Professional Learning Goals

• Selected one or two speech applications for the project teachers to explore in depth. This was done in order to gain familiarity with and to be comfortable using these applications in our lesson-planning and classes.
• Developed a step-by-step instructional process to allow teachers working with ELLs of widely differing skill sets and needs to easily upload and use these applications. Our student population encompassed a broad range of English language learners within ELD, ESL and sheltered classes. Some of our students have very low levels of English and limited school experience, while others are about to complete the ESL program and have sufficient levels of English to transition into regular program courses.
• Determined the strengths and limitations of the selected applications in terms of student accessability and their overall usefulness in improving English pronunciation, fluency and confidence
• Determined ongoing and continued regular use of these applications amongst individual students to improve their speaking skills and encourage self-monitoring of their learning

Activities and Resources

• Class sets of Chromebooks (approximately 15)
• Class sets of headphones (microphones included)
• Class set of hand-held mirrors
• Google Read and Write application (downloaded to the Chromebooks)
• Vocaroo (free voice recording application accessed via Chromebooks or students’ phones or personal computing devices)
• Lesson plans with instructions on how to download and use Google Read and Write (ELDAO and sheltered Grade 10 dramatic arts)
• Lesson plans with instructions on how to access and use Vocaroo (ELDAO and sheltered Grade 10 dramatic arts)

Unexpected Challenges

• We wanted to determine if the application could be used on an Acer laptop, school Chromebooks, two Macs and a variety of smartphones. We did this to ensure that teachers who lacked classroom sets of computers could easily access the applications via other devices such as students’ personal phones. This would also encourage BYOT or Bring Your Own Technology to class which is an initiative within our board. This took much longer than anticipated and was also more challenging than we imagined.
• Our first full planning day was completely exhausted simply by experimenting with Google Read and Write. We had many issues trying to use the application in the desired manner across our selected platforms. Other than on the school-provided Chromebook, none of the selected devices could reliably and easily load, open and use Read and Write. Recording speech, saving and sharing the recordings were particularly frustrating. We determined that it would likely take more time than we could budget simply to plan and create STEP appropriate instructions on loading and opening this particular application.
• Furthermore, we determined that in terms of self-recording, Google Read and Write was too complex for use with all of our target students. In addition, when we attempted to engage in voice recording, Read and Write encountered difficulties working around distinguishable accents. As a result, we decided to move to a much simpler, faster and multi-platform application. It was at this time that we began to look at Vocaroo as an option. We found it much easier and more intuitive to use and began to plan with this application in mind.
• The quality of the recordings generated via Vocaroo was sufficient for our classroom aims. That said, our attempts to upload examples of the recordings for sharing revealed that this application does not provide acceptable resolution. We therefore feel that while we have learned the value of speech applications with our targeted student population, we are still searching for ones with ease of use, an approachable level of English language and higher sound quality.
• The members of the team are highly co-operative and very collegial, however, synchronizing four schedules (and later five) across two school sites proved very challenging. During the second semester, it was particularly hard to find days when we could meet.

Enhancing Student Learning and Development

• Multiple exposures to language is extremely beneficial to all students learning English as a Second Language, but is absolutely essential for beginners and for English Language Development students. With continuous regular use of speech applications, students have opportunities for both massed (within an individual lesson) and spaced (over the course of many lessons) practice in reading, listening to and speaking English.
• Student engagement is heightened when they have the opportunity to hear themselves speaking English, when they have multiple opportunities to practise and record, and when the technology allows for error correction prior to submission of their work for assessment and evaluation
• Gains were noted in the confidence and fluency of most students. Not having to speak in front of the class or in the context of a formal presentation/performance allowed students the comfort of greater experimentation during the language acquisition activities.
• Google Read and Write is very useful for students (and teachers) in that it is a powerful means of helping ELLs understand written materials. The application has a function enabling students to listen to the material being read aloud by a native English speaker. This is an excellent way to expose beginning English language learners to a number of features of spoken English. They can follow along and practise speaking the passage aloud many times prior to being asked to record it themselves. This is quite helpful for improving their confidence as speakers.
• Lessons and practice materials for Google Read and Write and Vocaroo allow students to engage in independent and/or teacher-led practice of elements such as phonetic pronunciation, minimal pairs (words that differ by one letter and one sound such as fail and sail or cat and sat), and the prosody of English (the patterns of stress and intonation). These techniques are proven to improve spoken English, but the exercises that lead to the greatest gains (especially for beginner level speakers) are often repetitive and tedious. Research and this project have revealed that the prefered approach and best results are more likely to be obtained using spaced rather than massed practice. Our aim moving forward is to collaboratively develop and also provide links to an existing series of speech practice exercises. These programs will require students to engage in daily completion of speech exercises for approximately 20 minutes over a span of roughly six months. As a result, continued use of these applications within our sites will need to involve collaboration amongst teacher across subject areas and semesters.

Sharing

• Project teachers at Ridgemont (Bell, Gandhi and Merhi) will present their work and findings to all staff in September 2017
• The project teacher at Glebe (Grinnell) will present the work and findings to all staff in September 2017
• We will tweet our lesson plans via #ELD forums and provide links to the lesson plans and support materials via Google Mail ELD, ESL and drama conferences. We will also share our lessons at the Glebe and Ridgemont School conferences and with the ELD/ESL curriculum coaches at our board.
• It is hoped that there will be a half-day of school-supported release time for all teachers of sheltered classes at Glebe to meet with D. Grinnell. At this time, she will go into further depth regarding the applications mentioned in this project, as well as additional findings related to the reading, research and other forms of technology she explored as a direct result of the project.

Project Evaluation

• Initially, enthusiasm for the project amongst the staff members was very high and we had good success in meeting to collaborate and design lessons which we implemented in semester one. Followup in which we continued to use and expand the learning opportunities provided by the applications within our second semester classes proved to be a challenge.
• The project was successful in terms of validating the benefits of using speech applications with this student population. It has generated a number of exciting ideas as to how we might make continued and extended use of such applications within our classes.
• We now have a strong foundation of materials for the instructional process necessary for using these two speech applications within our various classes. We collaborated to create a very basic “how-to” template for use with Vocaroo. The template was targeted to those learners requiring the simplest formats, easiest level of language and greatest supports (AO level in ELD). It covered how to recognize the application, engage in the first login and make use of Vocaroo to generate a recording. Thus, we now have an easily modifiable and adaptable base template. It can quickly be altered to suit learners who are capable of using and will benefit from fewer teacher-provided supports. More advanced learners can also manage increasing complexity of language and a high number of or more difficult learning tasks.
• Our next success in terms of materials and lessons developed was creating a “how-to” template for the use of Google Read and Write. This was targeted to DO Level ESL students reading a short story within their English class. It now stands as our base template that can be simplified for ELLs who need less complexity of presentation (word choice, sentence structure, layout).
• It is very challenging to evaluate the speech products of ELLs without making them feel very self-conscious and damaging their emerging confidence. As a result, most of our feedback was anecdotal and involved compare/contrast of older and newer recordings. Students were able to hear the differences between first and subsequent recordings. Students are also able to self-identify particular English phonemes or sounds that they struggle to produce. This allows students to work alone, with a partner or small group, or with the teacher to generate word lists whereby they can practise these difficult phonemes. Developing a process whereby we can formally evaluate their sound production and recordings will be an area of need moving forward. We must find ways to render such evaluation that do not cause students to feel self-conscious about their “errors” and pronunciation challenges and which will not lessen their motivation to engage in spoken English.
• As the author of the original project proposal, I now realize that my initial scope for the project was much too vast. I have a tendency to want my learning, professional development and subsequent instructional shifts to happen very quickly. This student population, however, is not one that can be rushed. Especially at the beginning levels, instruction must be presented in sequential steps, language must be simplified, and many supports such as images or realia must be provided. The time needed to generate a bank of lessons and materials that suit all three levels of ELLs (beginner, intermediate and advanced) cannot and should not be underestimated. It is now much better appreciated that sometimes we proceed more slowly in order to arrive at a destination of quality rather than quantity.
• At the start of the project, it was thought we might generate a higher number of lessons, particularly lessons for use in sheltered drama. We did co-construct two lessons, one of which extends use of the Vocaroo application and took place during a semester two sheltered drama class consisting of ESL AO to EO students. This took the form of No Direction Scripts intended to help students identify different registers of language such as slang, informal and formal (see Resources Created). The second lesson involved No Direction Scripts or NDS that were intended to help students practise the “th” phonemes. These are particularly challenging sounds for students whose first languages are Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Japanese.