Our Spring 2020 Needs Assessment

Hello, students!
Please scroll down to last week's blog post for an interesting newscast that might answer a question of yours.

We have completed a new needs assessment to help us plan what to learn this semester. The three themes will be: 1) health, 2) travel and transportation, and 3) Canada.

Under those themes we talked about possible topics, such as:

• preventing dementia
• teeth
• VRBO / Air B&B
• comparing modes of transportation for travel
• buying a ticket (travel)
• geography of Canada

Okay, buckle up! It looks like we are going to become travel experts. It will be fun to tie together travel with Canadian geography. I can't teach it all, so you will have to do your fair share in the way of reports and presentations. I think Peiji's report on Banff has got everyone excited to travel this gorgeous land.

Banff, Alberta

Cheers!

In the New Semester

This week we bid farewell and good luck to exiting students and new Canadian citizens Nabil and Raja. We hope they will meet us in public when we go on field trips! Meanwhile, as soon as she finishes her virus quarantine, another student recently returned from China will be re-joining our class after a very long absence. We are also getting a new student Monday.

Monday was Y Olympics, and my room became the quiet room for table games while the rest of the student body and teachers got boisterous in the gym with hilarious competitions like stacking beanbags on one's forehead.

SET! (rules went out the window)

Quarto won Mensa game of the year when it came out!

Saadallah said he has the same exact magnetic travel game as mine at his home.

Thursday you had your conferences with me, and everyone gave me useful feedback. Here are some suggestions and comments from you:

Another school promoted me too quickly from level one to three to five, skipping levels. I have never learned the common level two words. My goal is to learn level 2 vocabulary solidly.

I want common everyday spoken English so I can understand a group of native speakers chatting around the water cooler at break time where I volunteer.

Please give us short, interesting stories.

My reading and writing abilities are strong. I need more speaking and listening. I know my listening skills are poor. I want a conversation partner who talks a lot, not a quiet one.

If you drop the level of this class in February, please give me extra material to read. (Two students said this.) Teach the same topic to both groups, the advanced and lower groups, but use a more difficult, richer version for the advanced group.

We benefit from giving presentations and doing role plays and skits because it forces us to practice a lot until we remember the phrases in English. Making our brains work hard staves off dementia, you said.

It is hard for me to focus when so much is going on back home (violence, war).

All of you expressed appreciation for the CONTENT of our modules and said you really benefited from learning about Uber, air travel, hearing and hearing loss, falling and falls prevention, the LIHN, and the new dental health program for seniors in Ontario.

Okay! That was a lot of great feedback! Here are some answers I have to your feedback:

Yes, we are going to drop the level of the class to a high 2, low 3 in February. I will need a lot of help and support doing this in a multilevel class. I will do my best to give higher level students their own version of materials, but this is only possible with some resource packages that I have access to. Many times, I will simply ask those of you who want a challenge to do something extra with the same material. We'll see how that pans out!

I wish I could give you short, interesting stories, but I have spent hours and hours and hours searching for them. The only good sources I've found are five or six very old, tattered books in the teachers' library here at school. Those stories are so tired; we've read them again and again. The pig that called 911! The baby born on the subway platform! I'll see if I can find a newer edition of one that my manager can order us.

This past week we used the book Pronunciation Pairs, which has silly (not true) stories designed to make us practice a certain pair of consonant or vowel sounds in English. Let's start using that book more often. Saiying said it was useful.

As for the request for the basic vocabulary taught at the lower levels, I am going to give everyone a copy of the new General Service List of the first 2000 words needed to speak and understand everyday spoken English. We will highlight any that you don't already know well and use them in common phrases and in our chats.

Care Homes in Ontario

Hi, students!

Maria Giannotti of the Compassionate Community Project of Windsor-Essex Hospice will be with us on the 24th to give us information about care homes. We will begin acquiring some new vocabulary and concepts the weeks prior to her visit.

Friday in the computer lab, you can learn about a leader in creating a new model of care in long-term care homes in Ontario: Schlegel Villages. They have been pioneers in a culture shift from the medical model to a social model.

Here you can read the eight aspirations that guide them in growing and evolving toward what they want the experience to be for their staff and residents.

Schlegel Villages has a YouTube channel with a variety of short videos about life in their care homes, which they call "villages" because they are set up to resemble streets and neighbourhoods.

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Update: I have finished tallying the votes from this week's NEEDS ASSESSMENT. The topics we will study this semester are:

1. Health and Safety. Topics include safe urban foraging, how to fall, a fun line dance, the most common diseases, their symptoms and their diagnostic tools
2. Fun and travel (transportation). Topics will include airport announcement listening strategies and two new app-based ride services: Lyft and Uber
3. Canada. Topics will include our rights and responsibilities as good citizens in a local context, city government, our B.I.A.
4. Community Services. Topic will be our Local Integrated Health Network (LIHN).
5. Law. Topic you requested is traffic laws.

We decided to reserve the right to occasionally insert other short topics that may be seasonal or timely.

New Cohort, New Priorities

Hello, students of the seniors' class.

We have a new mix of students, and our recent needs assessment shows that we as a group have new priorities. The survey results show that the most popular topics were, in this order:

1.  The English articles system
2.  Canada and citizenship (rights and duties, anthem)
3.  Legal Aid
4.  How to use an ATM
5.  Hospital Safety

As for activities, I got a surprise! Eighty percent of you want to use iPads weekly. The majority of you want to go to the computer lab either weekly or now and then. What would you say to going to the lab (for one hour) on weeks when we have a Friday class and using the iPads during weeks when there will not be a Friday class?

We've said in the past that we all like field trips in good weather and we like occasional guest speakers, so I will continue with those. Let me know if you have ideas for places to visit. We have to limit these trips to places within walking distance unless everyone has a bus pass.

Cheers!

P.S. Here is a little clip that expands on what we were talking about in class regarding gun laws in the U.S.

Let's Get Cracking!

Enough dithering, let's tally the votes! Create your own user feedback survey.

Here is the link.

Computer Lab Hiatus

Hello, students of the seniors' class.

Well, it's been a good run. When I took over the seniors' class, going to the computer lab was not a weekly thing. Back then our class was small, only six or eight students--all men! They were from Somalia, Chin State in Myanmar, Eritrea, Iraq, and China. We started going to the computer lab every Friday after break.

Then the class changed. Those gentlemen--one by one--left the YMCA. One got his citizenship. One moved to the east side. And so on.

Meanwhile, Bernie spread the word among his friends at another school. One by one, YOU drifted over to me from that school. I'm glad. We had to ask for more seats. IRCC gave us more seats. Then we had to ask again. IRCC gave us more seats again.

We have learned a lot in the lab over the past several years. But during this needs assessment, you have almost unanimously voted to go to the computer lab either "never" or "occasionally."

So this blog may remain dormant for some time. We'll see whether it is still useful on iPad days.

Sayonara!

Kelly

Our Needs Assessment

Because our class is all about 'Back to the Well,' we have spent a lot of time priming our brains for the vocabulary and concepts of PBLA and the periodic needs assessment. After much exploration and discussion, we are finally ready to cast our votes.

Our needs assessment is now in Google Forms! We may be older, but we are not always old school!

https://goo.gl/forms/DFjHb5gwWXcQoK0u2

Our New Computer Course (Every Friday)

Hello, students of the seniors' class!

You circulated a petition and nine of you signed it. You told me that you wish to change our Friday "short, easy story" and pronunciation lesson to a computer literacy course. That's a fine idea!

First learn some new words.

Here is a website that will help us with our first few lessons as we begin with an overview of what a computer is, the parts of the computer, and some basic terminology.

Can you label the parts of this computer?

Practice your MOUSE skills.

This is an excellent worksheet for learning the parts of a computer.

This is the book we will be using in our course. It is designed for ESL students like you!

Our Needs Assessment

Dear Seniors,

At the time that we did our last needs assessment, I failed to log it here. I'll do that now.

We voted to study all types of safety, and indeed we have spent the past month or more on the safety of the flu shot, safe food handling, cell phone safety, safety on the internet, and safety in our community.

Our second area of study is to be telephone skills followed by Canadian law. You said you wanted to learn about the Canadian courts and penal system.

Tied for third and fourth were food and nutrition (including how to read a nutrition label) and customer service (how to return an item to the store, how to make complaints).

Tied for fifth and sixth were immigration (how to sponsor a relative, culture shock, acculturation, etc.) and community and government services that are available to you such as legal aid, food banks, etc.

The least popular of the topics were the environment, holidays and celebrations and shopping.

I did not include the topics of crime, health/doctor or Canadian civics because those had been covered recently. However, one of the new students has expressed a strong desire to learn to talk to his doctor. So we will put that up for a vote and see if we can integrate that topic again. After all, it has been many months since we last covered it.

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!