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Keeping students engaged

Summary:   This week I read an article about keeping students engaged during online tutoring. The article was written by Marcelo Barbosa Gagliano and in the article they mention that there is a specific type of student that will succeed in this setting and they have the following characteristics:  (Gagliano 2017) These characteristics are definitely the ideal traits for a student who is going to engage in online learning. The article goes on to say the instruction should mirror this set up:  (Gagliano 2017) My Thoughts:  When I was reading this article I immediately thought about online learning due to the COVID-19 shut down. Those great qualities mentioned above of students are definitely not the qualities all students possessed going into the pandemic. A lot of students were ok and could get a handle on what they were supposed to do, but a lot of students struggled. My ELL students definitely missed out on the hands-on att
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NoRedInk

This week I decided to research NoRedInk a little bit. Our regular education ELA classes use this website in their classrooms, and I have been meaning to look into it a little more. NoRedInk is an online program, free and premium versions available, where students can practice various skills as they relate to English Language Arts.  Summary of reading:  I found a dissertation titled, Exploring the Use of NoRedInk as a Tool for Composition Instruction written by Alyson Snowe. Her dissertation is 211 pages, so admittedly I didn’t read it cover to cover, but I was particularly interested in the 5th chapter: Students respond to NoRedInk. In her paper, Snowe notes that all students with the exception of one was able to make progress on their grammar skills. I also enjoyed reading the comments the students made on the program, and they said they wish NoRedInk would add an audio component that will read feedback aloud to you when you get something wrong.  The appeal:  I have no problem admitt
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Preparing students for the digital age

My Ramblings (in other words, an intro):  This week I read a few articles about digital literacy and how to promote that in my classroom. In class I was assigned to read, Empowering English Language Learners through Digital Literacies: Research complexities, and Implications. For me this article brought up a bunch of different connections to my own experiences. The second article I read was, Preparing ELLs to be 21st- Century Learners, and this article gave me a myriad of different things to consider.  Summary of the articles:  Empowering English Language Learners through Digital Literacies: Research complexities, and Implications. - In this article the focus was on the need to incorporate student culture to create more meaningful learning experiences for our ELL students. These students need to be supported and not just overlooked.  Preparing ELLs to be 21st- Century Learners- This article gave a lot of strategies and “How to’s” to support your ELL students in the classroom. It d
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Augmented Reality Gaming in the classroom

I have gone easy on myself this week and the article I have chosen was only 6 pages! Even though it was a much shorter article than the others I have read so far for class, it was just as beneficial. This article was titled, “Augmented Reality Game(ARG), 21st Century Skills and ESL classroom.” A few things popped into my head as I read the title. One, I love augmented reality games, so I’m sure students will too. And two, I haven’t heard 21st century skills pop up in my PD sessions on inservice days in a while. It seems that while we are still teaching students the skills to be a 21st century learner the buzz word might be fizzling out.  The Summary:  In the Article Karmila Rafiq and Harwati Hashim talk about the success ARG has with ESL students. The article discussed an example of ARG which was Pokemon Go. The authors explain that games like these allow the user to gain real world skills by using maps, books, and tools. The article discussed the lack of real world skills people had w
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To Flip or not to Flip

The Article:  This week brought me back to Google scholar to find an article that would interest me. The article I landed on was Exploring the Impact of Blended, Flipped, and Traditional Teaching Strategies for Teaching Grammar on Iranian EFL Learners by Farzaneh Khodabandeh and Mohammad Hassan Tahririan. This was another 41 page article, so I skimmed through the article and tried to make sense of the information presented.  The Summary:  The article was a study to compare the different types of teaching in an online class setting. In the article they compared the flipped classroom to the blended learning environment and the traditional learning environment. There was a pretest and post test of grammar skills. In the Traditionally taught group, there wasn’t a significant difference between the pretest and the post test. On the other hand in the blended and flipped classroom there was a significant improvement between the two tests. So which method was the best? Well, when we look at th
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The beginning and Effective strategies

    This week I was scouring the internet for some interesting reads, to try and wrap my head around starting this blog. As I was exploring blogs of differing genres, I realized the ones I gravitated toward were the "easy reads." Something light, but still worth reading. I also very much enjoy when I read something that directly relates to my content, or something I can easily try in my classroom. That is going to be my goal for this Blog. I will try to make it interesting, so you may read it quickly, and hopefully be able to take something away from it in the end.  My research took me to a 63 page document this week in addition to the readings for class, so needless to say I have been very tired. While I didn't read the document in its entirety, Informing Educators on Effective Strategies for LTELs by Maria Soto taught me about LTELs. LTELs stands for Long Term English Learners, and in her paper, Maria explains that LTELs are often looked upon in frustration for their l
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