ELL-ESL+and+Voicethread

Several years ago I had a student in my class that did not speak any English, only Spanish. I had Spanish in college, but that was many years ago and I was better at reading it than speaking it. My challenge was to get this child to understand me better than I could understand her. If only I had the Web 2.0 tools back then. That was in the days before we had computers in the classroom. So, you can only imagine my challenge.

Using Voicethread in the classroom for ELL/ESL students would benefit them in several ways. First, you can use voice thread and words together. With this, students would be able to associate the English word with the picture and practice saying the word at the same time. Next, the students would be able to use pictures to tell stories. The more you speak a language the better you become, so Voicethread would be a great opportunity for an ELL/ESL student to practice their pronunciation and speaking. Voicethread provides listening and speaking opportunities. Vocabulary practice is another way that a Voicethread can be used for the ELL/ESL students. ELL/ESL students could also teach about their culture through the use of Voicethread. Another good thing about Voicethread is that the students can make multiple recordings on one Voicethread allowing these students to hear how much progress they are making.

There could also be some barriers for the ELL/ESL students in using Voicethread. Students may not know how to use Voicethread. Of course, this can be learned fairly quickly with several opportunities of practice. Also, the students may not know the language used that is giving instructions in a Voicethread. It may take some extra planning on the teachers’ part to provide voice instruction, written instructions, and maybe some pictures for better understanding. It may be good to pair students together for collaboration when starting out using Voicethreads.

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These are great ways to use Voice Thread for an ELL/ESL student. I have been fortunate that any ELL student I have had has already been able to speak English. I can only imagine how difficult the communication must be between the student, teacher, and other students in the class. Voice Thread is a great way to practice hearing and seeing words. I also love the idea of having the student share about their culture using Voice Thread.

I am a fan of visual presentations in the classroom. I like to use mostly slides or short videos in a number of my lessons. During graduate school I have learned of new websites such as [|Prezi]and [|VoiceThread]which shown me new ways of presenting a lesson for my students. One of things that my students have benefited from these types of sites is the visual presentation draws in students into the lesson. When using videos or slides with illustrations to correspond with key words for the particular lesson it increases student vocabulary. Secondly, VoiceThread in particular has the potential to increase oral expression. Students would be able to add, listen to and if necessary delete their own comments to help with speech development. Nearly all of my students were engaged in the lesson except for the few ELL students that I had in my primary classes. The reason why is because there were English words in the presentation that my students did not know. There are two possible solutions to ELL students learning new key words in a video or slide presentation. As I stated earlier using illustration (pictures) with the key words can help students learn the meaning of a particular word in a VoiceThread. A second possible solution is traductor Google (or [|Google translate]). Using Google translate to assist in translation from English key words to any foreign language translation such as Spanish or German. Secondly students can use Google Translation as means to translate words to English and hear how those words are pronounce.

Aaron McAfee

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