ROSIE REVERE
Cycle 3
Explore and Connect
Rosie Revere enjoys coming up with new ideas and inventions. In this reading activity, students will explore and connect with the text before making an invention of their own. This activity will allow you to observe the development of the C2 competency. Students will also speak English while they collaborate to design a new invention.
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COCO'S UNIVERSE
Cycle 3
C3 Writing Task
Coco's universe is bright-colored, flamboyant and lively. With the help of a 360 video, students will be invited to write a short text to describe Coco's universe. The video can be watched on any devices or on the interactive whiteboard. Students will also collaborate in a digital brainstorm to come up with the vocabulary and functional language needed to write their description.
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ZOMBIE SURVIVAL
Cycle 3
C2 Reinvestment Task
**WARNING** Zombies have now entered Canada and it's too late for many Canadian provinces. The experts foresee the arrival of the zombies in the province in a matter of days. Please ask your students to collaborate with the Ministry of Zombie Prevention and Outbreaks to create a zombie survival guide for the residents. Everyone should take this treat seriously.
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HAVE YOU EVER SEEN THAT THING?
Cycle 3
C1 Oral Interaction Task
Let's face it, although we don't want to think we are getting older, some gadgets and contraptions from our past are completely unknow to our students. In this C1 activity, students will have to discuss and agree on the use of different objects from the past. They will even be invited to survey their parents about these items.
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ONLY IN JAPAN
Cycle 3 - Intensive
Vending Machines
Japan definitely has its shares of innovative contraptions and vending machines are no exception. There are vending machines for almost anything from hot dogs to live insects! Discover the surprising world of Japanese vending machines with your students and invite them to create their own silly or not-so-silly vending machine. In this short LES, students will do a collaborative planning before individually writing their text. This activity can be done online or in class.
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FANTASTIC BEASTS
Grade 5-6
You Won't Believe What I Saw...
In this engaging learning and evaluation situation, students will learn about different fantastic beasts, their physical characteristics, personality traits and other interesting facts. They will explore the different texts and demonstrate understanding through filling out charts. As a reinvestment task, they will become famous YouTubers and create the script for their new video. You want to take it a step further? Why not have them record their video for real?
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TALK DETECTIVES
All levels
C1 Teaching Strategy
Using talk detectives in the ESL classroom is a great way to teach students how to successfully interact orally in English. What are talk detectives you ask? In a nutshell, while students are interacting orally, the appointed talk detectives walk around the classroom and look for specific observable elements in the discussions. Not only does it help students better understand oral interactions, but it creates peer-generated observations for the student portfolio. These tools can be adapted to use with students as early as Elementary Grade 3 to Sec 5.
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MY EMERGENCY PLANNING
Cycle Three
Teaching ESL Remotely
What will I do with my students if a classroom closes and I have to teach online? This question is on everyone’s lips, along with “when will I find the time to do all this?”. Well hopefully this emergency planning will give you a hand. This planning springboarded from my service center’s 9 day schedule in which 1st cycle students receive 2 hours of English and other cycles get 3 hours (each period actually lasting 54 minutes). You will therefore find activities for a complete cycle in this planning. It includes everything you need, from the presentation documents to the students documents ready to share. We use Google for Education so you’ll find most documents in the Google format. However, I did create either a PowerPoint or PDF version of all documents for teachers using other teaching platforms.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE AND IDEAS
Cycle 3
A New Era
It is unavoidable! The ESL classroom will be very different as of May 11th. Some schools might even remove ESL from the curriculum until June. But for those of you who will teach ESL with all the measures in place, I hope this document helps you find a couple ideas to use in the classroom. In no way does this document replace your official MEES documents. It only presents my take on how to go about the next few weeks in the ESL classroom. You will find essential elements to be learning from the Progression of Learning for each level as well as ideas to continue leading activities for all three competencies.
ORAL INTERACTION
Intensive ESL
Activities For Video Calls
These ten different oral interaction activities were created for intensive English teachers who wanted to keep their students interacting orally during this social distancing period. Each oral interaction activity comes with an introduction activity and a wrap-up. Although they were created for intensive ESL, teachers could use them with other levels as well. These activities were also thought out to be long-lasting and they will definitely be useful for both Elementary and Secondary teachers once we're all back to our normal lives. Please watch the explanation video before downloading the files.
LET'S TRAVEL TO...
Cycle Three
IPad Project
Travelling is one of the popular reasons why people start learning English. Us ESL teachers are so lucky to have the opportunity to share our curiosity about the world with our students while developing their English competencies. We originally created this project at our board to prepare students for their end of the year trip while integrating the use of iPads in class. Over time, we added different destinations for students to discover. You will also find a template to create your own student booklet with your favorite destination. You will only have to change the title and five QR codes.
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A PECULIAR PLACE
Cycle 3 Year 1
A Peculiar Place: LES
This awesome LES was created by a teacher from my board. She generously offered to share it with all of you via my website. She was inspired by the characters from the book Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. Students will learn about four peculiar kids named Olive, Millard, Bronwyn and Horace. They will do different tasks to demonstrate understanding of texts. Then, as a reinvestment task, they will have to write a diary entry. Both C2 and C3 can be evaluated in this learning and evaluation situation.
CARMEN SANDIEGO BREAKOUT
Cycle 3 Year 1
Have You Seen Carmen?
Do you remember Carmen Sandiego? This criminal mastermind helped many children of my generation in learning geography. She was the inspiration for this new Breakout lesson. Students will follow Carmen through different countries around the globe and they will need to interact orally to solve the different puzzles. This breakout activity integrates technologies. Students will need an iPad or Chromebook to scan the QR codes on the map. There aren't any devices available? Don't worry! There is a printable version of the information cards.
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TECHNO TASK CARDS
Cycle 3
Using Chromebooks in ESL
Here is a series of thirteen different task cards for ESL students to use with Chromebooks or with a Google for Education account. The different tasks include the creation of an interactive greeting card, the production of a weather report, the invention of a fake Facebook profile for a celebrity, the making of different videos using an online video editing tool and so on. Increase students' motivation and engagement by offering them the choice of a task. Let students be creative while they learn and develop their competencies. As Albert Einstein once said: "Creativity is intelligence having fun".
CHRISTMAS DIGITAL SCAVENGER HUNT
Cycle 3 Year 2
QR Codes & Christmas Traditions
As an educator, I strongly believe that learning about culture is a key part of learning a language. To me, learning about other countries, landmarks, social habits, cuisine, art, and music can help shape the students' minds and make them better citizens of the world. Here's a little scavenger hunt about different Christmas traditions from around the world. Students will learn about different traditions and celebrations in Argentina, Greece, Kenya, Japan, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, and other countries through reading texts and watching videos they will access by scanning the QR codes. Have fun!
THE POSTCARD PROJECT
Cycle 3
Interactive Postcards
Creating postcards is one of my favorite activities to do with students. It is such a flexible activity and can be adapted to suit almost any theme. This postcard isn't the traditional postcard. Using online tools, students will create an interactive postcard of a randomly assigned country. They will have to do a quick research online to find a video and information to use in their written message. Then, students will add their postcard link on a world map to combine all the class' postcards. This postcard template could also be modified to be used as a C2.
THE STORY OF EMOJIS
Cycle 3 Year 1
Reinvesting Smileys!
Emojis are literally everywhere. They form a language of symbols understood internationally. In this learning and evaluation situation, students will explore texts to learn more about the invention of emojis. They will go through different learning stations to discover and create around this theme. They will answer questions as a demonstration of understanding. As a reinvestment task, students will create a vlog by each recording a video including information about how emojis came to be. You can even create the vlog for real if you have the parents' approval.
INVENTIONS FROM THE PAST
Cycle 3 Year 2
Mom, What's That?
Have you ever seen a child coming face to face with a rotary phone for the first time in their life. Most of them have no idea what to do with such a contraption. Through this learning and evaluation situation, students will learn about past inventions such as the rotary phone, the Nintendo, the Walkman and color television. After reading texts, they will sequence information, write the information down in graphic organizers and answer true or false questions to demonstrate understanding. As a final reinvestment task, students will write a dialogue between time travelers.
OUTER SPACE
Cycle 3
A Turnkey Project for Reinvestment
Let’s be honest, C2 is a struggle even for the most experienced teachers among us. The demonstration of students’ understanding through questions is not much of a problem, but creating reinvestment tasks can be challenging. Yet, if you get to tame the beast, you will happen to find that reinvestment tasks can be fun and engaging for students. In Outer Space, students will learn about 4 different aliens living on a far away planet. As a reinvestment task, students will write the diary entry of an astronaut who just landed on that planet and met aliens.
MY PASSPORT TO VIRTUAL REALITY
Cycle 3
First Steps Towards VR
In this project, students will discover various locations around the world by going on six different day trips. While doing so, the students will complete a passport to get country stamps. The length of a day trip varies from 20 minutes to 45 minutes, as each day trip contains an optional writing task. An explicit model is provided for each task. Tasks are also separated in different levels to allow for differentiation. Don’t forget to look for the “Going Beyond” activity for older or stronger learners. Are you a virtual reality newbie? Don't worry!
MYSTERY SKYPE
Cycle 3
Authentic Interaction
The main objective is to have students from intensive ESL classrooms interact orally in English with students from other regions. Another educational aim of this project is to broaden the students’ horizons about the different cultures of the world. In traditional Mystery Skype events, two classrooms interact together and ask questions to one another until the students guess in which city of the world the other class is located. The students can only ask yes/no questions. The activity was a success. The students were engaged and the situation was definitely authentic.
PUZZLING ANIMALS
Grade 6
Explore, Demonstrate, Reinvest
Grade 6 students have had more than their share of animals projects in ESL. Yet, I've decided to create another one. Not only do students enjoy the proposed angle from which we discover animals, but they enjoy the collaboration in the exploration of the texts phase. The magazine presents animals with special abilities, some of which will have your students laughing out loud. This LES brings the animal theme to another level. This LES includes a complete reinvestment task as well as oral interaction and writing tasks.
WOULD YOU RATHER?
Grade 6
C3 Flexibility
Be flexible in the classroom is fundamental. Not only does it provide a better leaning experience for students, but it allows for differentiated instruction. Also, providing a choice of tasks reinforces engagement and positive behavior. These writing tasks have been created to share the same learning outcomes and to be evaluated with the same criteria. Therefore, students could chose a first writing task as a formative evaluation on which the teacher would give feedback. Then, students would select a second task among the three choices in order to be evaluated.
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HAUNTED CASTLE
Grade 6
Encourages Interaction
Breakout EDU activities are definitely a new trend in education. Inspired by the "Escape the Room" puzzle and adventure games, the concept has been used in schools all over the world to foster cooperative learning. It is an interesting context for our ESL learners to engage in authentic interaction situations while developing functional language and vocabulary. The Case of the Haunted Castle was inspired by the Clue board game. You will see many resembles with the characters and rooms from the game. Will your students be able to help the characters escape from the haunted castle?
HAUNTED CASTLE
NO BOX
Grade 6
Breakout Activity on a Budget
Same engaging activity but without the expensive box. This activity is done in teams of four instead of being a whole group activity. Inspired by the "Escape the Room" puzzle games, the concept has been used in schools to foster cooperative learning. It is an interesting context for our ESL learners to engage in authentic interaction situations while developing functional language and vocabulary. Will your students be able to help the characters escape from the haunted castle?
MY OREO EXPERIENCE
Grade 6
Teaching Personalization of Texts
When you think about it, the main purpose of describing a place or character in a text is to help the reader create an image in their mind. Using descriptive words related to all five senses is a very effective strategy to improve the personalization of a descriptive text. In this lesson, students will learn how to use their five senses to better describe. They will collaborate to build a common vocabulary bank that will be used as a common resource for writing the final text.
THE BALL IS IN YOUR COURT
Grade 6
Building Common Resources
Involving students in the creation of the resources is a teaching strategy that is well worth integrating in the planning of any lesson. In this persuasive writing activity, students will compete in a vocabulary competition using sticky notes. They will also be asked to categorize all of the vocabulary onto different posters placed around the classroom. The activity was inspired by the Step Up to Writing strategy and created to help students better organize their ideas before writing.
HOW MANY TOONIES?
Grade 5
And the Actual Retail Price Is...
Based on the famous television show The Price is Right, this learning and evaluation situation promotes oral interaction by proposing different games and team challenges to the students. As a final task, the students will have to write the script for a supermarket radio advertisement. A audio model for the task is provided. Whether you prefer the original show host Bob Barker or the most recent host Drew Carrey, watching an episode of the show is a fun way to start the LES.
MURDER AT THE THEATER
Grade 6 - Intensive
Role-Playing in Intensive
Using role-plays in the classroom is a great to foster oral interaction amongst second language learners. In this investigation, the students will each have to portray a character. They will be given cues that need to be respected in order to follow the storyline. However, the students will be given time to build on their character and bring props if needed. Not only does this activity engage students in the interaction but it also helps develop problem-solving strategies. Will you find out who did it?
COLLABORATIVE STORY
Grade 6 - Intensive
Taking Penpalling to the Next Level
Penpalling in the ESL classroom is such a great activity. Not only does it provide an authentic audience to the writers, but it also allows them to engage in the publishing phase of the writing process.The idea behind the creation of this project was for students to experiment with collaborative writing through their penpals. The student booklet will be sent back and forth from one class to the other. Without even knowing each other, the students will develop a narrative and use peer editing strategies to improve their writing skills.