Lesson Plan Using Concordance Lines

I have created the following lesson for my CALL course. 

Overview
The lesson plan below makes use of concordance lines from corpus websites such as Mark Davies' COCA. It is designed to provide students with a scaffolded use of concordance lines to learn new academic vocabulary words. The words have been chosen from a reading that students in a level 5 PIE course encounter in their reading texts.
I have chosen to use the corpus-based materials to provide learners with more exposure to learning vocabulary from context, which is one of the objectives of the course that I am teaching. I have chosen to use paper-based materials rather than have learners use online corpus research tools because I feel it is important to scaffold learners' use of concordance lines prior to having them use computer resources.
I also feel that these activities can help supplement the weak vocabulary coverage usually found in English reading textbooks. Providing learners with more exposure to how vocabulary is used in context through concordance lines can also help to show how words tend to be used with different collocates.

Call Lesson Plan by

CALL Vocabulary Corpus Activity by

Using Socrative to Review Vocabulary

In this post, I describe the steps of a lesson plan that involves the integration of Socrative.com as a type of vocabulary review exercise. This is being used to help students review synonyms that students need to know associated with specific vocabulary words they encounter in the course readings. It is important that students know how to use synonyms for specific vocabulary words in an integrated reading/writing course because it is included in the ability to summarize and paraphrase what you read.

Introduction:

The vocabulary review includes a number of multiple choice type items that help prepare students for the key vocabulary/synonyms that will be featured on the achievement tests. It contains selected words from Reading Explorer 4, chapters 7A, 7B and 9A. Some of the review items are from topics covered in the readings, while others have been adapted from the Corpus of Contemporary English (COCA) to ensure they feature the most frequent collocations.  

Teacher Set-up:

The quiz involves students logging on using their smartphones. The teacher should access socrative.com and set up an account beforehand. Then, they can select the “import quiz function” and enter this number: “SOC-856897”.

This will allow you to add the quiz to your teacher module in socrative.com

Next you need to create a space race so that learners can team up into groups and compete against one another. To get an idea of how you can set up a space race using socrative, watch this quick youtube tutorial video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wNnVUKVIAc

Review of Steps:

• Access the main menu of socrative. 

•  Select space race. This will display the room number and ask you how many teams to assign students. If you have a class similar in size to mine (13 students), then you can choose 3-4 so that there are roughly 3-4 students in a group. You can auto select colors or give students a choice.

• Once you have selected these options, a new window opens that displays the room number, how many students have selected a team, and what colors have been selected.

• Students can google socrative.com using their smartphones. This will bring up either the student or teacher version. They should click on the student version. Then they will be prompted to enter the classroom number (which you will project on a screen to the class).

•  As students are logging on, assign them groups and have them choose the colors. Students should enter their names when they are asked to (this allows for you to view their individual performance). Once the site shows that every student has logged in, you can begin the space race. If a student doesn’t have a smartphone, then they can take turns submitting answers on a classmate’s phone.

•   After students have completed the space race and you have congratulated the winning team, ask students if there were words they didn’t know. What words gave them difficulties in the quiz? These are words that warrant more discussion and that they need to study to be prepared for the achievement test. 

Note: Once students complete the activity, I will also post the results as well.

A Working Phisophy of Integrating Technology in the Language Classroom

In conceptualizing my beliefs on the use of technology in the classroom, I feel it is helpful outline the integration of technology in terms of different roles. The roles I feel that are most important for integration of technology are the following:

• Learner roles
• Teacher roles
• The role of the curriculum

 Learner Roles
I think that before integrating technology into the language classroom some type of needs analysis should be conducted to determine students' attitudes and feelings towards technology. I also believe it is important to collect information on the type of experiences with technology that learners bring with them to the classroom. Is the student a tech savvy web designer or app developer? Or did the student come from an environment where little if no technology existed? This background inventory will help me make future decisions about how, when, and if I will integrate technology into the classroom. Even if I come up with the most interactive and engaging lesson using technology, it will fall flat if I have not fully considered the affective concerns of my students.



Teacher Roles
 I have come to realize that, as a language teacher using CALL,  my roles are multifaceted and ever in flux. There are times where I need to be a resource in using the technology itself. This means that I have considered the types of issues regarding the functionality of various types of applications I introduce to my students. It also means I have walked through the activities I have planned and looked at it from the novice point of view of even the most novice technophobe. In some cases, this results in a teacher-centered classroom where I walk through the use of a specific application and model the use I expect of my students.

There are other times when my role as a teacher is that of a facilitator, a role I take to guide students through the successful use of technology.

The Role of the Curriculum
Just as there are learner needs that should be considered, I also strongly believe that how I use technology in the classroom should align with goals of the course and program-wide goals. I feel it is important to let the curriculum drive the selection of how and when technology is implemented into the classroom. For example, in a curriculum that utilizes a task-based approach, I would want to consider how the use of technology in a pedagogical task aligns with real-world tasks.

Week 3 Reflection

Experimenting with Vuvox for Digital Storytelling
This past week Haley Winters and I worked together creating a collage using the program Vuvox. The program allows for you to create a media file box, which you can then upload into what Vuvox calls a collage. This collage allows for you to upload text bubbles on images, upload videos and embed background music. For my digital story I used the background sound to upload a sound file that gives an overview of the use of the get passive I prerecorded using audacity.

With the limited amount of time I experimented with Vuvox, I found it to be rather cumbersome to upload videos. It also seemed like a complex task at times to upload them onto the collage. However, the other features seemed to work more efficiently. I think a strong point of the Vuvox is that the drag and drop function in editing mode allows for pictures and media to be added to a collage with ease. I did feel that there were times when the program was unresponsive and slow.

The use of websites in CALL
During the past week we looked at a number of web resources and discussed their potential for language teaching. While we had some difficulties using Hot Potatoes in class, I do see how it could be useful for creating activities for grammar and vocabulary practice. Creating gap-fill activities appears to be one of the most common uses of the site. Although I'm sure there is much more potential for this program than just gap-fill exercises. We also touched on the use of wikis such as google sites.

I feel that it is good to get familiar with these resources and then slowly test them out and assess their potential for use in your own classroom. So I'm looking forward to seeing what other uses there are for the sites we discussed in class.

In this blog post, I have embedded a digital story using Vuvox to give examples of how the get passive is used.