Children's News Podcasts

Here is a link to the BBC World News Podcast for Children, which features short podcasts about (you guessed it!) world news made specifically for 7-14 year olds.

Because the news videos are short, sweet, and designed for children, I think that they would be great for ELL's to practice listening and writing skills. I would ask my students to listen to one news podcast from this website per week and turn in a 7-10 sentence written response summarizing and discussing what they learned. Students could ask questions about the news and write about what surprised them or what they learned. Because reading/writing and listening/speaking usually go together, I think that using these podcasts to create a listening/writing ESL and social studies exercise is a great way to change things up.

SWBAT listen to the news with the purpose of relaying current events to others.
SWBAT ask questions about current events.
SWBAT summarize what they have heard in writing.

Animoto: Creating Picture Slideshows

Animoto is a website that allows you to easily create photo slideshows with musical background tracks. Most importantly, you can add captions to your photos, which changes Animoto from a nice way to share your photos to an educational tool.

For my trial video using Animoto, I made a simple video about the growth of flowers. With this video as a model, I could use this assignment to assess students' understanding of sequence of events expressions following an in-class lesson. Students could create their 30 second photo slideshow online using Animoto and then email me the link to their work.

I could also use this online tool for different assignments, such as assessment of spatial words ("above," "underneath," "next to," etc.) or, as the syllabus suggested, an assignment asking students to describe their daily routines would be an excellent way to use Animoto.

I like this website. I found it very easy to use and I recommend trying it out if you haven't done so before.  

Storybird: Making Picture Books Online

This week, I explored online picture book creation tools (or comic strip creators, although I completely disagree with that description.) Storybird is a cute website that features tons of artwork from uploaders from all around the world. You can use these artworks to create a picture book, a full chapter book, or even just a poem. Then you can share your story with others or even publish your story on the website for anyone to view.

Here is the link to the story I made using Storybird, which is the tale of a lonely young girl whose wish for a friend is granted by the Princess of Heaven. It was a fun experience to make the book, but I will say that it was a little difficult to find enough corresponding images to make a full story.

If I were to use this online picture book creation tool with students, it would be as a general writing project for intermediate level ESL students.  I could use it to test students' story structure understanding by making sure students create a story with a beginning, middle, and end, including an obvious conflict. I would also be checking the students' use of punctuation when writing quotations in English (comma placement, quotation marks, proper placement of sentence ending punctuation markings, etc.)

Due to the difficulty I encountered finding enough coherent pictures to make a full story, I would not limit the students in any way other than the objectives I stated in the paragraph above. Students would be able to write about any topic of their choice using Storybird OR they could create a picture book with pictures from elsewhere.