth of the plant using a ruler in centimetres. This continued for four weeks. Longer would have been better as we did not end up seeing our amaryllis bulbs bloom. The lucky draw winner was able to have it bloom in her house. 

We reviewed the chart weekly, learned how to read and write in a chart and built competency in measuring using a ruler.

Outcomes: Listen to and follow instructions, copy words and sentences, use a ruler to measure height, read and write numbers, read and write in a chart.

Clove and Orange Pomander

Ever since grade 3 I have been making orange and clove pomanders for Christmas. My school teacher introduced this activity in class in 1985 and for some reason it really stuck with me. Perhaps it was the hands-on-ness, or the wonderful smell. I have made these in my ESL classes a few times, and each time was a success.

This year, my centre held an end of the year celebration (as there are diverse religious groups at the centre). I chose to lead this activity with the adult students and presented it as a natural air freshener for the kitchen or bathroom. I googled the history (e.g. on Wikipedia here), but decided not to go into too much detail during this celebration activity. I also showed some design ideas as mentioned below. This activity was done close to the end of the day and students were wanting to leave early, but when I showed them the task, they were quite interested. All the levels of students (e.g. from Literacy to LINC Level 5) sat together and worked on their own pomanders while chatting with each other and showing off their creations. The room smelled incredible and we were relaxed and just making stuff! Amazing!

A tip I have learned over the years is to start with pushing in 4 cloves at the top of the orange and another 4 at the bottom of the orange. This creates sturdy 'posts' to wrap the ribbon or yarn through. The ribbon will not slid around and off the orange. With the ribbon secured, I then develop the pattern I want with the remaining cloves. There are many image ideas on the web if you do an image search for orange and clove pomanders.

Outcomes: Listen to and follow instructions, ask for help, help peers, conceptualize and create a pattern