History of Black Lives in Windsor-Essex Area

I am SO happy that you voted YES to read my abridged story of Josiah Henson, drawn from his autobiography. This week we examined outdated and preferred language for talking about slavery and those who held other people as property.

We thought about the invasion of Iraq. What language is used when the U.S. government describes this event? Liberated. Spread democracy. What language do many Iraqis use? Invaded. Destroyed a civilization.

We must consider whose perspective we are reading. How are attitudes embedded in language?

Here are some links you can use in the lab on Friday or from home.

Redeeming Uncle Tom is a movie we will watch together, but Nahlah asked to have it early.

Go to my website for other ESL teachers and check out the links there under African Canadian History.

For those wanting to practice common daily English phrases, check these links out! Don't forget that you can adjust the speed and turn on closed captioning (CC).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgDhHz_2NDc

Small Talk

Hi, students of the seniors' class!

This week we are learning to make small talk. This will help with your goal of social integration.

First, we studied the grammar of TAG QUESTIONS.

Next, we looked at these conversation starters.


Take the quiz.

Three Truths and a Lie

Hello!


I hope all our Muslim colleagues had a wonderful holiday yesterday. Eid Mubarak!


Today was conversation day. We played a game called "Three truths and a lie." I started us off by putting my example on the board:

• I used to have rats for pets.


• I don't have a television.


• My mother is a famous artist.


• I have visited 12 countries.

Three of these are true and one is a lie. Can you guess which is the lie? The idea is to think of true things that seem very unusual. You want to deceive your classmates!

I gave you ten minutes to think up your sentences and write them down. Then we got into groups of three to four students to play the game.

I had fun learning very interesting things about each of you! We learned that Ricardo was a famous dancer when he was a child. We learned that Lena's mother has chickens, goats, ducks and rabbits. We found out that our new colleague Svitlana is a geography teacher. She can help me when I don't know where a country is. People educated in America are not very good at geography, I'm afraid.

Oh, and I also got you all to guess which of my statements was a lie. The lie was about my mother. She is an artist, but not famous. I showed you pictures of my pet rat, Stella. She is dead now, but I loved her a lot when she was alive.

Tomorrow we will continue with the lowest front vowel. See you!

The Week Flew By

Hello!

This week really flew by. Tuesday was our bi-weekly computer lab day. Then on Wednesday, I asked you all if you would be willing to spend our class learning how to fold an origami crane. I asked this because I will need a few helpers when we do this activity for Peace Week. You all said yes, you were willing to donate one of our classes to this cause, so that's what we did. Ina, Angela and Lena are good at folding the crane, so I hope they will help me that week.

Because you didn't get your conversation day on Wednesday, we did it on Thursday. So that was a short week!

Question Circles

Hello!

Today was another conversation day. Before we started, I put four guidelines on the board:

1. take turns; everyone gets a chance to talk
2. speak English
3. stay on topic

Then we went over them together.

I told you that guideline #1 is very important. I want to see everyone getting a chance to speak. I used my green marker to put a big check mark by guideline #1.

I told you that guideline #2 is pretty important, but I don't mind if you occasionally help each other out using your first language. But let's keep it to 95% English, okay? I put a big green check mark by rule #2.

And then I told you that guideline #3 isn't important to me. You do NOT need to stick to the topics I offer you. I only offer topics to help you get started talking. The whole point of conversation day is to practice speaking. If your group gets excited about another topic, that's great. Run with it. The point is to speak.

Next I showed you a game boards and explained the rules. You told me you prefer to talk in mixed-level groups. We divided into three groups of three and one group of four. Then you all spent the next hour chatting away using the question prompts on the game board.

At 12:27 we had to tidy up and give the classroom back to Chris and his students. Four or five of you came up to tell me that you really enjoyed this activity and want to do it again in the future. I'm really glad I bought that book A Grab Bag of Socializing when I was at the conference in Toronto. I think we're going to have a lot of fun with it on Wednesdays.

See you tomorrow!

Reading Day - a Poem by Naomi Shihab Nye

Hello!

Today we continued our discussion of stereotypes for the first five or ten minutes of the class. I put a new word on the board - "gender stereotypes." We learned that gender means sex, as in:

• my gender is female
• I am of the female gender
• Bashar's gender is male
• Federico is of the male gender

You might see that word on a form that you have to fill out. M stands for male, F stands for female.

I admitted that I am sometimes guilty of gender stereotypes. I also told you about a boss of mine that I had in 1990. She assumed that women were not good at computers, so she did not send any of us women employees for computer training. She only agreed to fund training for the men. I quit that job and went to work in an academic library where I had access to computers and computer training books. I taught myself to program in Visual Basic and designed software. Later I had a job supporting software users.

To get an idea of how we all have gender stereotypes in our heads, I told you this little riddle:

A man and his son were riding in a car. They were in a car accident. The father died. The little boy was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. The little boy was lying in the operating room. The doctor came into the operating room, looked down at the boy and said, "I can't operate on this boy. He's my son."

How is that possible?

Some of you suggested that the boy had a real father and a step-father. One of you said that perhaps the boy was adopted. Finally Elena said, "The doctor was the boy's mother."

Tania, who is a doctor, admitted that even she is guilty of gender stereotyping. I think perhaps we all are.

Next I explained that I wanted to pass out a prose poem for our reading material. I also explained that each of us will have a pronunciation evaluation sheet that I will use to give you feedback on your progress during the course. I passed them out. The top section has two blanks for you to fill in: "name," and "my goal for this class." The rest of the spaces are for me to complete as I listen to you speak and read in class.

Next I passed out the poem, which is entitled "Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal," by Naomi Shihab Nye. You asked me to read it all the way through first as a model for you. I did that. Then you asked if we could discuss the new words before we took turns reading. So we did that. Before the end of class, four or five people got a chance to read.

Tuesday is our day in the computer lab, so we will continue practicing reading the poem on Wednesday. I think we will probably do that again on Thursday, as well. Then on Monday we can start our new unit.

Have a great Thanksgiving weekend!

Conversation Day - Stereotypes

Hello!

Well! We had our first ever conversation day today. How do you feel it went? Did you enjoy it?

We had fourteen students but then two had to leave early. First I asked you if you knew what the word "stereotype" meant. Federico used the adjective in the example of "the stereotypical costume of a country." I said we were going to do an exercise in groups, and then we would ask the same question at the end.

I had posted about 12 items on the whiteboard for each group to do. I gave each group a piece of lined paper on which to record the group's answers. The items went something like this:

_____ are crazy drivers.

_____ are fat.

_____ are good at math.

And so on. In groups, you were to discuss which nationality you think should go in each blank. There was much animated discussion in each group. I was happy to see everyone talking.

At about 12:05 we stopped to compare notes. Some said Russians are good dancers. Many agreed that Asians are good at math. We think Canadians are polite.

By this time, I had put several discussion questions on the board. For example:

1. What is a stereotype?
2. Are stereotypes good or bad?
3. Where do stereotypes come from?

And so on. We had a good time thinking about our answers. All of those ideas are stereotypes. As Bashar and Husnieh pointed out, some people in every country are tight with money. Some people in every country are rude. I am from America, but I'm not too fat, eh? My brother and mother are not at all fat.

I hope you enjoyed our first conversation day. I think we will try to do this again almost once a week. Maybe we will do it three times per month. Also I will begin incorporating more conversation into our regular classes.

Again, thank you all for speaking up and helping me design the course!

Survey Results

Thank you to everyone who participated in our pronunciation class survey. The results of our survey are here.

We will try to have a conversation day almost every Wednesday. Let's try that for a while and see how we feel in a few weeks, okay?

Also, I will try to have more games. About 80% of you said you like games at least twice a week.

Keep giving me ideas! I love it when we work as a team to build the best class EVER!

Needs Assessment Day

Hello!

Today we had a full house! Almost everyone showed up, plus two new students: Eric and Rehab. Welcome! After introductions, I listed on the board the language points that I feel a good pronunciation course should cover:

• sentence stress (content words, function words, etc.)
• word stress
• intonation / pitch
• linking
• vowels
• consonants
• assimilation
• deletion
• palatalization

I told you all that a misunderstanding on my part has recently been brought to light. I do not have just three months in which to cover the material. We can take it as slowly as we wish! This is wonderful news, isn't it?

In light of this, I wanted to get everyone's ideas and opinions on lots of things. For one, would you like to incorporate a full hour of conversation now and then? If so, how often? Once a week?

I also wanted to get your feelings on the format of the lessons. I wanted to know how many of you like the worksheets and how many want more variety in the lessons. I need to know how often you want to play games or go to the computer lab.

After we talked about this as a group, each of you shared with me your personal goals for the course. As many of you remember, we did this at the end of the spring term, and I did my best to incorporate your ideas and needs into the summer term's curriculum.

Finally, I passed out a questionnaire so that each of you could share your opinions anonymously. I will read those this weekend and begin thinking about changes that we can make to the course so that all of your needs are (hopefully) more fully met.

I really appreciate how all of you share your ideas with me freely. I value your trust and hope to be able to deliver an even more effective and fun class beginning Monday.

Have a wonderful weekend!