Blog #4 ESL 509 - Learning English through Gaming

This past week I had the pleasure to attend the PaTTAN conference, #CSForAllPA.  Throughout the two days of keynotes and workshops, I attended some on building diversity in the computer science classroom.  I recently started teaching AP Computer Science Principles this past year and had a few students who were not native English speakers.  One such student came from Puerto Rico, and although he had an excellent education including English, speaking the language was not a fully acquired skill.  At the beginning of the year even with his limited English, he and I did bond over our shared interest in computers and video games.  This got me thinking about the wide range of "gamers" that are in our world.  During the workshops, one that I attended was called, "Supporting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion through Esports."  The presenter had some interesting data and a great anecdote that described one English Learner's journey to learning English by becoming engaged in Esports at his high school.  He developed a sense of belonging and had a personal reason for learning English when he became a member of their team, playing video games.

Video Game Club

For the past 12 years of advising students participating in William Penn's Video Game Club, that I and a few other teachers have run, I have bonded with more students who had this common interest with me and have met a lot of great students who I would not have had in class.  One young man, LaQuinn Thompson, has taken this passion and is helping it drive him to create an esports team within York City itself, with his BEAST Initiative Push.   He describes video games as the way he and his family bonded when he was younger and hopes to help other young people bond with gaming.  The Esports phenomenon has been growing very steady, and the US has a lot of catching up to do with the rest of the world in this venue, but our very own Harrisburg University team, The Storm, has brought some regional publicity.  They won the Collegiate Esports Championship in Overwatch this past spring on ESPN. 

William Penn Video Game Club

From the Esports workshop I attended, I hope to also bring more of a competitive nature to our weekly Video Game Club meetings, and help establish an Esports team to compete and bond students.  The North American Scholastic Esports Federation, helps bring teens and curriculum to High Schools with esports.  There are designated roles and beyond the gaming challenges that can bring multiple youths together to create a mindset of community and establish a guide of career paths for their future.  My hope is that we diversify and have some English Language Learners who want to join and enhance their educational career at William Penn through Esports.  

Video Games for the English Language

In a recent article on, The Conversation, the question was asked, "Can You Learn a Language Playing Video Games?", and the author looked at several Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) video games and described how players, both young and old, had to communicate in real-time with little time to be self-conscious of how the language was spoken, meaning the player was more likely to just communicate freely and not worry if they were muddling their language.  This freedom is likely to build student self-esteem and the use of another language.  The high levels of extrinsic motivation to level up a character or find rare equipment for the character, make a player strive to work well with others to do obtain these in-game rewards.  

Another blog, 3 Reasons Playing Video Games Helps You Learn English Faster, described the process similarly and said games helped alleviate stress in learning.  They also help develop cognitive skills, linguistic skills and provide in-game context to learning.  While playing a video game, a developer often makes the player start small and learn all of the mechanics of how a character can move, advance their effectiveness in the game and use their environment.  All of the learning is scaffolded to help the player achieve a better in-game character while also learning about their in-game surroundings.  The levels grow progressively harder to pass, and in-game puzzles or riddles help challenge the player in learning the environment or obtaining their next goal.  Learning happens all through video games and creates a safe place for a student to fail and try again to pass to the next level.  English is used in most games, and reading and responding to the passage in context to move to another level is a must for any player and would aid English acquisition by an EL student.  Players also can play collaboratively giving them time to practice their speaking and listening skills in English.  

Some downfalls to gaming would be that not all games are designed to provide the basics of grammar or vocabulary, and the structure is not progressive.  Meaning, the grammar, and vocabulary are not taught in a way that would build upon itself, and would not be used to help students decipher the building blocks of the sentence and decipher a verb or noun in the context.  This is where the teacher would have to step, and scaffold to help English Language Learners with some mini-lessons on the vocabulary, or take a break and help students break down a sentence to identify its structure.  Then return to the game for more fun and learning. 

Through Esports and Video Games, students can learn English, find career paths, develop a sense of community, build trust in learning even at the expense of failure, and all in the safety of a controlled environment.  This week has me thinking a lot about how to use these tools with English Language Learners and students of all backgrounds in my school.  It is my hope to push the boundaries of my student's education and help them find common ground in the games they enjoy.  

Blog #3 ESL 509 - Statistics for Success

Statistics Growth

In Falmouth, Massachusettes, the school district has seen an increase in students who identify as English learners in the past 10 years.  The number grew from 35 students to 105 students, and the district had to find a way to meet those students by adding a full EL program.  The program also included adding resources for student's parents as well, partnering with the Cape Cod Literacy Council.  This increase and partnership remind me of York City Schools, we have had a gigantic increase in EL students over the past 10 years as well.  In the 17-18 school year, we saw 22.6% of our students were identified as English as a Second Language Learners. 

YCSD should look to find a similar partnership with our local library.  Martin Library in downtown York offers a lot of great programs.  The local library could help their ever-changing population of city residence with strategic programs.  Maybe parents could have English Language support for contacting the district, working on reading the report card, and even finding tools to help with translating,  In the 2017 Census, 82% of the foreign-born residents were from Latin America, which may have different cultural expectations on education.  Making sure the parents understand the school's expectations and cultural differences in York would also make for a great workshop. 

Martin Library, York, PA

Around the U.S. 

Topeka Kansas has seen a growth in their EL population as well in the past 4 years they rose from 3% to 14% in their EL population.  They have added EL teaching positions and paraeducators into their programs.  One of their goals is to track EL success after graduation and report out on that success, as their only other means of tracking their student progress is through the Kansas English Language Proficiency Assessment (KELPA).   Building from multiple points of data can definitely help define the successes of a program.  In York City, we should create a tracking system for the post-secondary success of our EL students, including career and military choices.  Not everyone is going into college for post-secondary success and that should be taken into account when rating the students' success after high school.

Texas Schools that have a successful EL program encouraging post-secondary schools is another way to look to student success.  There were 9 post-secondary schools in a Texas that received a seal of excellence from a non-profit called Excelencia in Education.  Adopting this sort of award for high schools that are providing an impressive education for their EL learners might be a great way to increase student and parent buy-in to a program.   In York, the York County Hispanic Coalition might be a good program to start the High School seal of excellence for EL programs.  Some may think awards for doing what you should be doing are not necessary, but it does build legitimacy in what is being done to teach the students in different ways. 

Ideas for the Future

Other educational programs in multiple states have seen a rising population of EL students, and have adapted accordingly.   York City has seen this same increase, using a combination of traditional classroom data to post-secondary success can help look at a students' success.   Outside partners to support and award those programs can only help in building our students into life-long learners. 

Blog #2 ESL 509 - EL Students and the Four Skills

During our fifth week of class, we were assigned to read Robert Blake's journal on using, "Technology and the Four Skills."  The reading had us investigate technology to help teachers effectively and deliberately teach EL students reading, writing, speaking and listening skills.  Each of the four skills is necessary for a class with EL students.  Teaching students a vocabulary heavy course like Geometry I have found that I do need to find ways to make students interact with the vocab in different ways.

Speaking and Listening

Out of the four skills, two that lend themselves to one another are speaking and listening.  Students in a classroom who need practice speaking and listening to the English language.  One article that I found useful in my Google Alerts this week came from Study International and had a list of Top 4 Apps to Help International Students Learn English Effectively,  one of the comments from an App developer, FluentU, was really interesting and stated that it, "uses a natural approach that helps you ease into the English language and culture over time."  I really liked the perspective and see the app as something that could be useful in our EL department.  Students can interact with videos, musical numbers, commercials, news and inspirational talks with subtitles and quizzes that adapt to the student's level of English.  

Getting Social in the Classroom listed a lot of great technology apps to use with students and inspired me to think of ways that I could get students to practice using the vocabulary in Geometry in an authentic way.  Using Flipgrid, I could have students post vocabulary pre-view videos and then interact with one another by responding after listening to one or two recordings of their peers.  Students could then practice using their English skills in the mathematics classroom, and use the technology to listen to others in the classroom.  Students would be able to listen to one another, critique their expertise and engage with one another in listening and speaking about content.

Reading and Writing 

The Top 4 Apps for learning English Effectively also had an interesting use for Google Translate, using it Live to translate menus, signs or even museum exhibits.  This tool would have been useful for the group of students that I had the pleasure to chaperone in Annapolis, Maryland.  Students could have used Google Translate to quickly translate the wording on the plaques that were displayed in and around the capitol building.  The Google Translate tool can also be used within the mathematics classroom to help translate word problems in the mathematics classroom as well. 

Getting Social in the Classroom using social media to help engage students is described as an authentic way to get students to read and write in the classroom.  In my first blog, I talked about how I wanted to use Edublogs as a tool for student writing.  The one app in my reading that piqued my interest was the use of Twitter.  I have been using Twitter to connect with educators around the world, and the thought of linking student writing with the use of a specific hashtag.  Geometry students could connect to one another across my periods, and Tweet out real-world mathematics connections.  The beginning of the school year my classes could have a competition to find the best hashtag for the Geometry class, and I could then curate the Tweets for the classes to read online on my website.

With all of the online digital tools and applications on mobile devices, there are tons of ways to enhance and support the speaking, listening, reading and writing of my EL Students.  I am looking forward to using some of these tools in the future.  

Blog #1 ESL 509 - Blogging with ESL Students

Over the Summer of 2019, I have the opportunity to increase my pedagogy skills by taking several courses.  One of the courses I am engaged in is utilizing technology in an EL classroom, called Computer Assisted Language Learning, ESL 509 at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania.  The course has required our class to start a blog, which luckily I already had this one, and use Google Alerts to keep up to date on ESL Technology for the classroom.  Several tags I have added include ESL itself, ESL Blogs, ESL Tech, ESL Math and some other Gaming to Learn Alerts.  Although they are limited, I have begun to collect some great resources for my teacher toolbox through the Google Alerts.

Blogging in the EL Classroom: 

During my tenure at William Penn Senior High School, I have taught the full gamut of mathematics courses until I finally landed in my passion, Geometry.  I teach a heavily vocabulary centered mathematics course, that has a lot of terminologies to describe the pictures and diagrams my students see every day.  One such set is the "undefined terms" of points, lines, and planes.  Within my classroom, I have utilized journaling on a weekly basis to help students process, use, and analyze the terms in Geometry.  I have a journaling page that students write on, and usually, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and submit each week for a grade.   They are asked to describe a process, define terms in their own words, and solve algebraic problems with geometric shapes.  I have been toying with the idea for some time, and I think after some much-needed pushes with my research, I want to utilize Blogs in the coming year for students to accomplish much of these written responses.

After researching all of the resources, using EduBlogs will best help me take my writing assignments to a new level.  While looking for information I came across some Tips and Tricks on how to use blogs with EL students.  Suggestions included having students utilize Blogs to keep up with the written practice of the English Language, then to make sure students write comments after at least one other person's written responses.  Setting up a good framework of expectations with a grading rubric is a must in this endeavor, as students will need to make sure their responses are thoughtful and appropriate for a school setting.  Blogs can be utilized as a writing platform to connect all student learning as well as help EL acquisition of the English Language.

EL Math Course

While reading some more of my Google Alerts one popped up that was interesting to me,  "CSISD Trustees Approve New Math Course for ESL High School Students."   While we have been struggling with Algebra Keystones and meeting state proficiency benchmarks, there are very few supports for our EL students.  Having an EL Math Course could be a game changer for our district.  If we had our students in the right supports we would be able to help students grow even more than in previous years.  Some of our students could really benefit from having an EL supported Math class to help with skills and vocabulary that they could encounter in our state exam.

This past school year our Algebra courses were enriched by adding the Math 180 online course and curriculum.  Students are challenged daily to make numerical sense out of the problems that they see. Maybe just taking this course, adding an EL co-teacher or aid might be just enough to make an EL math course with number sense and language support.


Look out next week for my next writing involving more of my thoughts on teaching EL students with technology!