Touro – Dr. J's Education Blog

Infographics by Touro TESOL Candidate Evelyn Ramos EDDN 636 Linguistic Structure of the English Language

As a Professor preparing my teacher candidates for the 21st Century technology integration comes up often. Yet, what does that really mean? For the EDDN 636 Linguistic Structure of the English Language, I had my teacher candidates complete a project: design an infographic and incorporate this into their required SIOP lesson plan. My candidate Evelyn Ramos delivered an innovative, well designed bilingual infographic. Once she laminated it and used it in her class, several other teachers in her school approached her to also receive a copy for themselves. In addition, her students now want to create their own infographics.

Evelyn Ramos: I am a Brentwood High School graduate and graduated 11 out of my class of 450 with honors in 2009. I started my bachelor’s degree in Queens College and later transferred to SUNY College at Old Westbury earning a dual bachelor’s degree in Adolescence Education Spanish (7-12) and Spanish Language, Hispanic Literature and Culture; I graduated in 2016 with Cum Laude honors. My teaching career started two years ago in 2017 at Brentwood Union Free School district as a bilingual language teacher. Currently, I am teaching Home Language Arts to 7th & 8th graders at East Middle school, choosing to return to Brentwood to give back to the community that gave so much to me. I started my graduate degree at Touro College, TESOL and Bilingual Department in 2017 and will graduate in June 2020 with a Master’s degree in TESOL. I have accomplished all this being a mother to two beautiful girls, a wife, daughter, and granddaughter.

Evelyn Ramos EDDN 636 Infographics

State your target audience (group of learners) for the project.

The target audience for this project are 7th grade ELA/ENL class. Students are in a Bilingual/ENL program. Class size is 18 students; 10 students are transitioning and 8 are emerging. The class is a stand-alone ENL/ELA class. Students receive two 45-minute periods of ELA/ENL.

State your topic for the infographic.

The topic of the infographic using the different parts of speech: Noun, Verb and adjectives. There will be a focus on using adjectives to describe people and place using color, size and appearance.

State your intended learning outcome for the project.

The intended learning outcomes for this project are the following:

Students will be able identify adjectives orally and label the parts of speech in a sentence. Students will be to write a description of a monster or spooky place using adjectives. Students will be able to identify an adjective in a sentence. What type of infographic will you create (comparison, flow chart, timeline, etc.)?

What type of infographic will you create (comparison, flow chart, timeline, etc.)?

The infographic I created is a flowchart to help the information flow one from another.

What design decisions did you make in terms of:
1. Text – font, colors, white space, and so on, Text reduction – how did you translate text into a graphic form? Color & Pictures/graphics

At first it was hard to choose a background because I did not want to a background or template that had to much. I choose bright colors and the color code I will be using in my lesson is a color code used within my department to teach the parts of speech. Blue for nouns, green for verbs and red for adjectives. I also used different fonts for each part of speech. As I introduce the different groups of adjectives, I used a different font for each but kept the color red to show that they are all adjectives. When it came to the writing, I kept it simple and comprehensible for my ELL learners. I also used pictures that provided clear written and visual examples of each topic mentioned. I also translated the infographic into Spanish.

How is the topic relevant to learners? State how it relates to curriculum professional development, training goals, or other learning context for your intended audience. Please note that you are creating educational materials in this and all of your assignments for the course.

The infographic allows students to review the parts of speech. Students need to understand how each part of speech is used in a sentence. Learning the basic parts of speech will help ELLs in their writing. Students do not only see parts of speech in ELA, this is a concept that will be used throughout all content areas and across curriculum.

Reflect on the process of creating your infographic. You should be reflecting on pedagogical benefits and challenges of creating and using infographics. Maximum 250 words on this section.

I really enjoyed creating my infographic. On a pedagogical point of view, infographic is great to use with all learners, especially ELLs. They are effective because you are able to provide the content in written form with visuals packing the big ideas into a small space. Students will become engaged in learning with this mean of presentation. An infographic presents information in a compelling way that catches the learner’s eye. Also, infographics are much easier to read and follow. This allows for information to be more comprehensible to the learner. Students will be able to retain the information easily because it captures their attention and none of their teachers are using infographic in the classroom. Allowing the students to create their infographic in class would be a way to incorporate technology and in the classroom. However, making an infographic can be challenging and time-consuming. Creating an infographic can be an end of the unit project. I am able to use the infographic in a bilingual classroom by creating the graph in both languages. By providing a translated version to an Entering or emerging students I am scaffolding the content to meet their needs.

What did you learn relating to teaching and learning with digital content?

I learned that using a digital resource limit the amount of copies needed in the classroom. The infographic can be displayed on the smart board. Shared with the students through remind or class dojo. Also, I am able to share the infographic not only with my students but my parents and colleagues. The resources are endless. Students really love and enjoy using infographics.

Evelyn Ortiz’s infographic on Bilingual Education vs ESL Education EDDN 639 – Trends and Current Issues in Second Language Acquisition

Touro TESOL Candidate Evelyn Ortiz is a certified bilingual teacher (Spanish speaking) working in the Wyandanch school district. She has worked for more than three years as a third-grade bilingual teacher in Wyandanch. Ms. Ortiz states that: “I love working with ENL, CLD students and I pursuing my master’s in TESOL at Touro College so that I can better support my students with new strategies and methods.”

The assignment guidelines: Infographics

CAEP: Standard 1: CONTENT AND PEDAGOGICAL KNOWLEDGE 1.5 Providers ensure that completers model and apply technology standards as they design, implement
and assess learning experiences to engage students and improve learning; and enrich professional practice. CAEP

For this assignment, you will create an infographic for a specific group of learners (your audience). I highly recommend that you create your infographic for the learners that you are currently teaching, or typically teach. You will know more about this group than other groups of learners and are likely to have an easier time designing instruction for them.

Here Ms. Ortiz’s assignment submission and infographic:

Infographic Documentation

Identify your audience

The intended audience for this infographic are parents. In the Wyandanch school district we have both Bilingual education and ESL education. I think that it is important for parents to know the differences between the two programs so that there aren’t any misconceptions for the program expectations that their child may be enrolled in.

What is the learning objective(s) of the presentation

I can identify the differences between Bilingual and ESL education.
I can identify the instructional expectations of a Bilingual one way program versus the two-way program.
I can identify the differences between a Push In / Pull out and ESL class period.

What type of infographic did you create? If your infographic falls into more than one category, please list them.

The infographic created falls into the category of educational. It can also be a compare/contrast infographic.

What content did you decide to include in the presentation (point form or outline is fine)?

I decided to include bullet points of sentences so that the information is short and concise.

5. What design decisions did you make in terms of: Text – font, colors, white space, and so on – I chose three different fonts: Oswald, Arvo and Advent Pro Medium. The top of the page there is white margin and then there are two colored columns, the left side is magenta and the right side is purple. The left side has font colors in yellow, white and black. The right side has font colors in light blue, white and black. The left side represents Bilingual Education and the right side represents ESL education.

Text reduction – how did you translate text into a graphic form? I took the most important points and created short and simple sentences and organized it by bullet points.

Color – The main background color is magenta and purple. The fonts are yellow, light blue, black and white.

Pictures/graphics – I chose a picture of child that is surrounded by educational images. The child looks happy and excited. The books below her say “never stop learning” on the bind. I like that there is a clock, a globe and a lightbulb in the background. The clock represents time, the globe represents diversity and the lightbulb represents innovative ideas and learning. There is also a question mark and a music symbol. The students should be curious with their learning and encouraged to ask and answer questions to gain a better understanding of academic content and the world around them. The music symbol represents harmony and music. The students can learn content through rhythm and music.

Reflect on the process of creating your infographic. You should be reflecting on pedagogical benefits and challenges of creating and using infographics. Maximum 250 words on this section.

The pedagogical benefits of creating and using infographics and that it can be used to summarize a topic. The infographic can be used to organize information that makes it more meaningful and comprehensible to understand. The audience is able to get the gist of a topic and learn important facts by reading an infographic. Infographics are also very colorful and can be a visual aid to comprehend a topic. Not only can an infographic be used to education, it also could be used to persuade and used for advertisement. Infographics can also be incorporated into the classroom, especially at the Middle School and High School level. I chose to give the students at the HS level during my practicum hours, an infographic to represent what they have learned about the topic, which was Selena.

Some of the challenges of using infographics is that it is sometimes difficult to compact the information into a one page infographic. In addition, creating an infographic is not difficult however, people who are not tech-savvy may find it a bit challenging to create one at first. When I assigned an infographic as an assignment I had to show the students step by step how to sign in, edit text/images and how to choose a template. The beginning stages takes a lot of patience but then it eventually gets easier to create. The activity may be challenging but the students eventually enjoyed it.

What did you learn relating to teaching and learning with digital content?

I learned that teaching with digital content could be appealing to the intended audience. Looking at an infographic can be more captivating than looking at a worksheet of information. An infographic can be accompanied with visuals and the most important points and or information which would not be overwhelming for ELLs.

When might you use this infographic with your students, parents or audience?

I might use this infographic with parents and colleagues. There are parents who believe that their student is a bilingual program that is an additive or maintenance program when indeed, it a transitional program. The priority of the program is to get the students to “test out of bilingual” program which means to get them to reach commanding. Many students who do not have phonics base in Spanish do not get the opportunity to build those skills in their native language, the goal is to start in English even though there is evidence to support the idea that teaching both may aid L2 acquisition. By the third to fifth grade, it is difficult to start teaching them sight words and phonics in their language when they have entered such a rigorous grade. The parents think that the bilingual program teaches Spanish, however, we teach content in Spanish it is not intended to build them up from scratch like the dual language and or two-way program does.

References

YourDictionary. (2016, June 2). ESL vs. Bilingual Education. Retrieved from https://esl.yourdictionary.com/about-esl/esl-vs-bilingual-education.html.

Marissa Leis, graduate TESOL student at Touro College on Cross-linguistic Influences

Many experts on student-centered online learning agree that the discussion board is the place where some of the most important learning can happen. Robust Discussion Board contributions not only show an engagement with the material read but also analysis and reflection. This requires thoughtfully crafted questions by facilitators for candidates to respond to.

Marissa Leis is a graduate student at the TESOL program at Touro College. “My goal is to continue my education to get new strategies to better assist my students in a forever changing world.”

Understanding Second Language Acquisition by Lourdes Ortega – Class Discussion for Chapter 3: Cross-linguistic Influences

From reading Ortega and thinking about your own experience/observations as a teacher and a learner, how can an L1 negatively influence an L2 (e.g., L1 Mandarin Chinese and L2 English)? What about the other way around (e.g., L1 English and L2 Mandarin Chinese)? Are there any interesting asymmetries? (The Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis would predict reciprocal influences.) In your written response, please choose two languages to exemplify your discussion.

A way in which Mandarin Chinese can negatively influence English would be in writing. In Chinese, there are different characters used that can sometimes represent more than one letter which is different from how we write in English.

From reading Ortega and thinking about your own experience/observations as a teacher and a learner, how does L1 positively influence L2 (e.g., L1 Arabic and L2 English)? What about the other way around (e.g., L1 English and L2 Arabic)? Are there any interesting asymmetries? (Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis would predict reciprocal influences.) In your written response, please choose two languages to exemplify your discussion.

From my experience, L1 has positively influenced L2 in the sense that both languages require a noun and a verb. This basic knowledge of sentence structure is beneficial when learning a new language because it gives you a simple template to create sentences. This, depends on the language. I can only speak for learning Italian. I know that other languages have different sentence structures.

The text explains the differences between learning pronoun placements in French and English. Someone learning English rarely shows difficulty learning this placement however it is the opposite when learning French if you are a native English speaker. “By contrast, for L1 English learners of French, the learning of what is essentially the same difference but in the opposite direction poses much more difficulty, and the error Je vois les is indeed attested.” (Ortega 32) The reason for this is in fact similarities of the two languages that causes the confusion. Since the languages are similar, this leads to misconceptions.

What other issues, such as language universals, complicate crosslinguistic influence? And how is it that sometimes, even if negative transfer occurs, it does not result in ungrammaticality? Please give examples to support your claims.

When a language is similar in the way the words are arranged, this can cause confusion and misconceptions which leads to a hindrance in learning the language. Language universals can also complicate language acquisition. They can also lead to new learnings about L1. “There are also attested occasions where the benefits accrue from rather abstract similarities, as when a grammatical category in the L1 sheds light on a different grammatical category in the L2, thus facilitating the discovery and learning of the new category.” (Ortega 43) If a student is learning about grammatical likeness in L1 and L2, this can result in the student learning more about their native language and the rules.

Even if a negative transfer occurs, this does not always result in ungrammaticality because students sometimes remember the sentence structures. If they are pronouncing a word incorrectly, it does not affect the grammar of the sentence.

How can understanding these phenomena better inform our understanding of cross-linguistic influence? Please give examples to support your claims.

Understanding these phenomenons can help me in my teaching methods. Before reading this chapter I thought that having a language that is similar in its grammatical form will cause the language to be more easily understood and acquired. After reading this chapter, I realized that this can actually have the opposite effect. When instructing students, I will first become acquainted with their native language and focus on the similarities and differences. For similar characteristics, I will point out how English is similar and the small ways in which it may be different. I will focus my Sheltered Instruction curriculum around these issues and common misconceptions. If I know that in French the pronoun comes before the verb, then I will work on questions techniques in my lesson. I will gear my lessons so that they revolve around these techniques.

What do you think of Michael Long’s Interaction Hypothesis? What type(s) of corrective feedback do you use the most, do you think that is the best to use? How does this affect your students?

According to Michael Long’s Interaction Hypothesis, language learners learn from comprehensible input which requires them to determine and draw meaning from interactions. I believe that this is beneficial for language learners. When learning something new, it is important to understand the meaning of what you are doing or saying. This promotes a deeper understanding and will allow the learner to remember what they are learning. A comparison of this would be when one is learning math. If the math problem is on paper, a student may be able to do it. When the time comes for the student to generalize the information and execute it to a real-life situation, it may be more difficult. When the student is allowed to perform the math problem a few times during a real-life situation such as measuring the perimeter of a yard to buy fencing, this will create a true and deeper understanding that the student will remember long term. The same goes for learning language. If a student is studying vocabulary words on flash cards, they may remember the words temporarily. If students are spoken to and are required to find out the meaning of a sentence, they will most likely have a long-lasting understanding of the information.

A way to use this with the students is to repeat a sentence in L2 and allow the student to interpret the meaning of the sentence along with the vocabulary that is used. A method that is effective is TPR. (Total Physical Response) This method allows students to use their whole body to act out words and phrases that create a lasting impression. As a teacher, I can recite actions and phrases in L2 and have the students act out the action after I model it.

Work Cited:

Ortega, L. (2009). Chapter 1-3: Introduction. In Second Language Acquisition (pp. 1–50). New York, NY: Hodder Education.