My
blog post this week focuses some useful podcasts geared toward teaching English
language learners. I am new to using
podcasts and I actually had to download iTunes in order to subscribe and
critique these podcasts. After I figured
out how to use the program, I was able to search for podcasts that focused on
teaching English language learners. I narrowed my search to only include
podcasts that were created for teachers and professional development. I wanted to find some podcasts that I could
use as a reference for other teachers. I
was pleased to find several podcasts that I was able to subscribe to that gave
some very useful information for teachers.
The first podcast that I subscribed to
was the TEFLshow.com. This podcast is
designed to provide teachers with new and useful information to help stay up to
date on the latest teaching and instructional methods for ELLs. The most recent podcast on the site was about
ESL blogs for teachers. The blogs that
were discussed in this podcast were: Evidence Based EFL, ELT Researchbites, Film
English, Teacher Training Videos, Tekhnologic, A-Z of ELT, ELF Pron, and Adrian
Underhill. All of these give practical advice and strategies for ESL
teachers. I found this podcast to be
useful because it didn’t just provide the name of the blog, but instead the
podcaster’s critiqued each blog and gave advice on how each blog could be best
utilized by the teacher.
Another podcast that I subscribed to
was ESLteachertalk.com. This podcast was
useful because each podcast focused on a different aspect about teaching
English Language Learners. The most
recent podcast discusses a video blog that one of the hosts, Matt has put
together on DreamEnglish.com called the Teach Kids English Show. Each video blog is three to four minutes long
and provides tips for teaching English to young students (preschool-3rd
grade). The video blogs are geared
toward new teachers or teachers that are new to teaching ELLs. The show that I listened to this week focused
on Dolch Sight Words and how to use them in the classroom. The show discussed how to integrate reading
into all aspects of the classroom and how to integrate the memorization of the
Dolch Sight Words. The show also gave advice
to teachers on when to start using sight words, the importance on knowing the
word before memorizing the spelling of the word, using a book to create a list
of sight words and then immediately applying knowledge to context, and they
also provided the listeners with five different games and activities they could
use in their classes to practice sight words.
The podcasts were both informative
and interesting to listen to. The
speakers made the information easy to follow and understand. These podcasts would be useful to any teacher
with English language learners in their classroom.
Cox,
M. (2010, May 31). Dolch sight words – using them in ESL classes [Audio blog
post]. Retrieved July 19, 2017,
from https://www.eslteachertalk.com/
Kiczkowiak,
M. (2017, May 2). Our favourite ELT blogs (Part 1) [Audio blog post]. Retrieved July 19, 2017, from https://theteflshow.com/2017/05/02/our-favourite-elt-blogs-part-1/
David,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing this review of useful podcasts to use with our English language learners! You did a fantastic job of describing them and their uses. As an aspiring ESL educator, I would find this review helpful in identifying podcasts to implement in my instruction or simply to have available to my ELL students.