Fall 2017 Flex PD Recap

ESOL Faculty getting started with Flipgrid and Padlet

Thank you to everyone who was able to make it to our Fall Flex PD Meeting! We had a great time sharing ideas and trying out Flipgrid and Padlet. If you missed the meeting, please click on the top tab to PD Activities to record a video for our Flipgrid ESOL Faculty Introductions and post One Thing on Padlet. We discussed ways that we can use both of these easy tech-tools in our classes.

Below is a quick summary of what each of us shared:

• Evelyn is incorporating SMART Goals into her class so that students can focus on improvement and specific goals. Here's short video.

• Karen talked about the many different ways she has students write Mini Sagas. I think we all immediately want to try it out! We thought it could be cool to have students post them on Padlet, to lighten up Karen's car trunk full of her students' mini sagas!

• Tina has decided that one of her big ongoing class projects will be to create a class cookbook of recipes. What a great takeaway for students to have when the class ends too. 

• Abedin shared how he has potlucks in his classroom where students write and share recipes for the food they make and then present them. An extra step he mentioned is having students go home and cook something using another student's recipe. Sounds yummy to me!

• Stephanie discussed a great way to have students work on summary writing by having every student write one-line summaries per reading section of a longer text on sticky notes. When students come to class they put the sticky notes together by sections and then groups have to discuss, analyze, and decide on which one-line summary is the best for their reading section.

• Sheryl reported that she and Victoria are "going commando" without a core textbook and are using My English Pages which has many resources including great grammar units and quizzes.

• Miriam reminded us all that the best part of teaching is creating and fostering a strong and caring class community that lasts far after the class ends.

• Denise showed off Newsela and encouraged everyone to join as our department has been given free Pro Accounts again from the Newsela for the semester. A quick link to join is here: Newsela Pro Account.

• Tina also suggested we check out University Readers, which puts together readers of just the materials you want for a more relevant and price-friendly "textbook." The contact for University Readers is Mark Nagy, mnagy@cognella.com.

Thanks everyone! 

Welcome to our Shared Space

Welcome to our Miramar College ESOL Department Professional Development Blog. This is our space to share ideas, spotlight faculty and students, keep each other informed about department and college events, and discuss relevant topics in ESOL education.

Regular blog posts will include college updates and events, interesting articles and links, new technology tools and teaching ideas, and best practices from our classrooms.  I invite everyone to contribute to these posts by sharing resources and taking turns blogging!

Denise Maduli-Williams
ESOL Coordinator