Encouraging Academic Skills in ESL: Grade Tracking

After a harrowing day, one can crawl in a hole and hope to die or try to make it better for the next time.

At my school, teachers have a fast turn around.  Final exams are done one day and the next report cards are to be handed to the school.  This happens monthly.  So the turn around is quick, the learning curve is high for students and teachers.

This last Friday was a little rough.  We always have had teachers give the report cards directly to the students.  This can be a great time to give feedback and even congratulate the people who passed and are moving on to bigger and better things.  But for the students who didn't do well, this is a time to place blame and confront the teacher one on one about the reasons they need to repeat the class.

The tricks for dealing with the upset students are many: remind them that learning any language takes time, that it has nothing to do with intelligence, it takes some people longer to acquire English, etc. In a perfect world you move on and council the student the specifics to improve and succeed next month.

In a not so perfect world, tempers rise.  "Why did you fail me, I did everything right!" "My teacher failed me."  The students blame the teacher; the teacher is forced onto the defensive.  It now becomes the teacher justifying everything they have done in the last month, not what the student should do to improve.  This puts the teacher in a rough spot to say the least. This is when the shouting matches begin, when teachers decide to leave the profession.

What to do? Well, crawling into a hole sounds good but...

The Idea

Let's bring the responsibility back to the student while encouraging building academic skills.  The idea is for students to keep a grade book of their progress.  In this blog, I'll share a digital version.  It doesn't need to be; you could print it out blank and pencil in the numbers.

This will help students to not be "surprised" about their final grade while taking some of the bureaucratic weight off the teacher so that they do not have to fill out endless warning forms.

The end goal is to encourage students to take responsibility for their learning, plan and be on the right track to improving their English, not being worried about numbers and grades.

What to do

However you calculate your grades, make it simpler so everyone can understand it.  Make thing point based, have a total where all the quizzes add up to that point.  Or only work in percentages and average.  Whatever you do, just make it simple enough for a student to work the numbers.  I teach adults, adults know math.  They can figure it out if you give them the information in a comprehensible form.

Work in your rubric to your form. For example, one rubric I follow is split into four categories: 25% for participation/homework, quizzes, speaking, and the final exam respectively.

Next is the spread sheet.  Leave room for students to write.  Leave room for yourself if you need to "pull an audible" and add or subtract items as you see necessary.

I used Google Docs and created a spreadsheet that holds all my grades.

Examples

Feel free to view the spreadsheet here and copy/download it for yourself to modify.  This is what you could send to students so that they can put in the numbers.

What to do next

Feel free to copy or download and modify my examples as you see fit.  For me, I would share the form with my students on the first day of class and have them save it for themselves.  As grades come in, help/encourage students to record their grades.  This way they can see how well they are doing and what scores they need on tests to succeed in the future.

Other Applications

• Keep track of all the grades for the students. Give them numbers so their identity is secure.
• Administration sets up the E&E and watches as grades/attendance come in.  They can assist with warnings.
• Link in with other grades and have an up to date total class average.  
• Give teachers laptops/tablets. Teacher fills it in an shares with the student so they can watch.  
• Websites that track student grades.  You could do this with Edmodo or Engrade just to name a few...Maybe a blog for the future :)

What do you think?

Any ideas on how to encourage students to take responsibility?  Help them succeed in their work?

Community Clips for Written Feedback

Do you ever have students ask questions, questions, questions, when they receive a writing back?  I've always found that giving constructive feedback for my students has been a balancing act: Try to give them as much information as I can about the writing and yet not spend half an hour a paper.

Solution? Record yourself looking at a student's paper.

So in conjunction with the macros I have set up on my Word (go here if you would like to do it for yourself), I decided to try using a screen-cast, something that records my computer screen and voice, as I look over a paper.

The Idea

While you are giving feedback, however you give feedback, record the paper and your voice.  This way you can show they what is wrong and how to fix it while you are doing it.  You then make the video available to the students.  They can go over and fix their mistakes at their own speed.

This can not only save you class time by not having to spend as much time assisting individual students, but also the students can watch the video as much as they need to make the corrections.

You can do this in conjunction with how you already give feedback.

How to

Set Up

Set up a way for students to send you their written work.  You can use something as easy as email for this.  This is a perfect time to use Edmodo however.  It is a great tool and really easy to use.  You also don't have to worry about organizing things, searching through your email, or even giving away anything personal.

Get a Program

Download something to do a screen-cast.  I like CommunityClips.  It is easy, it does everything I want, and it does it for free.  There are others though, such as ScreenCast-o-Matic, though it leaves a watermark.

Record

While you look at the writing from the student, record yourself speaking the comments and how to fix it (or whatever you like to do).  Try to to have too much dead sound while you are doing it.  I try to read the paper out loud to them if I found myself silent for a time.  Community Clips (and I assume others) has a pause button, so you can take breaks or give yourself time to think.

Send back

Email or upload back to the students.  With Edmodo, this is super slick.  You can create an assignment and send it back to them really easily.  Other options would be to put on Youtube or some other share site.  The disadvantage here is that anyone can see it.

If you can think of any other good vessels of delivery, please write a comment!

Example

If you would like to set up the buttons (macros which make the grammar comments without me having to type it in), read this older post.

What would you do?

What do you think? Are you scared about the amount of work it would take? What kind of variations would you make?  Make a comment!

Another Great Tool: Socrative

Want your students to use a smart phone for good, not evil? What kind of things could you do with instant feedback from your students? Socrative is an interesting web site which hosts questions that students can answer using any device that has web access, such as a smart phone.

The Idea

Create a couple of comprehension check questions that you would like to ask while giving a lecture, or a quick quiz to check up on your students.  Use the feedback to help steer the class or even to aid error correction.

What to do

Create a Socrative account.  Your account now controls a "classroom".  Now, create a quiz or even just one or two questions you would like to ask your students during a lecture.

Give the students the code to enter the classroom.   They can use their phone or any device that has Internet access by going to m.socrative.com and answering the questions that you ask.

You can then use the feedback to help you gauge how much time to spend on the topic, which students need more work, what kind of mistakes people are making, etc.

Example

Go to http://www.socrative.com/ and create a teacher account.  Follow the directions on how to use the site.  Make some questions or quizzes.  If you would like to try one of the quizzes I made, use the codes below. I'll try to add more quizzes.

If you would like to see what it is like for students, join this class: 261381.  Take the quiz.

What is really nice is that you get an email report of the answers at the end in the form of a spreadsheet.  I really like printing this out for students the next day and having them correct their own and other's mistakes.

What is really neat about this report is if you have a projector, or better yet smart board (I have an Eno board), you can project the wrong answers on the screen (without the names) and correct mistakes right then and there.

Here is an example worksheet I made with real responses from the students.

Try it!

What would you like to see done with this technology?  What are some good quiz ideas you have?  What are some other ways we can get our ESL students to use their smart phone smart?

Pod Cast

Following the trend of the last few posts about flipping the classroom, here is a Pod Cast type recording of a lecture on process writing.

The Idea

Have students listen about the steps in writing an essay.  Have them make a study guide after to aid them in the process.  The idea is to have students teach themselves on the subject, you checking up on them to make sure they follow through.

How

Record yourself speaking on any device.  Upload to podbean.com.  Share with your students.  Come up with a way to check comprehension.

Example

Here is a website I made that would allow students to walk through the whole process online.

Here is the actual podcast.

What About You?

Have you ever thought about making a podcast?  What kind of things do you think would be useful for ESL students to listen to?

Screen-Cast

Do you have Power Points or other presentations you are proud of? Why not record yourself talking while showing what is on the screen? This way, students can move at their own pace.

Following up the ideas from the last post about flipping the classroom, this week I've added a screen-cast.

The Idea

Record a lecture for students to watch at home.  Have them show what they learned be producing notes or an assignment from the listening.  Practice in class.

Why and what?

Why do it? It is fun! It's a different format for students.  They can do it at their own pace.  Here is a closer look on why, it's a page that my teacher, Dr. Wilson created.

What to do? Anything that may benefit your students. Last post, there was a flow chart to assist.

How to do it

There are lots of programs that can record your computer screen along with your voice.

Community clips (google it)
Screencast-O-Matic
Quick Time Pro
and many more

I really liked Community Clips and found it really easy, though I am sure Quick Time has better editing.

1. Download Community clips
2. Prepare your lecture
3. Click record
4. Save the file
5. Upload it to Youtube or whatever site you would like

Community Clips has a nice walkthrough as well.  I felt like it was pretty user friendly and the video files quite managable.

Example

Here is a screen-cast I made about either or.



In class the next day, I check their notes and do some example exercises.  I also have them do this Polleverywhere.com survey so that I can check their answers as they come in.

What about you?

Have a video you would like to share? Anything else that could be done with Screen-Casts? Let me know what you think!

SketchCast

How do you see your role in the classroom? As a lecturer or a facilitator?  If you are a facilitator, you may like to flip your class.

Flipping the classroom is a bit of a trend right now,  and it is actually pretty easy to do.  I've tried it a couple times and have really enjoyed the results.  Here is the set up.

The Idea

Instead of doing exercises at home, do them in class.  Instead of lecturing in class, lecture at home.  That is the principle.  There  are many different reasons for doing it, and many resources for it.  This is a website that my teacher made which I found to be particularly useful explaining the studies done about it and how to do it.

What do to

Choose a topic to teach. I find that teaching grammar works really well for this.

Pick a way to present it.  Here is a nice picture that you may find helpful.

http://flippingclasspedagogyandtools.weebly.com/index.html

Then you pick a way to share it.  I just used a program on my iPad called Educreations.  I really liked it, found it really user friendly.

What do to do after

Now you class is freed up to actually use the grammar.  Have conversations and do exercises.  Have the students explore the topic as much as possible.

Here is the lesson I made and a follow up conversation to have the next day.



Here is one example of a follow up activity to do the next day.

What do you think?

What are your thoughts on Flipping the class? Any concerns? Do you have any favorite sites or lessons? Have you made one yourself?  Let me know!

Collaborative Idea Lists

The Problem

I had a class I hated teaching.  It started when "rape" was one of the words to be taught that day (apparently it is in a bigger list of 2000 "most frequent vocabulary words).  In my teaching career, I'd never felt more frustrated about the material I was given and told to teach. Let's just say we did something different that day. Ever since, I've dreaded teaching that class.

The Idea

To shake the bad feelings off, I decided to put my heart into making teaching these 2000 words better. So I went to work and asked coworkers to contribute. Great time for a Google Doc.

What to Do

Share a document with other co-workers of different teaching ideas.  There should be a general goal and some guidelines.  For this, I found a common problem and tried to address solutions together.

After you frame what you want the document to cover, make it.  I just used Google Drive for this.  Click the create a new document button. Name it.  Click the share button, and then click "change" to so that it can be edited by who ever you want.

Example

The frame of this example:

• Create a 10 minute lesson
• Little to no preperatoin
• To be used with 10 words

Here is an example of a list that I started.



Go here to add your own ideas, be sure to write your name (if you wish) so you can get credit!

Write a comment if you can think of any other ways to use Google Documents.