Wednesday, May 24, 2017

We Can Bargain at a Yard Sale

Here is the audio file for the listening assessment (if you have issues with Flash, try using MS IE instead of Chrome).


Audio recording and upload >>

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Our Ping-pong Field Trip

Tareq is a celebrity now! His face was spread all across the front page of the Windsor Star today.

I hope this link to the video remains valid for several months. I'm sure you would like to alert your friends back home that you were in the news. http://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/seniors-learn-the-language-of-ping-pong

Today we wrote a Language Experience Approach book to capture our experience and turn it into a way to learn language. For the rest of the week, we will work with the grammar and vocabulary in this story.

Monday, May 1, 2017

The Internet Can Help Us

Hello, students!

This tour of the brain may help us.

Here is a TED talk that will help us. Turn on subtitles to help you understand.

Sandrine Thuret: You can grow new brain cells.


Saturday, April 29, 2017

Alzheimer's Disease

Hello, students of the seniors' class,

We did a needs assessment by passing around pamphlets that we picked up on Health Access Day. You chose three topics you would like to explore further: Alzheimer's Disease, the VON, and the Clinic Seeker app.

Let's start this week with Alzheimer's Disease. Although it's an ambitious undertaking, I'd like to show this movie in two parts. We will have quite a number of terms to learn before we can watch it, but I know we can handle it if we break it down over time.

http://www.pbs.org/program/forgetting/

K

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

M.E.

Students,

This morning I was unable to find more information on Jennifer Brea and her disease. Now I've found it. You can watch her TED Talk with Arabic or Chinese subtitles.

This one has Chinese subtitles.

This one has Arabic subtitles.

Sunday, April 23, 2017

The Language Lessons

It's about time for another needs assessment. Until then, let's enjoy this touching little video and explore its message.

Thursday, April 20, 2017

We Taught Each Other

Spelling City is now in the sidebar ----->

What great presentations you all did! You really rocked it.

You made posters.

You gave presentations. You spoke clearly, took turns, and used props well.






We even improvised a ping-pong table and had a live demo!

Excellent work, everyone!

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

What Can You Teach Me?

Hello!

This week we have divided into groups in order to share our expertise with one another. One group will teach the rest of us how to play ping pong. That will come in handy when we take our field trip to the open air ping pong table in Kiwanis Park.

The second group will teach us how to fish. Weimiao and many other students in our class are very accomplished Detroit River anglers.

The third group will teach us how to knit. That group needs for me to post three short videos for them. Here they are.

Cast on:
The knit stitch:



Cast off:

Friday, April 7, 2017

Leisure Time

Some of us have too much idle time on our hands. That's not good for our mental and emotional well-being. It's better to keep our bodies and minds active, isn't it?

We're compiling a long list of free and low cost things to do in Windsor, especially downtown and within easy reach of public transit.

We are also exploring the idea of teaching each other how to do something. For example, some of us know how to knit and others wish to learn. Some of us know how to play ping pong; others are dying to know how. Let's have a knowledge and skills exchange!

Log in to Spelling City to do some spelling and vocabulary activities with this week's words.

In May we are going to take a field trip to the open air ping pong table in Kiwanis park.

Thursday, March 30, 2017

Eat Safer Fish

I'm sure you all did great on your reading assessments. I'll mark them on the weekend.

Meanwhile, here is a spelling test. Log in with your username and the password.

Cheers!

Friday, March 24, 2017

Get Ready for Fishing Season!

Hello, students of the seniors' class.

This week we are learning how to get information about suggested servings per month of fish caught in the Detroit River based on our weight, fish species, cleaning, and cooking methods.

Here is the video that will be the basis of our listening assessment.
https://youtu.be/cLUu85zrRHA

Cheers!

Thursday, March 2, 2017

Learning to Use 211

Would you like to search for a topic on the Southwest Ontario 211 website?

Here is a video we will watch in class during the second week of this module.

If you want to practice our new words, log into Spelling City with your username and password.

Enjoy spring break!

Sunday, February 19, 2017

We are CCAC Experts!

Hello, students of the seniors class!

Join me in thanking Jenna Martin for coming to answer all our questions this week.
Please click HERE to log into your Spelling City account. You can take the spelling test and play many word games with this week's words.

Click here if you want to listen to the story of Herman.


Tuesday, February 7, 2017

ESINC Day is Thursday

This week we have practiced calling 9-1-1.

Thursday we will have guest speakers from the police department. Some classes will walk to the library for Emergency Services Information for Newcomers to Canada.

We've talked about the various types of emergencies.

Do you have an emergency preparedness kit?

Listen to these conversations. Someone is reporting a break-in.

Thursday, February 2, 2017

Did You Get the Message?

Hello, seniors!

Here are some listening activities to help reinforce the week's learning.

Telephone Conversation and quiz

Useful Telephone Phrases

Emma's Tips for Telephone English

See you Monday (Inshallah!) I miss you all so much.

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Happy Holidays!

Thank you, students of the seniors' class, for a wonderful party.


You are too good to me.  I hope you know how precious each of you is to me.  We are like a family.
the spread
We shared food.
JunJian
We spoke from the heart.
Mr. Zhang
We listened to a poem. I think I know why Mr. Zhang chose that poem. It was poignant.
Mei, Xiumin, Hamdi, Kelly, Junjian
Hamdi taught us a dance step. Tareq drummed for us.
Mei, Xiumin
We heard a delightful story about an unlucky day turned lucky!
Weimiao
We solved riddles.
.
Dr. Peng, Xiumin, Kelly, BaoHua, Shurong, Mei
The women took a group shot.
Enjoy your two-week break. We will see each other again in 2017, Inshallah!

Thursday, December 8, 2016

Spelling City

Hello, students!

This week I want to introduce you to Spelling City. This is a website many teachers use. We store word lists there so that our students can practice spelling and syntax.

I have just put some of our words and sentences on Spelling City for you.

I really hope the iPads work Friday. I hope the wifi works. I hope you can try out this learning tool.

If you like it, I will load our vocabulary words onto that site more often.

Let me know what you think!

Kelly


Tuesday, December 6, 2016

Happy Holidays

Happy end of term (soon)!

Congratulations on your assessments.

At the Pharmacy

Hello, students of the seniors class!

This week we honed in on the topic of talking to the pharmacist, reading the label, and asking questions. We want to be active participants in our own care.

We had our listening assessment based on these four recordings of patients being advised by the pharmacist regarding their new prescriptions. These audios are from Queens University "English for your Health" series, which we use a lot in this class even though we find the odd typo or factual error.

After the listening test, you assessed your own ability to understand this level of audio text without being able to see the speakers using a self-assessment multiple choice list.

Here are the audios again.

Patient 1
Patient 2
Patient 3
Patient 4

Enjoy!

Thursday, December 1, 2016

A Fun App

Hello, seniors!

Let's do something frivolous and fun with our digital literacy course this Friday.

I want to tell you about a fun app called Aurasma.

First you need an interesting picture, such as this one I edited in LunaPic.

Then you need a video that you will use as an OVERLAY.

Aurasma will put the two together, and we will set up a gallery of our augmented reality pictures in the hallway. We can use this app for speaking assessments in the future.

Do you like it?

Can you think of other ways to use it?

Have a nice weekend!