The Potluck!

At the end of the calendar year or the end of the school year, we often enjoy celebrating with a potluck with our classes. This is a great time for building the sense of community within our centre as we all get to share our favourite dishes with each other.

Not only is a potluck a great time to try some delicious new recipes, it's also a great time for practising English!

Speaking
1. Present a short description of your dish including the main ingredients or why it is a special dish for you. This includes a lot of vocabulary, presentation format, and allows you to share your own experiences!
2. Make small-talk with a friend about the food on the table or about your favourite dish. This year, before the potluck, we talked about sources of local news - radio, TV, websites. I encouraged them to try to find one news item a week and to take the time to understand it. That way learners will have something to talk about with old and new friends.

Reading
1. Read and follow a recipe or two as a class! The class can create a dish or a series of dishes to share with the larger group. This builds on reading and understanding the genre and format. It also builds on the concept that reading has meaning.

Also, look here for a teacher's guide to Potluck published by http://grassrootsbooks.net. The link to the book is here: http://www.grassrootsbooks.net/ca/potluck.html


Writing
1. Write out the recipe for your dish. Recipes could be added to a class or site cook book. Students could also take photos to include in the cookbook. This can build on sequencing skills, using the imperative verb tense, format, and genre. It can also build on the concept that print is permanent and consistent each time you look at it.
2. Make a food label for the table so that people know what it is. This can be very important for individuals with food allergies or restrictions. This builds on the concept of the importance of labelling and reading labels for restrictions or allergies.
3. Write invitation cards (or an email) for the potluck celebration. These can be for students, teachers, or administration. This also builds on understanding genre, format, and numeracy skills.

But most importantly...

Enjoy eating the food!

Apple Season

Apple season is one of my favourite seasons. There are so many learning activities that we can do with our learners with the theme of apples in mind.

1. Go to an apple farm to pick apples. This could involve trip planning by the learners, reading a farm map, and practising numeracy skills by weighing apples and calculating the prices.

2. Apple taste test. Bring in a few apples of several different varieties, and conduct a taste test with all the learners. Each learner can sample a slice or two of different varieties of apples paying attention to apple qualities such as the sweetness, tartness, and crispness. The class could then vote on their favourite by doing a survey and completing a tally chart. Learners could make graphs that display the class' preference for the "best" apple.

3. Make apple sauce with the class. Learners can peel, core, and chop the apples. Learners can take turns stirring the apples until the apples break down into the sauce. This could be another taste test and surveying opportunity by making different apple sauce recipes. You could add a pinch of cinnamon or a spoonful of sugar. My vote would certainly go to plain, unseasoned, and unsweetened apple sauce made from MacIntosh apples.

4. And of course, apple season would not be complete without drinking apple cider. See Beautiful Things - Apple Cider and Pumpkin Pie for an activity on describing apple cider with the five senses.

ESL Week

ESL Week is a time to acknowledge dedicated ESL professionals and the hard work of ESL learners within our communities. There are endless ways to celebrate the work, energy, and dedication of all the stakeholders involved in adult ESL education.

Some ideas are:
- enter ESL Week contests (usually entries are submitted in early summer)
- host a writing contest at your school
- host an open house at your school and include cultural displays, international cooking, and activities
- host a potluck with your students
- invite and support students to do group presentations about experiences learning English
- share international recipes and publish a small cookbook (or publish on a class blog)
- invite coordinators to present teachers with a small token of appreciation (e.g., a card with a small treat)
- have students write thank you cards to coordinators and other staff



Check out TESL Ontario's web page: http://www.teslontario.net/esl-week
See the winning entries for this year's creativity contest. Get inspired to celebrate!

What are you doing to celebrate ESL Week with your classes? Post your ideas here!

Beautiful Things - Apple Cider and Pumpkin Pie

Apple season! My favourite time of year!

Seasonal foods may be new to some of the learners in your classes. 

Build in cultural experiences by bringing in culinary favourites for this time of year.

Be sure to ask about allergies, and be aware of dietary restrictions around lard as it is often in pie crusts.

Build from what the learners know, and expand vocabulary.

Use the five senses to describe pumpkin pie and apple cider.

Literacy Considerations
1. Change activities often. Do this kind of activity 20 minutes before break time to break up the day.
2. Begin with speaking. Have students orally describe and discuss words with a partner or a small group.
3. View learning as a social activity. Have learners enjoy the food and drink with a partner or small group.

Outdoor Things to Do in the Summer

When schools are out in the summer, individuals and families often seek fun things to do. Outdoor activities may differ in different parts of the world. What do boys and girls usually do in the summer? What do adults do? One idea is to make a big class list and check off who has done what, and who will do what.

This Hamilton Conservation Authority Facebook link has a list of some ideas: https://www.facebook.com/HamiltonConservation/photos/a.111847857651.118338.7446247651/10152650367427652/?type=1&theater .

If you are teaching during the summer, you could try out some of these activities in school or on a field trip. You could tally up who has done the most things.


I have done 33 things on this list. How about you?

Themes: Canadian Culture, Leisure, Health and Safety
Grammar: Imperatives, cardinal and ordinal numbers, go / try + gerund

Reminder: Start with oral language first. This kind of language development could also be really fun if incorporating TPR (Total Physical Response).

Have fun!

"Eat your Weedies!"

Edible weeds in your neighbourhood? Why not learn about them!

With a teacher experienced in identifying edible weeds, several activities are possible across the levels.

A good resource book like this one can be helpful.  You could use it for your own information or adapt it for higher level learners.

You could
1. Talk about learners' own experiences foraging for and growing food. Do TPR to connect actions and vocabulary. See this link for some ideas for Phase I learners on using TPR and song for learning new vocabulary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJuOR9jTpV4

2. Talk about foraging in Canada - do people do it? Where? Why? What times of year?

3. Collect some edible leaves and flowers and have your students take photos of them, or trace / draw them.

4. Compare shapes, sizes and colours of leaves and flowers.

5. Take your class on a walk around the block to pick your own salad. Follow or make a map while you are at it!

6. Sample all the edibles and describe the taste, texture, and smell.

7. Have a local guest speaker come to class and talk about edible weeds.

8. Read a flyer (adapted as necessary) about a course on this topic: http://haltonenvironment.net/?tribe_events=eat-your-weedies-2

9. Find and follow some recipes using edible weeds. Write your own recipe.

10. Read and discuss issues around excessive foraging / harvesting (adapted as necessary): http://www.thespec.com/opinion-story/4034957-foraging-is-fine-but-not-on-rbg-property/

 Garlic Mustard 

Some recipes are here: http://the3foragers.blogspot.ca/2014/04/garlic-mustard-recipe-roundup.html

Wood Sorrel (has yellow flowers) - Check out the warnings before you eat this.

Be careful, though! If you cover this topic with your learners, be sure you are providing all the correct and relevant information. Some edible plants may have look alike plants that are poisonous.

Winter Salad

Winter time can be a difficult time to find good quality and cheap fresh fruits and vegetables. In my class a few weeks ago, we had some visitors from a local "eat healthy" group demonstrate how to make a delicious salad with us. They brought all the ingredients, and we provided the bowls, forks, and appetites :)

For most guest speakers that come into my classes, I  encourage them to use simplified language and make the presentation very visual and experiential. Following this recipe was a great opportunity to build on these learning styles. We adapted the recipe based on what ingredients we had. This concept was a bit freeing for my learners and they began brainstorming ideas to make the recipe their own.

Our guest speakers brought this recipe. I do not know the source.

Some ingredients:

Great cooking vocabulary!

 Chop

 Slice

Toss

We sat and enjoyed this delicious and nutritious salad together. It was a social event and we talked about the textures, the tastes, and recipe adaptations.

Our final item: compost! In our city we are lucky to have a great municipal composting program. This all got pitched into the "green" bin.

Outcomes: Following instructions, describing personally relevant experiences, working with others, measurement, asking questions

Follow-up: Our community offers a "Good Food Box". This contains many fresh fruits and vegetables at a very low cost. It support local farmers and businesses. Practise reading the program flyer for details about dates, costs, items, and pick-up or delivery locations. Once the food box comes in, talk about the food and share other recipes.

In addition, you could precede or follow up this recipe with studying nutritional facts, reading food labels, and doing a class presentation on a nutrient or mineral.

Needs Assessment Tool: Dotmocracy

Every two months, I like to assess what content and activities my students  want to stop, continue and start. 

One way I do this is a "dotmocracy".

My workplace has suggested a consistent yearly thematic sequence to cover. However, we can adjust this, extend it, and skip themes, etc., to meet the needs of our learners. For the topic dotmocracy, I told the students the themes were Travel and Transportation and Family, and if something else was important, we could add it. I love what they added! 

I gave each student five stickers. They had to choose the five most important things for them right now.

For the classroom activities dotmocracy, I started the list with activities that are regular weekly activities, and asked students to brainstorm what we do in class and other activities they would like to do. I gave each student the same number of stickers as items listed. I asked them to choose either “do” or “stop” for each one. Then, students put up their stickers during break.

From this, my students have essentially designed the curriculum for the next two months. I look at the most important items and our time-line and see what we can cover. We will do it again in two months. If something was missed and is very important, the students have the opportunity to express it and vote on it again. Also, students can see how many of their peers share their same opinion, needs and wants.

Winter Wishes

The end of the year celebration at school usually includes all students at all levels. The teachers tap into their creativity to meet the needs of the learners. This year, our students ranged from Literacy Foundation to CLB 6. To start off our morning, we designed an activity that included some student collaboration, speaking, fine motor skills, following instructions, and writing.

We started by having students put together a puzzle.

I designed the puzzle in Word, saved it in Adobe, and printed it as a poster. I enlarged it to about 375%, so it printed off into sixteen squares. The images I chose were not distinct enough, and we decided to add colours. Students used the colours to determine how the lines matched up. I gave them some clues such as that the puzzle was 4 x 4 squares. I also put up squares six and seven to get them started. Students of all levels participated in this.

This puzzle had the question for our next activity. First, each student expressed their own answers. Some students required a sentence starter, and others said a few sentences.

Then, we moved on to writing our sentences and decorating some winter-themed images.

Teachers and higher level students assisted lower level writers by writing down the learners' sentences or words. Students then copied their message onto the paper.

  

Happy new year to you all! I hope your winter wishes come true too!

On-going project: Binder Organization

For many of my students, binder organization is a big challenge, or quite low on the priority list. I have promised myself that this will be the year that I incorporate binder organization into the daily lesson plan. And actually be consistent with it!

Some things I have observed about student binders and binder organization:
1. Some students have no binder at all.
2. Binders are often a place to place papers, but generally not securely within the rings.
3. Some binders are organized from back to front, not front to back.
4. Some students do not like to carry binders back and forth from school because of the size. (There were three binders left in my class over the summer vacation!)
5. Most papers are not dated.
6. Separating papers from the morning class and afternoon class is challening.
7. It takes some students a long time to find their homework.

Our tools:

My plan:
After a month or so in school, students will have a sense of what being in my class is like - routines, style, approaches, and types of papers I give out. Students will brainstorm and decide upon categories for binder division so that they are in control of it and remember how to organize it. Students write on the labels, and organize all the papers according to section and date.

The results:

Headings chosen by the class.

So tidy!

 

The final test: Hold the binder up and see if any papers fall out.

  

Success!

Routines, Activities and Strategies for Literacy Learners
1. Binder Organization - organize it together and maintain it together
2. Respect learners' knowledge and experiences in having them list and decide on the categories as a group.
3. Provide learning strategy instruction. Now that the binders are labelled, teach them how to use this system. This can help them in class and at home.
4. Play a game. Once the binders are organized and the papers are all dated, have a scanning game. For example, find the grammar handout from September 27. Find the citizenship paper from October 10.

Bread and Butter

Little House on the Prairie, Anne of Green Gables.

I have observed a trend in my friends, and my on-line friends, to try to go back to a simpler time. Grow your own food, use cloth diapers, make bread from scratch. I admit that I enjoy being caught up in this trend as well.

At school, we just completed a unit on pioneer life. We studied this in preparation for a field trip to a local pioneer village.



As a follow up to the trip, we made two recipes: handmade butter and Irish soda bread.

If you use these two recipes, make the butter first. That way you can use the buttermilk and the butter in the bread recipe.

The Butter

 

Students enjoyed making the butter, and noting three different steps of turning whipping cream into butter. First, it was all liquid. Second, it was all solid. Third, it was half liquid and half solid: the buttermilk and the butter.

  

The Bread

The first step, if you are not using buttermilk, is to mix milk and vinegar. I asked the students to predict what would happen. Some ideas were that they would bubble, separate, and have no change.

Students took turns reading out the steps, measuring, adding, and mixing in the ingredients.

We had the extra challenge of doubling the recipe to make two loaves of bread. This was great numeracy practice!

 

  

 And finally ... the soda bread! If you haven't tasted soda bread before, it does taste like the baking soda / salt. One person spit it out, but the others enjoyed it.

We especially enjoyed it with the handmade butter!

Other activities: Start the unit with a KWL chart, read short stories about different aspects of pioneer life, read Penguin Reader level 3 of Anne of Green Gables using the great activities provided in the book to build a variety of reading strategies, and go on a field trip to pioneer village.

Life Cycles

Spring is here! 

New life abounds. 

Fresh scents, and many shades of green. 

Rain, frost, and sun. 

Introducing biology basics.

Life cycles.

Activity Steps for Students
1. Sequence cards of the life cycle of an animal / insect / amphibian / plant. (I used http://www.enchantedlearning.com/sequencingcards/)
2. Research the life life cycle on-line. Create a simple handout.
3. Find a youtube video that shows the complete life cycle.
4. Present the information from the handout and show the video.

Ant

Student selected video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2gilSwvQik

Butterfly 

Student selected video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH8EE03wvNM

Frog 

Student selected video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GGuEr-MQf4

Mosquito 

Student selected video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwIqGbhq4T8

The addition of the youtube videos added a greater dimension to the presentations. During the videos, I heard students say the following: "Wow!, I didn't know that!, Two tongues?!, Whoa!, So many eggs! Where do all the eggs come from?!".

 Furthermore, during the research part of it, some students read and understood a lot more information. Students had many questions about each life cycle, and some students were able to answer the extra questions. Another student actually researched the answer on-line during class so she could share the information with the class.

Follow-up
1. Students can write questions about their handout for their peers to answer.
2. Make a class booklet.

This unit includes the following key approaches and strategies for Literacy learners:
work collaboratively, plan time to complete the project within the deadline, ask for help when needed, use technology, use pictures and format to understand text,  follow directions, identify the main idea and supporting details of a text, plan a presentation, and copy information.

Additional Resources
http://www.sparklebox.co.uk/topic/living/life-cycles.html#.UXm9iMrm86r

Beautiful Things - Spring Bulbs

Morning Warm-up: 15 minutes

Brainstorm descriptive words for the daffodils and hyacinths using the senses of touch, smell and sight.

How does it feel?

soft, flat, squishy, smooth

How does it smell?

nice, fresh, fragrant, strong, sweet

What do you see?

purple, yellow, ivory, green stems, jar, water