Presenter – Sean Graham

My Background
 5 years teaching ESL
 1 year middle school math
 4 years sciences (7-10, biology, chemistry)
 I can’t spell to save my life…and I’m a horrible singer

Let’s get to know each other
1) Turn to your shoulder partner and say “Hello”
2) Introduce yourself “My name is Sean.”
3) Ask your partner the following questions
a) What school do you teach work at? “I teach/work at
CMIS.
b) What is your specialty? “I’m a high school science
teacher.”
c) Did you take this session for Cooperative
Learning, ESL, both, or there wasn’t anything else
interesting on during this time slot? “I wanted to learn
more about both ESL and Cooperative Learning.
d) One more question of your choice, “Do you think we can
sneak out of here without making too big a scene?”
4) Draw a picture and write your partner’s answers
5) Present your partner

How do you teach ESL
students?
 Teaching ESL means just using good pedagogy
 There is no magic technique or trick to teaching your
ESL students
 Differentiate, engage, care

What is Cooperative Learning?
 It’s a collection of teaching strategies that focuses
around small groups that complete a single task and
promotes social skills and requires group members to
be accountable.

Five Basic Elements of Cooperative Learning
1. Positive Interdependence
2. Face-To-Face Interaction
3. Individual Accountability
4. Social Skills
5. Group Processing

How is it different from traditional
group work?
 Interdependence – for the group to
succeed everyone must contribute in
a meaningful way
 Everyone in the class is a teacher
 Social Skills – there is a focus on
teaching social skills along with
teaching content
 Individual and Group Evaluation –
each member of the group assesses
their own contribution to the group
and the group as a whole

Why should I use Cooperative
Learning in my ESL classroom?
 One of the most common complaints with regards to
learning English from teachers, students, and parents
is that the students don’t talk enough
 That’s all you do in a cooperative learning group!
 But my students can’t speak English!
 Then start with pictures and manipulatives and work up
to simple interviews
 Many cooperative learning activities can be modified to
be done with very little vocabulary to begin with

Is it safe???

Turn to your shoulder partner and
ask/answer this question
 What do you like about having students work in
groups?
 What do you think is the biggest problem with
students working in groups (especially with ESL
students)?

It’s hard to do something you’re
not good at in front of others
 If the students don’t think it’s safe, they won’t try to
talk or participate
 Classroom Activities: Ice-breakers, interviews, circle
talk, human knot, name game, name tags
Make groups!

Give students roles randomly
 Everyone in a group will help with creating a finished
product/answer, but everyone should also have a
special role that is vital to completing the task

Possible Roles in Groups
 Presenter – the person that will present the group’s work to
the class
 Time Keeper– the person that listens carefully and/or reads
the directions, ensures everyone is on task
 Leader – ensures that everyone gets a turn to participate and
have their ideas heard, helps resolve disputes
 Recorder – writes down everyone’s combined ideas and work
 Encourager – this person encourages everyone to do a good
job ***Often encourages others with their English
 Supplies – goes and gets any supplies when something is
needed

Tasks:
 1. Read the case study: I want to work by myself
 Only do part 1 of the reflection
 READ
 2. Everyone shares what they think the teacher feels and why
 SHARE
 3. Discuss how she could have handled the situation better
 DISCUSS
 4. Collaborate to turn individual answers into a single group answer
 GROUPS ANSWER
 “You feel ___________ because ____________.”
 “We think she could have ________________.”
 5. Present to class
 PRESENT

What accommodations would be
needed to support an ESL student
doing a similar activity in your class?

Assigning Tasks
 The goal should force the students to work together
 The best tasks don’t always have a right answer
 Grouping/sorting
 Create something that requires shared work such as
making a comic book, a skit, or a poster
 Give prompts to help answer
 “The five things we learned were…”
 “Our groups idea is ….”

Classroom activities:
 Think-Pair-Share
 Jigsaw
 Numbered Heads
 Three-step interview
 Coaching
 Grouping (sort, spectrum, puzzle)
 Graphic Organizers

Think-Pair-Share
 Everyone thinks about answers on their own (often
writes it down)
 Then they share their answers with a partner
 Then the partners tell what their partner’s answers w
ere (not their own answer)
1 2 4

Jigsaw
 Each student (or group) learns about a topic (or part of a
topic)
 It is then each student (or groups) job to teach everyone
else in the class about their topic
 When you have to teach about something your brain is
forced to critically think about it so you can present it to
others

Numbered Heads
 There are several groups
 Each member of the group gets a number
 Everyone works together to make sure they understand
or know the material
 Then the teacher says a
number and only that number
is allowed to answer the
question for each group

Coaching
 When working on a task such as a
worksheet, students take turns being the teacher and
student
 Student #1 is the coach tells student #2 how to do the
problem verbally and gives encouragement
 Then for the next question they switch roles and #2 is
the coach and #1 is the writer

Make a Connection
 Make it personal (connect to their own lives)
 Show them (visuals and manipulatives)
 Use themes
 Create something
 Rinse and Repeat!

Classroom Activities
 flash cards
 graphic organizers
 vocabulary journals
 word walls
 word webs
 foldables
 manipulatives

Seeing is believing
 The lower the students English ability,
the more you need visuals
 Allow students to answer questions on
assignments with pictures AND as many
words as they know to describe their
answer

Manipulatives
 Allows students to get ‘a hold’ on the language

No word is an island?
 Use the same words and ideas in several different
classes
 For example, the word variable is used in
math, science, and business
 We should help the students make these connections
 Use themes to help activate prior knowledge and make
more connections to words and ideas
 Teach the parts of the word and create a dictionary for
common roots, prefixes, and suffixes

Examples of Themes
MONTH THEME WEEKLY THEME
April
Spring
1W: Seasonal Change - Spring
2W: Easter
3W: Plants
4W: Bugs
May
Me and
My Family
1W: Me (Children’s Day)
2W: My Family (Parent’s Day)
3W: Movement, My Body
4W: My Neighborhood
5W: Jobs, Vehicles, Places
June
Environmental
Awareness
1W: Recycling
2W: Pets and Animal Care
3W: Wildlife/Habitats
4W: Dinosaurs

Vocabulary Journal

Graphic Organizers

Foldables
http://foldables.wikispaces.com/Foldables
http://flesolcobbcentral.typepad.com/cobb_
math_esol/files/CauseandEffectTwoTabBoo
k.pdf

Word Walls

Repetition and Review
 It takes at least 10 exposures to a word to learn it
 It takes time (days, weeks, months) to process new
information
 Don’t just review for the day or week, but plan to use
words in lessons a month or after you taught it
 Start or end every class using a similar phrase or
vocabulary review
 What was one of the visuals or manipulative activities
you saw today?

Focus on improvement
 Everyone that speaks English started knowing
NOTHING
 Help students see how much they’ve improved
 Keep portfolios
 Add more words to the word wall, word webs, or
vocabulary journals every week
 Give check lists at the start of units and check them at
the end
 Focus on improving yourself too
 Who talked more today the students or me?

Discuss!
 Think-Pair-Share
 In your groups, come up with a list of the five best
things you learned today (I just forgot that you knew)
 Summarize your groups five points in a graphic
organize

Evaluate
 The whole point of being a teacher is to prepare
students for life beyond the classroom
 In the real world is there always a teacher giving you a
grade to tell you how well you’re dong?
 No, so we need to teach the skills of self reflection so
they can evaluate their own learning

Evaluation continued…
 ESL
 try let students demonstrate some of the learning with
minimal use of language
 projects with a choice of formats of presenting is helpful
 Cooperative Learning
 Important features in group evaluation
 Social skills
 Ability to complete task
 Individual contribution
 Improvements for the future

Criteria Score (1-4) Reason
We accomplished the task
Each person did their job
We encouraged each other
We had positive attitudes
We stayed on task
Everyone participated

Tic-Tac-Toe
MIND MAP
Make a mind map that shows ho
w different concepts are connect
ed in this unit (should have many
connections and explain why con
nections are present)
POEM, RAP, SONG
Create a rap, poem or song to he
lp you remember and organize a
topic (or all topics) from this unit
FLASH CARDS
Create flash cards for key vocabu
lary from this unit, they should h
ave a definition, example, and so
me sort of diagram/picture
MNEMONIC DEVICE
Create a mnemonic device for re
membering a topic (such as MR.
GREEN)
SUMMARY
Make a summary of everything fr
om this unit on one A4 piece of p
aper
COMIC
Create a comic strip that explains
a topic from this unit (minimum
5 frames)
GAME
Design and make a game to help
students study topics from this u
nit
WORD SEARCH / CROSSWORD
Create a word search or crosswor
d puzzle using vocabulary from t
his unit
JOURNAL
Write five journal articles about
examples of when you see (or fe
el) homeostasis happening in yo
ur everyday life (should include h
ow a negative feedback loop con
trols this example)

Self-Reflect
 Earlier, you answered the question ‘What do you think
the biggest problem with group work (especially for
ESL students)? ’ so…
 How can you use what we discussed today to fix that
problem now?

Contact Info
If you want a copy of any of files or
additional materials contact me at…
sgraham@cmis.kr
Edmodo – mrgram
Group Code: dsddx7