BBC Learning English and Google for Education in a mixed skills language class

Have I already mentioned that I love BBC Learning English? I had a somewhat long break from using this fantastic site and now that I’m back to it, I clearly remember why it is such a great resource for teaching and learning English. I have many favourites on the site, The English We Speak and 6-minute-English to name but a few (in fact, I'm a big fan of all their courses).

Presently, I teach a group of immigrants with a variety of cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Their levels of EFL vary significantly from absolute beginners to intermediate level, which is why I ended up dividing the learners in two groups. However, the lessons happen at the same time and in the same classroom, so this requires a bit of planning so that each student would benefit from the course and improve their language skills.

What to do?
Picture by Papunet

I planned a programme for both levels and this is where BBC Learning English came into picture for the intermediate level students. Together with the students we chose two items from the site: an older series called The Teacher for learning idioms and Lingohack Words in the News for learning vocabulary. Both programmes consist of videos, which ensures that the students will get plenty of listening practice. In addition to informative (and funny, in the case of The Teacher) visual and audible resources, the material also includes a script for each video. This is particularly helpful for those students who need written material to support their learning.

Solution found!
Picture by Papunet

How a regular lesson could go when the students are practising vocabulary (they also study grammar during this course but that’s another story): I normally start with the beginners’ level students while the intermediate group already know the drill. They choose a set of idioms or news item to study, watch the video, listen and study the vocabulary. They do this alone, in pairs or in small groups. They then sign in on their Google Document (shared with the teacher) and report their learning process there: What were the idioms or vocabulary they studied? What do the idioms mean? In what kind of sentences the idioms or vocabulary could be used?

When we’ve had enough time with the beginner’s group, and they are engaged in their exercises, we then go through the findings together with the intermediate students. At this point the students also get practice in speaking. 

Google Docs is a great tool for documenting and sharing learning. Perhaps now that the students are familiar with the BBC site and the more self-directed way to find information online, we could try using Google Slides to increase collaboration and information sharing between the students. 

The idioms of the day

Do your students use BBC Learning English? Or, if you’re a student, do you use the site? Which is your favourite course on the site? 

Glimpses of our school year in pictures!

Here's a link to a recent posting in our school blog, you don't need to know Finnish to check it out, since it's all about photos.

Click here to take a look at some moments from our school year 2015-2016!

Vanhankaupunginkoski in Helsinki (now that is a long word!). It's such a beautiful place to walk around!

Good old learning stations!

I’m a big fan of learning stations. They are great for letting students choose what to do, in which order and they are also a very natural way to differentiate teaching. I also very much like that students work in small groups and help each other. Learning stations naturally also allow the teacher to go around and be of help when needed. 

Since September my students have been learning Finnish at an overwhelming pace. This week they started to study vocabulary on Finnish nature. Here are a few glimpses of our Friday’s stations.

• Increase your vocabulary with Quizlet. Choose the themes you wish to practise: nature, trees, birds, animals in the forest, insects
• Study the vocabulary and play a game of domino.
• Start studying the text (challenging).
• Go out and find the following trees. Photograph them and show your findings to the rest of the group. Test if they know which trees you captured.

My favourite station this time was the one that took the students outside the classroom to explore surrounding nature. It was a sunny day, too! 

Speaking about nature, can you believe that Finland has 187 888 lakes!

A game of domino

Learning vocabulary with Quizlet. A picture of one of the 187 888 lakes in Finland.

Do you know what this tree is in Finnish? Check it out here.
Photo taken by a student in my group.

A study programme for immigrants aged 17–25 without school leaving certificate

A new term is about to start in our school! This week we’ll be interviewing and choosing new students to our study programme which is officially called instruction for preparing for basic education. Basically it is a one-year-programme for young adults aged between 17-25 who have recently arrived in Finland and who don’t have a school leaving certificate from their home countries. They don’t need to have previous knowledge of Finnish but they need to be literate (if they aren’t, we also have courses for illiterate adult immigrants). I think this is an excellent opportunity for a young adult to start a new chapter in his or her life in a new country by learning the language, getting to know how the new society works and exploring what options there are for the future. We also have a strong emphasis on developing each student’s learning skills and helping them to find their true potential as learners. 

This is, in brief, what their their school year is made of:

• Finnish studies: starting level 0, target level A1.3-A2.2
• preparatory courses in mathematics
• preparatory courses in natural sciences
• preparatory courses in social studies
• preparatory courses in English
• fine arts
• field trips
• ICT-skills 
• introduction to the Finnish school system with the focus on the students’ own interests and study plans

I’m running out of superlatives when thinking about the students who completed the programme last May. I’m also so very pleased that they all are now carrying on with their studies, which means they reached the language level required for entering the basic education for adults. This is fantastic news given the fact that most of them started the term last September with little or no knowledge of the Finnish language. I was happy to see their skills develop in so many ways during the school year.

Before starting to write about this up-coming term, here are a few highlights of the last weeks of May with my highly motivated students I had the privilege to work with for the entire school year. I wish them all the best and all the happiness in the world!

Getting a hands-on experience on how to prepare Finnish bun at Fazer. 

Learning about the biggest chocolate factory in Finland.

Ending the tour with our goodie bags.

Learning about underwater world in Sea Life.

The students practised theme-related vocabulary on Quizlet before the field trip.

Celebrating and saying farewells at the end of the school year.

Listening comprehension summer course: Links for EFL learners!

Greetings from our summer courses!

For more than a decade our school has organized high school summer courses in various subjects such as English, Swedish, Finnish, Biology, Geography, Health Studies, History, Chemistry and Mathematics. This summer we had 24 courses with approximately 25-35 students per course. Now this is what I call motivation! 

Here in headphone land. Photo thanks to clemsonunivlibrary 

This summer I was in charge of the listening comprehension courses which are one of my favourite ones (well, they all are to be honest). To cut a long story short, the during the two-week-course the students practised for the up-coming national examination. We covered all possible exercise types listed by the National Board of Matriculation Examination. This includes:

• multiple choice questions both in English or in the language of instruction ie. Finnish or Swedish

• open questions in English or in the language of instruction

• a summary based on what you hear

I enjoyed planning and teaching this course. All EFL teachers in Finnish high schools know that it is seldom possible to concentrate on one particular area throughout the whole course, but with this course it was possible. The main focus was to improve students' listening skills and expand their vocabularies. The students who took the course were there for this specific reason so clearly they were very motivated and ready to learn.

Our school organised 24 summer courses for high schoolers in June 2015.

We concentrated on one exercise type at a time and students had the opportunity to test different techniques when carrying out the exercises. In addition, we practised previous years' listening comprehension test. The students had a chance to listen to the tests independently at their own pace, which got great feedback from them. They also frequently commented how they feel more confident to face the challenging exam now that they are prepared for it and know what to expect.

The national listening comprehension test. You can also find them on the net.

We also used some material on the net. Here are some links with brief descriptions of each site. I think they are great for practising listening skills and expanding vocabulary:

• BBC Learning English: Words in the news video stories: A great site for EFL and ESL learners scroll down a bit for the video stories and see for yourself!

• English in a minute: Short videos that explain idioms and often also their origins.

• BBC Learning English: The English we speak: Dialogues that shed light on the English idioms and colloquial expressions. I advise students to listen to these with the scripts.

• Yle news in English. Yle is a national Finnish broadcasting company.

• LBC 97,3: A talkradio that focuses on everyday news and issues.

• An example of the national matriculation examination test. This test is from 2006, soon this test type will be in history as the national exams will be reformed starting from autumn 2016.

• English Lab: Students can choose the level they want to practise: easy, medium, difficult

• For students preparing for the Finnish matriculation examination there are also a variety of listening comprehension exercises available. One of the best known is probably abitreenit.

There is an excellent blog for preparing students for the national exam, it also includes a posting on listening skills. Studying this was one piece of homework in our listening course (the blog is in Finnish). Additionally, if students wanted to practise test-related vocabulary, they could do that with the help of Quizlet. 

After these intensive courses it feels great to start the summer holidays!

Wishing you all a lovely summer! See you again in the autumn!

Have a relaxing summer!

Studying vocabulary: plurilingualism, work stations and a field trip

In Finland, most Finnish as a second language teachers rely on the method of teaching Finnish in Finnish. In fact, this is often the only alternative when there may be dozens of different mother tongues in the same classroom, yet not a single language that everybody would understand, so the only option often is to use only Finnish, alongside with visual cues and, of course, acting out :)  This time, however, I wanted to try a different approach in learning the somewhat difficult vocabulary relating to Finnish society. This, in brief, is what we did.

Previous week we had studied some basic information on Finnish society and now it was time to revise the vocabulary. I arranged four work stations in the classroom and the students worked their way on them in pairs or in small groups. I didn't set any time limits for each stations. I was hoping the working would proceed smoothly and that the students would chance stations when they were ready for that. 

Our worksheet with vocabulary

Before the students started working at the stations, they teamed up with a student with the same mother tongue or with a student who shared a mutual language to communicate with. They then talked through a pile of Finnish terms in a language they knew well. I truly felt it was important for them to get support from their peers and to define the somewhat challenging vocabularies in their own languages or second languages before dealing with them in Finnish. The conversation was lively to say the least. The downside of this was that I couldn’t evaluate how well or poorly they defined the terms as I don’t speak the same languages as they do. Anyhow, if there were any mistakes, they got straighten out at the work stations. My aim here was, again, to encourage the students’ plurilingualism and make it a resource in their learning processes. I would be very glad to hear if you have any ideas on how to make the students' plurilingualism a resource in the classroom. Please share them with us.

Some terminology

Once the students were ready to carry on, they could in their own pace start working in pairs or in small groups at the following stations:

1)   Online writing practise: What do you know about Finland? Here the students practised writing sentences in Finnish. Now bear in mind, that this is a beginner’s Finnish course so the task was rather challenging. What I really enjoyed noticing was the lively conversation in Finnish that took place when they were discussing the spelling of the words and the formation of the sentences. We used OneDrive for writing and saving the texts, and we’ll carry on working with them later on. What I would love to have in my classroom is higher work desks. It would be great if the students could stand at some stations. This would also make taking turns in writing easier.

Students forming sentences together

2) Vocabulary practise: I’m a fan of word clouds, they are pretty, you can vary the font and the colours and you can use them for a variety of purposes. Creating them is an easy way to check how well your students know the vocabulary being practised. Again, the conversation was lively also at this station. It was great to follow how the students corrected each other and commented on each other’s work. This time we used a programme called Word it out. 

3) Speaking: Questions about Finland. Here the students had a chance to practise talking some key points we had studied the previous week and thus revise the vocabulary. 

4) Mind-mapping: The students used Popplet for mind-mapping the key aspects of what they had learned about Finnish society so far. We used the version that doesn't require registration. Perhaps that's why there is "your name" on each popplet...?

Popplet created as teamwork - still to be finished off

The best part of the introductory lessons came the same week: We visited the Finnish Parliament House. What is so incredibly great about these tours is that you can ask for guidance in different languages, in our case, the language was selkosuomi which means simplified Finnish. Our guide Lotta was great, she really made an effort to give her presentation in a way that was understood by the students. I believe they learnt a lot during that one-hour-tour. It was also great that the same words we had practised in the classroom came alive in a real world situation.  

Getting out of the classroom

What I liked about these lessons was that they included several aspects that I find important in learning and teaching:

• taking into account learners' previous experiences and skills
• working together in creating something new
• using the power of co-operation
• communicating with the target language
• practising IT-skills
• getting out of the classroom
• using the language in real life situations

Word Clouds

For the past week or so, our theme has been home. Today the students collected the key vocabulary under titles such as Home, Rooms, Furniture, Household appliances and Decoration (they are learning these in Finnish) and created word clouds. Students then made a poster where they put their work to be seen every day.

They used three word cloud generations: 

WordMosaic: The site offers some free features such as heart, clover, smileys, arrows, etc, a variety of fonts as well as background and text colours. You can also create your own feature which some of my students did.

WordPack  and Tag Cloud (IPad apps): Both have a selection of styles or features, see the photos below.

Word clouds are handy tools for practising vocabulary. What we did today was pretty simple but, nevertheless, it helped the students to revise the vocabulary and they learned how to create word clouds which make nice adds to presentations and draw focus to particular words. Instead of listing separate words, the students can also make word clouds of the websites they are studying and use it as a starting point for reading comprehension and vocabulary expansion.

Koti - Home

Sisustus - Decoration

Tag Cloud style selection (part of it)

WordPack feature selection (part of it)

Three iPad apps for language learning classroom

It's been a busy autumn with my new group. The students have already improved their Finnish skills quite a bit and they have  also started a course in mathematics. There will be more school subjects coming as their language skills develop. 

This time I'm going to present a few more iPad apps that I have used with my students to encourage them to practise their pronunciation, speaking and listening skills:

Decide Now!

The app is designed for decision making but it turns out there are so many other ways to use it. My students, who are presently at beginners’ level in their language studies, have been using it for practising question formation, followed by discussion: Just add question words in the wheel and voilà, you’ll have a wheel that can be used in various contexts. Decide Now! is also a handy tool for practising vocabulary: Write the words in the wheel, students can then form sentences using them, define them or create a dialogue around them. Fun and effective, and when students work in pairs each one of them gets a lot of practice!

Dragon Dication

Pronunciation can be tricky. I am a supporter of each student’s own personal accent but I also encourage them to learn pronunciation to avoid misunderstandings simply because in the real world they need to be understood. I listen to my students speaking a lot, they also read aloud to me from time to time. I encourage them to use online dictionaries with audio as well as listen to the language around them. Yet another way to practise pronunciation is with Dragon Dictation. It is a voice recognition application. My students have used it, for example, for reading aloud short dialogues. Then they check the writing and see if there’s something to be corrected. In this way they also practise reading and spelling. The app can also be used for reading out easily confused words. For example, many Finnish language learners find it challenging to recognize between long and short vowels (tuli – tuuli) and double consonants (kuka – kukka).

Microphone and Recording Pro

So far we've only tried this app once, so there are yet many things to explore. The students were given a situation and they created a dialogue. The students then recorded the dialogue and later we listened to each one of them. A quick and easy way to practise speaking and listening skills. The students also like the idea of re-recording the dialogue if they were not happy with the final result.

Part V: iMovies for teaching and learning

Part V: Some highlights of the previous school year

Just a quick note on using iMovies. This posting will finish off the five-part-series of my reminiscing about the previous school year.

Last year I took a one-day-course on how to use iMovies. Teachers in Helsinki are very lucky to have so many opportunities to stay up-to-date with the developments in educational technology. Helsinki City Media Centre organizes a variety of courses with the focus on professional development.

So, there I was for one day and with friends who are teaching in other schools, and together we were learning on how to use iMovies. Since there are so many excellent instructions on how to use the programme, I won’t bore the readers with that. I just want to say it was so much fun!

I got somewhat excited about the possibilities to make my own teaching material and teach my students to do it, too. I definitely wanted to share my experiences with my colleagues, and happily they were interested in the topic. There are 20 Finnish as a Second Language (FSL) teachers in my school, and on one Friday afternoon 13 of us showed up to learn more about it and work together.

We had a great and productive afternoon. We created a YouTube channel for our work (so far it's private). The idea was that slowly but surely, whenever we would have time, we would add videos on our channel. These could then be used in our classrooms, and, of course, the students would also be learning on how to use the programme.

I was (and still am) excited about this idea. It's so much more fun and efficient to have many people working together. I believe in the power of sharing.

Here are glimpses in photos of the demo video I made. I asked our staff members to tell the camera what languages they speak. The result was a two-minute-video for a beginners' FSL course.

For the photos and speech bubbles I used an iPad app called Photogene.

What language do you speak? What languages do you speak?

I speak Finnish, English, French and also Swedish.