ESL research, methods and strategies. Seminar 2

Teaching English language learners: Principles and Strategies

In this session we worked Strategies in action. We started with one strategy called Headlines. We wrote some catchty headlines about what our experiences have  been like so far in the  US with the purpose of synthetize our thoughts. Mine was How different is life in a developed country? -A Colombian teacher's insights. 

At school we can paste these headlines on the door, generating curiosity in the readers. It can generate conversations later among the students. 

Then we talked about phonemic awareness. English language has  26 letters, 42/44 phonemas and approximately 250 spellings, so phonemes are "not logical sound units" and must be taught.

We did a funny exercise pointed the phonems that does not exit in English. We heard them from the different languages we have in class.

Then we played more games to enhance the the listening, the vocabulary and spelling such as "Telephone" (broken telephone), Sparkle. We listed some homophones and we realized we pronounce bad certain words. Finally we learned how to select Robust vocabulary and ways to teach it.

Recommended:
American voices (documentary) PBS
Kevin Stroud (Podcast)