ESL Online Resources

The last time I had an ESL student was when he graduated in 2009. Thirteen years ago? THIRTEEN??? Am I doing the math right? That is more than half the years I’ve been teaching! This year is the first in thirteen years that I have the opportunity to work with an ELL again. I’m loving it! Truly—it has been a fantastic year so far. Today we started the fun experience of state mandated testing, which allowed me to consider some resources that might be available that weren’t necessarily there when I last worked with ELL’s. Cue the video quizzes! Here is a site that offers videos and questions for comprehension. I’m so excited to try this website out! And I initially found it by doing a quick search (in hopes that I could add to my blog—Yes! It worked!) which led me to this wonderful resource. I cannot wait to check some of these out! For now, I’ll finish up with our testing break, and then we can start phase 2 of the testing.

Another Hamlet Post…

Since my students are reading Hamlet right now, it is what I think about writing most on this blog. Today I had a group of students reading Act IV in the hallway, and a fellow teacher asked them what they were reading. His response, “Oh! They just made a movie on AppleTV+ with Denzel Washington.” They told me about it, and initially I was excited, and then I remembered reading in my AP forum that there was a new Macbeth coming out this month on AppleTV+ (with Denzel Washington), but I had to check it out….just in case!

So, two thoughts:
1. I was a little disappointed that the students were so excited that there is a video version of Hamlet. Like, literally, as soon as they heard that, they were thrilled to think they could watch a movie to help their understanding of the play. Why was I little disappointed? Because I show them clips of key scenes at the end of each act. Clips from the Mel Gibson movie. Clips from the Kenneth Branaugh movie. Clips from the David Tennant movie. Clips from MOVIES. It is almost like they don’t realize the clips are taken from full length movies. Sigh.

2. The trailer looks pretty amazing. I don’t teach Macbeth to grade 10, but they read it their senior year with a different teacher. I can’t believe I had forgotten about all the hype other English teachers were making about this, and then I forgot to even check it out. I think I know what I’ll be watching this weekend!

Hamlet and TikTok

Just recently I was explaining a scene from Hamlet to my students. Our titular character was comparing his father to his uncle-turned-step-father. Basically, he was pointing out to his mom that his father was as amazing as a god (Zeus, to be exact) and his new step-father…his father’s brother…was comparable to a moldy ear of corn. It made me think of the TikTok trend in which someone says ,”How does this, turn into this?” {YouTube has a 10 minute compilation of a bunch of them.}

It got me to thinking of how TikTok can be used in the educational world. I actually have had students use TikTok in the past with their literature assignments. For example, one student took each piece of literature from our AP class and made her own compilation with several different TikTok trends; in the end there were about 15 different TikTok videos. I was blown away! Are there other ways in which TikTok can be used in an educational platform? Sure. I’ve found several teacher creators on TikTok, and I’ve bookmarked so many of their helpful strategies, websites, lessons, etc. Teachers helping teachers in the latest and greatest social media platform…but this teacher actually uses TikTok to teach her students. Check this out—she actually has an account for her students to use, and it complements her lessons. WOW!

No More Snow Days?

The students (and teachers!) are eager and excited and anxious about the impending storm. It made me think about the way snow days worked when I was a child. We would get up to hear about it (or look for it scrolling across the bottom of the screen) on the morning news, and we would wait (not so) patiently to see if our school’s name would appear, just hoping the name would show up on the little ticker going across the screen. Once we saw our school was canceled, we would go back to bed, sleep in a bit longer, and then wake up to go play outside in the snow, coming in after we were half frozen to thaw out with some hot chocolate and curl up to some random show playing on TV.

Now that we are so advanced in the ways of technology, those days are no more. Half of the time, the students learn about a snow day via text, and then they are expected to do work that would have been done in school. For example, the teachers at our school were just told today that we are required to offer zoom meeting for our students if there is a cancelation; they’ll have the opportunity to zoom in to complete assignments. The good part? This is a day we won’t have to make up at the end of the school year. If our last day is scheduled for June 3, it is very likely that our last day will be June 3, regardless of the number of snow days we have. The bad? Well, it just isn’t the same if you know you have to do work on your “day off.”

Personally, I think the good far outweighs the bad. I’m just a little sad that the traditional snow day is kind of becoming extinct. I guess it is kind of great that we have the technology to help prevent our school year from going too far into the summer since we won’t have so many snow days to make up.

Reading Challenge for 2022

…and just like that, a blog post from Simple Simon & Company pops up in conversation, and it totally applies to my post from just a few days ago. I’ve already committed to reading 38 books in the 2022 year, but now I am excited about this concept of accepting a new goal each month of the year.

Check it out!

Falling in Love … with reading

If there is one thing that 2020 brought me, it was an opportunity to find time to enjoy something I’ve put off for years: reading. There were so many ways to find books (even though I have plenty I’ve been planning to read on my own personal bookshelf). Several different websites and businesses were offering free books and readings for students/teachers/parents/etc. while we were in lockdown. I found a few I enjoyed, and I haven’t stopped since. Since then, I’ve been actively using “Libby” (an online library app) and I’ve reconnected with my friends on Goodreads. I’ve had a Goodreads account for ages, but I just kind of let it go dormant for years. In 2021, I decided to make a goal of reading 24 books. I succeeded! I exceeded! I am so thrilled with how much I actually read last year, and I have truly fallen in love with reading for pleasure all over again! Goodreads is a fantastic way to keep track of what books you’ve read and what books you’d like to read. It makes me feel much better to read than spend wasted hours on social media. That said, many of the books I read were recommendations from TikTok…so there is that! I’m glad I found BookTok. I’m glad I’ve rekindled my love for reading. I’m glad I am using my Goodreads account again. You can see what I’m reading if you look for me (JennHund) and my goal for this year (38 books—eek!)
Happy New Year!

Hexagons Galore!

I recently learned about Hexagonal Learning from a group chat I’m in, and I tried it out for the first time today. My seniors just finished The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, and I put symbols, characters, themes, quotes, and locations on different colored hexagons. I handed the hexagons to my students and told them to make connections! It was a great experience for me to see them not only interacting with each other, but also to hear their interpretations of the novella and how they thought the different concepts connected. I am definitely going to try this again with my sophomores next week as we finish Act II of Hamlet. I think it is a great way to assess what they are understanding right now, but it will also allow them some downtime before our week off for winter break.

Awaken Enthusiasm

A colleague just explained to me that one of her favorite ways to introduce a new unit is to start the class with a ‘mystery box.’ There are several items in the box to hint at what the students will be studying next. It gave me so many ideas as to how I can start a few of my units. For my speech unit, I like to have the students do oral interpretations (they don’t actually write the speeches, they use their voice inflections, facial expressions, hand gestures, etc. to interpret a famous speech, section from a novel, children’s book, etc.). I’m thinking maybe I could include a children’s book, a rolled up document that turns out to be MLK’s “I Have a Dream” or Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address,” a microphone, and a few other artifacts…I just need to think about what else I can add. But I’m also thinking about my short story unit (one story is about time travel and going back in time to kill dinosaurs, and I could include a little toy dinosaur!) and my novel unit. I’ve got all kinds of ideas running around in my head. I know the idea for the mystery box was to awaken enthusiasm in the students before a new unit, but my enthusiasm for creating the mystery box is also very much awakened!

Down with State Tests

When this article came out at the beginning of the school year, I was thrilled. There are just so many bad things about state testing that it is nice to see someone in our government is finally listening. Don’t get me wrong, it is a S….L….O….W…. process, but at least it is something Governor Wolf is willing to discuss. The amount of class instruction time that is lost due to these tests (and I’m at a jr/sr high, so we are affected by PSSA’s AND Keystones) as well as the disruptions that take place during the testing, is just irresponsible. I’m sure there are some pros out there for testing, but at this point (so close to when the PSSAs start) I can think of NOTHING. Can anyone suggest one good reason why state testing is necessary? Or why it is the best method to determine if the class of 2020 should be able to graduate?

No Smartphones Until Grade 8?!

Now that our Building Online and Collaborative Environments course is in full swing, I reflect on so many of the initial posts in which we discuss the pros and cons of social media, personal devices, etc.

It made me recall a conversation I had with a colleague who teaches family and consumer sciences. She was going to have her students compare/contrast the ideas of allowing children use these devices and determine what age they should be allowed. She told me about an article in which it is advised to put their children on a “digital diet.”

In fact, there are not parents taking a pledge: they will not allow their children to use a smartphone until 8th grade.  Eighth grade?! I find it very difficult to believe! Some of our students start to use electronic devices in preschool and kindergarten…how is someone going to prevent their child from using a phone until grade 8??

Well, with a quick google search, I did find a few things; first of all, the pledge is for parents to limit their children from using their phones as anything other than a phone (to make calls and text). Second of all, it isn’t to say that other electronic devices are NOT to be used (that I can see anyway), so if they are using iPads in school, for example, it isn’t like they will be prohibited. And third of all, it seems like the pledge is more about teaching responsibility for knowing what is right and what is wrong when getting on apps like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and the like.

Check out the blog post and let me know what you think!