This was an interesting resource to research and develop. It presents two different versions of the same core song - Beds are Burning; the recent version produced as part of the Tck Tck Tck Campaign to promote awareness of climate change in the lead up to the Copenhagen Summit, and the original version from the band Midnight Oil, which was inspired by the Pintupi tribe and their move in from and then back out to the isolation of Australia's Western Desert.
Two very different 'causes', and it is interesting to look at how the lyrics are different for each version according to their purpose.
To best showcase this, I've built a webpage featuring both music videos and the lyrics for each in a scroll box beneath, side by side for easy comparison. In addition, for each version I've added a series of key words and links to graded (or gradable) texts on Google Search that explore a variety of issues or topics relevant to each rendition of the Beds are Burning song.
For ESL application, just listening to and comparing the lyrics can be a really interesting exercise. The main ideas and 'roots' in each set of lyrics make for clear comparisons, but at phrase level there are also some great opportunities to explore language (for example to take a stand versus to say fair's fair, or turning back versus give it back).
These texts are also well set up for Certificate III in ESL (Access) and the following element/performance criteria:
Unit C24 (VPAU505): Read and write a range of straightforward informational, instructional and other texts.
Element 1: Analyse a range of informational texts
Performance Criteria 1.1: Scan informational text and identify the context and topic
Performance Criteria 1.2: Identify the main ideas or issues
Performance Criteria 1.3: Locate supporting information or examples
Performance Criteria 1.4: Identify conventions of informational texts
Performance Criteria 1.5: Analyse the structure and discourse features of the texts
Performance Criteria 1.6:Respond to the text, outlining any opinions expressed, and state own opinion about the topic
Learners could be encouraged to tackle both texts as part of this outcome, or the one that interests them most. Alternatively, they could follow the links featured alongside each set of lyrics and source their own reading text on a more specific topic (anything from climate change to The Pintupi Nine). This is a great way to marry extensive reading with some basic tech skills oriented around particular themes.
Besides reading, there are plenty of opportunities to have classroom discussions or negotiate writing topics feeding out of the content available on the web page.
One or more of the texts available through this resource could also build towards any of a number of ESL Framework Elective Units (for example, Current Issues, Indigenous Australia, Environment of Australia, Australian History, etc.)
See more of this these sorts of resources over at the English Oz section of this blog.
Worried about having to pay for access to all the Englishraven.com resources for teaching English to young learners and teenagers?
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
2012 is going to be a year of changes and new directions for English Raven, and pay-for access to the (3000+) resources created and gathered over the past decade isn't part of the plan.
So if you teach English to children and/or teenagers, I'd like to wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New year, and draw your attention to the new Open Access Downloads Page where a rather large sack of teaching gifts awaits you.
The only things I ask in return are:
1. You pass the gifts along to other teachers you know as well!
2. You respect my authorship and rights to the material and don't go uploading it on your site or blog without my permission, and (heaven forbid...) don't go trying to pass it off as your own work.
Enjoy, and see you about in 2012 for some exciting new adventures!
It's a complicated sort of decision, but in the end it wasn't terribly difficult to make.
The full 168-page digital version of World Adventure Kids is now a 100% free download. You can get it now by popping over to the WAK page on English Raven; look for the green bar inviting you to download the book for free. No strings attached.
I might blog in the near future about why I've decided to head in this direction, but for now let's just say that:
I designed and wrote this because I wanted to enjoy the whole design and writing process. It was fun. Enormously enjoyable to make.
I'm a truly lousy (and lazy) salesman. I honestly couldn't be bothered putting all the time into advertising and pushing it. I'd rather children just read it, liked it.
It cost thousands to self-publish this sort of work (the illustrations alone put me back close to three thousand US dollars...), but it was bankrolled with part of the royalties from a massively commercial textbook series (and let's just say that, using that equation, I'm still well in front).
There is the risk, of course, that offering something up for free means that people will be less disposed towards valuing and respecting it. We'll see, shall we?
If you're wondering how I managed to jump from Materials Design Masterclass 8 (last week's entry) to 12, take a look at this post from late October where I incorporated Masterclasses 9, 10 and 11 into a Halloween Materials offering (the one I invited you to wrap your pumpkin's laughing gear around).
This particular tutorial (and my last in this series for the year, most probably) explores the notion of teaching unplugged alongside materials design. You might be thinking that sounds a bit like taking a vegan smorgasbord to a meat lovers association dinner, but personally I've always seen a role for smart materials design in a 'materials lite' paradigm like Dogme.
For those who have been following the Materials Design Masterclasses, I hope you've learned something new and useful along the way. Remember that all 12 tutorials are permanently available on a dedicated portal over on the English Raven main site.
These are terms you might have seen bandied about a lot of late. We do, of course, want our learners to read extensively, read intensively, and do so based on voluntary interest in what they are doing.
It's not always as easy as it sounds, especially for highly reluctant readers and/or those children who are reading (or being 'forced' to read) based on a study schedule where, despite all of our best intentions and slogans, the rewards for reading are more often extrinsically motivated than intrinsically driven.
These were the sorts of issues that inspired me, several years ago, to write choose your own adventure style stories that address the reader directly and focus on the idea of having grand adventures, and for it to almost feel like a game.
One of the most interesting aspects of this came in the form of 'cheating'...
With both the print and digital versions of World Adventure Kids, the narratives are divided up into chunks and spread at random around different page numbers in the book (with directions on which part to go to next, often with a choice to make).
A common result, as with the pages illustrated at the top of this post, is that the readers find themselves looking at one part of the story on one page but also get a juicy preview of another stage of either the same or a different adventure thread in the book. The temptation to at least glance over that facing page (knowing that it might inform you about what is coming up later in the your adventures) can be quite irresistable.
Hence the reader looks beyond the section of the story to other sections (extending what they read), and does so voluntarily.
A similar sort of thing happens when readers are presented with choices. The temptation to do a little cheating and glance over at the results of both choices before selecting one to follow is natural (with more opportunities for voluntary extension outside the bounds of a single narrative).
The facilitation of these forms of 'cheating' is deliberate on my part in World Adventure Kids.
The readers may be cheating a little when it comes to 'playing' this story as a game, but they are winning (without actually realising it) when we consider the extra reading and critical thinking they engage in quite naturally through this process.
So, dear younger readers of World Adventure Kids, cheat to your heart's content. I'm all for it!
The eighth instalment in the Teaching Materials Design Masterclass Series really throws the gauntlet down and showcases a rather long list of design skills integrated with content writing and presentation considerations.
At close to an hour in length, it is not for the faint-hearted... But for those blog visitors who have been following the Masterclass series so far and have a genuine passion for professional materials design I think there is nice full spread meal to chew on here.
Here's the final product of the tutorial in terms of the materials themselves:
And here are the hows and whys in terms of building and design:
If this all feels a bit too much for you at this stage, you might like to check out some of the earlier (and shorter and simpler) tutorials in the series at the link here.
Oh, and I've just noticed that this year's Edublog Awards have opened for nominations (hint hint, wink wink, nudge nudge).
JUST in case you were getting a bit sick and tired of background and header/footer style used in many of the previous tutorials, this week's Teaching Materials Design Masterclass takes a bit of a turn and looks at a different design concept that might be good for some variety and/or could be a little more attractive to younger learners.
The tutorial here shows you how to built a 'textured' header and footer with a curved 'bubble' window covering the main part of the page. Some variations on that are demonstrated a little later in the video as well, hopefully presenting you with even more design options to consider.
This is tutorial seven in the series, so if you'd like to learn more I encourage you to check out the full bank of materials design lessons over on the English Raven site here.
Rilla Roessel is one of those people you meet and work with in publishing who constantly surprises you and -- occasionally -- makes you realise there are people out there who see things you never even guessed at.
Rilla was kind enough to look over a very early draft of World Adventure Kids for me (I'd worked with Rilla extensively at Pearson through the whole process of making and then marketing the Boost! Integrated Skills Series) to give me some feedback and provide a few angles I might have missed.
She really liked what she saw/read, acknowledged that it ticked a lot of those boxes like CLIL, extensive reading, etc. and then made a comment along the lines of "another thing it really has going for it is that it has such a strong values curriculum embedded in it."
Values curriculum?
There was a new term to add to my thinking box...
Rilla is right, of course. There are a lot of different values and ethical or moral perspectives presented in World Adventure Kids. In fact, several of the decision pathway options in the reader-directed story deliberately target choices that could be said to embody ethical issues and 'values.'
I featured 'values' in this way in World Adventure Kids because it seemed to come naturally to a story for children -- young people still exploring ideas and choices in the world and trying to figure out what is inherently right or wrong about what they choose to do and why.
However, having identified (thanks to Rilla's astute observation) that my work definitely did have a 'values' orientation, I must admit that I started to feel a little uneasy...
Was I preaching at and attempting to moralize children in this story? In embedding a strong 'values curriculum' was I in actual fact falling prey to something more along the lines of the 'hidden curriculum'?
I looked back through the stories and choices again, eventually realising I was comfortable with the ethical choices presented. From the very start, World Adventure Kids are presented as having a very specific mission: to protect the world's environment, animals, people and cultural treasures. If you want to be a World Adventure Kid, lead a mission and use all the cool resources this mysterious movement has at its disposal, your actions and decisions need to reflect the values identified as being synonymous with WAK.
Hence I feel quite comfortable with choices presented to young readers along these lines (warning: may contain some plot spoilers!):
Free the anaconda?
You've found an anaconda trapped in a cage in the depths of the Amazon Rainforest. Do you let it loose (which could obviously present some danger to yourself) or leave it right where it is (a course of action very enthusiastically supported by that member of your team who is absolutely petrified of snakes)? Should the fact that anacondas are illegally caught and sold as pets in other countries really matter?
Be the first to meet the Hi-Merima?
You accidentally stumble upon the village of the Hi-Merima tribe, an uncontacted people secreted away in the Amazon (this one is based on actual fact). Be the first modern humans to meet them and get your name in all the newspapers and research journals, or leave them alone? Does the fact the tribe is hostile to outsiders and at serious health risk based on lack of immunities (from things like the common cold) warrant consideration? What about their right to continue living their lives the way they always have, not bothering the outside world?
Touch the treasure?
After a perilous underground journey, you've finally discovered Pharaoh Sety's hidden treasure and it is truly SPECTACULAR! Haven't you earned the right to be the first to touch and examine it all, even if there is a bit of a risk that your inexpert hands might break something? And does the notion of the treasure rightfully belonging to the people of Egypt (first and foremost) really carry any water? Why is Tootenhootin in the British Museum, anyway?
Worth the risk?
This one is presented in World Adventure Kids in various guises in the face of different dangerous situations where a specific item of equipment hasn't been chosen by the adventurers and is necessary for safe navigation through the danger. Swim across a river full of Black Caimans? Sprint along a corridor despite a specific warning it needs to be walked in complete silence? What about your responsibility as team captain to ensure the safety of your team members and not take any unnecessary risks?
I'm not sure about other people's feelings on these issues, but I don't personally think these dilemmas represent ethical consideration that is inappropriate for children to tackle.
Yes, they do make an attempt at a set of values to be thought about and exhibited, and to that extent they perhaps do comprise a 'values curriculum.' But given World Adventure Kids are up front about what they expect from their team members, I would hardly say they form any kind of 'hidden curriculum.'
And in any case, the 'values' stuff isn't the only criteria for challenges and choices. Most of the other pathways depend more on critical thinking skills, which is something I will blog about in the near future.
Then again, isn't a values curriculum yet another way to encourage and facilitate critical thinking?
When I designed and formatted World Adventure Kids, I saw it mainly as an e-reading text ideal for desktop computers, laptops, notebooks and tablet devices.
Trying it out on my Galaxy S smartphone confirmed my suspicion it wouldn't work that well on a mobile phone. The screen still feels too small for comfortable reading, and the Adobe Reader for Android (for some baffling reason) rendered out the interactive functions that make World Adventure Kids a fluid and pleasant touch/click experience.
As it turns out, it wasn't the smartphone (or its size) that was the problem; it was the e-reader app itself.
I uploaded a different e-reading app for Android by a company called Mantano (easy to find in the Android store connected to the phone) and I was blown away by what this reader did for an interactive text like World Adventure Kids. Not only could I now read and interact with the story on a smartphone, it was really clear and easy and... fun!
Mantano features excellent display properties (as well as customisation options for viewing the text) and I found WAK 2-1 beautifully clear and easy to read by turning the phone for 'landscape' mode. Scrolling down was easy, the interactive links to different 'next stages' in the story worked flawlessly on the touch screen, most illustrations fit perfectly on the landscape screen (and those that were more of the full-page format in size could easily be seen by simply turning for vertical portrait mode, before returning to landscape to continue reading text) and the colour and detail in the pics were wonderful!
There's also an excellent and beautifully simple bookmark function which allows you to save your current page, and unlike the crippled Adobe Reader app, Mantano automatically opens to your last viewed page if you happen to be returning to the text after a break of some sort.
But the Mantano Reader comes with a lot more than just a clear, clean and easy interface.
With a simple touch to the screen, the extra Mantano features pop up around your text. You get a convenient 'slider' to move back and forth across the entire book, navigation and display options, as well as really easy to use annotation and highlight functions.
One function I particularly enjoyed, however, was the TTS (Text to Speech) option, which when activated basically reads the text to you out loud. It does have that flat, somewhat expressionless monotone you expect from a computer-generated TTS function, but it was much better than I thought it would be and for the reader who enjoys the aural supplement I think it does a wonderful job.
Despite the fact that I actually wrote World Adventure Kids and must have read over the story a million times, viewing and reading it on my Galaxy S with the Mantano Reader app became almost an addictive experience! With a single thumb I was able to scroll through and navigate to next sections of the adventure, activating Text-to-Speech here and there to have my adventure story read out loud to me, and enjoying the full colour illustrations.
It felt much more like playing a game than reading a book...
I couldn't help envisaging kids in the car on a family trip, enjoying an interactive adventure on their parent's smartphone. A tablet device would probably make for an even more enjoyable reading experience, but knowing that WAK 2-1 really can work on a smarphone is music to my ears.
Just make sure you have a good e-Reader App, and Mantano Reader comes top of the list as far as I am concerned!
Here is the sixth tutorial in the Teaching Materials Design Masterclass series, and here we look at how 1:3 design (see last week's tutorial for more information on that, or use the link above to access all the previous tutorials) creates a simple template for you to experiment with different sorts of teaching methodology and a variety of different practice or extension applications.
This tutorial isn't so much about technical aspects of building or designing something; it looks more at the interesting interface between your teaching methods and the materials used to express or facilitate those methods.
Next week's tutorial will introduce a new kind of background option, one that might be more appropriate for younger learners or just as an alternative way of presenting your material.
Hope you're enjoying and getting something out of the materials design series so far -- see you same time next week!
One of the most important parts of reading, from a skills and foundation point of view, is building vocabulary. This is particularly true for young readers engaging with texts in their second language, but is generally relevant to first language learners as well.
How robust the approach to building vocabulary is can depend on a variety of factors. Some readers can sort of 'absorb' new words just through the process of guessing from context and doing a wide range of extensive reading. Others can get by reasonably well enough by occasionally referring to a dictionary or asking an adult for explanation and elaboration when it seems called for. Some readers benefit from writing up word lists with basic definitions.
Working with learners of all ages in a context where English was a foreign language and a major priority of reading in English was to develop vocabulary, some years ago I developed a workbook approach to supplement reading texts called 'Word Hoard' (and later: 'Word Wise'). It worked so well that I thought it would be a good idea to apply it as an optional resource for the World Adventure Kids stories as well.
What follows is an overview of how to use the World Adventure Kids Word Wise resource (available as a free PDF download here) and what it covers and why. I've also included an introductory/instructional video specially made for the children-users themselves (though I'm sure teachers and parents could benefit from it as well!).
Basically, Word Wise WAK 2-1 is a 69-page workbook designed to be used in conjunction with the World Adventure Kids reading sets. It can be printed out and added to progressively as learners encounter and explore new words in the story texts. It caters to 8 'units' of 20 words each (hence 160 words altogether), but these numbers can be easily adjusted upwards or downwards based on reader and classroom preferences.
The first step involves the Master Wordlist at the start of the book. As learners read through and experience World Adventure Kids, the idea is that they look for words that feel new or that they would like to explore more. When a word has been chosen, it is entered first in the Master Wordlist at the front of the book (to create an initial reference point) -- the example used here is the word 'adventure'.
Each word is then placed into a special work grid, presented in the workbook as above, with three word grids per page and twenty per 'unit'. This is where the word is going to be really worked with and explored in a much more robust fashion, and the video below explains and demonstrates how it all works (this was specifically made for young readers to understand the process, by the way!):
So, in essence, a word grid features the following exploration:
A. Listing the word
B. Translating it into a learner's first language (or writing a definition for it)
C. Writing the word out three times neatly
D. Identifying the word's part of speech
E. Finding words that represent related ideas (building 'convocation' and lexical sets)
F. Writing the word in context using the full example sentence initially encountered in the World Adventure Kids text
G. Writing the word in a new sentence of the learner's own creation, using it accurately in a new context and/or personalising its use
H. Drawing a sketch or diagram (or pasting on a picture) to help visually conceptualise the word
Having experimented with vocabulary development for children over many years, I've found this has been one of the most comprehensive when it comes to really exploring the notion and use of a word.
Note that the grid doesn't necessarily need to be filled out in that order, and I have in fact seen children complete the grid in all sorts of different sequences. Great! Let them find what works for them. I've also found that a basic dictionary, physical or online, is a great help for filling out some of these sections.
When a word grid has been completed (or completed to the best of the learner's ability), it can be checked by a parent or teacher (you'll probably find it easier to check several at a time) and have 'stars' allocated for each complete 'row' on the grid. There are six star rows in each grid, and many of them represent 'easy points' (for example, writing the word out, finding its part of speech, copying the sentence it comes from in the main text, etc.). This star point allocation is meant to be reasonably flexible; I have, for example, been willing to circle a complete star in cases where most of the row was successfully completed.
The star points can be tallied on each page of the workbook (there is a space at the bottom of each page to do this) and then a points tally can be made for an entire 'unit' of 20 words. There are basically 120 star points per unit up for grabs, and I've divided them into grade rankings (not very scientific or statistical, mind; I've just found that this allocation tends to reward learners willing to put in the hard yards without slapping an unnecessarily shocking grade on those who aren't quite as dedicated!).
There is also a chart at the end of the workbook that allows learners and teachers/parents to track how well they performed across all of the units.
The final part of a unit features an integration/use activity encouraging learners to write 'a report, article, short essay or story using at least 15 of the vocabulary items from the unit'. This is strictly optional of course, and one of the great things about this printable resource is that, if you feel this is going just that little bit too much overboard, you can always not include it!
The basic idea here is for the learners to do some extended writing of their own, using the words they've explored for a targeted writing purpose.
Here are just some of the ways this section could be used for readers of World Adventure Kids:
1. Write a quick report about what has happened in your adventure so far.
2. Write about some of the new things you've learned so far(World Adventure Kids is rich in subject-based learning, so this ought to be a relatively rich area to choose from).
3. Rewrite key parts of your adventure so far, using past tense (the adventure itself is written in the present tense, so this can be an interesting way to highlight differences between the two tenses).
4. Create a spin-off story (take one or more parts of the adventure and add new narrative to change or extend it in some way).
5. Rewrite the key points of the adventure so far from the perspective of one of the other characters (for example, pretend to be a different team member or even Golden Sky or a Jump Jet/Heliporter pilot observing the adventure from a distance).
6. Create a timeline or map with labels summarising the adventure so far (good for learners who aren't confident with extensive writing but may like more visual activities).
Generally speaking, I've found this section to be a great way to encourage reviewing and rethinking over what one has read so far, with the new vocabulary integrated into the process. There is a second listing in the summary at the back of the workbook which allows a score to be allocated for this writing section alongside the actual word building grid work.
I've gone into quite a lot of detail here, which I hope hasn't been off-putting, but I would remind you that this sort of word work isn't a necessity when it comes to engaging with World Adventure Kids. For those who want to squeeze a bit more out of it, however, this can be a particularly rich resource.
Funnily enough, and despite the work involved, I've found that most children actually like the Word Wise approach and get into a nice rhythm with it. Many of them are very proud of the end result and get a real sense of having learned a lot of new things. And the pictures/conceptualisations... my goodness, kids are brilliant with that part and make us adults look very one dimensional indeed!
If you're interested in using the Word Wise approach in other sorts of language learning contexts, you might like to also check out my post here:
There is a more extensive instructional video there for teachers as well as adaptable open source versions of the Word Wise resource for you to download and use as you will.
Waaaay back on October 2nd, I launched a Halloween lesson materials design challenge here on the blog. I offered up some initial materials and sound files in open source format (for those who wanted a starting point) and challenged teachers to finish, adapt or replace it according to their preferences.
There are some excellent contributions there from teachers, and if you're looking for some great materials for Halloween I suggest you check them out in the comments thread for that post.
Just to follow up from that challenge, I did of course complete the templates myself and create a full Halloween lesson resource, and here are the open source files for it if you are interested in checking it out:
Note that the PDF version has the sound files embedded in the actual document; if you want to use the sound files for either the MS Word or open/compatible versions, they are available for download back on the original Halloween materials challenge post here.
Blog visitors may be satisfied with just that if they are simply looking for free, ready-to-use stuff to download and use for Halloween...
For those of you interested in the actual design process and the underlying teaching methodology principles, however, you're in for a bit of a treat (and tricks--hopefully of the more helpful sort!).
I'm bringing forward three of my teaching materials design video tutorials (I'm up to tutorial number 5 in the weekly release schedule here on the blog, but what you see below constitutes tutorials 9, 10 and 11 in the series) to show you not only how I made these Halloween materials, but why I've made them the way they are. So basically there is a blend of practical design techniques and teaching methodology principles.
Tutorial 9 (below) shows how I set up the basic template (using a design made earlier) and developed the first page of the handout, focussing on the Halloween notice and follow up prompts. The last third of the tutorial explains in detail why I've left so many gaps on the page...
Tutorial 10 demonstrates how I developed the second page of the handout, featuring a listening text to complement the Halloween invitation notice on the first page. Again, the design stuff is followed up with my teaching methodology rationale(s), for those who find such detail of interest...
Tutorial 11 is shorter and more targeted, demonstrating basically how I've managed to embed sound files into the PDF version of the Halloween materials using Adobe Acrobat. Having embedded sound files can be great when you want to send materials to students electronically and/or don't have an actual Internet connection working at the time of access.
There is more than an hour of materials design demonstrations and tips just on this individual post; and given that (apparently) blog readers aren't interested in anything that can't be absorbed in less than 3 minutes, I'm not sure how much of an audience it will have! If you do watch these tutorials and get something from them, then thank you and I hope they prove useful in improving your materials design skill set.
P.S. If you are/were wondering what the heck 'Wrap your pumpkin's laughing gear around this' implies... The pumpkin simply refers to the theme of Halloween, but the rest of the line comes from Australian 'ocker' slang meaning 'try (eating) this: it's good!'
('Laughing gear' = mouth)
('Wrap your laughing gear around ___' = try/eat ___)
Over many years of doing reading with learners of all age groups, I must confess that the actual act of reading something--while itself often very enjoyable--pales in comparison to what happens when we use that reading, or follow up from it.
Project tasks, either on an ongoing basis while a reading text is being engaged with or as a series of follow ups after the whole story has been wound up, are brilliant for encouraging a deeper layer of analysis and comprehension as well as taking full advantage of opportunities to engage in creative and critical thinking.
Basically, I think reading expansion projects (when done right) rock, and without them stories and texts only really capture a fraction of their thinking and learning potential.
My personal preference is to let the whole story be experienced first, with some 'in the margin' discussions if it is being scaffolded or shared with other readers, and then apply a range of small project options which will encourage the learners to go back over the text, look at certain parts of it more carefully, and then extend it (often in application to their own lives) in creative new ways.
In a whole-class approach to using World Adventure Kids 2-1 (as outlined on the blog here), however, it could be an option to apply mini projects in an ongoing way as in class or at home extensions between one part of the adventure and the next.
So here are four initial expansion projects for the first sections of World Adventure Kids 2-1 (before the narrative gets too deeply into particular adventures), which could be used as part of a re-reading/re-thinking of the story or as a series of challenges while the story progresses.
1. Secret Names
Part of being a World Adventure Kid is having your own secret name.
A. What is your secret name and why did you choose it?
B. Look at other characters' secret names in the stories. Why do you think they chose those names?
Make a Secret Names File to help you remember World Adventure Kids' secret names and what they could mean!
2. The Next Secret Meeting Place
Golden Sky asks you to meet her in the tallest tree in the park near where you live.
But next time she wants to meet you in a different place. It needs to be secret, where you can meet and talk about new adventures in private.
A. Make a map of your neighborhood.
B. Choose and circle three secret places where you could meet Golden Sky secretly.
C. Send a message to Golden Sky and explain each meeting place to her (where it is and why you chose it).
3. Amazing Transportation Machines!
In World Adventure Kids 2-1, you get to travel in a Jump Jet or a Heliporter.
Apparently, these machines are completely quiet and produce no pollution.
How do you think these machines could work? How do they move so quickly? How do they stay so quiet? How do they avoid making pollution?
A. Draw a diagram of a Jump Jet or Heliporter.
B. Show how you think it works, drawing lines to different parts and explaining what they do.
4. Pilot Preparations
In World Adventure Kids 2-1, you meet and travel with two special pilots: Cumulus Swift from Malaysia (flying a Jump Jet) and Blue Stratus from Turkey (operating the Heliporter).
Would you like to be a World Adventure Kids pilot?
Well, there are many things to learn and do before you can become a pilot. Two of the most important are designing a secret place to hide your Jump Jet or Heliporter (called a hangar), and learning about all the different places in the world.
A. Design a secret hangar (in your house or somewhere close to where you live) for your transportation machine and send the design to World Adventure Kids. If it is a good design, they will send experts to build the hangar for you!
B. Make a list of the most important cities and places in the world. For each place, find out what country it is in and what makes that place special. (Look back at the stories and find the information Cumulus Swift and Blue Stratus have found out about the different places they fly to.)
Of course, this is just a small taster of possible expansion project ideas for just the initial parts of World Adventure Kids 2-1. You and your reader(s) can no doubt think of many more, and/or tweak the ideas presented here to help them better fit the interests of the reader. I think there are also exciting opportunities to integrate technology skills into many of the projects (for example, using Google Maps for projects 2 and 4, using something like Excel for projects 1 and 4, using visual design tools for projects 3 and 4, etc.).
I'll also be presenting other project ideas for World Adventure Kids here on the blog in future, so keep your screens (and adventure ideas) peeled!
World Adventure Kids 2-1, like any reading text available out there, can be used in a variety of ways as part of a reading program. Aside from possibly the most obvious application (independent reading from individual children), I have been getting questions and suggestions from teachers of classes about how to best utilise WAK 2-1 for whole-class reading.
I am happy to say that the interactive, reader-directed format of World Adventure Kids actually makes it an excellent resource to use with a whole class for those contexts or situations whereby a teacher would like to apply it in a way that all the learners progress through it at the same pace. In fact, the role of decision making in the progress of the overall narrative really enhances opportunities for classroom discussion and debate (more so even than with a standard linear narrative).
To use WAK 2-1 with a whole class of learners aged 8-11, I would be inclined to apply it in the following way:
- Print out one copy of the whole book.
- Beginning at the start, take in one section of the story at a time, photocopying just that particular section so that each student in the class has a copy.
- Have the students read the section silently on their own (or out loud in turns if that is your context's preferred approach to 'reading').
- Elicit summaries of the section and explore key or difficult vocabulary as a class.
- (Optional:) Further explore any of the cross-curricular elements in more detail (for example, photosynthesis, an historical note, the effects of poisonous venom, etc.)
- If the section ends in a range of decision options, invite individual students to make suggestions and explain why they have chosen that option (alternatively: get the students into pairs or small groups and have them debate the choice together and then report back to the whole class). Then have the class debate and vote for the pathway the story will take next.
- If the section ends with a single link to the next part of the story, invite students to make predictions about what comes next and why, or to summarize their feelings about the narrative up to this point.
- (Optional:) Have students add an entry to an ongoing 'adventure journal' summarising what happened in that part of the adventure, how they feel about it and the decisions made as a group, and what they think might happen next.
- Based on the voted on decision or single pathway link, the teacher knows which adventure entry number to prepare and photocopy for the students for the next class. In this way, students add to their adventure narrative from one class to the next, perhaps filing the text (in order) in a folder of some sort.
Teachers may also be able to apply the same sort of process with digital versions of the material, by editing the main download and breaking it into discrete sections (the open source format in PDF facilitates this) which are mailed to or downloaded for students one bit at a time. The actual reading could even take place outside the classroom at home, with the checking, discussion and decision making happening in class before the teacher mails out the next part of the adventure.
Admittedly, an approach like this one really slows down the overall speed of the adventure experience, but it certainly does facilitate a lot more discussion, collaboration and analysis at each step along the way. It could also lend itself well to a syllabus whereby WAK 2-1 follows up other classroom learning in the first part of the lesson (or earlier part of the week), with 'adventure reading' being the reward at the end of the class or end of the week!
And... another thing you might like to consider is the potential for you to create an ongoing reader-directed adventure for your students using the same basic principles. And from there, adventures written and shared by the students themselves! For some useful guidelines and even software applications on this front (as well as numerous other existing story resources), I encourage you to check out Larry Ferlazzo's outstanding The Best Places to Read & Write "Choose Your Own Adventure" Stories.
If you've been following the materials design masterclass videos patiently and learning new things, then I thank you and congratulate you... and now you've got a little reward: a tutorial that works with actual learning content!
Tutorial 5 here follows on from all the skills built up over tutorials 1-4 and shows you how to plan some content oriented around a short dialogue ('The Cappuccino Chat') and apply it in a professional format using the '1:3 design principle.'
Tutorial 6 will be along soon enough, but for now remember that all of these tutorials are available over in the English Raven Materials Design section of my main site for your viewing pleasure/torture.
Given that World Adventure Kids 2-1 is so rich in illustrations (one of a few reasons I am unlikely to ever make any profit from it--not for a very long time, anyway!), I thought I'd have some fun and make a bit of a movie trailer for it.
It turned out pretty well, considering my amateurish skills in this area...
But this also got me to thinking... In this day and age, I think children's books could really benefit from this sort of initial marketing. It's also a fantastic pre-reading resource that can help the children get an overview and start to make some predictions about what they are going to experience in text.
I did my best not to give too many plot secrets away, but I wonder how children will react to this. Only one way to find out!
The use of the direct 2nd Person as the underlying narrative style in World Adventure Kids was a very deliberate choice on my part, with affective, interactive and linguistic rationales in mind.
For a start, this is a powerful way to 'insert' the reader directly into the story. It is appropriate for a narrative whereby the reader makes the choices and finds out where the adventures go based on his/her own decisions.
But I think it is an important affective device as well. For reluctant readers in particular, I think personal involvement (and a sense of freedom through the story options) can do a lot to pique their interest about what happens and why. I can recall my first experiences with Choose Your Own Adventure and Fighting Fantasy storybooks, at about age 10, and loving the sensation that I was in charge, that this was my adventure and not the far-fetched exploits of some abstract fabricated character I might never really relate to.
This format also allows for a deeper sense of interaction. The picture you can see at the top of this post comes from a section of one of the adventures where YOU have decided it could be fun or fame-enhancing to go and meet the Hi-Merima (a genuine Uncontacted People secreted away deep in the Amazon) and be the first modern person to do so. As you can tell, your team members aren't impressed with the idea. Panther Step warns it could be dangerous for you (the collective you this time) as the Hi-Merima have a fierce reputation. Think Sharp, your science expert, points out some of the risks modern humans pose for Uncontacted Peoples who have limited immune systems...
This is just one of a great number of interactions that take place in the stories between you, the reader, and the team members you go adventuring with. In a way it adds more life to the characters as well as the story. You get to see different sides of your co-adventurers and their personalities based on the decisions you make during the story.
And then there is your interaction with the story itself. Certain sections finish up with a direct question to you, and the options for going ahead are phrased in the 1st person.
For example (this was the text immediately preceding the scene depicted above):
It does, admittedly, put words in your mouth to some extent, but at least you get to choose which words they are, and you get to see what happens as a result of those words.
Last but not least, I like what this format does linguistically. The 2nd Person (combined with Present Simple tense) makes for beautifully direct and simple language. In my opinion, it helps to keep the narrative clean and simple, especially for struggling readers or second language learners. It also, to some extent, presents more language that is more relevant to spoken or personal English -- something that only happens in regular 3rd person and past tense narratives via dialogue sections.
Admittedly, those (more common) narrative styles yield a lot of precious language models as well, but I think the World Adventure Kids format makes for a valuable (different) supplementary model as well as a potentially rich source of comparison and noticing.
I might even venture so far as to say that narrative employing a lot of 2nd Person and Present Simple tense can facilitate easier access to reading, for those who might benefit from it. And the format of the reader-directed story means this happens in a way that feels natural, not contrived.
So...
What do you want to do now?
I think I'll leave a comment here telling the writer what I think of his ideas
I'll go back to my web-surfing now and look for something more worthy of my attention!
I thought this might be worth getting out of the way from the outset... World Adventure Kids is NOT a coursebook.
I state this only as an interesting reaction to some feedback from a very respected friend (and abundantly able ELT writer) who took a look over the new version of World Adventure Kids for me yesterday. He expressed some mild surprise that the release seemed to have shed all of its supplementary comprehension and language building elements.
He was referring to one of the very first drafts of WAK which I showed to him more than two years ago. That draft featured a page of vocabulary building and comprehension/grammar questions for every page of reading text. It was, essentially, something along the lines of a reading-coursebook; and I was doing it that way because the major ELT publishers I was approaching with the idea at the time had made it abundantly clear that that was what they were hoping for: something that could be marketed and applied as a coursebook.
This IS rather interesting to me, because as soon as I stopped trying to please major publishers and looking for something that could sell in the squillions, a good hard look at the original notion and feel of 'adventure reading' reminded me that exercises and language tasks were the last things I really wanted jammed into World Adventure Kids narratives.
Admittedly, I am finishing up post-reading comprehension quizzes for each of the two adventures, mainly emphasizing the content/subject elements like science, geography and history. I also have language-oriented quizzes in the pipeline. The key difference, however, is that I want them to be optional extras to the main stories, and if they are to be applied I would encourage that they happen after a full uninterrupted reading of the texts. This to me is more of a revisiting and reviewing process; I don't want that stuff to be compulsory and I certainly don't want it jammed alongside the main story content.
Personally, I want the adventures and stories in World Adventure Kids to be experienced and enjoyed basically as they are: straight up stories. Sure, learners might like to use a dictionary to look up the meanings associated with new words or turns of phrase (and/or invite teachers and peers to help them in this process), but this should be about helping them to continue reading (not stopping and in many ways 'leaving' the story to do other stuff).
The best follow up to the stories would be discussion and small or large scale project work, further exploring a theme or task based on what they read about across entire (short) stories.
I'm not going to be so arrogant as to tell you how to use any resource in sort of black and white terms. However, I would reiterate that WAK is about stories, and I hope you find the best way to help learners experience them as stories.
That could well mean (gasp!) letting them engage with it on their own and on their own terms, helping or assisting them if and when they ask you to.
Really, when was the last time you just let your learners READ... without reading it out loud, without dissecting and analysing all the language the moment it pops up on the page?
Sure, go ahead and do content/comprehension/language work later through a second or review reading stage, but first (and this is just my personal take and preference):
It's taken a while, but very pleased to announce that World Adventure Kids has finally arrived and is now available through my site.
Initial feedback has been very positive, including this from my 10-year-old niece:
Hey Uncle Jase,
One word: AMAZING! I can't wait to do the worksheets when Mum gets some more paper!
Given that this young lady is a pretty 'discerning' reader for her age and is never backwards in coming forwards to tell you what she's really thinking, hopefully I can interpret her analysis as being reasonably free of bias!
Here's a quick intro to the new book:
You can find out more about this 'adventure reading' approach and how to get your hands on it over on the main English Raven site here.
And... given there are several layers to the approach and design, I hope you won't mind me blogging from time to time about some of the things I'm trying to achieve via 'adventure reading'.
Oh, and thank you so much for all the very heartening well wishes and encouragement I've had today via Facebook. It took three years to build this boat, so it's wonderful to finally have it in the water...
It's Thursday, which on the English Raven blog means Open (Source) English time... This is the third set of materials, and hopefully the video below explains all you need to know about it:
The teaching materials design masterclass continues here on English Raven!
Tutorial 4 (here) looks at one of my basic design principles for teaching materials: the 1:3 design principle. In essence, that means (1) major space for content/input and the rest of the space divided into (3) sections each with a different learning application or extension.
In addition to demonstrating and explaining the 1:3 principle, this tutorial includes a quick application and review of the skills showcased in tutorials 1-3. Remember you can head over to the materials design section of English Raven if you want to watch any of the previous or future tutorials.
Next week: Tutorial 5 continues the concept of the 1:3 design principle, but showcases how to start producing actual content and how it can slot into the 1:3 design (and why...). Watch what is possible with a simple conversation oriented around ordering a cappuccino...!
Be sure to let me know how the materials work (or don't work!) for you and your learners, remembering of course that it is up to you (and them) to make them work...
This, previous and all future Open English materials can be found in the Open English section/category of the blog. Be sure to share!
It's Wednesday, and that means teaching materials design tutorial here on English Raven... Here is the third lesson in my series, showcasing how you can make those pretty buttons ('activity sequence markers' -- think A, B, C, or 1, 2, 3, etc.) for the different parts of your material.
Tutorial 4 will appear this time next week, and it looks at my basic '1:3 design' principle (basically, the idea of (1) content/input plus (3) applications or extensions of that content/input).
Remember that all of the tutorials are available over on the English Raven site in the special materials design/development section, so if you want to see previous or upcoming tutorials that's the place to head!
There is, of course, a solid rationale behind using multiple choice questions in educational materials designed to 'measure' what students 'know'. Actually, the description that accompanies the image above on Flickr is a reasonably good summary of some of the most important issues multiple choice questions address.
Over many years in education as a teacher and materials writer, I've used more than my fair share of multiple choice questions. It's what many teachers expect. My Boost! series has thousands of them (especially in the reading and grammar strands). I have folders with hundreds of tests I've designed for schools over the years, and multiple choice is a mainstay of the overall approach in many of them. An online reading program I acted as consultant to specifically asked me to format comprehension questions predominantly in mutliple choice format. The relationship with that company petered out when I refused to make the so-called writing section of their program all pre-set and multiple choice...
However, looking over some recent projects I've been involved in, I am seeing a huge demise in multiple choice questions. My online Trade-Lit program uses them very sparingly indeed, and mostly as a way to mix up the task work a little. I've been working on an online reading program for the English Raven site, and looking over the initial design I realised there are almost no multiple choice applications at all.
I've come to the realisation that they are just a very second rate means of facilitating and checking comprehension and critical thinking, no matter how scientifically you look at and apply them. They can never compare to short answer and open-ended questions, and reliance on them seriously blinds a teacher to what is really going on in students' heads and how to best address their cognitive and learning needs.
Admittedly, there is an exception to this rule: when students create their own multiple choice questions in response to a task or text. This can be a wonderful way for them to really think their way through content, analyse it and learn at a deeper level. But clearly this is a very different application we are talking about.
I also don't entirely subscribe to the view that pre-provided multiple choice questions save time for teachers. Sure, it can be much quicker to mark a test or task using multiple choice. But is that our job? Just marking tests? Allocating scores? I'm under the impression (and feel free to correct me if you disagree) that our job is to educate and really get to know what our students need in the way of strategies and tasks. Multiple choice is a dangerously enticing shortcut across a corner of a forest for a park ranger whose job it (technically) is to know the overall forest rather more comprehensively.
And anyway, these days I find myself reading and marking those short answer and open-ended questions at a speed not all that much slower than the time needed to sort through multiple choice answers. The difference is that the former inform me a lot more and in the longer run I think this enhances my understanding of learners and my ability to help them progress. Compared to the multiple choice application, overall I think this is saving me time.
Those arguments of mine all might sound fine, but we all know multiple choice will remain with us. The reason for that is very simple. Multiple choice removes the time required for analysis and thinking. It speeds things up and makes it all more convenient. Time is money. Multiple choice saves time and therefore ensures certain stakeholders make more money.
Personally, I believe multiple choice questions epitomise the extent to which education has become industrialised in the pursuit of monetary profit. I also believe the extent to which teachers become addicted to it embodies--to some extent--how much we are losing out as well-rounded, receptive and generally aware educators.
Avoiding the multiple choice temptation for Trade-Lit is fine, because it is a small program made for a small group of teachers. However, I feel a little grim when I contemplate the English Raven online reading program prospect. Just what percentage of schools and teachers am I potentially missing out on by refusing to use multiple choice and auto-correct options (that is, by making a program that requires teachers to actually check and think about the students' responses)? Such a program still represents the opportunity for profit, in my opinion. Profit more of the learning and not monetary kind, perhaps. But still: mouths need to be fed (and not just in my kitchen) and it can be a hard ask to stick to your principles.
So what's your take on the multiple choice questions issue?
Here is the first of the Raven Open (Source) English materials... and below you can get a bit of an introduction to the idea as well as some suggestions on ways to use it.
Remember that it's all open source material ('share alike'), though if you do change and/or add stuff, I'd love to hear from you and learn from what you did.
Enjoy your open sauce (more on the way next Thursday...)!
Here is the second installment of the English Raven Teaching Materials Design Masterclass (if you can forgive the pomposity...), continuing on from the first tutorial about designing basic headers and footers.
This tutorial shows what can be done for basic backgrounds with a little playing around, remembering of course that an unadorned white background is perfectly okay for most materials! However, the point here is to show you how some things can be done, which in turn will prove useful for later tutorials more to do with your content layout (for example, my '1:3 design' principle).
The next tutorial demonstrates how to make those neat little 'activity sequence markers' (or 'buttons') you can see in professional materials... so drop by same time next week to see that, or if you're too thirsty to wait, pop over to the materials design section of English Raven and see it now (tutorials 1 through 12 are all available there at the time of writing this post).
October has arrived, and that means Halloween is very close. Experimenting with some of my own Halloween materials, a sudden thought came to me: How great would it be to see how different members of my PLN in different parts of the world use the same basic core input/ content but adapt, extend, abolish in whatever way suits their own teaching beliefs/and or the educational culture in which they are working?
The idea of the English Raven Halloween Lesson Material Design Challenge (as you can see, it took a while to get the idea out of my mouth!) was thus born... Find out more by watching the video I prepared for the challenge:
So, are you up for it? I hope so!
Remember that you can change any of the existing content and add and extend with your own activities in whatever ways work best for you and your learners.
Post your customised Halloween lesson material on your blog or site, then leave a link here on this page to the location of your efforts (so that we can all find it and give it a squiz).
I'm genuinely excited at the prospect of so many different versions of the basic template and core content...
Templates with content/input for you to download and work with...
Oh... and if you're interested in having some audio files to go along with the input/content already in the templates, here they are (right click and select "save as" if you want to save the files to your own computer):
Look forward to seeing some of your work and hearing from you!
;-D
[LATE ADD]: Just an idea, but you might like to try screencasting your lesson material! Try a tool like Screenr (free, allows you to sign in with your Twitter account), where you can present your material on the screen and explain it with accompanying audio. You could then post a direct link to the screencast here on the blog, or embed it as a video on your own blog. Give it a try, you'll love the results!
Thank you very much to all the teachers out there who posted kind comments of appreciation and encouragement on the recent materials design tutorial I uploaded here.
The snapshot above comes from Tutorial 8 in the series, which I have nick-named the Bamboo Mega-Tutorial. It basically demonstrates how to make something that looks just like the material you can see above (but hopefully you'll have something more exciting and inspiring than bamboo to showcase...), from blank page to finished product.
Don't for a minute think that smooth professional formatting of materials is the exclusive domain of the big publishers. You can make stuff of this quality, too... if you're willing to put in the time and learn (and have fun experimenting).
Tutorials from the ER Teaching Materials Design Masterclass series will be posted here every Wednesday over the next couple of months, so keep your screens peeled!
I've been meaning to get around to these for a while, ever since Barbara Sakamoto and James Taylor asked me for tutorials on the subject (I'll assume they were almost half serious!) and so many visitors to the blog and site were kind enough to leave compliments about how professional they felt some of my materials to be in terms of formatting and presentation.
So here it is: the first English Raven materials design masterclass!
This one looks at one of the beginning steps in setting up a professional looking document: creating headers and footers. It works with Microsoft Word, which I assume many people have access to (and for those who don't, hopefully the basic actions and principles can be somewhat instructive).
I'll try to post new tutorials every week or so for those who are interested enough to want to learn from (or, just as likely -- and welcome -- critique) them.
For those who want to get more stuck into these sorts of skills NOW, you might like to check out the new materials design section of the main website. There are three full tutorials up there at the time of writing this post, with many more planned.
Oh, and if you think the formatting and ideas here are pretty plain crappy, by all means comment to that effect. I could well be deluding myself about my materials design prowess, and it would be nice for the readership to see the different perspective!
Brad Patterson's recent blog challenge to share two similar but different pictures came at a good time... The pics above were taken yesterday as part of a new Little Reader resource English Raven Jnr and I are putting together.
There's something a little bit freaky about them as well...
The pictures were taken about two hours apart, but there's one particular similarity which is amazing, considering ER Jnr was twirling his clock handle and making the hands move around at a million miles an hour. I never even noticed until we got home and downloaded the pics... for the time to be what it is on that clock at the precise moment I clicked, and the relation to the sundial two hours before...
I am regularly surprised by the power of my Samsung Galaxy S phone when it comes to the quality of the photographs it is capable of producing.
The above shot was taken today at ScienceWorks in Melbourne, with English Raven Jnr in the foreground pointing out the time according to the giant, vivid yellow sundial. The contrast of yellow against brilliant blue spring sky and the dark building -- gosh I love this shot!
This picture is one of many I took today and the collection will be used to generate a new audio/self-record book (The Science Museum) for the Little Readers section of my site.
English Raven and English Raven Jnr discuss their next digital learning project (apparently the Little Readers and some new, more interactive Halloween materials are in order). Little Miss Raven Jnr offers some feedback, but as always, appears to echo English Raven Jnr's sentiments...
Yesterday, I released a special online version of my GrammarGolf card game application. This is something I trialled and used extensively with younger learners as a classroom teacher, and based on the exciting levels of engagement and awareness it generated, I was looking forward to making a multi-media version for the English Raven site.
However, even as I am aware of the activity's strengths based on my own experiences, I also knew this was something of a risk; dare I feel happy about a teaching application that I know probably won't get that much uptake?
See, here's the thing... I got Mrs. Raven to try it out. Being an advanced learner herself (Certificate IV level in the local parlance), I wanted her impressions and feedback.
Surprise surprise: she didn't like it very much. And not really because, despite her advanced level, she got more than a few of the sentence options wrong!
"Why have more than one possible answer?"
"Why aren't the mistake options explained?"
"How am I supposed to understand why I got it wrong?"
Mrs. R has, in my opinion, voiced criticisms of GrammarGolf that I think will be shared by a very large number of learners.
I don't want to give too much away here, but this is NOT the way younger students generally react to the GrammarGolf application. And... that is precisely one of the reasons why I think it can be such an important learning tool.
Now, from a teaching perspective, I think there will be another serious objection. The sentences are not contextualised at all! Oh my goodness... there goes the neighbourhood. And absurdly enough, I am absolutely fine with this as well.
So here is my question to you:
Do you think GrammarGolf is a grammar teaching gaffe? Why or why not?
If not, why do you think I purposely avoid giving detailed explanations and emphasize the idea of 'have a swing, and if you miss, swing again!'? Why on earth would I think that sentences without communicative context could possibly be useful?
Is this Raven a teaching emperor with no clothes, or just a straight up moron???
As you can see, English Raven has been (self!) sentenced to some community work... The little offering above is another example of my ongoing quest to digitize more of my (originally print-based) flashcard materials and put them into a format that teachers might like to use on a screen in front of the class or even refer students to for some self study.
The entire set of community places cards consists of 48 images, including some of the following:
On the web page here, you can also find a set of activity suggestions utilising these cards and vocabulary for Cambridge ESOL YLE Starters, Movers and Flyers levels.
But here's a quick tip for those of you seeing this post, liking the look of the cards but not particularly wanting to pay for them:
Go up to that little search box at the top of the right-hand column of the blog and punch in some keywords along the lines of 'community places'... see what turns up!
A person (well-known in English Language Teaching circles -- keep that circular idea in your head for a bit...) I happen to have a great deal of time and respect for caught up with me on Skype yesterday evening. It was Lindsay Clandfield and, as many of you tuned into things like Twitter and Facebook would now be aware, he had some pretty exciting news.
Lindsay and another rather admirable fellow we all know, Luke Meddings, have just officially launched The Round, 'an independent collective of creative individuals in English language teaching' which 'arose from a series of conversations about bridging the gap between blogs and books – and about the difficulty of placing innovative, niche or critical materials with the big ELT publishers.'
However you look at this, for goodness sake don't just walk away with the idea that this is just a publishing start-up. Having been honoured with some initial inside info, I can tell you now that this initiative is going to be far more than that.
I'll let Lindsay and Luke explain it all to you in their own words, over on their new site and by watching things unfold through things like their Twitter handle and Facebook page.
The way I am reading this, what we are looking at is something not only innovative but sorely needed: a sort of 'publisher for thePLN.' We're not really looking at anyone making stacks of cash here, but we ARE looking at riches. In multiple currencies that don't necessarily equate to printed money but do correlate to a fair deal for authors. That and a fair offering to all the innovative and creative teachers out there who have been left starving at the rim of the 'profit at all costs/lowest common denominator' big publishing square shipping containers.
If you want to see new materials produced and shared in new and vastly more appealing ways, get behind The Round.
Because I have a feeling that what goes around in this initiative will come around... for the better!
Hope to see you there. This Raven is definitely IN!
I'm positively delighted with this latest addition to the ongoing nest of experiments on the English Raven website.
The video above shows English Raven Jnr trying out my online Little Readers application, which basically allows kids to flip through a simple little storybook with text accompanied by pictures, audio and an embedded recording device.
ER Jnr's efforts, done on his own (as he often likes for me to leave the room while he tries out this stuff), showcase a couple of the ways this helps to build reading and pronunciation skills:
1. He can flip through and take on the story at his own pace.
2. He reads what he can out loud, but uses the audio provided in one part when he's not sure how to say the sentence precisely.
3. He records his own voice using the provided audio recorder and really looks forward to playing back his reading aloud performance while he flips again through the story and looks over the text.
4. He skips the review stuff at the end. He's had enough by that stage and just wants to hear himself perform the story. That's fine. He can use this the way he wants to use it, and for just the parts or ways that most interest him.
There are another four of these Little Readers stories already in printed format, but ER Jnr wants them loaded up on a screen the way this one is. I flinch at the prospect of another late night catering to his enthusiasm for this, but mostly I'm pretty darned pleased with myself...
For the sake of hypothesis, I'd like to ask you a question. And present you with an interesting choice.
You're teaching English to children who are aged about 10-11. They've been at this English caper for about four or five years already, and have a pretty good level. Let's say they're a bit beyond Cambridge YLE Flyers level, and somewhere in the vicinity of mid-PET (or getting reasonably close to pre-Intermediate).
You're on the hunt for some new ideas and materials to use with these kids, and you roll around to good ol' English Raven's site and you see two versions of an extended teaching/learning endeavour. We'll assume for now that both versions basically match the existing language level and learning needs of your students (in terms of the linguistic demands).
Version A is a fully scripted out adventure story, complete with excellent pictures, audio files to accompany each passage of text, review questions with answer keys, and quizzes to help you with overall assessment. Oh, and a bunch of supplementary activity ideas.
Version B is the same adventure story, but almost none of the content has been provided--just the pictures. The general idea is that the learners, with assistance from the teacher, make the story up as they go, either as a class or in groups or--for those who prefer it--individually. There are prompts to help things along, as well as extensive teacher notes explaining ways to facilitate the story and to help the learners make it their own.
Please forgive me here, but I don't want any fence-sitting. It's not a crime to prefer one of these versions over the other (and yes, I know, they both have their positives and negatives).
In essence, which of them appeals to you and excites you in terms of what it could achieve in your classroom with these pre-Intermediate learners of English aged 10-11? Version A or Version B?
In some ways, I might dare to label Version A as the preference of the teacher who is coming (to the learners with planned and controlled input, first and foremost), while Version B is the tool of choice for the teacher who is going (with the learners away into new and mostly unplanned territory, working more or less from output).
So, remembering again that this is not about judging either kind of teacher, which teacher are you: the one who is coming or the one who is going? What is your instinct telling you?
Would absolutely love to read your responses to this!
Following the usual summer/winter lull in July and August (where hits to the English Raven site drop to a little under 100,000 per month), I confess to being pleasantly surprised with the numbers presented for September...
Half a million hits so far. And September ain't close to over yet.
But this got me to thinking: what exactly did I do that brought so much visitation to the site this month?
All I can really think of are newish things I haven't done a lot of for the site in the past, and those things are:
- Added a lot of fresh resources (as well as a refreshed interface)
- Really leveraged the power of social media across blog, Facebook and Twitter to get the word out there about things being added to the site
- Created something in the way of an interface between both the site and the blog in terms of making and explaining ELT materials
- Made much better use of YouTube to add audio-visual components to many of the resource pages
- Brought my son (affectionately known as English Raven Jnr) into the fold as a partner and participant, something he loves being part of and whom site visitors obviously take to given that (a) I maintain a site for teaching children and (b) he's just naturally charming and talented!
- Added a lot of free (and open source) stuff
- Added interactive components for several resources that allow learners to practise directly online (an interesting direction I've wanted to explore for a long time now: making English Raven a potential destination for learners as well as teachers)
- Perhaps just got lucky during what is (based on 10 years of site traffic to compare to) often a boom month for the site as teachers head back to classrooms for a new term
In any case, it looks like ER is in for a booming last quarter to the year (October has always been a massive month for visitation to the site).
Why post about it?
Believe it or not, for anyone out there looking at making and distributing their own ELT materials online, I thought this experience might be helpful to pass along... It's no longer a matter of making worksheets and flashcards and posting them on a members-only portal. Teachers are using different avenues to find their teaching ideas and materials and they (seem to?) expect to find different things on offer when they arrive somewhere.
I'm happy to report that a new application of Talk it Up has been put together for the English Raven website, with the capacity for students to create and actually record their own conversations or individual talks based around open, thematic icons.
This will be especially useful to teachers who want to use a more emergent methodology with their learners (rather than serving everything up in listen and repeat format, in this application the starting point is the learners' own language and communication). Directions are provided on the webpage to explain a basic process of choosing a thematic icon, talking about it (together with a classmate or on one's own) and recording the effort, transcribing their own speaking onto paper based on listening to the recording, editing and improving their own production, and retrying the task again to see if it sounds better a second time around.
This application is 100% free to all site visitors. No catches or gimmicks. On the same page, teachers can also download print versions of the Talk it Up! application in PDF, MS Word or adaptable/compatible MS Word format (to change and adapt as you will).
The website also provides some initial starting prompts for those teachers or students who need a little help converting the pics/icons into thematic topics for discussion:
So there it is, a new version of the Talk it Up! concept. Hope you'll give it a whirl with your learners, and if you do, please do let us know how it goes (or feel free to ask any questions)!
I'm not sure if this is a sign of (or a coping device to try and avoid) a mid-life crisis, but I seem to be a bit preoccupied this week with how things were a decade ago. Or perhaps, as I continue to dig up and revamp material from the English Raven website, I just continue to find it staggering how far back in history ten years ago now appears to be.
The picture above shows a listening test I developed in 2001. It was an ambitious exercise in some ways, because the school I was managing at the time was using Barb Sakamoto's excellent Let's Go series and I wanted to combine the Let's Go content with the Cambridge Young Learners of English test formats. What I did was draw on the themes, vocabulary and functional language in all six levels of Let's Go and apply them as listening tests which mirrored the sections and applications in Cambridge YLE Starters, Movers and Flyers sample tests.
Even the scripts I developed for the tests mirrored exactly the style and methodology used in the Cambridge YLE tests:
TN: Hello and welcome to this Listening Test for Let’s Go 4 Units 1-4. Please listen carefully to the instructions and try to answer all questions on this test paper. Good Luck!
Part One. Look at the picture and listen to the example.
M: Today is Wednesday. What was Ted doing yesterday?
W: He was playing basketball.
M: Oh, yes. I see him now.
TN: Can you see Ted playing basketball yesterday? Can you see the line going from Ted’s name to the picture? Now listen and draw lines from the other names to the pictures.
W: What about Ted’s friend David? What was he doing yesterday?
M: He was catching butterflies. He caught a lot!
W: Really? That must have been fun! Mmm, can you see Tracy?
M: Yes, she’s right there. She was feeding ducks yesterday at the lake.
W: Right. What about Tim? Was he taking pictures with his new camera yesterday?
M: Yes, he was! And can you see Sam? Was he playing catch yesterday?
W: No, he wasn’t. He was picking up trash with his friend Sunny. The park was so dirty yesterday!
M: Right! I can see that. That just leaves Chris. What was he up to yesterday?
W: He was playing catch, of course. Can’t you see him there?
M: Oh yes, now I see him!
But of course, a script is useless without a sound track... How did we produce them?
That's right: myself and two other teachers stayed behind after school one night and recorded them all... on a cassette recorder that looked very much like the one you can see at the top of this page. Hold down the RECORD and PLAY buttons at the same time. Remember? Then use your master tape to record onto all the other tapes, one after another...
This was only ten years ago.
iPods and MP3 players weren't around then. Phones, while definitely quite small and very mobile, weren't taking pictures or recording things yet (much less taking 1 hour high quality video and connecting us to the Internet).
Today I had a teenager making assembly instructions for a catapult, and he couldn't access his CAD drawings. We popped out of the literacy classroom into the workshop, took a variety of different angle and close up photographs of his catapult with my Samsung Galaxy S, which I sent directly from the phone to his school email address. He had his assembly instructions done by the end of the class, complete with high quality photographs.
This evening, based on a quick request from yesterday on Facebook, I joined Marisa Constantinides and her YL teacher trainees in Athens via Skype for a brief video link up to discuss ELT materials design for young learners of English. As easy and convenient as glancing out the window, really.
Not long after that, I left the screencasting tool on and left the room while my son played my newly minted When-Who-What-Where card game online. The resulting video shows his screen actions, plays his voice and also the recorded voice files I had uploaded into the game. And I can show it all to you here (a fascinating example of child language experimentation and thinking out loud, I must add), basically with a flick of a (code embed) switch:
As I look at what we are doing today (and the relative ease involved) and compare it to me sitting at a table with a cassette recorder that (now) looks like a big black fridge, it really does hit me between the eyes that technology (and access to technology) has absolutely exploded over the past decade. To look back at 2001 and for it to feel like ancient history is exciting but eerie and even a little unnerving.
In ten years from now, will that screencast above and the Skype session and my Samsung Galaxy S seem as crusty and clunky as the old cassette recorder appears to us now?
English Raven Junior was in class form for this latest video; here are some tidbits for you to watch/listen out for:
Find out why, according to ER Jnr, hamburgers can be bad for you
Listen for the correlations between 'unhealthy-like' and 'healthy-don't like'
Why do you think the onion is depicted with a tear in its eye?
We call them capsicums here, while others call them peppers; ER Jnr has a suggestion along the lines of a compromise
Ever seen a chicken hanging from a palm tree?
In any case, I'm delighted with how these vids are turning out, and wish I'd had access to them when I was teaching English to little children. They're completely unscripted and beautifully enhanced with a real child's world view of things. They're real -- something we see and hear so little of in English language learning materials where pretty much everything is carefully staged.
I think they're also precious as ELT materials because while a central lexical direction is presented, it is wonderfully enhanced with all the peripheral language and comments. Even if children don't quite understand everything they hear, I think the targeted vocabulary will be very salient and there is enough use of recasting, follow up questions, intonation and emphasis to create excellent initial exposure to the language in natural use.
And most importantly of all: they can be pretty bloody funny. Kids everywhere love funny.
So get on over and see English Raven Jnr strut his stuff with food vocabulary!
Check out Jason and Jamie presenting weather and seasons vocabulary here
Converting all of my old (but still awesome, in my opinion) print-based flashcard material into a more digitally friendly audio-visual format has long been on my agenda. Tonight, English Raven Junior helped me to take the first step in superb style.
Forget the publisher-produced stuff with some lady paid to sound happy and bubbly as she reads aloud items of lexis to go with glossy pictures. Step up six-year-old James Renshaw, who talks his way through a set of weather and seasons pics in a performance that couldn't have been better even if you'd scripted it.
In fact, the whisper of "did I speak clearly?" and the sneeze that took place right when the winter cards were up on the screen were definitely not scripted (I swear by my sable feathers). And the little exchange at the end... priceless.
In all seriousness, though, I'm very keen to do a lot more of this with Jamie, because (1) he really loves doing it and (2) I think it is a much better way to present vocabulary and concepts to other children. The core vocabulary is there, but the richness of the totally natural peripheral conversation is precious. Jamie himself, who has only been around other English-speaking children for a little over 18 months, is still very much a lad with an ESL background. What better way to present vocabulary and language to young learners of English than via a similar aged peer interacting conversationally with an adult with pictures on the screen?
Oh, and (3) I don't have to pay him... much.
And (4) he sounds sooooo much better than that lady the publishers hire to do this sort of thing. No offence intended, of course.
For those interested, this week's articles (at 'Eagle' level) are now up on World News for Kids, featuring the interesting news that Liechtenstein is apparently happy to hire itself out to visitors (and up to 150 guests) at the very reasonable rate of $70,000 per night!
For English Raven members, the complete study kit is also available in their individual download portals, with 8 pages covering:
- The original article script
- Reading skills and comprehension
- Follow up listening ('News Extra') providing background information about Liechtenstein
- Talk Time dialogue feature (where two students discuss the idea of 'hiring out' their country)
- Class Discussion prompts
- Email response to a notice asking for advice on how to attract visitors to the students' city
- Essay topic (advantages and disadvantages of tourism)
- Discussion topic for online submission via Voxopop
Right, we've got some news... now where do we go with it? Image: Cyberslayer
On my World News for Kids Teacher's Page, I demonstrate how I build extensive 'kits' based on initial news articles, working through reading, extending into listening with additional topical content, then working through a variety of different speaking and writing activities.
I figured some teachers out there might be interested in the how and why of this sort of kit creation, and even might like to work on making their own extensive study kits based on news articles. Or (and even better) they might like to explore how this could become more of an 'unplugged' learning application where learners choose and work with the content more on their own.
So here are some quick audio-visual guidelines I've produced, starting with the more 'teacher-led/created' side of things and finishing with some thoughts about taking it 'unplugged'...
Of course, this is only a small selection of ways to build materials and activities around news articles for the ELT classroom, but I hope they at least give you some ideas to think about.
On the WNK Teacher's Page, towards the bottom, you can access four full 8-page samples (across four levels of difficulty/challenge) to see how my approach works on paper. I also heartily recommend a good look at Sean Banville's outstanding BreakingNewsEnglish.com for an alternative range of activities based on news articles.
A couple of minutes ago, I finished uploading open source versions of my latest World News for Kids study kits to the members' section of my resource site, English Raven. This is part of a general promise I have been making: that henceforth most of the material I produce will be in open source, editable format.
I'll admit, this is a fairly difficult thing to do when you try it for the first time. As in, when you've spent close to a decade striving to protect the identity and ownership of your materials, going to sometimes extreme lengths to keep it out of the hands of those filthy site scavengers who slink about the Internet looking for quality things to lift and pass off as their own on sites bulging with Google ads (making them money), going open source with your material on the Internet can feel rather like -- after doing the rounds and making it available to good people who will respect it and acknowledge your original authorship or design -- you are taking up to a week's worth of hard work at a time, placing it on a waiter's tray and wandering out onto a plain to hand-feed it to a pack of grunting and grinning hyenas.
Aside from that being a wildly over-long sentence, you might be raising your eyebrows at the strong rhetoric it contains. But I can tell you that, for materials designers (and especially those who work at it as something close to a full-time job), having your work lifted and any of your authorship notation removed so that someone else can basically 'sell' it as their own feels very much like having someone come into your bedroom and rob you while you are asleep a couple of feet away.
But open source, adaptable materials... This is clearly what teachers are starting to demand, and certainly something that they need if they are to both do their classroom jobs better and also develop more as producers and users of materials in their own right.
And that is the dilemma. The very processes many of us needed to put in place to protect our authorship and our (often quite meagre) revenue stream for the work we produce are also the very ones that prevent good, committed, professional teachers from getting the most out of them. Sticking to things like non-editable PDF versions of materials meant that, even though we couldn't always prevent them from being lifted and sharked around the Internet, at least we could protect the original version and authorship of the material. And, erm, yeah: produce stuff that teachers couldn't adapt (in the 'on paper' sense) for their own classrooms.
However, that all said, I've started seeing all of this in a different light.
Realistically speaking, there is no way to prevent someone from appropriating and 'messing' with your material if they are really committed to doing so. That goes for print, image, audio and video. While things like PDFs and access through secure membership portals can certainly reduce this risk, basically no matter how many safeguards you put in place, if it's on the Internet, it can be taken and abused.
I've watched fellow materials developers raise quite righteous flames of public ire on things like Twitter and blogs and forums when their stuff is filched. I stopped doing that years ago. To me, spending that many hours chasing and wailing about it just reduces the amount of time I have to get on with the job I enjoy: making more good materials for good people to use with good people in classrooms.
Basically, just making and attempting to sell educational material "as is" on the Internet is no longer a very viable business (if in fact it ever was, to tell the truth). One of the essential things to do, in my opinion, is to focus on those aspects of your creativity and expertise that really can't be copied. That can only be found in one place: your place.
What are some of those things (for online materials providers)? That can't be copied and can only really be found on your own well-established turf?
- A reputation for quality and consistency
- Regular, well presented and well organised materials all in one place
- Access to advice and tips on how best to use (and adapt) the materials
- A positive and productive interactive relationship between materials writer/designer and teacher/user/adapter
- Ethical goodwill (even loyalty?)
Probably most important of all is to understand that the scavengers and most of the freeloaders were/are never likely to become a paying customer interested in interacting with you.
And, when you are dealing with educators, much more often than not, they do the right thing.
For the past year or so, I've let members of my site choose their own subscription fee for access to all of the materials. Many would assume this results in teachers choosing the most paltry fee possible. The self-selected fee varies of course, but when I look at the contexts the various teachers come from, in almost all cases they choose a pretty generous fee (considering how much they earn).
Likewise, on this blog for a number of years now I have been providing free resources and downloads. Over the past year this has included a lot of open source/adaptable material. I see these materials appearing in adapted form on other blogs and sites, and in most cases I see very clear and conscientious referencing from the teacher concered: acknowledging the original idea and author and providing a clear link back to the source.
In fact, as I see it, the call for open source is gathering rather enormous momentum. Anyone interested in making material will need to heed it, or risk locking themselves away in their own cupboard.
So, as I ponder that open source bottle on my materials design kitchen table, I figure this has to be the way forward.
There will always be the scavengers and the crooks, as well as the naïve collectors and distributors who honestly don't know better when it comes to the ethics and 'done thing'. They are a bit of an occupational hazard for the maker of online educational materials.
But I also think there will be more of the 'good guys': professional and ethical people who will respect the material and sources, who will help spread the word about the services we provide, who will also be intrinsically interested in more of those non-copiable aspects I listed above as part of what they are seeking in a good materials/resources provider.
If worse comes to worst, I'll go down a raving optimist...!
Latest World News for Kids articles are up, talking about the fabulous Lego building efforts of the children of São Paulo in Brazil, with the News Extra providing some information about the history of the company called Lego (based on the Danish words for "play well", appropriately enough).
The 8-page supplementary activities and practice kit for these stories will be uploaded to the members area of the English Raven site a couple of hours later (first, got to get the kids to bed and read some stories to them :-)
Ever since reading Autonomy and development: living in the materials world (by Julian Edge and Sue Wharton, in Tomlinson's Materials Development in Language Teaching -- CUP, 1998) several years ago, I've been fascinated by the idea that we can build coursebook materials that provide choices for learners and teachers, and facilitate more autonomy and diversity in the way material is selected and used in the classroom.
I liked the examples provided in that article from a commercial coursebook that provided a 'choices' section at the bottom of select pages, which basically allowed learners to choose the way in which they progressed forward at that point in terms of specific practice or follow up. Similarly, I quite liked seeing the same basic principle applied in Ken Wilson's Smart Choice series (OUP), which also went a bit further by providing a digital supplement to the books allowing teachers to tailor make their own worksheets.
From my own perspective, my only criticism is that, while it is great to see commercial coursebooks provide these 'choices', I don't think they go far enough. I think classrooms need more than two choices at the bottom of every second or third page.
Let's avoid, for a moment, the pragmatic view of commercial publishers that this would all be fine and dandy if it didn't result in too many pages in a coursebook to make it economically viable, and if it didn't result in coursebooks that would upset teachers, students and parents based on them coming home with sections of them passed over or not completed. Let's pretend, for a moment, that digital versions and/or delivery of such material could avoid such complications. Heck, let's be dreamers and go so far as to say that, whether print-based or digital or both, course material of this nature has major potential for the development of autonomous learners who pick and choose the sorts of additional language work they might like to try beyond what ends up selected and covered in the limited confines of the classroom...
So let's take this notion of choices and really swing it around a bit on a coursebook page. For the sake of exploration.
This is a reading passage I developed for a post elsewhere on this blog, but here I have adapted it to explore the 'major range of choices' idea.
Below the main text, there are three sets of options:
A: Options for doing particular types of practice or extension, linked closely to the text on this page.
B: Options for sticking with the general topic or theme represented here, but switching skill 'mode' (to say listening, writing, speaking or project work integrating all of the skills).
C: Leave the topic and passage altogether and try something new.
So, in A, the options basically extend from the main text. Learners can answer comprehension questions, develop vocabulary, convert the text to listening practice (say filling in gaps or doing dictation or dictogloss based on this original text), pick out grammar patterns and rules based on the input text, rewrite or extend/adapt the text, or use the text as a basis for classroom discussion and debate.
In B, the options are to switch to a another skill mode and a new text of some sort, but related to the general topic or theme represented here. (Think from earthquakes to tsunamis to world aid organisations, etc.).
And, of course, C recognises that the topic and text may not be of much further interest or relevance to the students, and it is time to make a more dramatic change...
These options could follow immediately on from the page here, or they could be packpaged into their own sections later in the coursebook. For example, the coursebook might start with 20 topics and reading passages, then sections dedicated more to the other skills as starting points, then all the follow up language practice and extension activities, each gathered into its own section (but with page number references/links to help learners continue to navigate their way through the material).
The homework aspect and group work notions (where learners get together and plot their own way through a coursebook) are intriguing ones.
Of course, a digital version of this format would mean the options linked directly to a particular text can become pop up or insertion options within the interface itself...
Sure, this sort of approach would result in a rather voluminous amount of material and options. Just what so many teachers and learners have been telling us they want for years.
Or am I wrong in that conclusion? Do teachers and learners (for the most part) want everything compact, packaged and sequenced in advance?
As a teacher, would you be interested in using materials of this nature (and format) with your learners? Do you want this range of choice, or would you like to see the concept of 'choice' applied differently?
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