Yesterday, the 39th PRTESOL Annual Convention finished. Although
I did not have the opportunity to be during the whole convention, I would like
to share my notes of the presentations that I enjoyed. And of course of the
informal conversation during little breaks.
Let's begin saying that almost everyone that I met or I greeted
there, agreed that the best presentation was offered by the Friday's plenary
speaker Sharroky Hollie. My commitment is to find notes from participants that
attended to share with you his knowledge and experiences.
One important moment on Saturday was the award granted to Dra.
Alicia Pousada. She received the Dr. Marie E. Aloise Lifetime Achievement Award
2012. She has contributed to the teaching of English in Puerto Rico; and as she
gladly said she will continue researching, writing, and teaching. If you like
to know more about her work you can access http://aliciapousada.weebly.com/articles.html
The plenary session of Saturday morning was addressed by Dr. Changhua
Rich, Ph.D. She is Mc Graw Hill CTB's Research Director, Asia. Dr. Rich is
responsible for developing international assessment business and research. Some
of the key points presented by her are:
· The main burden for teachers is grading.
This mainly because lack of time and tools. Teachers really want to provide an
inmediate feedback but the amount of students, the amount of administrative
tasks and planning occupied a big portion of their time.
· Online learning and online assessment
using real time data is good for differentiated instruction and adaptive
learning.
· In the process of teaching and assessing,
teachers are preparing students to acquire and develop the 21st
century skills. (http://www.p21.org/ )
· The next generation of assessment will
include online assessment and international benchmarking.
· Dual language environment is harder and a
big challenge for rural schools. Students might not find interesting nor
necessary to acquire a second language.
· Internationally,
as English is being transformed from a foreign language into a global language,
productive communication skills of English writing and speaking are being
taught and tested as basic skills. As a result there is an increasing interest
in the use of automated essay scoring technology in ESL/EFL teaching and
learning.
If you would like to read more about online assessment and automated
essay scoring you may access:
The morning workshop Problem and Project Based Learning: Teaching
Financial Literacy in the ESL Classroom was offered by Arlene F. Serrano, a
humble and enchanted doctoral student at Texas State University. Her main
objective was to share her actual experience teaching young people and adults
about financial literacy. Simple things as managing their wallet, creating
conscience of using a budget, and working on finding positives outcomes are the
kind of tasks that her students learn to do.
During the workshop, all the participants were actively engaged
and even created posters to show different popular sayings about money. It was
a very fun and enriching experience. As part of the workshop, Arlene provided
material to be used in ESL classrooms and discussed the implications for this
practice. As an actual Math teacher in
an ESL classroom and a strong believer of financial literacy, I found the materials
provided as high quality and also as an easy guide to incorporate the theme as
part of the curriculum. If you would like to contact her, you may write to as1864@txstate.edu
Another nice workshop, right after lunch, was Increasing English
Language: Learning Naturally Through Brain Science. The presentation was based on researches
performed on the Neuroscience field. As result of these researches, Scientific
Learning designed a reading intervention program that work with the brain areas
related to the process of reading. The program as presented by Mr. Cory Armes
help students to strengthen their ability to learn content and to build memory,
attention, processing rate and sequencing. Participants received demos and information about researches. I got a cute little blue brain, made of that nice material that you can squeeze when you want to release stress. A cool token by Scientific Learning. If you like to read more you may
access http://www.scilearnglobal.com/
