Dotted Lines

Jean Kalscheur, fresh out of pre-service training, has become This Week’s Favorite Tutor! Jean informed me of a free resource for learners and tutors working on handwriting. The two websites below give you a way to create your own writing paper templates. The writing paper resembles the stuff we used in grade school, with the dotted line between big lines.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/CT101448201033.aspx?stt=1 This link has templates for specialty papers for MS Office. It includes templates for MS Office 97 to MS Office 2007 users. The first few pages are for Office 2007. Keep going to find templates for earlier versions of MS Office. The penmanship/writing papers are mixed in with the other specialty papers, but there are lots of variations in lines/dotted lines so one can select the writing paper that works best for a learner.

http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/ Scroll down about ¾ of the page to Writing / Penmanship / Note-Taking papers. These download to pdf, so PC or Mac or person without MS Office can download these templates. These templates have a nice feature in that you can select a color to make the lines, which might provide better contrast for some learners.

If using lots of paper, it would be less expensive to buy “penmanship” paper at a school or office supply store. But the templates are helpful to determine what paper works for a learner (bigger space between lines, dotted lines, color contrast, alphabet reminder at top of pages, etc.) and for when you need paper now and didn’t have time to stop and get it at the store.

Now I had a little trouble with the Microsoft page, but I eventually solved it. Please note: it seems to work better with Internet Explorer than any other browser. Wonder why that is? Hmm.

There’s nothing quite like having a volunteer tutor. Thanks, as always, for helping someone.

Citizenship Resource

Some of our learners have a test to pass for citizenship, and so they need to practice the conversational skills they will need to pass an oral exam. That means talking about U.S. history and civics, the constitution and some of the stuff you may have studied in junior high school social studies.

To find materials you can print out on your own, check the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service website. Above is a screen shot of the “Welcome” page. I painted in a tacky pink arrow to help point out the search field.

They used to be called Immigration and Naturalization Service, but they got a new name after their assimilation by Homeland Security. When you get there, find the search field in the upper right hand corner of the page. Type “civics and citizenship” in the field and you will find some links that contain documents like the Declaration of Independence, civics flashcards and a “Citizen’s Almanac.” There are PDF files that you can print and use in your lessons. Preprinted flashcards, books and workbooks are also available in the Literacy Network library.

Does anyone else have recommendations for free resources in this topic or others? Please in the comments section. Always nice to hear from you. Thanks for teaching someone.

Calendar Teaches Tenses

The Favorite Tutor of the Week award (and all bragging rights thereunto pertaining) goes to Mindi Potter, who submitted the tip below. Mindi uses a calendar with clip art as a visual aid when working on tenses. Mindi writes,

Hi Brian,

I used a blank calendar image I copied from a kids' web site (I cropped out the words at the bottom). Then I found clip art in Microsoft Word, put them in text boxes, reduced their size, and positioned them on the calendar. I noted some date and time phrases to help make specific statements.

We use the calendar to work on past, present and future tense. I'll pick a day, then I ask my learner to tell me about what might be happening before, after, or on that day. The images are just to prompt ideas for a sentence. She must consider the verb for the action and conjugate it correctly, so it leads to many good discussions of tense and vocabulary. It can be the focus of a lesson, or it is sometimes a nice diversion to fill the time.

I hope this is helpful.

You can print the simple grid that you find when you click here, and cut out little pictures from magazines and other sources. Another thought, inspired by tutor Eva Bellinger, is to buy (or borrow fromyour kids) a variety of stickers to put on the calendar. I modified Mindi's calendar a bit, for instance putting Soccer practice on every Friday. You can use that to teach how simple present tense works for things that happen frequently, always, rarely or never, e.g. “I always play soccer on Fridays. I usually go to church on Sunday.” Or “He never studies on Wednesday.” Above you will see a blank calendar with Mindi's helpful helpful text boxes with expressions of time. Clip art, well, that's just kind of everywhere. Good luck!

Free Resource: YouTube

Today’s tip involves a free resource for anyone who has access to the internet at home, work or the library. Many of you have heard of YouTube website, which, in the current parlance, “hosts” videos for free. Some users post vacation video, others make personal or political commentary.

A company called Real-English.com has video lessons on a variety of subjects posted there, too. Here is one that features interviewers with big, furry microphones asking people in the London streets one question, “What are you doing?” The answers are in present progressive, such as, “I’m cleaning the street,” or “I’m putting my card in the ATM to get some money.” Here is a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGzsTYWprNA

Now, some of the accents may be odd, but if you watch with your learner you can make the speakers’ everyday statements into topics of discussion. And, even if you check it out and don’t find that video interesting, real-English has many more mini-lessons. Here’s one that’s very well oriented toward beginners: the cardinal numbers from one to one hundred http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHa-vEoO3fM being read by someone with a nice voice.

To find more videos by this company, go to the www.youtube.com website and search for “real-english”. You can see the search field atthe top of the screen capture image above.

You can see that the search for “real-english” turned up 177 videos—quite a haul! And remember, even if you cannot show the video directly to your learner during lessons, you as a tutor might learn some ways to teach new concepts by watching them. Sometimes it just helps to watch someone else doing it.

And here’s a parting thought for you, in the form of a question: Why not try making your own ESL video? If you have a reasonably capable digital video camera, perhaps we can collaborate and share ideas with this technology. Are you trying anything you’d like to share with your learners through the YouTube? Think it over. And for now I have embedded one of the videos below in the Blog of Literacy. It is a technical first for this blog and this blogger, but as ordinary as Cheerios to anyone under 25.