Settlement Language Training PD

Having just attended a short workshop about digital storytelling on Friday, I think I'll add this activity to our Housing unit. Students will describe their dream house, choosing pictures, or even videos, and recording their commentary. 

The choice activity can be used in many ways. I used it to poll students on what theme they were most interested in covering in the summer school class and also if they wanted to concentrate on listening, speaking, reading or writing. I also used it to ask questions during a unit, to get an idea whether they had understood something or not. I will also poll them at the end of the course to find out what they thought of the course.

I added a few labels to make it much easier for students to use this courseware. These labels divided the learning activities into several different sections, such as Listening Activities, English Test Center, English Grammar and English Writing. These headings help students find the area where they need to improve. It suits their learning needs. 

Students need to browse threw a list of current events and activities going on in the city and post a suggestion to the teacher that they think the teacher would like to participate in.  They should include the date, time, and place so that they are getting used to the function of making appointments.  They cannot suggest the same activity as other students, so students must read others' postings and select accordingly.  This is a task in reading and writing.

Since most of my students are poor readers and are not computer savvy, I am pairing them up and taking baby steps with the courseware. I developed a step-by-step pairs worksheet to practice logging in/off, coming up with an appropriate password (had to define "at least 3", "characters", and "lower case", etc..) By pairing them up, they got to help each other practice twice. The second time we logged in, they could explain the steps and do them with relative ease. Changing their profile information was a challenge, but on the other hand, they got even more practice logging in when the second partner's turn came up. They did a poll before quitting for the evening and some were already asking me for help with messaging!

After my students signed in for the first time, to help them become familiar with the courseware, I designed a Scavenger Hunt exercise which they had to complete with a partner in the computer lab. You can make it competitive if you want to do so. I uploaded the exercise I used with my LINC 5 classes. You can adapt it to suit most of the LINC levels.