Well, you may have noticed that there haven't been many posts for the past 6 weeks or so on the blog, and some English Raven members are no doubt wondering where the World News for Kids articles and new World Adventure Kids project are headed. Still others are wondering what has happened to all the interviews and follow-up articles I promised for this blog...
And yet others have assumed that I have fallen into a voluminous black sack somewhere and can't crawl out. Perhaps others are hoping that's actually true!
The truth is that a new publishing project has landed on my lap and it has deadlines that are extreme. Projects like English Raven certainly don't generate anywhere near the income required to turn down publishing projects like this one, and what additional attention I can spare needs to be thrown into my online TOEFL services, which - in comparison to English Raven - do in fact generate a healthy income.
So my heartfelt apologies to people wondering where all the development in English Raven is going, and a humble plea to be a little patient... My current publishing project will wind up at the end of December this year, and I'll be free to dedicate some energy to English Raven and its hoards of materials and projects from early next year. Nothing is lost, nothing is cancelled. There's just a bit of time out here to generate the sort of income I need in order to pursue the projects I love to do and dream about developing. I'll be back in the early new year in 2010 - with a vengeance!
It's getting close to that time of the year again - HALLOWEEN! Before I get too busy with various other things, thought I'd better post about the page of Halloween materials and activities I have on English Raven - given everything on it is 100% free for site visitors and it's been a popular destination for teachers over the years.
The page includes flashcards, card games, word searches and puzzles - all highlighting Halloween vocabulary and concepts. Here's a quick preview for you!
Hope they give you some starters - though remember there is an asbolute plethora of great activity stuff out there on the web for Halloween now (try Googling it!).
I've been somewhat missing in action from this blog over the past couple of weeks. There are a plethora of reasons, not least my wife's recent induction into an AMES language program here in Australia (thank you, Australian government, for footing the bill for 510 hours of language instruction leading to a real work qualification for new permanent residents, offering free child care, and providing a free voluntary tutor that does house visits to boot!). I've also had an explosion in demand over on RISE for TOEFL speaking and writing subscriptions, and I've been struggling to keep up with it all!
Inspired by Radiohead's move a couple of years back, where they let fans choose their own price to download their whole new album of songs, I decided to scrap a set fee for membership in English Raven and let teachers decide for themselves how much they could/should/would pay for access to all of my materials for an entire calendar year.
Of course, it went a bit beyond that. I had always been concerned that one set membership price could (a) disadvantage or turn away teachers who were only after a couple of specific things or sections of the site materials; and/or (b) slap those teachers who happened to be in a country where the income or exchange rate made purchasing a membership with my site inordinately expensive; and/or (c) get away from the basic idea that money earned through English Raven would basically help the site pay for itself in terms of hosting, space, time investment, etc.
After I made the change to a self-elected fee, word got around pretty quickly, and I've had dozens of emails from blogsters and site owners wondering how it is all going.
Early days yet, of course, but here's what I've noticed from all the various numbers:
1. Generally speaking, although almost all teachers pay widely different amounts for a membership, the average is about the same as what I had originally as a pre-set figure.
2. My rate of membership sign-ups has almost doubled. It usually comes close to doubling at this time of the year anyway, but I'm talking "double the number that already doubles" - or something like that!
3. I'm getting a lot more members from parts of the world like Eastern Europe, which tended to be a source of a lot of visitors in the past but not paying members.
4. Site visitation in general has gone completely through the roof. I've had some generous WOM support from some great and influential people lately (namely Larry Ferlazzo and Sandy Kemsley) which needs to be factored in there, but I do believe the "choose your own membership fee" has had a definite impact on general visitation as well.
So far, a resounding success. It works. If you let site visitors choose their own fee, you will get a lot more members and most probably make more money than you were making previously.
That's the theory, anyway, and the pattern for my own site at this stage appears to confirm it.
Why does it work? Well, I may have already sort of answered that in some ways above, but I may pass it over to some of you readers to ponder and comment on for a while...
AND, could I be so arrogant and bold (and/or naive) as to say this little experiment may pave the way to more teacher resource sites using the same sort of pay-for procedure? Would it be such a bad thing?
I've always been a big fan of simple grammar games that can be used in YL classrooms with minimal preparation and focus on using clear grammar patterns for realistic and practical speaking tasks.
I use them in two ways or directions: (1) pre-planned as part of a (build up to a) specific communicative activity, and (2) on the spot as a particular grammar point becomes more salient through various other activities.
They are actually simpler to design and apply than many teachers imagine, and they still focus predominantly on having learners express themselves and improve both their accuracy and awareness of grammar while communicating something. In addition, they also make good use of game-like rules and parameters, to keep learners motivated and energetic with them.
Well, I've had my presentation proposals accepted and I'll be heading back to Korea to present a couple of seminars at the Korea TESOL (KOTESOL) International Conference on October 24-25.
I've actually lost count how many KOTESOL ICs I've attended, but this will be the first time in almost four years that I haven't been there as a guest of Pearson Education (and subsequently the first time in quite a while that I'll be presenting on something other than the Boost! Integrated Skills coursebooks!). The price of going as an independent presenter this time is compounded by the fact that I'm jetting into Seoul all the way from Melbourne this time, rather than getting a 30 minute flight up from Kimhae Airport in Busan. It's going to cost a bit between the airfare and the accommodation, but it is an excellent conference and I'll be able to catch up with a lot of old friends.
Here are the abstracts for my two presentations, in case you happen to be at the event and want to come along and say hello!
How to Make TOEFL Speaking Involved, Interesting, and INTERACTIVE!
Unfortunately (and curiously), the majority of test-preparation materials on the market for the TOEFL iBT speaking section are rather uninspiring and – in many cases – just downright boring, for both students and teachers! They also tend to target single users preparing for the test on their own, which creates complications for classroom and group-based students preparing for the test together with a single teacher. In this presentation and accompanying workshop, Jason Renshaw will present a unique approach to TOEFL speaking preparation that focuses on three essential criteria. These are that the students should become personally INVOLVED in the tasks; they should find the content and applications INTERESTING; and – most importantly – the activities should promote genuine INTERACTION. In addition, Jason’s approach to classroom-based TOEFL speaking tasks promotes the idea of teachers being facilitators of practice rather than just “checkers”. Finally, the tasks presented also encourage whole-class participation rather than isolated performances. Whether you are a student preparing for the TOEFL speaking section or a teacher responsible for preparing learners for the test, you’re likely to find some ideas here to inspire you. This will be a very hands-on workshop, so be prepared to participate!
Creating an Adventure-based Reading Approach for 9-14 year olds
Part of our professional practice as English teachers(and materials writers) is to explore new approaches to teaching and learning. “Adventure-based” Reading is an example of this creative process borne out of classroom experience, designed by Jason Renshaw. It specifically targets first and second language learners aged 9-14 who are ready to move on from standard levelled-reading approaches, and seeks to incorporate priorities such as extensive and voluntary reading, reading fluency, and integrated and content-based reading. It also targets global issues, a values-based curriculum, and the combination of non-fiction elements within an imaginative fiction-style format. Central to the approach is the idea of the reader him/herself becoming the main character in the story and controlling the direction of the plot to experience a genuine adventure! Adventure-based reading also addresses the tricky issues of mixed-ability classrooms and reader motivation. It is flexible enough to be used as a whole-class or independent reading application. In this presentation, Jason will explain how and why this new approach was developed, and give attendees a taste of Adventure-based Reading so they can experience it for themselves.
Biography
Jason Renshaw is a veteran teacher of English as a second and foreign language, having taught the language for more than 17 years in countries on three different continents. He is a graduate of the University of Melbourne and his Korea-based experience amounts to 10 years teaching in private institutes, culminating in a position as visiting professor in the English Education department at Kyungpook National University. He is the author of the acclaimed BOOST! Longman Integrated Skills Series, and is the founder/webmaster of the well-known teacher resource website www.englishraven.com. He has also developed considerable specialization in materials design and test preparation for TOEFL, TOEIC and IELTS. Currently, Jason lives in Australia and works from his home next to the beach as a freelance ELT materials writer and tutor for his own online school: www.English-iTutor.com.
Luckily, our intrepid adventurers (led by YOU, the Team Captain - and also the reader, by the way...) have chosen to bring along Stretchy Rope on their mission in the Amazon Rainforest.
Thanks to that rope, Think Sharp doesn't get gobbled up by the Black Caimans in the river. But it was close! Their snapping teeth just missed his boot.
But a little further on, the team discovers an anaconda trapped in a cage in the river. Panther Step wants to set the giant snake free, but your other team members don't look so sure...
What are you going to do? You're the reader and the team captain. It's up to YOU where the story goes next!
(Oh, and if you want to read that page encounter above in a larger and clearer size, just click on it - that will take you to the larger version of the image!)
Okay, I've dug up some more Harry Potter oriented lesson materials that were gathering dust in the Raven Vault! Even if they're not quite right for your actual classroom use, I hope at least they can give you some materials writing ideas.
First of all, a series of lesson materials based around the first chapter of the first Harry Potter book (depending on where in the world you live: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone or Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone). They are quite high level (post-intermediate at least), on account of the input but also because I basically developed these materials to use as examples in a teacher development seminar (hence wanted it to be reasonably challenging for the teachers, too!). I had just taken over DoS responsibilities at a school that insisted on having different teachers for different skill areas (so learners had four different teachers all focusing on something different - reading, grammar, listening/speaking, and writing; and each teacher used a completely different textbook). I wanted to show the school and teachers how we might use a more integrated approach with united topical content, while still allowing for skill-specific focus. I was also getting reading to implement a more process-oriented approach to the writing curriculum and wanted to show the teachers how this worked through real examples as well.
All of these materials were exhausting to make, but they worked brilliantly in the classroom (given the massive topical appeal to learners) and I had high hopes of making many more of the same type for all of the books at differing levels of English proficiency. I thought at the time that I was really onto something and I might even get some writing work out of it! That was, until Peter Usborne politely asked in an email me how on earth I'd managed to get permission from the Rowling Empire to feature the actual name Harry Potter on any of my potentially commercial materials... There went that idea!
There are some more Harry Potter learning materials elsewhere on this blog, too:
These are some alphabet cards I've been (re)designing as I work on some alphabet awareness with my son Jamie (aged 4), in combination with some phonics skills (which I showcased on video here).
We're at the halfway point, and the following download presents letters A-M:
This is all about basic exposure to the alphabet upper-case forms and connecting them as sounds to a range of words. The great thing is that this time around (I think I've made these cards about four times over the years with different classes of very young learners), I have Jamie with me and he loves helping me choose pictures to go with the letters/sounds.
The screencast below shows Jamie and I designing a card in Microsoft Word for the letter "L". You can hear Jamie's contributions (may need to turn up the volume - the microphone wasn't all that close to us) as we make the card and choose the pictures. This is also a good little demonstration of how easy it is to use Microsoft Clipart to enhance your word documents!
It's interesting to note how Jamie always goes initially for the very dark, blocky images. I have to get him to negotiate a little with me, because we need images that he'll be able to colour in (AND ones that are not going to chew through all of our expensive printer ink!).
You can also hear Jamie applying some of the things he's learned from my phonics books, most notably the way he sounds out words, connects a letter to a sound and then stretches it out to find words he knows.
The screencast below shows a similar process as we go about building "M" (it also demonstrates how to choose a colour clipart image if you can't find a black and white one, and how to greyscale it for a B/W worksheet).
What happens after this is that Jamie colours in the card and we chat about the letter and words together. When he's done, we tape it on the living room wall next to the other letters in the sequence he has already done. This gives him constant exposure to the letter and the pictures, with lots to remind him and talk about. It's also a useful reference when we sit down together and do the phonics books together!
As I mentioned earlier, this isn't the first time I've made or used these materials. They were a VERY handy resource for very young learners in the kindergarten programs I worked in (many years ago now...).
Below you can see a small group of Korean children I use this activity with (believe it or not, a few of those kids are only three-going-on-four!).
This is so useful because it gives the kids some focus (looking and colouring in) while I gently talk with them. The children above have actually moved on to the next stage, which involves scrambling the clipart pictures on new pieces of paper, colouring them in and talking about them, then cutting them out and sticking them on the correct alphabet letter template.
I think this post also showcases just how useful kindergarten teaching experience becomes after you've had your own children!
Here are some materials I developed for learners in grades 1-3 to give them a very gentle introduction to email-style written communication, and to help them notice and discover things about writing (and language as well - of course!).
Feel free to download the files used as examples in the screencast:
I've been developing a set of simple readers (called "Little Readers") for my son Jamie which should also be relevant to teachers who want to teach basic reading skills to students aged 4-7. The first of these (The Beach) is now available as an online storybook (feel free to embed the version below, or access the master version at http://screenr.com/8x8):
For best visual effects and delivery, I recommend hitting the zoom icon to the right of the volume setting there. It will give you a high definition full screen version which is perfect for using at home or in a classroom with younger readers.
I'm not exactly a master story-teller, but I've made an effort in the recording and pacing here to make sure learners have time to repeat each line of the story after the narrator (and also in the Sentence Review section at the end).
You can also use the picture grid at the end to get the learners to re-tell the story to the best of their ability just by using the story images in sequence (without text).
I have print versions of these Little Readers ready as well, but still a little unsure about the best way to format and distribute them online. I intend to make these online versions free for all to utilize!
Oh, and my son Jamie has been instrumental in these Little Reader storybooks. He often tells me what to include in them! I really should be acknowledging him as a co-author, shouldn't I?
One of my new site members on English Raven asked me today for some help accessing a Dolch Sight Word Reader I made several years ago, called Why Can't I Fly?
This is a pretty good example of there being so much stuff on my site (I've been adding resources to it since 2002) that even I sometimes forget what's available there! Why Can't I Fly? was my attempt at a simple little story that utilized as many of the basic Dolch Sight Words as possible, with lots of meaningful repetition in a kids-friendly story format
In chasing up Why Can't I Fly? for my new site member, I had some fun reading back over the story and printed it out to add to the collection of stuff I'm making/reading with my son Jamie. It then occured to me that this would be something nice to try out on Screenr - a new screencasting tool I've just started playing around with.
The story was a little too long to read out loud within Screenr's five minute time limit, but I did manage to get the first 6 of 8 pages read out loud. Here is the result:
You can get a larger, high-definition version of the video by clicking on that square icon next to the volume button. Actually, the full-screen version is going to be great for showing Jamie on my or my wife's computer screens! Just a pity I didn't have time to read the full story here...
I'll let you download the actual print version (PDF) of the story as well:
For Jamie, I've printed these out on thicker paper and I use them as a kind of card story.
Most of the other reading material I make for very young children involves far less text, so I'll have to think about putting more of them into this online Screenr format. Fun fun fun!
I'm not sure how worthy I was of a guest piece in this series, but it is definitely worth checking out all of the guest articles contributed in pursuit of this "spread your knowledge" concept.
Here's a list with direct links to the various articles in the series:
The text for World Adventure Kids 2-1 was finished ages ago, and all of the illustrations were completed a few weeks back.
Now I am working on all the page layout and typesetting, and my goodness... really starting to miss those good friends at Pearson Longman who (during the production of Boost!) would take my manuscripts and turn them into beautiful well-presented pages ready for the printer!
Getting your book pages ready for the printer takes as long (if not longer) than the actual content writing. I have to admit it is fun (and interesting as a writer to have so much say over how things look on the actual page), but right now I'm struggling a bit. It's a LOT of work!
Doesn't help when the lozenges you're taking to help you quit smoking kick in with such a violent nicotine hit that you get massive doses of the hiccups and your mouse starts streaking all over the screen...
This kind of project also means I have double or even triple the work to do, as once the print version is ready (in black and white format), I then have to transfer over to a colour online format, and then record and upload audio files for each and every page (the online version includes an option to hear the author reading aloud the story while the children read along).
Tough going, though I shouldn't complain of course - wonderful being your own boss and all...
Here is one of the great advantages of becoming a teacher of English to children: one day a few of your own pop out into the world and very quickly they reach an age where you can start using all of your favourite materials and activities to help them learn at home!
Our son Jamie turned four in June (just gone), and for the past 7-8 months I've been very gently introducing him to alphabet and basic phonics activities, to provide some "bottom up" style learning activities to supplement the already impressive amount of storybook reading we do together. In the past 2-3 months, he's really taken to it and comes to me daily asking for more "alphabet games" to do together.
We do a variety of ongoing things together, to maintain variety and to appeal to different kinds of "doing" for him.
We're working on a big alphabet strip that goes right across our living room wall, around the television (and will eventually snake its way around the entire room!). This consists of simple A-4 size pictures of letters, each surrounded by a variety of pictures that utilize that letter to make its initial sound:
While Jamie colours these in, we chat about the different pictures and practice saying them together. Even at this very early stage, I'm trying to give him exposure to the idea that some letters can make different sounds (hence 'A' has ant, apple, astronaut - but also apron, arm and alarm; and 'G' has girl, gate, ghost - but also gem, giraffe, and gym).
He loves this ongoing mural and comes to me every day asking for a new letter to work on (frankly, sometimes I struggle to keep up with the demand!). The colouring in is good for developing his motor skills, and the very casual chat about the words appears to be very effective "peripheral" exposure to words, letters and intial sounds.
We've also been working with basic phonics worksheets from my Phonics Starter Series. You can see a video of Jamie when he was three, working with the initial (and very basic) motor skills activities on the front page of the English Raven website (down toward the bottom, underneath the gorgeous video of him when he was two, reading the Very Hungry Caterpillar to his parents!).
But we're also starting to get into initial sound variations for different sets of words. The following videos are an excellent example of how quickly children can develop and progress with these sorts of activities.
In this video, Jamie is a little uncertain about what's supposed to happen on paper, so he wants Dad to do it. I show him how to "build" the letter F as a big and small letter, using different strokes, and then we work through a series of pictures to see which of them begin with the "f" sound. He's uncertain at times, not least because I've deliberately scattered some words in there that start with "v" or "b" - but mainly he's just coming to terms with this whole idea of sounding out words and linking an initial sound to an alphabet letter.
You might also notice that the selection of words includes vocabulary items from previous worksheets we've already completed (starting with "e"), to help recycle and review words and alphabet letters.
This video is from a couple of days later, and we're now up to the letters "I" and "J". If you watch/listen carefully, you may notice that Jamie still wants me to sound out the words for him, but he is making much more confident decisions about initial sounds for words, linking them to the target alphabet letter, and he has decided by now that he wants to do the crossing out or circling on the worksheet. As you will see in the video that follows next, all this scaffolding and modelling from Dad is important, as it creates a platform for him to start doing these sorts of activities according to patterns and routines independently.
Here you can see that Jamie is not only doing most of the activity himself, now he is expanding it and adding things he knows from previous applications or other kinds of exposure to the alphabet. In addition to sounding out words and using the initial sound to decide whether a word starts with 'O' or not, he also wants to state what sounds and letters the other words in the grid start with. In fact, he even recognizes (finding a 'P' word in the 'O' section of the worksheet) that some words will feature in the next grid, knowing that 'P' follows 'O'.
Anyway, if you've watched those three videos in sequence, you can no doubt see how things are progressing and developing quickly for the little lad!
It is a true delight to sit down and help your children learn this way. My wife was gobsmacked when she saw what Jamie was capable of doing by the third video there, and asked me how in heck I managed to get him to that stage so quickly. I reminded her that I made these worksheets for classes of 12 children aged 4-6 in small classrooms in Korea, and that helping Jamie 1-1 in this way was a piece of cake by comparison! But really, it comes down to a calm and progressive method, appropriate scaffolding supported within familiar routines, and basically letting the child decide when and how they want to take the next step.
I also reminded my wife that she had recommended (during the activity in the first video above) that I ask Jamie to do more of it on his own, and challenge him more (my wife is Korean, and Korean mums do tend to have a pretty demanding nature about them when it comes to education!). By the third video my wife was starting to see the bigger picture (plus some hints about why Jamie doesn't seem to be taking all that well to her attempts to keep developing his Korean...). Not fair, really - having a husband who has spent more than 15,000 hours in classrooms with young learners! I think it also infuriates her when she asks me "what level/grade do you think he's at now?", and I always answer "He's at Jamie's level - his grade, whatever he decides that is today."
In any case, I'm certainly no super expert in early childhood education, nor in phonics instruction, but the time and activities Jamie and I are engaged in here have nothing but positives going for them. I think it's really important that it is him coming to me wanting to do this rather than vice-versa, and we always skip whatever he doesn't want to do or stop as soon as he finds it boring. He's still a very young lad and all...
Here is a snapshot of the different worksheets Jamie and I are currently working on in Phonics Starter 2 from my website:
By the way, the best worksheets and activities I've seen for this sort of thing are over on Abc Teach, a fantastic resource website for teaching young children (my phonics stuff is a good starting point, but Sandy - the maker of Abc Teach - is the genuine expert). I'm planning on becoming a member of that site very soon, and drawing on a ton of great resources to help Jamie with his learning at home!
So - are you a teacher with an ESL or ELT focus looking for new teaching materials for the new school year? Why don't you post a comment here and let me know some of the things you'd like to see added to the English Raven resource bank!
Oh - and yes - I do operate a pay-for membership policy, but if I like your post and your idea, I'll gladly give you membership and full access to the site for free!
If you've visited the front page of English Raven any time recently, you may have noticed the logo featured above - and perhaps even followed the link through to the introductory preview page for World Adventure Kids!
This is a rather ambitious publication I am embarking on, and I thought it might be interesting to comment about its background and ongoing development here on my blog. Later, these posts could make for interesting reading!
The concept of World Adventure Kids! has been in my mind as a writer and teacher for at least 10 years. However, as a type of genre and style of reading, it goes back much farther even - to when I was about 10 or 11 years old. At that time, some friends and I were getting right into the Choose Your Own Adventure reader-oriented fiction stories, where - basically - the book is written in the 2nd person, talking directly to the reader as the main character in the story, who then makes the important decisions on how the narrative turns at given points and what outcome is achieved. While CYOA was cool, we thought the Fighting Fantasy books - written in the same fashion but within a fantasy world with additional game rules (and, of course, plenty of monsters and sword and sorcery style swashbuckling) - were THE coolest set of books possible!
These books were (and no doubt still are) powerful for young readers. Becoming the main star of the narrative makes a young reader feel like they are flying, and being able to control what happens (for either good or bad outcomes) represents a challenge that totally absorbs the reader. Now, later - as an educator - something important that occurs to me is that these books were read by both girls (who generally were ready to read anything) and boys who technically "hated reading" or weren't considered to be all that gifted in the classroom. We were so into these books that a couple of friends and I even wrote our own version of one, with each person exploring a different adventure direction, and all the entries pulled back together to make one interactive story with multiple adventure options and endings. The compilation and editing job fell to me. It took forever to put it all together, but the result was - well, seriously COOL!
The Choose Your Own adventure style books were enormously popular in the 1980s, and then suffered a catastrophic decline in the early 90s with the advent of video games. It now appears they are starting to make a serious comeback - something I wasn't actually aware of some 3-4 years ago when I embarked on putting something like World Adventure Kids together.
You may be wondering (quite rightly) why I would develop and go ahead with World Adventure Kids if the original CYOA series are being revamped and re-released. Well, my approach to this genre is somewhat different, in a variety of ways:
I wanted to make something that reflected the nature of the world today, and the world today's children will face in the future, making things like technology, global issues and the environment key issues.
My background is in ELT (English Language Teaching), and I wanted to make a series that doesn't just talk to English-speaking children in western countries, but children anywhere in the world (the emphasis on teamwork with characters from different nationalities is fundamental in World Adventure Kids; I won't say that the books are culturally neutral - but I will claim that I've tried to write books in a way that is culturally respectful).
In combination with the EFL/ESL angle, I wanted to make a series of books written in a way that caters to children who may not be expert or patient readers - I might even go so far as to say I wanted adventures and a reading style that could be considered "remedial" - especially in terms of getting struggling readers going (and just as importantly - keep them going!).
Of course, I also wanted to write a series of books that I would enjoy writing and reading myself! The 10-year-old boy in me still wants to go on amazing adventures all over the world, meeting other kids and solving mysteries and problems. Writing commercial coursebook materials over the past 3-4 years has definitely shown me that it's not all that enjoyable all that much of the time. In spoiling myself, and going back to what feels like more genuine writing - writing from the heart, and with the spark of imagination - I might end up with some books that kids will really enjoy reading! Hopefully, in being selfish, I'm actually going to end up doing a better job overall and entertain more readers in the long run...
Occupied as I was with other work and writing projects (you know, the kind of stuff that might actually help pay the bills), I had to be content with just musing about this project for several years. When it came time to actually put something down on paper, I did - several times over a period of about one year, with an equal number of trips to the wastepaper basket. For some reason, it just wouldn't work.
At about this time, my 20-book coursebook series with Pearson Longman (Boost! Integrated Skills Series) was really starting to take off, not just in Asia but in several regions around the world. Suddenly I had a willing audience of major publishers ready to listen to my ideas about new publication ideas... Under some pressure from one of these publishers to get the idea down properly on paper, I finally sat down and wrote a whole double-adventure kit in about three nights - and this time, it didn't just work, it really worked!
As thrilled as I was with the final product, I re-read it yet again and realised that the ELT publishers I was being courted by probably wouldn't like it all that much. It was too innovative, too niche, not cookie-cutter enough, too sophistocated for the publishers to neatly package and sell with a big bang into an already highly competitive industry that was as cluttered with coursebooks and leveled readers as it was unwilling to ever try something genuinely new...
Still, the publishers wanted to see it, so I sent off my manuscripts and publication prospectus.
And... I was right! Despite ELT publishers telling me the concept and actual story were brilliant, fun, innovative, and definitely appealing to kids - it was too niche for their tastes, it couldn't be packaged up easily and sold as a coursebook series, it wouldn't be able to compete with the reading series already out there, etc. etc. I'll be fair to ELT publishers and concede that it's not easy for them to bring new innovations out into the market, and they are under enormous pressure to appeal to the company's bottom line and produce things that will sell well. I'll also be critical and say that new ideas and approaches don't often come out in teaching materials because major publishers - the entities best positioned and equipped to support such endeavours - won't try them. As one academic and coursebook writer said to me recently "no, they'll let some start-up go ahead and have all the ideas and take all the risks, and then they (the major publishers) will just copy them and claim it as their own new bandwagon..."
Well, I decided to take this as a sign and a direction rather than a cause for dejection. I decided to go ahead and produce World Adventure Kids! entirely on my own. I hired a fabulously talented illustrator named Declan Walsh, and got down to work. I created a careful level system and also an overall approach concept for this style of educational writing: IARA (Interactive Adventure Reading Approach), and then went over the storylines and text very carefully to make sure they provide an "even keel" for readers of different reading proficiencies and motivational interests. The results have been very exciting and now I even have a nice-looking preview page up on my site:
At this point, I am looking at both print and online versions of these reading materials, as the interactive nature of them works well with an online format. The first two adventure kits are going well, and will most likely be released in late October (this year) in online format, with print versions available not long after that.
I have to admit it is a little scary (there's a part of me that really wishes I'd done this sort of self-funded risk-taking adventure before I got married and had two children!), but it is also really exhilarating! World Adventure Kids are seriously cool, with really unique characters and action-packed Indiana-Jones-style adventures that address global issues. If nothing else, I know my own kids will have some fun and motivating things to read as they grow up! But more importantly, I am already proud of this work, irrespective of how well it does or how much money it makes me. I've added to my own education in terms of researching the themes, issues and contexts in the adventures, and had a lot of fun being a 10-year-old again...
Here's a little bonus for my weblog visitors - free access to a complete Sentence Navigator kit download from the Member's section of EnglishRaven.com!
This is the second edition complete kit for Sentence Navigator Two, and you can download it instantly at the link below:
You can see the syllabus details and scope/sequence for Navigator Two at the link here, and there are teacher's notes and examples for the various activity types available here.
I wrote the Sentence Navigator series years ago, well before I started writing any sort of major commercial material. The idea was to bring a discovery and puzzle approach to basic level grammar and writing skills for kids. All four levels in the series became a very popular alternative to the boring (and often very difficult) grammar coursebooks used in the schools I taught at.
Interestingly enough, the Sentence Navigator materials still appear to be among the most popular downloads on the site!
You can see the scope and sequence for all four Sentence Navigator kits at this link, and if you are interested in accessing the other three kits, you'll need to consider the unthinkable and actually become an English Raven member (and yes, that costs money: US$20 per year - or approximately less than $2 per month!).
Nik Peachey recently wrote an interesting and informative blog post on how you might go about selling your ELT materials online using something called Tagito. Basically, it's a facility that allows you to promote and sell individual downloads.
Learning about Tagito is interesting enough - and worth checking out - but I've also posted a fairly detailed response in the blog thread there about how I operate English Raven's pay-for materials: essentially, through a general subscription membership that allows people to access whatever they want from the site over a period of one year.
I've since checked back and seen some more interesting comments from other netizens, related to why they are or aren't willing to pay for online materials, or else explaining other options for selling material online. Something that caught my eye was the option of self-publishing using Lulu (looks great, but could be expensive if you're located outside the US).
It's an interesting discussion for any budding ELT materials writers out there wondering how they can generate a little extra coin for their hard work and creative efforts!
I've just uploaded a page on English Raven that features a video and powerpoint display from a presentation I did in Seoul last year at the Pearson Amazing Minds Young Learners and Teenagers conference. The subject was TEE ~ Teaching English in English (or TETE ~ Teaching English through English, as it is often called) and how it related to current English education policy in South Korea.
You can see the video and powerpoint file in one screen at this link:
While this presentation was specific to current issues in Korea, if you are interested in the issue/concept of Teacing English in/through English, you will probably find this presentation of some interest irrespective of where in the world you happen to be teaching.
I am considering adding a whole section to English Raven dedicated to specific considerations and methodology for Teaching English in/through English, but for now I'll just see how much interest there is in the issue!
Well, I've finally gotten around to adding something to English Raven that I've been wanting to do for a long time (years, in fact) - and that is a hybrid online/print-based world news service geared to the interests of children.
WNK, as you see it above, features an online page with four news stories, each representing a slightly different level of difficulty (dove, owl, eagle, and albatross - in that order). These levels generally correspond to the four levels in my Boost! Integrated Skills Series.
In addition to an eye-catching picture for each story, there are two listening files attached. The first is the basic news article, read out loud by myself. The second is something I call "News Extra" - a follow-up article which links to, adds to, or expands the general topic in some way.
Below the listening files is a link labeled "TALK ABOUT IT", which links to a special Voxopop page with an oral prompt related to the main article. Students can then record their own oral responses to the prompt, getting some valuable practice with speaking online and sharing their opinions worldwide.
That's about the extent of the online side of things, and also the general service as it is available 100% for free for teachers and learners around the world.
For those teachers who want to go a bit further, and use this online facility in combination with classroom-based worksheets and activities, there are special study kits available to English Raven Members. Each kit consists of eight PDF-formatted pages, beginning with the basic reading passage and finishing with a writing topic, working through a variety of other skills and activities on the way.
By way of example, here is an overview of the study kit for the second level (OWL), in application to the online news articles about sharks becoming extinct and the cruel fishing practice called "finning":
News article (reading) + Reading Skills
This features the written version of the article (with a simple URL archive link if students want to go back and listen to the article while they read it here in text). On the following page is a list of important vocabulary to be checked, and some reading comprehension questions. Two things you might find different from standard textbooks here... (1) vocabulary is listed and students are encouraged to use dictionaries to check up on their meanings (hey, this is what I used to have to do when learning a new language, and I'm tired of publishers and teachers asking me to figure out the meanings of the words for the learners in advance!); (2) not all of the reading comprehension questions are multiple choice (I'm tired of publishers or teachers asking me to use multiple choice all the time, so that kids can guess correct answers even if they have no idea what they've read/are reading!).
"News Extra" (Listening) + Talk Time
The "News Extra" is a listening gap-fill activity, featuring a follow-up article linked to the main reading article above. Following the listening are some simple true/false prompts to see how well students have understood essential points in the listening. Teachers can either read out the article or use the online news page provided (which features a pre-recorded version of the News Extra text).
On the next page is "Talk Time", a little innovation I'm quite proud of and excited about. This is a dialogue, linked thematically to the content that has been presented so far in the reading and listening materials. Basically, the same dialogue is presented on two cards (to be cut out separately), with highlighting for either an A or B speaker. The idea is to get two students up in front of the class and have them perform this short dialogue (drawing on the teacher if necessary for assistance), while the rest of the class listens to them. The speaking cards for the two performers then feature simple comprehension questions for them to ask to the class. In essence, students are performing the dialogue input (rather than the usual unrealistic replication on a CD) "live", and then actually hosting the comprehension check to see how well their classmates have understood them.
Class Discussion + Write an Email
"Class Discussion" provides some prompts related to the news article theme for students to answer for themselves and then ask to 1-3 classmates. Very much integrated skills and interaction - basically a version of the "Finding Out" application I've already written a lot about (and used a lot in classes for fantastic results!).
"Write an email" provides some sort of real-world input to which the students respond via email. They may be answering an email from a friend, or sending an email to a particular organisation or online application. The idea here is for realistic-feeling real-world style writing practice.
Write about it + Talk about it (+ Teacher notes)
A more open, semi-essay style writing task follows, with a general theme-related prompt to respond to. Below this, students are then encouraged to go online and respond to the same prompt orally (and they can use the writing task to help them speak if they want, as the same prompt is applied).
The final page in the kit has teacher notes, with answer keys and links to any online help that could be relevant to teaching the unit.
So there it is, World News for Kids, in online format and in printable study kits!
I recently checked the English Raven site stats and noticed that it had recently clocked up its 1,000,000th(putting all the 000s there feels more impressive than writing "million", don't you think?) individual visitor. The exact figure I had on checking (today) was 1,034,958. It would have been nice to see who the 1,000,000th visitor was... Oh well, only missed him/her by 34,958 other visitors. I must pay more attention next time!
Wow. 1,000,000 people have visited the site. That is pretty cool to contemplate, but also kind of staggering. The site might not be a "big cheese" in web circles, but for a guy like me who barely knew how to use Microsoft Word to type up a resume when I started fiddling around with site building, I must say it is a pretty satisfying feeling seeing that number of visitors. It's also a humble reminder to me of just how many English teachers there are out there in the world, and by extension, how many English language learners. WOW!!!
Million (or rather "millions") is a magic figure for English Raven in other ways as well. 2007 saw the site get 1,148,267 hits, up from the year before when it got 1,006,202 hits. It's an interesting feeling to look back over the stats and see the first year (2001) with a grand total of 88 visitors and 1806 hits overall. Those 1800 hits were no doubt mostly from me, trying to work out how the heck to make the pages work...
All in all, English Raven has (as of today) accrued 4,405,532 hits over its 6-odd years of life on the world wide web. I think that gives the site, and the million visitors to its EFL/ESL resource cyber shores, plenty of reasons to celebrate!
If you're reading this and you were one of the 1,000,000 site visitors, my heartfelt thanks, and I hope whatever you found on the site gave you and your learners a more rewarding experience in the EFL/ESL classroom.
Rightio, then. Time to start setting our sights on 10,000,000 hits to the site...
Well I'm happy to announce that English Raven (www.englishraven.com) has reverted to being a free resource site again for all teachers of EFL/ESL to young learners and teenagers. That means teachers everywhere now have completely free access to the 3000+ pages of materials and activities stored away on the English Raven site. Enjoy!
This followed a period of around four years where I was charging a membership fee to access English Raven. During that time I was subsisting mainly on a rather meagre teacher's wage here in South Korea, and with a distance MA in progress, a family on the way and a stubborn insistence to not succumb to illegal private teaching, I generally needed to supplement my income somehow... In fact, the initial decision to charge for membership was largely driven by feedback from visitors, who were telling me they couldn't believe the amount of quality materials they could access, and some actually recommended that I charge for it!
Some improvements to my salary, an international publication with Pearson Longman and a flourishing online teaching business well and truly fixed any income woes, and I immediately changed Raven back to a free resource again at the first opportunity. It's actually quite a relief for me, because I was never entirely comfortable with the idea of charging teachers to access materials to make their classes run more effectively. Teachers of young learners in particular need all the assistance they can get, and shouldn't have to pay out of their own pockets to make the schools they work at better institutions.
Well, that's that then, and I hope teachers find English Raven a useful and convenient tool.
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