Category Archives: Designing

Intelligent Design-Creating Worksheets for Literacy Students

Planning and designing worksheets are necessary skills that teachers need to achieve best practice in the classroom. Of course, there are times when we end up hastily throwing together a hand-out or using a less than appropriate one from the Internet. However, we should create our own material because we are the ones who know our students the best. Further, a well-thought-out worksheet isn’t just something to give the students; for our literacy learners, it is an essential tool for skill-building, skill-using, and for acquiring learning strategies. Here are some tips for planning and creating worksheets for literacy students.

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Teaching Lower Level Students with ABI

Many lower level students are living with the effects of Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) from trauma, such as concussions, infection, and strokes. They struggle, while other students are learning and progressing. No matter how many times and ways we cover the same material, do the same activities, these struggling students still battle and labour to learn. It’s a situation of snakes and ladders. One day they seem to get it, have some sort of breakthrough, only to return to their old patterns of difficulty. Teacher and student have to begin all over again.

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Language Instructors & NotebookLM

A screen grab of a NotebookLM Notebook.
A screen grab of a NotebookLM Notebook.

The hype pinnacle was NotebookLM’s podcasts, termed “audio overview,” that created deep dive AI generated podcasts. The AI hosts present realistic human voices to simulate engaging audio discussions based on the content of input documents. Beyond the appealing podcast generation feature, can this tool offer educators potential ways to transform the way they design and deliver language instruction?  Continue reading

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The Magic of Inclusive Classrooms through Differentiated Instruction 

child's hand with different colours painted on each finger and the palm
Image by Prashant Sharma from Pixabay

Inclusive education means that all children have access to learning regardless of their social background, economic status, physical abilities or any trait which may potentially hinder them from their right to education. While this is a recent phenomenon influenced by Montessori methods and research on learner-centered classrooms, the shift actually has roots that go back hundreds of years to the one-room schoolhouse. It was formerly thought that all children learned in a similar way and at the same pace. It was only when achievement tests were introduced in 1912 that the disparity in the students’ grades became glaringly obvious.  Continue reading

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Simplifying Real-World Content with ChatGPT and the Canadian Language Benchmarks 

Image taken from: Big Stock Photo

Lesson planning can be a time-consuming endeavor, especially for educators teaching students with lower levels of English proficiency. Adapting materials to meet the needs of these learners requires careful consideration and often entails significant effort. However, with the assistance of tools like ChatGPT, this process can be streamlined and made more efficient. 

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Web Accessibility for Language Teachers

Digital accessible logo on a screenEducational digital accessibility is often viewed as a set of practices  dedicated that assist disabled individuals with challenges to participate in online and blended courses.  In fact, accessibility practices endeavor to more than eliminate barriers to education; they ensure that digital content is enhanced for everyone. Digital accessibility practices are something we all should practice because:

  • they remove barriers to education and training
  • legislation requires accessibility across Canada 
  • many Canadians live with at least 1 disability 
  • they improve all digital resources for all users 
  • it is the right thing to do 

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SAMR Says, Part II

Image taken from: Schoology

SAMR Says

Change is never comfortable, but, as we all know, it is necessary. The SAMR model is flexible and easy to use at all levels of education. To read about ‘Substitution’ and ‘Augmentation,’ please check out SAMR Says, Part I, where we discussed these stages of ‘Enhancement’ and some simple and fast tools you can find to help you move from paper to online without much stress or extra work. Using technology tools that enhance your class, as per the SAMR model, means that you are enhancing yourself, the material, and the students’ experience too.

In this blog, we will be discussing the stages of ‘Transformation’ and how to modify and redefine your approach to allow for more technology in your class.

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Good Habits for Managing Learning Material

 a poster for Good Habits for Managing Learning Material
Generated with ChatGPT

Introduction

Over the past months, thousands of language instructors across Canada have been unwittingly or intentionally taking on instructional developer responsibilities. They have been cobbling together, rearranging, and refining digital resources and activities from various sources to meet the needs of their students. Many instructors have been generating original learning resources to fill in gaps that appear while teaching online.

Usually, learning materials are prepared ‘on-the-fly’ to anticipate or adapt to challenges that arise from our classroom lessons. What happens to these documents? Often, they are forgotten on a computer drive and discovered on a slow day when you are considering which files to remove to free up hard drive space. These files are hastily named, filed, and saved, so they are lost.  Sometimes, it is too much trouble to save and properly file a document that is created just before your online class is about to start. If you are currently teaching online, I am sure you will agree with this! Continue reading

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Effective Online Tools & Resources for Teachers and Learners

Education, distance education, internet studying, e-learning flat vector illustration. Online classes, training courses, tutorials, online education design for mobile and web graphics
Image source: www.bigstockphoto.com

Over the past two years, I have been attending a lot of webinars, presentations, conferences, dialogues and online courses. I’ve also been reading blogs and articles as well as doing presentations and writing blogposts. I’ve gained knowledge and collected remarkable resources. Tools like the ones below can help us design tasks that will engage and motivate our learners.

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I fell off my chair during my online class!

Happy Asian woman in hijab raising arms and stretching body while working with laptop in cozy cafe
Image Source: Bigstockphoto.com

Teachers have always been associated with having a lot of movement in their workplace. The nature of teaching and checking on students always allowed teachers to be ambulant and move around the classroom. However, COVID-19 has sent most ESL teachers home and behind their laptops all day long. Besides physical issues that sedentary behaviour can bring to everyone, it can affect the creativity and eagerness of teachers despite their good intentions. Here are five tips for those at home who feel the pain in their back and knees and want a change!

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