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| One of the big reasons for this particular webpage was the realization that when travelling on the metro, the T, the Acela, the bus or even the plane, people are always reading. Newspapers, books, magazines and lately items on palmpilots and laptops, even remarkably smart cellphones. Another reason, is that books have always been of great importance to me. So almost naturally, I want to extend this gift – if you will – to my students as well. |
| Being pre-service presented a bit of a challenge in this respect, as there is so much available on the internet, and I don’t even know for sure who my audience is, or rather will be. But I decided to focus mainly on high school students. Thinking realistically, I imagine I’ll have students with varying English skills, so it would be best to have links to sites with varying difficulty. |
| My choice for webpage arrangement and content was influenced by several people and things. On the one hand Collier and Thomas’ recent study regarding bilingual education which has popped up in class time and time again and which underscores the importance of the L1 at home, and on the other, Kraschen’s hypothesis of Comprehensive Input. One other item of influence are the Standards of Learning that I have carried over from my foreign language instruction. |
| I can relate to Collier and Thomas’ study, since I was one of the students who would have benefitted from bilingual education. The student performance curve plateaus just where my own performance did in high school, which is why I believe it is so important to have material available in the student’s L1. |
| Krashen’s CI hypothesis is just plain old common sense to me. If the students are interested in what they’re reading, if it challenges them just enough, then they’re learning and happy because they understand, the teachers are happy because the students understand (and hopefully participate) and the parents are happy because they don’t have to take off work to come hear about their children’s problems. Among other things. |
| As far as the content is concerned, I may not yet have the typical demographics of my future classroom covered, but over time I plan to add to the webpage so that for example, a student from Mexico could come into the classroom and access the webpage, choose a link either in English, or in Spanish (or even German, if they know how!) and read it on the monitor, or print it out and take it home. I imagine the student coming in and printing off a story for themselves, or perhaps even bringing some news home to read with their parents from their homeland. |
| Because I imagine my students will posses a wide range of language
skills, I thought it important to have very simple, short stories even
games, to the more difficult news texts and online eBooks. Of course, there
will be specific rules about printing off entire eBooks . . .
My future plans for homework entail reading over the weekend. It doesn’t necessarily matter what, so long as the students read. Then, Monday morning warm-up might include talking about what was read that weekend. |
| While I designed the webpage with the ESOL classroom in mind, I couldn’t help but consider Standards of Learning in mind from my Foreign Language instruction. This webpage would be a useful tool for the culture and communication aspect, since it offers many glimpses into other countries and cultures past and present as well. |
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