Shifting and Lifting in Devens, Massachusetts with a cadre of Beginning ESOL Professionals

Adult ESOL teachers are a rare breed...perspicacious, systematic, buoyant, resilient and coalescent.
(Okay, sure-- they were prompted with those choices...but they could have chosen not to vote. Did I mention that adult ESOL teachers are also very supportive? )

Over the course of five 1/2 hours these teachers committed themselves to sit in a windowless--and at times airless--room, working on ways to integrate the College and Career readiness Standards at the very beginning level of ESOL.  (Beginning literacy, Low Beginning and High Beginning) Not an easy process--let me assure you, but an important one. It involves looking at ways to help learners begin their dive into complex texts and citing textual evidence--using visuals, short pieces of authentic text, and all matter of multimedia.

Want to have a little fun? Try inferring what the image on the right is. Consider what evidence you are using as the basis for your inference. Then go to this link to check your inference. http://floorsix.blogspot.com/ (You might need to scroll a bit and then click"Show answer." )

If you'd like to see the materials shared in the workshops, they're posted on the Tools and Tips page of the website. And if you're ever in Devens, Massachusetts--you can't go wrong with the Marriott Springhill Suites. The people here are SO kind. There I was an hour before the workshop with the winter air turning me into a victim of intense static cling -- miserable in my suddenly form fitting blouse. (Form-fitting is not a place I like to go...) In response to my deep woe,  Jen at the front desk found a few dryer sheets. (In case you don't know, applying the sheets to the inside of clothing removes the issue.) Thanks to Jen (and Bounce ;-) ) flow restored.

The Story Behind the OPD Tell the Story Contest

Years and years and years ago, (22 to be exact), Norma Shapiro and I wanted to create videos based on the pictures in the *New* Oxford Picture Dictionary.  Our vision was of  OPD pictures dissolving into live action scenes that would engage learners and demonstrate the OPD vocabulary in use. At the time, the New York office of Oxford University Press (American English Language Teaching) was not in a media frame of mind. (Roy Gilbert, head of OUP-AMELT at the time, did like the dialog balloons we gave the cover characters during workshops - but we just couldn't "sell" the video concept. 


Soon after we made our video suggestion, Bill Bliss and Steve Molinsky came out with Side by Side TV and Norma and I put away our video dreams for a while. We brought
the idea up again during work on the 1998 edition of OPD, but at the time the resources were directed towards the OPD interactive and the learning curve for including video was a bit  steep.  By 2008, video had made its way into the OPD digital materials,but the authorial vision of a cross dissolve from page to reality didn't make the cut.



Still, I am a terrier at heart.

I ruminated and pondered and came up with an answer I should have had all along: turn it over to the learners! LEARNERS could make VIDEOS inspired by the stories they saw in the OPD. 

The sales and marketing group were enthused and plans began for the...
OPD Tell the Story Video contest. 

As one would expect, the vision has had to be adapted in order to make it manageable. The Tell the Story contest asks learners and their instructors to choose from one of four story pages in the OPD in order to create and act out a video script. The story serves as the narration that frames the action, and learners write the dialog and action to flesh out the story.  Once the class is happy with their work, they rehearse the script and perform it for the camera, upload the video to YouTube and await the video judging in June.

The teacher of the grand prize-winning class wins a Trip to TESOL 2015 in Toronto

Teachers of First-Runner Up and Second-Runner Up Classes win and iPad and an iPad mini respectively

Learners get prizes too, of course. The Grand Prize class get the iPhone OPD app
or a choice of print dictionaries, and first and second place classes get a choice of dictionaries as well.
(There's even a Learners' Choice Award given to the video with the most votes from the ESL community participating in the contest.)

All contest submissions must be in by June 2, 2014.

While the prizes are certainly lovely, I think the task-based learning at the heart of the contest will be the bigger pay off.* This is an opportunity for learners to collaborate and get creative as they determine what parts of the story to tell and how. (All the materials you and your learners need are provided free through the Oxford Teacher's Club.*) Here's a sample: Tell the Story Lesson Plan. The recording process is an added benefit to learners. It allows them to capture and celebrate their successes and identify language skill areas they want to refine.

I hope you'll consider trying out the materials and entering the contest!


*This year the contest is open to US learners in secondary and adult classes, but the free materials for "telling the story" are available to all teachers and their learners at The Oxford Teachers' Club. You'll need to register, but registration is free. And once registered, search for OPD Tell the Story. You'll be directed to the free materials through a link on the site.)

The art of conferencing: TESOL 2014

After 23 years of TESOLing, I feel as though I can speak with some authority when I say that Portland knows how to do a conference! The giant poppy sculptures hanging from the convention center hallways, the laptop lounges, the compostable coffee cups (with coffee that tasted much better than compost), the reassigned men's to women's restrooms (well that was a little tricky...) and a classy cocktail lounge right on site. All attendees received free light rail passes and I haven't even mentioned the excellent presenters and sessions. My focus is on adult ESOL and a plethora of sessions made the 2014 conference into a moveable feast. (Thank you Lori Howard,  Radmila Popovic,  Joe McVeigh,  Marsha Chan, Ronna Magy, Helen Solorzano, Susan Finn Miller, to name a few! Unfortunately, I couldn't make these links to their work at TESOL--it's too early...but once they come online, I'll switch the links.) 

A limited representation of the complexity of Adult ESOL

This was my busiest TESOL ever! A paired reading PCI with Lori Howard on Tuesday; all day TESOL meetings on Wednesday;  a panel with authors Daphne Mackey &  Joe McVeigh along with editor Jeff Krum and publisher, Pietro Alongi on Thursday, a vocabulary session on Friday--which I began 15 minutes early, until I caught myself.

My last session, on complexity, motivation, and adult ESL was a new adventure and to my delight I experienced a gracious group of participants who went along with me for the brain twisting ride. :-) 

Throughout the days and evenings in Portland, I saw many of ESOL's rock stars, spent time with many good friends, made several new ones, and--as always happens at TESOL-- was inspired by the thousands of practitioners, researchers, and grad students in attendance.  

If you're interested in the materials I shared at the conference, follow this link to Lighthearted Learning's Tools and Tips page--and please, let me know what you think.