ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival Special Edition and Other Young Learner Sites

The latest ESL/EFL/ELL 23^rd Blog Carnival is up.  It is a special Young Learner’s Edition posted on Shelly Terrell’s Teacher Reboot Camp.  I am happy to pass this post on to my College of Ed students who work with the little kiddos in ESOL and bilingual settings.  The post can be accessed here; it is divided into two parts: 1. Tips, Lessons & Issues and  2. Teaching YL’s Effectively with Technology.  

The next Blog Carnival will be hosted by Eva Buyuksimkesyan in September.  You can see all the previous editions of the ESL/EFL/ELL Blog Carnival here.  We were pleased to be a part of the 22nd Blog Carnival.

Shelly Terrell’s Teacher Reboot Camp is worthy of a post in itself.  She is a prolific blogger with an amazing presence on twitter as well.  In keeping with the theme of ELLs, here are some of her posts related to What Works for English Language Learners .  I particularly liked her Let’s Play! 20+ Sites for Young Learners post.

Grammaropolis, GoAnimate4Schools,  Into the Book, International Children’s Library (for teacher use), Kindersay, Learn English Kids, Little Bird Tales, Picture Book Maker, Mingoville, Smories, Storybird, Storyline Online and Zoo Burst are a few more sites that look promising for young learners.  Let us know about your favorite sites for young learners.

Happy exploring!

Reflections from Class: Engaging Students with Storyline Online

I introduced my students to Storyline Online which is a site where famous people read books sponsored by The Screen Actors Guild Foundation. There are about 18 books available with additional activity guides that include information about the authors and links to other websites.

 My students were immediately engaged by the multi-media “show."  The books are filmed and the presentation flashes back and forth from the illustrations to the celebrity reader. There is an option for “captions” on or off, so you can see the text that is being read. I showed my students how they could turn down the sound while the captions are on and read the book themselves. They must read with fluency because the page turns “on time.”  It's no problem if you can’t keep up, you can pause it or go back and pick up where you got off track. They loved this and we practiced reading as a class using the “choral reading technique” which we have been practicing as a group since September.  Reading Rockets has a great explanation and some sample texts to get you started with this technique. 

After winter break, one of my students informed me that she had “become bored” and logged onto Storyline Online with her mom’s Smart phone. A second student chimed in and said that she too logged on with her mom’s Smart phone. I’m not sure why, but I had not thought about the possibility of using a Smart phone. I envisioned students going online with the standard PC.  Just goes to show that I am NOT a “digital native”!