Tweet on behalf of a character

The cellular view (click the photo to view it bigger)

When my students read stories I like to give them different assignments to keep things interesting. For example, I may have them draw a character, make a soundtrack for a chapter, or create a Twitter account for a character.

"Pretend a character had a cell phone. Create a fake Twitter account for this character (on paper, not online). This should include a username, picture, description/bio, and FOUR tweets (one from each chapter). The tweets should make it clear that 1. You read the chapter and 2. You understand the character. You can tweet what they were thinking, feeling, or hoping."

This student used stickers! (click it to view it bigger)

Another artsy one! (click to view it bigger)

The results are usually entertaining. The students enjoy making them, and I think they show more comprehension than a simple summary. Rather than telling me what they read, they are inferring and predicting what one of the characters thinks about it. These higher level thinking skills are key!

I love how some students made the project look like their smartphone. That is, after all, how they usually view Twitter.

Some got really artistic with it and used their  creativity to make different designs, and pictures they felt would best suit the character.

Chris Chambers computer made account (click to view it bigger)

Others preferred to use sample layouts (available online) and make their Twitter account on the computer (in Microsoft Word, Paint, or Photoshop)

What is really fun about this is sometimes students look outside of the main characters and choose to focus on a lesser known character. This really let's them use their creativity and develop a character; sometimes further than the author had the opportunity to do.

A lesser seen character. Milo's Twitter. (click to view it bigger)

In this post you can see an example of each "type" of submission.

Each one shows a knowledge of the character. For example, one student chose to give Teddy a camouflage background knowing he admired his military father.

The student who selected Milo Pressman made his avatar a ferocious dog since Milo is the owner of Chopper.

Many of the students picked clever usernames for their accounts such as: GordonInvisibleBoy since Gordie says his parents always ignore him.

In short, even though these projects are shorter than say, a summary of each chapter. I feel like I can still assess who did the reading.

You can easily adapt this to a short story, or change the frequency by making them tweet more per chapter.

I also know teachers who have students make these accounts online and interact with one another.

While that may be an option for me in the future, right now privacy issues and students with varying levels of Internet access prohibit this.

Nonetheless, I think doing it on paper still gets the same results! If you get a chance to do this (or do something similar now) let me know in the comments. I'd love to see what you do differently, or what worked (and didn't) for you!

Interesting in doing this activity with your students? You can download a copy of the assignment (with examples and a rubric) on Teachers Pay Teachers.(If you haven't signed up yet you can register for free here)

Twitterpated Webinar

A sample tip: Avoid Twitter vomit

There's a free webinar tomorrow as part of the CO2014 (Connecting Online for Instruction and Learning)

If you are someone who never tweets or students, or have never used Twitter before then you may want to check it out.

http://www.wiziq.com/online-class/1565130-co14-getting-twitterpated-with-carissa-peck

The tips are simple, so if you have been tweeting with your students for a while, you may be able to pick up a few useful apps, but this is really designed for teachers who haven't used Twitter with their students yet.

The webinar is tomorrow (Saturday) at 2pm (Mountain Standard) but recordings are available if you cannot make it live.

5 places to find CPD online

I have been seeing many teachers New Year's resolutions and many seem to be to learn new technology, try a new technique in class, or, basically, to keep growing. As a teacher it is really important to always be growing. We should strive to be a better teacher every day. Luckily, there are tons of places to find professional development: local conferences, at your school, and even online!


1. LinkedIn / Facebook / Twitter etc. That's right! Social media is an easy and informal way to keep developing as a teacher. You can join groups on Facebook and linked in that are devoted just to your subject, or all educators. With twitter you can follow certain hashtags or other teachers. Teachers share blog posts, links to awesome videos, and help one another out when they have questions. When I first started teaching a deaf student I had NO idea how to adjust my lessons. LinkedIn gave me some great responses and encouragement!

2. Webinars There are tons of webinars online! Some of them charge, but I've found a great number that don't. Keep an eye on social media to see when new ones come up. The British Council just did one on teaching Special Needs students, Cambridge recently did one on teaching higher level learners and American TESOL does one every Friday on technology to use in class! Most book publishers will hold webinars so you can search their sites too (e.g. MacmIllan). Attending these live (or watching the recording) is a great way to grow as a teacher. Sometimes completion of these webinars will even get you a certificate.

3. Classes Websites like Udemy, WizIQ, iversity and others make it easy to make yourself a better teacher without every leaving the room. There are the classes you'd normally think about (like online TEFL certificates) as well as ones that may not be as obvious. For example, learning to code, or taking better pictures could make you a better teacher. Keep an eye out for MOOCs too! These are classes which are typically held on a large scale. Many universities have started offering these for free. Harvard, Yale, and others  

4. Blogs That's right, I count reading blogs as professional development. I get great ideas from seeing what other teachers have done. I love being able to be inspired by other teachers and adapt their lessons or ideas to my own classes. Don't limit yourself to just your subject area and age level. I have gotten great ideas from math teachers' blogs and many activities designed for little children are easily adapted to adults. Just by seeing how other teachers do things (and learning from their mistakes) you will be a better teacher! I admit I don't really have bloggers that I follow regularly. I mainly check out whatever blogs look good when they are posted on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

5. Read I tell my students one of the best ways to improve their English is to read. I feel that one of the best ways to become a better teacher is also by reading. Read online journals, news articles, e-books. Whatever you can get your hands on that will give you more information and make you more creative or make you a better prepared teacher.

In the end that's it. The five different ways you can become a better teacher online.

What do you think? Did I leave anything out?

Maintaining Contact with Parents

For the life of me I can't remember where I heard this story. It could have been from a colleague, a friend, a teacher, or a blog. Essentially the story goes:

A parent came in to complain about her child's grades and how the school needed to be doing more.  The employee looked at her and said, "Name three of your child's teachers." The parent paused nodded her head and said, "I see your point, have a nice day."

The moral of the story is that parents tend to only get involved when things go bad, when they would be more useful getting involved from the start!

On the first day of class we do several things. I have a PowerPoint where I go over class expectations and rules. Then they fill out a gap fill restating the rules. The final part is to take the paper home to their parents. The bottom of the paper is a short letter (in Spanish) to the parents. It explains that they can access engrade, or twitter to get a hold of me in addition to my e-mail. I also offer to speak with them in Spanish if they don't feel comfortable in English.

This way, right away I have opened up the channels of communication. Not all parents choose to contact me, but I know that I gave them the option to get involved from day one.

This year when I sent out the letter I received an e-mail that very night from a mother sent from her iPhone. It was written in Spanish, but the loosely translated it said, "Hello. It is very nice on your part to introduce yourself, and it is very nice to meet you. I am the mother of (student). This is the first time that a teacher has shown this kindness. I wish you the best."


I know it is silly, but notes like that really make me feel like I am on the right track.

There are some more suggestions here. How do you make sure that your parents stay up to date with your class?

News Coverage: Task Based Learning with Tourism Projects

One of the biggest Task Based Projects in my Advanced One English class is a Tourism Project. They get in small groups and create a travel agency whose purpose is to sell you on their city. Each group is given  a different English speaking city and they work together to create a brochure, presentation and then sell the hell out of it!

This year we worked hard to make it something special. Students were given a table to make their own, and after school for two hours family, friends, teachers, fellow students and everyone I could tweet showed up waiting to be convinced which team should get their covetted vote.

Students worked hard (in English!) to get people to vote for them and it was a great success.
 
We even got some newspaper coverage: www.noroeste.com.mx/publicaciones.php?id=857285
(this link seems to be acting temperamental. You can also access it from the wayback machine)

For my non Spanish speaking readers here's the essential gist (not a direct translation, as I changed a few things for clarity):

Tour around the world

School students have an English Festival with a sample of countries and traditions

By: Gabriela Camacho
March 28th 2013

CULIACÁN. Coordinated by English teacher Carissa Peck, fourth semester high school students at ITESM were put into 27 groups of 3 or 4 members to present various English speaking cities.

Singapore, Perth, Dublin, Seattle, Durban and Bristol were among the cities represented by high school students who creatively and enthusiastically prepared their booths.

As guest judges evaluated the students, their foreign language teachers: John Harper, Ann Persaud, and Carlos Gonzalez graded them based on their innovation, information, fluency, explanations and overall presentation.

Not the most  in depth coverage, but it was great to see the level of enthusiasm rise as students realized they'd be "famous" in the newspaper.

6 easy ways to keep their attention by keeping the focus on them

Losing control of a class can happen (even without a cross-eyed teacher), but the best way to prevent it from happening is keep students focused!

How do I keep a class' focus?

Well there are the usual steps.

• Make classes dynamic and interactive not just a lecture. 
• Appeal to all types of learners with pictures, songs, texts and activities. 

However, when I really think about what I do to keep my classes focused: I focus on them. Here are probably the 6 most noticeable steps I have taken to focus my lessons on my students.

1. Though I am not a gigantic twitter fan, my students are, so I have a twitter account I use with my students. It works fantastically. They stay up to date with assignments, are easier to reach if I have a question, and are more likely to ask me when they have questions. Using twitter is easy enough for any teacher to do it (Twitter 101) and it keeps my students engaged.

2. I also know my students love memes, puns, and other things found on sites such as 9gag or funnyjunk. So I make sure to peruse the sites and grab any class appropriate pictures which I can use in class. Many time this is a grammar comic, but sometimes it ends up being something relevant to something we've read in class (The Body by Stephen King, The Black Cat by Edgar Allen Poe) by showing them that the stuff we learn is still referenced in places they like they become more interested in class. These things can be tweeted, or used as attention getting devices in a lesson.

3. In addition to 9gag and funnyjunk most of my students are musicphiles. So at least once a week I work a song into the lesson somehow. There are tons of ways to do it! Even though I try to avoid clozes, those will work in a pinch. Here is a bunch of ways to use songs in class. Even when I am not using the songs themselves I use the artists. Instead of a textbook text students need to correct I'll use an article on PSY's rise to international fame where I have added errors. Or when making fill in the blank exercises instead of, "Susie, _____ is Johnny's friend, is tall." I'll say, "Lady Gaga, _____ is a singer, has a crush on Justin Bieber." Students pay much more attention to those worksheets!

4. Students also like movies (surprise, surprise) so I try to get visual clips in whenever. This semester we are reading the Body. Each week, after they take the quiz, they will watch the excerpt from the movie (Stand by Me) that matches what they read. We will discuss the differences and they will be able to cement their understanding of the story. I also use short films, silent films and use music videos like films!

5. And of course... GAMES! I don't use them all the time, but I have a staple of games that can be used at the end, beginning or middle of class to review grammar, vocabulary or general concepts. Sometimes they are games designed to cool things down (Like a folding game) other times they are to wake them up (Snowball Fight!) and everything in between.

6. Finally, I make sure to include students in my classes. If that means using pictures of them (school pictures that I have permission to use) when teaching about relative phrases, then that's what I do. I use them as examples (always appropriate) in worksheets as well! Most importantly I promote what they do! If they made an awesome video as homework, I save it and show it to other classes (Reference Words, Commas, Relative Clauses). Not only do the students whose work I share feel a sense of pride and accomplishment, but the other students are interested in seeing their friends' finished product and thus pay more attention.

Do you use any of these? How do they work for you?

Twitter 101

A lot of teachers are using Twitter in a lot of different ways. This is a good way for Twitter virgins to start using twitter with their class. In my opinion the EASIEST way (especially for technophobes) is to use it as an alternative to a class website.

You can use it to tweet homework assignments to keep students up to date.

Since I teach two different subjects I have two different hashtags. That means if I am making a tweet about an assignment for my high school students I include #Eng6ITESM. If the students have twitter they can easily keep track of the information I share.

If they don't have twitter, it is still pretty easy for them to go to my twitter feed (https://twitter.com/CarissaITESM) or their class hashtag  (e.g. #LengExtranITESM or #Eng6ITESM)  for all the relevant tweets.

It also tends to be a much faster way to contact students and get immediate feedback than using their e-mail.

What kind of things should you share?

If you take one more step forward (using dropbox), you can place documents like the class rules, syllabus, due dates, assignment weights etc. as part of your profile (or when you tweet assignments include a direct link to it).

I usually tweet homework and assignments reminders, test score averages, and any random relevant information that I care to share and they know that if it has their hashtag, it is about their class.


I also like to put links to pictures of students work, or videos that they have done for my class. Sharing it with my other students makes them feel a bit of pride and then other students can learn from what they did.

Once you get more comfortable you can link it to a facebook to allow students another way to follow the information.

Jobs for experienced teachers

In another post I point out a few good places to check out jobs if you are just getting into the TEFL. There are other places to look when you are already an "established" teacher and looking for jobs.

Now I am at a point in my life where I have experience teaching at multiple levels, a CELTA, and a Masters in a relevant field in addition to my Bachelors. This means that I am looking for other jobs than I did in the past.

I still think you should keep three things in mind when looking for a new job.

1. Is it legal? I always avoided anything that appears to be under the table. First, because I hate breaking the law (yes yes I am a goodie goodie) and second because I planned on spending most of my life living abroad; the last thing I needed was to be blacklisted from visiting some country because of visa violations. It is also safer to have a legal job. At this point in your career you are a professional and should not be sneaking around.

2. Is it verifiable? Google those people! Use your blind date stalking skills for good. Google e-mail addresses, names, the company, etc. Check out their LinkedIn profiles. Check blogs for past employees. Ask to speak to past/current employees. Again, you shouldn't need to take many chances here you aren't a risk so they should be a sure thing.

3. Is it appropriately compensating you? In Mexico I don't make as much as I would in San Diego (assuming I could get a job), but my apartment is much cheaper than what I would be paying in San Diego (as well as other expenses). So even though I am making less I am still able to save, and overall my pay is appropriate for my experience and location. There are other jobs here that pay half of what I make. Those may be great for other people, but at this point in my professional life they aren't for me anymore.


If you are looking into Korea I still recommend  EPIK(rural Korea and Seoul) or GEPIK (involving the doughnut shaped province that surrounds Seoul). Again you must be a "native English Speaker." You do get a pay raise depending on how your level of experience. Salary varies from 2 million won to 2.5 million won depending on your experience and qualifications (2,000-2,500 USD roughly) plus a one time settling fee (to buy pots, pans, etc). If you finish your contract you get a months salary as a bonus. You are given an apartment (which is paid for by the school) and there are often workshops. You work 8 hours a day 5 days a week, but you should only teach 22 hours a week. I believe now GEPIK requires a TEFL.

There's quite a few job search sites that you can find focused on different grades:

• Now, everyone will tell you to check out Dave's Cafe, as it is a pretty good site with jobs worldwide. It is very popular (which means lots of jobs!)  but it doesn't really regulate who posts jobs. Because of this, it is really important to thoroughly check the company.
• HigherEdJobs is available for people looking for jobs in higher education (which normally requires more experience).
• The Chronical of Higher Education has a job forum which also focuses on higher education.
• ESLJobs is a decent job forum as well.

Social Networking

• Mainly however I find these jobs through networking. My Masters program still e-mails me when jobs are available that would be suited to my major. 
• I am a big LinkedIn fan. Especially if you are active in relevant discussions people are more likely to think of you as a fellow teacher, rather than a stranger. 
• I know that facebook is traditionally a personal site but every year when my school hires new teachers I make a quick announcement on my facebook to let my fellow teachers know that they can apply. If they were to apply then they would have a plus: a teacher working here now who can talk to the director personally. What a leg up! In addition a lot of schools have facebook and will post job openings on their social networks before reaching out to recruiters or job sites. 
• Nowadays Twitter is a pretty easy place to check out jobs. You can keep it like facebook where you just follow schools' tweets and look for hints of jobs. An alternative is to look for relevant hashtags  there's also a twitjobsearch page worth checking out.

 Am I missing any? What programs do you find great for EFL teachers with more experience?

Social Media in Language Education Part II Day 1

Well Michelle and Catalina seemed to mainly focus on the use of primary pad and voice thread for student collaboration. To help their students practice third person they were assigned groups from another school and had to describe

As a group students had to come up with sentences describing the duck. Now in this case they are 8th grade Spanish teachers so the sentences would be in Spanish. Since I primarily teach EFL my students would be doing this is English.

• His name is Paul.
• He likes to swim.
• He hates to do math homework.

Primary pad is a type of etherpad. EtherPad was the first web-based word processor that allowed people to work together in really real-time. It was started by applejet and later acquired by google (I believe) but when they shut down the program they released the code for others to develop. I may be wrong, but all you really need to know is it allows several people to get together and brainstorm, peer edit etc. The other thing I really like about it is you can use the public version without logging in or registering!

Since students are working with one another they get all the positives of peer learning (team-building, greater psychological well-being, social competence, communication skills, self-esteem, higher achievement etc.)

Now, this activity gets them to practice reading and writing, but speaking is also pretty important. So the students also had to go to the link that the teacher had previously created and they would read the list they had created describing their duck. Voice thread seems pretty basic, it is just a way to have students record their voice over a picture and allow people to leave voice comments.

Their presentation is here

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Finally Kyle Murley took the opportunity to show us around some sites on the web and we all brainstormed some possible applications of these different options.

Some of the things we went over:

Prezi: Essentially a gigantic white canvas where you can put images, text, etc that you can play with (rotate, make bigger etc). A decent alternative to powerpoint, but it will take me a long while before I figure out if it is really any "better." It still seems rather presentational rather than interactive. Regardless, it was still nice to be made aware of this thing I kept hearing about.

Twitter: Twitter is actually linked with screenr when Kyle spoke about it. I think that Thursday we will have Chris Brown talk about twitter more so for now I am going to skip any application and just talk about the concept. Most people are aware that twitter is a "micro-blog" which allows members to post 140 characters per entry. While many native speakers have to practice to get concise this is a pretty good size for people acquiring a language.

Flickr: By linking Flickr to an e-mail address you can have students e-mail (or sms) pictures of relevant vocabulary words or themes tagging them appropriately. This will give students a great base of pictures (meaning!) and since it is THEIR material they will be more motivated and passionate about the concepts you teach! GREAT!

Blogs!: It is also possible to send pictures straight to a blog! I know Blogger offers this as does flickr (through blogger). By just having a number or e-mail students need to text things so they avoid needing to have yet another log in and password and you still maintain control. There's more discussion on blogs on Wednesday so for now we'll end that train of thought.

Screenr: The great thing about screenr is it can post things directly to your twitter without even needing to start an account with screenr. If you have a twitter account that's all you need! YAY for one less password. Its basically a way to record what goes on your screen (and you can voice over) so you could do an exercise on "How to look for an apartment in England." A nice replacement to the usual, "How do you make lemonade?" I'll make an example later but for now that's a pretty good summary! I am really glad I found this and looking forward to tomorrow!