Discover what's new or coming soon, including upcoming lessons and resources and product feature updates. 

Announcements

<h1>Introducing Individual Student Assignments</h1>

<p>Great news, teachers!</p>

<p>As of today, you can now select which individual students receive specific assignments within any class.&nbsp;</p>

<h3><strong>Here&#39;s how it works:</strong></h3>

<ul>
	<li>Click on a lesson, video, or flashcard set in your Prepping or Teaching lane within any of your classes</li>
	<li>A modal will open with your assignment preferences for that lesson&nbsp;</li>
	<li>Click the &quot;Students&quot; tab in the top navigation of the modal</li>
	<li>Switch the setting from &quot;All students&quot; to &quot;Some students&quot;</li>
	<li>Select the students you want to assign the lesson to&nbsp;and remember to hit &quot;Save&quot; inside the modal before closing it</li>
</ul>

<p>Only the selected students will see the assignment inside their class dashboard.</p>

<div class="videoWrapper"><iframe allow="autoplay; fullscreen" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/C5BgjG7wtaI?si=I4waw7z14JkLaeer" width="640"></iframe></div>

<p>We know that a lot of you have been asking for this feature for a while now. So thanks for your patience, and we hope it&#39;s a big help!</p>

<p>All the best,<br />
Ben :)</p>

<p>Founder, CEO at Ellii</p>


Introducing Individual Student Assignments

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Learn how to make the most of your Ellii subscription with tips from our publishing team.

Teaching with Ellii

<p>World Teachers&rsquo; Day is celebrated annually on October 5 to honor teachers all around the world for everything that they do for their students.&nbsp;</p>

<p>At Ellii,&nbsp;we&rsquo;re incredibly grateful for and in awe of our global community of educators. Teaching has always been a difficult profession, and the COVID-19 pandemic has made things even harder. In the midst of yet another challenging year, teachers everywhere have continually shown dedication, perseverance, and resilience.</p>

<p>This World Teachers&rsquo; Day, we want to give one lucky teacher a <strong>free,&nbsp;1⁠⁠-⁠⁠year&nbsp;subscription&nbsp;to&nbsp;Ellii</strong>! Simply visit our&nbsp;<a href="https://ellii.com/draws/teachers2022/enter" target="_blank">giveaway&nbsp;page</a> and fill in your information to enter. The winner will receive full access to our teaching materials and resources for an entire year.&nbsp;</p>

<p><a href="http://ellii.com/draws/teachers2022/enter" target="_blank">Enter our World Teachers&rsquo; Day 2022 Giveaway today</a>! <strong>Contest ends Tuesday, October 11, 2022</strong>. We&#39;ll reach out to the winner by email.</p>

<p>Good luck!</p>

<p>PS. Feel free to share this blog post with a teacher who you think deserves to win!</p>

<div class="whiteBox"><span class="label hangingLabel">Free related lesson</span>

<p class="circleThumb"><a href="https://ellii.com/lessons/holidays-events/1897-teachers-day"><img alt="an apple" src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2768/content_94_Teachers-Day.png" /></a></p>

<h2><a href="https://ellii.com/lessons/holidays-events/1897-teachers-day" target="_blank">Teachers&#39; Day</a></h2>

<p>We&rsquo;ve made our Teachers&rsquo; Day lesson FREE for the entire week! In this lesson, students read about all the ways that teachers educate, support, and inspire their students. They also review nouns, verbs, and adjectives and discuss which teachers had the greatest influence on their lives.</p>
</div>


World Teachers’ Day 2022 Giveaway

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<p>There&#39;s more to communicating than using words...</p>

<p>Writers and speakers often communicate by<strong> leaving some things</strong>&nbsp;<strong>left</strong>&nbsp;<strong>unsaid</strong>. Readers learn a lot by&nbsp;<strong>reading between the lines</strong>. Similarly, when listening&nbsp;we <strong>make inferences</strong> by analyzing&nbsp;the tone and emotion in a person&#39;s voice.&nbsp;</p>

<p>And then&nbsp;there&#39;s <strong>body language</strong>.</p>

<p>Body language can mean different things in different situations. Though some gestures are more or less&nbsp;<strong>universal</strong> (e.g., a smile or frown meaning happy and sad), some gestures&nbsp;also have cultural or even generational differences. A multicultural English language class is an ideal place for&nbsp;sharing what gestures and body language mean&nbsp;in different cultures and regions around the&nbsp;world.</p>

<p>Discuss these and other examples with the students in your class. Then try some of the suggested activities with the&nbsp;<a href="https://ellii.com/media/videos/silent-clips/body-language" target="_blank">Silent Clips</a>&nbsp;from Ellii&#39;s <a href="https://ellii.com/media/videos" target="_blank">Media&nbsp;Gallery</a>.</p>

<h2>Common body language examples and their meaning</h2>

<h3>Facial expressions</h3>

<ul>
	<li>eyes suddenly closed tight&nbsp;= I don&#39;t want to see that</li>
	<li>eyes and mouth wide open = I&#39;m so surprised</li>
	<li>rolling eyes = I&#39;m annoyed by you</li>
	<li>teeth&nbsp;clenched and head shaking quickly = Brr, it&#39;s cold</li>
	<li>looking away and shaking one&#39;s&nbsp;head = I don&#39;t want to know any more</li>
	<li>wrinkled brow = I&#39;m confused</li>
</ul>

<h3>Hand gestures</h3>

<ul>
	<li>thumbs up = Sounds good / Yes</li>
	<li>fist bump = Nice to see you /&nbsp;We did it</li>
	<li>high-five = Congratulations</li>
	<li>palm held out&nbsp;= Nice to meet you</li>
	<li>palm cupped&nbsp;= Please give me some money</li>
	<li>fingers crossed =&nbsp; Wish me luck</li>
</ul>

<h3>Other body language</h3>

<ul>
	<li>shoulder shrug = I don&#39;t know</li>
	<li>arms crossed = I&#39;m not pleased</li>
	<li>foot tapping = I need to move / Hurry up</li>
	<li>hand to forehead (facepalm) = Oops, I messed up</li>
</ul>

<h2>5 body language activities to try with your students</h2>

<p>The video clips in Ellii&#39;s&nbsp;<a href="https://ellii.com/media/videos/silent-clips/body-language" target="_blank">Body Language</a> category are silent. Each video includes a word and an expression (e.g.,&nbsp;<a href="https://ellii.com/video/interested" target="_blank">interested / Not bad</a>). Here are five&nbsp;ways to use this category:&nbsp;</p>

<h3>1. Review the vocabulary and expressions</h3>

<p>Teach the vocabulary from&nbsp;the video title and ask students to make a sentence describing what they see.</p>

<blockquote>
<p class="videoWrapper"><iframe allow="autoplay; fullscreen" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/746872096" width="640"></iframe></p>

<p class="caption">Video not playing? Your school might be blocking Vimeo, our video hosting platform. Please ask your administrator to whitelist <a href="https://vimeo.com/" nofollow="" noreferrer="" rel="&quot;noopener" target="&quot;_blank&quot;">vimeo.com</a>.</p>

<p class="caption">&nbsp;</p>

<p>He is interested in someone on his dating app.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Now ask students to pretend they are the person in the video. Repeat the expression from the video&#39;s subtitle&nbsp;(e.g., <strong>Not bad</strong>).</p>

<p>Work on&nbsp;the correct intonation and body language to express this emotion or&nbsp;meaning.</p>

<h3>2. Practice making&nbsp;predictions and inferences</h3>

<p>Have students guess what happened or what will happen next.</p>

<p><a href="https://ellii.com/video/pleading" target="_blank">Who is she pleading to?</a></p>

<blockquote>
<p class="videoWrapper"><iframe allow="autoplay; fullscreen" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/746871736" width="640"></iframe></p>

<p class="caption">Video not playing? Your school might be blocking Vimeo, our video hosting platform. Please ask your administrator to whitelist <a href="https://vimeo.com/" nofollow="" noreferrer="" rel="&quot;noopener" target="&quot;_blank&quot;">vimeo.com</a>.</p>

<p>She is begging her parents to use the car.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Discuss some related&nbsp;questions:&nbsp;<em>What happened? What might happen next? Has this ever happened to you? </em>You can even vote on whose prediction is most&nbsp;probable.</p>

<p>Encourage your students to think of at least three open-ended&nbsp;questions that go with the video. They can then work with a partner to answer the&nbsp;questions.</p>

<h3>3. Extend the language</h3>

<p>Though body language can say a lot on its own, we often add language to our gestures. You&#39;ll notice that in some of the videos, the people mouth&nbsp;something that you can&#39;t hear. What do your students think is being said?&nbsp;</p>

<p>Is &quot;irritated&quot; the best word to describe <a href="https://ellii.com/video/irritated" target="_blank">this silent clip</a>?&nbsp;What do you think he&#39;s saying?</p>

<blockquote>
<div class="videoWrapper"><iframe allow="autoplay; fullscreen" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/746917722" width="640"></iframe></div>

<p class="caption">Video not playing? Your school might be blocking Vimeo, our video hosting platform. Please ask your administrator to whitelist <a href="https://vimeo.com/" nofollow="" noreferrer="" rel="&quot;noopener" target="&quot;_blank&quot;">vimeo.com</a>.</p>

<p>You didn&#39;t pick up after your dog. I was watching out the window. How would you like it if I brought my dog to your front&nbsp;lawn?</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Can your students think of <strong>another word or a better expression</strong> that goes with&nbsp;this emotion or gesture? (E.g., He is really <strong>upset</strong>.)</p>

<h3>4. Role-play</h3>

<p>After watching some of the videos, invite&nbsp;students to go on camera or go to the front of the room and act out one of the gestures. (You may need two students in some cases.) The other students or you, the&nbsp;teacher,&nbsp;can shout out the word or expression. Your online students who never turn their cameras on may even want to participate.</p>

<h4>Example</h4>

<table>
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td>Student&nbsp;A:</td>
			<td>[<em>Walks up to the front of the room to act out some body language from the category. Crosses her fingers and holds them up near closed&nbsp;eyes.</em>]</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Student&nbsp;B:</td>
			<td>[<em>Shouts</em>] <a href="https://ellii.com/video/thrilled" target="_blank">thrilled / We did this!</a></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Student&nbsp;A:</td>
			<td>[<em>Shakes head no.</em>]</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Student&nbsp;C:</td>
			<td>[<em>Shouts</em>] <a href="https://ellii.com/video/hopeful" target="_blank">hopeful /&nbsp;Please let this work out!</a></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Student&nbsp;A:</td>
			<td>Yes!</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Student&nbsp;C:</td>
			<td><em>[Chooses a new body gesture/expression to act out.]</em></td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

<h3>5. Observe and suggest new additions</h3>

<p>As you and your students start to&nbsp;think about body language, you will naturally begin to notice it more often.&nbsp;You&#39;ll see people&nbsp;<strong>slumping in their seats</strong>, <strong>staring out the window</strong>, and <strong>fidgeting</strong>.</p>

<p>Start a list of body language on chart paper or the board&nbsp;and add to it every time you notice a new example.</p>

<p>Get your students to think of one word to describe the emotion or meaning&nbsp;and give them one expression that goes with it.&nbsp;</p>

<p>For the expression, think of&nbsp;something a person would say out loud (e.g., [looking at the clock or a watch]&nbsp;<em>Can we go now?</em>) or something a person might only say in their head&nbsp;(e.g.,&nbsp;<em>This is so boring!</em>). This activity will encourage your students to start&nbsp;thinking in English.<br />
<br />
You can use the comments to share some ideas with Ellii for <a href="https://ellii.com/media/videos/silent-clips/body-language" target="_blank">other&nbsp;Silent&nbsp;Clips</a> (body language/gestures) to add to this video&nbsp;category.</p>

<div class="white-box">
<h5>Now it&#39;s your turn!</h5>

<p>Use the comments to share&nbsp;an example of a gesture that&#39;s not mentioned in this list. Describe the body language and provide a word and&nbsp;expression for it in English.&nbsp;Can you or your students think of any gestures that are unique to a certain&nbsp;culture, age group, or region?</p>
</div>


Let's Teach about Body Language

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Stay up-to-date with ELT trends and ideas with articles from experts and teachers in the field.

Articles

<div class="white-box">
<p>This article is part of a series of posts highlighting education systems around the world. With this article, we hope to&nbsp;raise awareness of both the needs of the students and the challenges of running an English language program for refugees and asylum seekers who&#39;ve experienced persecution or violence.</p>

<p>We also hope to share heartwarming and inspiring success stories with our community of teachers around the world.</p>
</div>

<p><a href="https://jubileepartners.org/" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Jubilee Partners</a> was founded in 1979 when three families bought 260 acres of land in rural northeast Georgia.<br />
<br />
They hoped&nbsp;to use the land for welcoming refugees.</p>

<p>For the first year, the three families lived in tents while&nbsp;the school and welcome center&nbsp;were being built. The construction&nbsp;finished in 1981, just in time to welcome the first refugee group from Cuba.</p>

<p>&ldquo;We are a wide network of people around the country who seek to respond compassionately to the realities that refugees and immigrants face,&rdquo; explained Rachel Bjork, the ESOL (English to Speakers&nbsp;of Other Languages) coordinator and leader of Jubilee Partners&#39;s hospitality program.</p>

<p>Since its founding, Jubilee Partners has hosted more than 4,000 refugees and asylum seekers from 38 different countries.</p>

<p>They host up to five families at a time and&nbsp;provide them with housing, English language classes, social services, legal resources, and medical and mental health care. Families typically stay anywhere from two to 12 months.</p>

<p><img alt="Two wooden houses with porches surrounded by trees." src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2652/content_How-Jubilee-Partners-Supports-Refugees_01.jpg" /></p>

<p class="caption">Some of Jubilee Partners&#39;s housing is pictured here.</p>

<p>&ldquo;Everyone we receive has experienced some type of persecution or violence,&rdquo; said Rachel.</p>

<p>Seventeen&nbsp;long-term staff members currently live and work at Jubilee Partners.</p>

<p>At any given time, 5&ndash;8 resident volunteers also live and work on-site for three months to a year. Long-term staff are not paid a traditional salary for their work. Instead, long-term staff and volunteers receive food, housing, and a small living allowance. Staff also get additional financial support for medical and travel expenses.</p>

<p>All activities at Jubilee Partners take place in an intergenerational community context. The families, staff, and volunteers eat meals together and if individuals are interested, they can also attend worship services and Bible studies&nbsp;too.</p>

<p>The families that stay there are also invited to contribute their skills, expertise, and experience in whatever way they can. For example, working in the gardens and in the pastures gives residents the chance to share their agricultural knowledge and skills.</p>

<p>&ldquo;Our 260 acres is a gift and plays a significant part in our work,&rdquo; said Rachel. &ldquo;The land offers natural beauty, a sense of safety and space for children to play, and opportunities for therapeutic activities, such as helping out in the garden or working with the animals.&rdquo;</p>

<p><img alt="A garden with flowers, vegetables, and other plants." src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2653/content_How-Jubilee-Partners-Supports-Refugees_02.jpg" /></p>

<p class="caption">Some of Jubilee Partners&#39;s gardens are pictured here.</p>

<h2>English classes at Jubilee Partners</h2>

<p>Refugees and asylum seekers&nbsp;arrive at Jubilee Partners with a wide range of language abilities.</p>

<p>Some people have studied English before in their home countries, other residents are familiar with conversational English but have never received any formal education, and some people aren&rsquo;t familiar with the English language at all.</p>

<p>After assessing their English language skills,&nbsp;residents&nbsp;are grouped by speaking and listening levels. Both beginner and intermediate-level classes are usually offered. Language learners attend eight language classes per week and each class is about two hours long.</p>

<p>Beginner classes focus on simple conversational English. Students learn how to relay basic information such as their name, phone number, and date of birth.</p>

<p>They also learn the important terminology required when visiting the doctor&#39;s office&nbsp;as well as useful vocabulary when shopping for food. More advanced learners have the option of studying for the GED (General Educational Development tests).</p>

<p>&ldquo;Students need survival English for doctor&rsquo;s appointments, interacting with the school system, answering questions of legal and social service providers, and participating in everyday life in the United States,&quot; said Rachel. &quot;Our job is to adapt to their specific needs and learning styles.&quot;</p>

<p><img alt="A teacher showing a map to a group of five English language students who are sitting around a table" src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2654/content_How-Jubilee-Partners-Supports-Refugees_03.jpg" /></p>

<p class="caption">A group&nbsp;English class is pictured here.</p>

<p>At Jubilee Partners, resident volunteers teach English.</p>

<p>Each volunteer is assigned one class level at a time, and they share the teaching load with at least one other teacher.</p>

<p>Teachers are given one hour of prep time for each scheduled lesson as well as 30 minutes of time after class for journaling.</p>

<p>&ldquo;Class notebooks are essential for communicating amongst the teacher teams,&rdquo; said Rachel. &ldquo;They are kept up to date each day, recording practices and outcomes for each lesson to support continuity. Once a week, all of the ESOL teachers meet with the program coordinator for an hour to share challenges and successes.&rdquo;</p>

<h2>Responding to challenges</h2>

<p>One of the biggest challenges volunteer teachers face in the classroom is responding appropriately to the unique needs of students who have recently gone through a stressful situation and are worried about the unknowns of their future.</p>

<p>&ldquo;Our students have often experienced significant trauma in their lives before arriving at Jubilee, so our main goal is to present ESOL lessons that are engaging and a classroom atmosphere that is compassionate and low-stress,&rdquo; said Rachel.</p>

<p><img alt="A girl is helping a young refugee student with their schoolwork." src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2655/content_How-Jubilee-Partners-Supports-Refugees_04.jpg" /></p>

<p class="caption">A volunteer teacher is pictured helping a student here.</p>

<h2>How you can help</h2>

<p>Despite the challenges, Jubilee Partners continues to have an incredible&nbsp;impact. Here&rsquo;s just one touching story that Rachel shared with us:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>&ldquo;Tina* came to Jubilee after four years of labor trafficking under extreme conditions and almost a full year in immigration detention.</p>

<p>After arriving, she began to tend to health and legal issues while also jumping into English classes and trying to establish a sense of peace through a consistent daily routine. In classes, she particularly enjoyed reading interesting true stories and discussing ideas and opinions. She grew in her vocabulary, control over grammar, and ability to express detailed information.</p>

<p>Outside of the classroom, she spent hours exploring the surrounding fields and forests and enjoyed planting and tending to a small potato and cucumber crop.</p>

<p>Tina moved on from Jubilee after having gotten her work authorization, a driver&rsquo;s license, a car, and a job. There are still many hurdles for Tina in rebuilding her life after her difficult experiences, but she made important strides in her time at Jubilee.&rdquo;</p>

<p class="attribution">&mdash;Rachel Bjork, ESOL coordinator and director of Jubilee Partners&#39;s hospitality program</p>

<p class="attribution">&nbsp;</p>

<p class="attribution"><em>*Name has been changed to protect&nbsp;privacy</em></p>
</blockquote>

<p>As a nonprofit that receives no government funding or large grants, Jubilee Partners relies&nbsp;on donations from individuals, churches, and other community organizations to provide support to people like Tina.</p>

<p>&ldquo;The average person can help by volunteering, contributing financially, or providing support to refugee and immigrant populations in their local area. The need is great,&rdquo; said Rachel.</p>

<p>To volunteer with Jubilee Partners, check out their <a href="https://jubileepartners.org/volunteer/resident-volunteer-program/" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Resident Volunteer Program</a>.</p>

<p>To help financially, <a href="https://jubileepartners.org/donate/" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">make an online donation</a>.</p>

<h2>More inspiring organizations</h2>

<p><a href="https://ellii.com/blog/taking-action-for-education" target="_blank">Taking Action for Education</a></p>

<p><a href="https://ellii.com/blog/building-an-alliance-for-international-women-s-rights" target="_blank">Building an Alliance for International Women&rsquo;s Rights</a></p>

<p><a href="https://ellii.com/blog/how-isans-creates-possibility" target="_blank">How ISANS Creates Possibility</a></p>

<p><a href="https://ellii.com/blog/how-outreach360-empowers-students" target="_blank">How Outreach360 Empowers Students</a></p>


How Jubilee Partners Supports Refugees

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Tour around the ELT conference circuit as our team shares conference highlights and session reviews.

Conferences

<p>Our second annual virtual conference, held on September 15 and 16,&nbsp;was a huge success thanks to all of the organizers, speakers, and attendees.</p>

<p>After attending any <a href="https://ellii.com/blog/categories/conferences" target="_blank">conference</a>, I love to jot down my top takeaways so that I can look back and see how far we&#39;ve come.&nbsp;</p>

<p>The theme for this year&#39;s conference was<strong> Simplicity in ELT</strong>, so here is my simple summary of ElliiCon2022!</p>

<h2>S is for speaking activities</h2>

<p>We were thrilled to have <a href="https://ellii.com/blog/elliicon2022-shelly-terrell" target="_blank">Shelly Terrell</a>, a friend and former ESL Library blogger, join us at ElliiCon2022. Shelly has always shared the top digital tools with our community.</p>

<p>At ElliiCon, Shelly had&nbsp;<a href="https://www.shellyterrell.com/speaking.html" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">plenty of fun ideas</a> for getting students to speak up. I especially loved her idea of using <strong>avatar apps</strong>&nbsp;with shy students as well as this<strong> Show-n-Tell with a Cell</strong> activity.</p>

<p><img alt="show and tell with a cell" src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2746/content_Show_and_tell_cell_.jpg" /></p>

<p class="caption">Shelly Terrell presents her &quot;Show-n-Tell with a Cell&quot; activity at ElliiCon2022.</p>

<p><a href="https://ellii.com/blog/elliicon2022-karina-zew" target="_blank">Karina Zew</a> from <a href="https://bridge.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Bridge</a>&nbsp;also shared a fun speaking task where students practice intonation and body language using the simple word &quot;hey.&quot;</p>

<p><img alt="Drawing that demonstrates two people using different intonation and body language with the word hey." src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2747/content_Hey.jpg" /></p>

<p class="caption">Karina Zew shows teachers how students can practice intonation using the word &quot;hey.&quot;</p>

<h2>I is for inspiring ideas for assessment</h2>

<p><a href="https://ellii.com/blog/elliicon2022-dr-ken-beatty" target="_blank">Dr. Ken Beatty</a> kept things simple by helping teachers rethink assessment. His ideas included having students create their own assessments and asking them to predict&nbsp;what would be on a test.&nbsp;</p>

<p><img alt="Dr. Ken Beatty's assessment idea." src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2748/content_Student_Tests.jpg" /></p>

<p class="caption">Dr. Ken Beatty talks about agile assessment at ElliiCon2022.</p>

<p><a href="https://ellii.com/blog/elliicon2022-keishia-thorpe" target="_blank">Keishia Thorpe</a> also talked about assessment and the importance of helping newcomer students feel safe and welcome in order to maximize their potential.&nbsp;</p>

<p><img alt="Famous quote by Reyes et al 2012 on assessment." src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2749/content_Assessment.jpg" /></p>

<p class="caption">Keishia Thorpe talks about a famous quote by Reyes et al. on assessment during her session at ElliiCon2022.</p>

<h2>M is for more than just bubble baths&nbsp;</h2>

<p><a href="https://ellii.com/blog/elliicon2022-dr-katie-welch" target="_blank">Dr. Katie Welch</a> returned to ElliiCon2022 to talk more about social-emotional health.&nbsp;Dr. Welch shared practical tips for teachers&nbsp;including <strong>setting boundaries</strong>, <strong>streamlining with templates</strong>, and <strong>celebrating why we do what we do</strong>.&nbsp;</p>

<p>She got a lot of love for her&nbsp;<strong>Circle of Influence</strong> tip, where teachers focus on what they can do (vote, mentor, advocate for change) rather than what is out of their control.</p>

<p><img alt="Presenter showing her Why I Teach Binder on screen." src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2750/content_Why-I-teach-Binder.jpg" /></p>

<p class="caption">Dr. Katie Welch presents her Why I Teach binder as an example of how teachers can celebrate why they do what they do.</p>

<h2>P is for prizes and prizewinners</h2>

<p>There were fun prizes auctioned off after every ElliiCon session, including Ellii mugs, water bottles, hats, T-shirts, and most importantly, free subscriptions! All of the speakers also received the same swag that they were giving away, which was&nbsp;a fun way to model the prizes.&nbsp;</p>

<h1><strong><img alt="a list of the prize winners" src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2756/content_Winners.jpg" /></strong></h1>

<p class="caption">List of ElliiCon2022 winners.</p>

<p>Congrats to all winners! Be sure to complete our Post-Event Survey (sent via email) before September 26 for a chance to win the grand prize: an <strong>Apple Watch</strong>! Two runner-up winners will receive a 1-year subscription to Ellii. Registrants of ElliiCon2022, keep an eye on your inbox to enter.</p>

<h2>L is for laughter and light-hearted learning</h2>

<p>I&#39;m sure all attendees would agree that our lovely host (and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/esllibrary/?hl=en" target="_blank">Instagram</a>&nbsp;star)&nbsp;<a href="https://ellii.com/blog/authors/lise-papineau" target="_blank">Lise</a>&nbsp;helped set the mood for a light-hearted learning event.&nbsp;</p>

<p><img alt="Ellii Staff at ElliiCon2022." src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2752/content_Team.jpg" /></p>

<p class="caption">Lise (bottom left corner) and the Ellii team at ElliiCon2022.</p>

<p>At Ellii, we love telling and hearing stories and often start meetings with jokes or tales. Our&nbsp;CEO, Ben, kept things simple this year by shining a spotlight on our CTO, Eduardo.</p>

<p>Eduardo works tirelessly behind the scenes&nbsp;and is responsible for keeping Ellii running&nbsp;24/7 for teachers and students around the world. We hope you all got a chance to meet him at the Presenter Q&amp;A Table.</p>

<p><img alt="Ben and Eduardo laughing at ElliiCon2022." src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2753/content_Laughter.jpg" /></p>

<p class="caption">CEO Ben Buckwold (left) and CTO Eduardo Prauze (right) having a good time at ElliiCon2022.</p>

<h2>I is for intensive listening activities&nbsp;</h2>

<p>We were thrilled and honored to have <a href="https://ellii.com/blog/elliicon2022-nik-peachey" target="_blank">Nik Peachey</a> speaking at ElliiCon this year. Nik shared simple, yet effective ideas and activities for listening practice,&nbsp;such as asking more questions that we don&#39;t know the answer to and having students convert closed questions (Yes/No)&nbsp;into open-ended ones.</p>

<p>The Publishing team was madly taking notes throughout Nik&#39;s session, inspired to continue improving our&nbsp;NEW&nbsp;<a href="https://ellii.com/resource_categories/139/resources" target="_blank">Photo Prompts</a> section and <a href="https://ellii.com/media/videos/silent-clips" target="_blank">Silent Clips</a>&nbsp;video category.&nbsp;</p>

<p><img alt="Nik Peachy talks about listening comprehension at ElliiCon2022." src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2754/content_Open-ended-photo-prompts.jpg" /></p>

<p class="caption">Nik Peachey talks about listening comprehension at ElliiCon2022.</p>

<h2>C is for Coffee Talks</h2>

<p>A few members of Ellii&#39;s&nbsp;Publishing team (Jen, Ann, Tanya, and I) kicked ElliiCon off each morning with an informal Coffee Talk.</p>

<p>On Thursday we chatted about simplicity and shared some of our favorite simplicity hacks. (You all ran out and bought a pay-attention-rubber-chicken, right?)&nbsp;We also shared some improvements&nbsp;Ellii has made this year to make teaching easier (<a href="https://ellii.com/collections" target="_blank">Collections</a>, <a href="https://ellii.com/media/videos" target="_blank">Video gallery</a>, <a href="https://ellii.com/blog/research-behind-ellii-auto-scoring-ai-feature" target="_blank">Ellii Bot</a>, and<a href="https://ellii.com/blog/feature-releases-platform-updates-2022" target="_blank">&nbsp;improved task designs</a>).&nbsp;</p>

<p>On Friday we focused on creativity and&nbsp;shared our <a href="https://ellii.com/blog/word-of-the-year-2022" target="_blank">Word of the Year</a> wall as well as other creative projects we&#39;ve done at Ellii, including our&nbsp;<a href="https://ellii.com/blog/wordless-lessons-project" target="_blank">Wordless Lessons</a>.&nbsp;We talked about what we do to incorporate creativity into our own lives and <a href="https://theimportantsite.com/10-reasons-why-creativity-is-important/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">why creativity is important</a>&nbsp;for teachers and students.</p>

<h3>Watch Recorded Coffee Talk Sessions</h3>

<ul>
	<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_2RrMPK5WU&amp;list=PL0MvnNQjMzmYCMFFM_d_pbeEyoPqmVNQ3&amp;index=2" target="_blank">Coffee Talk 1: S is for Simplicity</a></li>
	<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzwmlFk7eW8&amp;list=PL0MvnNQjMzmYCMFFM_d_pbeEyoPqmVNQ3&amp;index=7" target="_blank">Coffee Talk 2: Create &amp; Innovate</a></li>
</ul>

<h2>I is for innovative flashcard activities</h2>

<p>Ellii&#39;s&nbsp;very own Jen took attendees on an adventure through the <a href="https://ellii.com/media/flashcards" target="_blank">Flashcard gallery</a>, sharing innovative ways to use images in the classroom while also highlighting lots of features Ellii subscribers may be unfamiliar with, such as the ability to edit text, play audio,&nbsp;and make changes on the fly.</p>

<p>I hope you&#39;ll all try Jen&#39;s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Dl7D2WCzc4"><strong>What are you doing this weekend?</strong></a> activity.&nbsp;</p>

<h2>T is for talking at tables with teachers</h2>

<p>Between ElliiCon sessions, attendees could either take a break or stay online for speed networking or table talk!&nbsp;</p>

<p>At the Publishing Team Table, members of the Publishing team (including Alison, Lula, and Lara who weren&#39;t in the Coffee Talks)&nbsp;enjoyed meeting new teachers after every session. We took down some excellent requests for new <a href="https://ellii.com/lessons" target="_blank">lessons</a>, <a href="https://ellii.com/blog/feature-releases-platform-updates-2022" target="_blank">features</a>, and <a href="https://ellii.com/media/flashcards" target="_blank">flashcard</a> categories and also enjoyed some small talk.</p>

<h2>Y is for &quot;You can draw too!&quot;</h2>

<p>One of my favorite parts of the conference was the invitation to doodle along!&nbsp;</p>

<p>ELT graphic facilitator <a href="https://ellii.com/blog/elliicon2022-emily-bryson" target="_blank">Emily Bryson</a>&#39;s interactive drawing workshop showed how simple&nbsp;illustrations&nbsp;reduce&nbsp;the processing load on our learners.&nbsp;From roadmaps and visual rubrics to the Feedback Fairy, I think we can all agree that graphic facilitation is a superpower we can find a use for!</p>

<p><img alt="Drawings of common icons used in graphic facilitation like a drawing of an ear for listening and a drawing of speech bubbles for speaking." src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2755/content_Graphic-facilitation.jpg" /></p>

<p class="caption">Emily Bryson shows how drawing simple icons can help students learn and retain new vocabulary.</p>

<p>PS. I had fun <a href="https://twitter.com/tarabenwell/status/1570818308504702977" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">sketchnoting Emily&#39;s session</a>&nbsp;while she&nbsp;created sketchnotes&nbsp;of all the other sessions. (Emily&#39;s summaries will be available soon!)</p>

<p>If you registered for ElliiCon2022 and missed out on the event or would like to relive the magic, you can watch a replay of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvm-WZozaTw&amp;list=PL0MvnNQjMzmYCMFFM_d_pbeEyoPqmVNQ3">ElliiCon sessions on YouTube</a>!</p>

<div class="white-box">
<h5>What did you think of ElliiCon2022?</h5>

<p>If you joined us at ElliiCon2022, please share your top takeaway!&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
</div>


ElliiCon2022: Highlights & Takeaways

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<div class="white-box">
<p>This September 15 and 16, 2022, we&rsquo;ll be hosting&nbsp;<a href="https://ellii.com/conference/2022" target="_blank">ElliiCon</a>, a free, two-day virtual conference to explore simple, effective, and practical strategies that will help you build stronger relationships with your students and engage them in a more meaningful way. This article is part of a series of posts introducing some of the conference&nbsp;speakers.</p>
</div>

<p>Kieshia Thorpe is a US English teacher, licensed principal, and the winner of the <a href="https://www.globalteacherprize.org/person?id=15192" rel="noopener, noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">2021 Varkey Foundation Global Teacher Prize</a>&nbsp;in partnership with UNESCO. She&#39;ll be joining us at ElliiCon on September&nbsp;15.</p>

<p>Over the past few years, Keishia has dedicated herself to helping her grade 12 English language learners&mdash;95% of whom identify as low-income&mdash;level up their skills and prepare for&nbsp;college.</p>

<p>In addition to assisting her senior students with applying for college and scholarships, she also revamped the grade 12 English curriculum to make it more engaging and culturally relevant to her first-generation American, immigrant, and refugee students. Consequently, her English learners&rsquo; <strong>reading skills have</strong> <strong>improved by&nbsp;40%</strong>.</p>

<p>&quot;Every child needs a champion, an adult who will never, ever give up on them, who understands the power of connection and insists they become the very best they can possibly be,&quot; said Keishia via video conference after winning the 2021 Global Teacher Prize.&nbsp;&quot;This is exactly why teachers will always&nbsp;matter.&quot;</p>

<div class="videoWrapper"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/W0h4cJHgIpo" title="YouTube video player" width="560"></iframe></div>

<p class="caption">YouTube</p>

<p>Keishia is also the cofounder of <a href="https://www.uselite.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">US Elite International</a>, a non-profit organization that helps at-risk student-athletes around the world obtain fully funded scholarships to colleges and universities across the&nbsp;US.</p>

<p>So far, 500 students have received full&nbsp;scholarships.</p>

<blockquote>
<p>&quot;Education is a human right and all students should have access to it at all&nbsp;levels.&quot;</p>

<p class="attribution">&mdash;Keisha Thorpe</p>
</blockquote>

<h2>Learn about developing global citizens through culturally responsive practices with Keishia at ElliiCon2022</h2>

<p>On September 15, Keishia will be joining us at ElliiCon2022 to talk about how you can engage your students and make learning relevant to the real&nbsp;world.</p>

<p>You&rsquo;ll discover how to integrate culturally responsive practices that promote equity and inclusivity in the classroom and how you can support students in becoming global&nbsp;citizens.</p>

<blockquote>
<p><strong>Join us at ElliiCon2022!</strong></p>

<p>Want to attend Keishia&rsquo;s presentation?&nbsp;<a href="https://www.airmeet.com/e/0ee877b0-e369-11ec-b1b2-394b94cc9521" target="_blank">Register for ElliiCon2022</a>&nbsp;(it&#39;s&nbsp;free!).</p>
</blockquote>


ElliiCon2022 Speaker Spotlight: Keishia Thorpe

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<p>Vacations are a glorious, much-needed, brain reset. But sometimes it can be tricky getting back into the work zone after the holidays.</p>

<p>Here are five&nbsp;of my top tips for easing yourself back into teaching mode after vacation:&nbsp;</p>

<h2>1. Check your emails</h2>

<p>Checking your inbox and combing through your emails is&nbsp;a great place to start. It&rsquo;s a chance to get organized and familiarize yourself with current tasks, sort out your calendar, delete old emails, and get started on a &quot;to-do&quot;&nbsp;list.</p>

<h2>2. Chat with&nbsp;colleagues</h2>

<p>Whether your colleagues have been working throughout summer or your team has been sharing the same vacation schedule, reconnecting over a warm beverage&nbsp;always feels&nbsp;good.</p>

<p>Exchanging&nbsp;vacation tales and workplace news also helps build relationships and strengthens workplace&nbsp;connections.&nbsp;</p>

<p>The conversation will inevitably lead to chatting about upcoming deadlines, agendas, and meetings. This allows your&nbsp;brain to naturally get back into work mode.&nbsp;</p>

<h2>3. Tidy your desktop</h2>

<p>Returning from vacation can be the perfect time to clean up your overcrowded desktop.</p>

<p>Sorting out piles of papers&nbsp;in your workspace&nbsp;or folders on your computer often unveils <a href="https://ellii.com/resource_categories/107/resources/3971" target="_blank">hidden treasures</a>.&nbsp;You may find that long forgotten <a href="https://ellii.com/blog/categories/activities" target="_blank">activities</a> and <a href="https://ellii.com/resource_categories/103/resources" target="_blank">worksheets</a> re-emerge, serendipitously, effortlessly preparing your classes for you&mdash;all with the added bonus of a tidy&nbsp;desk!</p>

<h2>4. Sign up for continuous professional development</h2>

<p><strong>Continuous professional development (CPD)</strong> can help get your brain back into teaching&nbsp;mode.&nbsp;</p>

<p>Search online or check&nbsp;social media for interesting courses. Another easy way to keep learning and to stay on top of teaching trends and best practices&nbsp;is to&nbsp;read blog posts, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WClGk9Q8Owc&amp;list=PL0MvnNQjMzmbCk_AEw6JNaf8EoD5ATs5L" target="_blank">watch videos</a>, or sign up for a webinar or event. You could also watch videos from past events, such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@elliiteachers" target="_blank">Ellii Con</a>!</p>

<h2>5. Search for ideas</h2>

<p>Preparing for your classes&nbsp;will probably be one of your top priorities.</p>

<p>If you&rsquo;re not sure where to start, try browsing the Ellii website for ideas. Explore their&nbsp;<a href="https://ellii.com/discover" target="_blank">Discover page</a>&nbsp;(found under&nbsp;<strong>Materials</strong>&nbsp;in the navigation bar) to view a wide assortment of trending lessons and teaching ideas.&nbsp;</p>

<div class="white-box">
<h5>Share your thoughts!</h5>

<p>What helps you get back into the teaching groove? Do you have a process? We&rsquo;d love to know. Share your ideas in the&nbsp;comments!</p>
</div>


5 Ways to Get Back into Teaching Mode after Vacation

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<div class="white-box">
<p>This September 15 and 16, 2022, we&rsquo;ll be hosting&nbsp;<a href="https://ellii.com/conference/2022" target="_blank">ElliiCon</a>, a free, two-day virtual conference to explore simple, effective, and practical strategies that will help you build stronger relationships with your students and engage them in a more meaningful way. This article is part of a series of posts introducing some of the conference speakers.</p>
</div>

<p>Those who attended our virtual conference last year will recognize this speaker! We&rsquo;re thrilled to announce that Dr. Katie Welch will be joining us once again at ElliiCon2022 on September 16.</p>

<p>Dr. Welch is an educational consultant at <a href="https://www.welcheducation.com/" target="_blank">Welch Education</a> in Dallas, Texas. For two decades, Dr. Welch has&nbsp;taught and trained teachers to effectively work with English learners at the K&ndash;12, adult, and higher education levels.</p>

<p>She currently provides professional development to language educators through partnerships with institutions like the US Department of State and Cambridge University Press.</p>

<h2>Literacy for multilingual learners</h2>

<p>An education topic that Dr. Welch is closely following these days is <strong>literacy for multilingual learners</strong>.</p>

<p>&ldquo;In the US K&ndash;12 space, there&#39;s been a shift in recent years toward &lsquo;the science of teaching reading,&rsquo;&rdquo; said Dr. Welch. &ldquo;Many states, including Texas where I&#39;m located,&nbsp;have retooled their teacher&nbsp;certification exams and are now requiring elementary school teachers&nbsp;to take part in reading academies to become more proficient in early literacy&nbsp;research.&quot;<br />
<br />
According to Dr. Welch,&nbsp;teachers of multilingual students have concerns that the research does not take into account the unique needs of English learners.</p>

<p>She says that while&nbsp;these conversations are most&nbsp;applicable to those in K&ndash;6 education, the topic of literacy is emerging more broadly as an area of interest applicable to all levels.<br />
<br />
&quot;I just read a great&nbsp;<a href="http://blog.tesol.org/literacy-vs-reading-3-questions-to-consider-this-fall/?utm_content=buffer378e0&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=linkedin.com&amp;utm_campaign=buffer" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">TESOL International blog</a>&nbsp;this week about how our understanding of literacy is growing beyond just the discrete skill of reading,&quot; said Dr. Welch.&nbsp;&quot;Since reading is one of the four foundational language skills of English language teaching, this shift is definitely one to watch.&rdquo;</p>

<p>As an educational consultant, Dr. Welch explains she is also incredibly passionate about helping other teachers:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>&quot;I tend to &lsquo;nerd-out&rsquo; on all things pedagogy, so what I&rsquo;m most excited about right now is how I can be the best teacher I can be and how I can help other teachers do the same in their classrooms.</p>

<p>I especially enjoy following other educators on Twitter because I learn so much by seeing what others are doing in their classrooms.</p>

<p>Just today, I was inspired by a teacher who said&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/JakeMillerTech/status/1556943494354276354?s=20&amp;t=Pe9fWiLRtX6vCtmtWD6srg" target="_blank">he turns his syllabus into a mad-lib</a>&nbsp;as a way to build community, help students become aware of learning targets, and keep students interested in what otherwise can be a very boring first-day-of-class housekeeping matter.</p>

<p>I love adding new ideas like this to my teacher toolkit and enjoy passing them along to others&nbsp;as well.&quot;</p>
</blockquote>

<h2>Learn about addressing teachers&rsquo; social-emotional needs with Dr. Welch at ElliiCon2022</h2>

<p>On September 16, Dr. Welch will be joining us at ElliiCon2022 to talk about <strong>self-care</strong>.</p>

<p>&ldquo;The last few years have been so difficult for teachers,&rdquo; said&nbsp;Dr. Welch. &ldquo;Teaching was already a challenging profession, and the pandemic exacerbated that even more.&quot;<br />
<br />
Dr. Welch has&nbsp;spent more than a decade training teachers and has recently seen many former students&mdash;who she says were fantastic teachers&mdash;leave the profession altogether.<br />
<br />
&quot;Those&nbsp;who have stayed are often teaching with as much or more pressure than they had pre-pandemic but with much less energy and emotional reserves.&quot;</p>

<p>At last year&rsquo;s conference, Dr. Welch addressed students&rsquo; well-being and discussed how to cultivate social and emotional learning in the ESL classroom.</p>

<p>This year, Dr. Welch will focus on&nbsp;<strong>teachers&rsquo; social and emotional needs</strong>. She&rsquo;ll unpack how sustainable self-care must go beyond bubble baths and massages and instead address the underlying issues that make teaching so challenging.</p>

<p>Attendees will gain practical, concrete solutions for how they can prioritize their own social and emotional well-being so that they can bring their best self to the classroom each week.</p>

<p>&ldquo;While the topic of self-care tends to evoke images of bubble baths and massages (both good things!), I want to give teachers some additional tools to cope with the emotional labor that is often required when working with immigrants or refugees from traumatic backgrounds,&rdquo; said Dr. Welch.</p>

<p>&ldquo;I have personally walked through a season of burnout in my teaching journey and had to learn the hard way how to prioritize my own well-being,&quot; she admitted.&nbsp;&quot;I look forward to sharing some of those hard-won lessons with the Ellii conference participants&nbsp;as well as some practical ways that teachers can bring their best selves to the classroom each&nbsp;day. I hope attendees will leave feeling refreshed and encouraged!&rdquo;</p>

<blockquote>
<p><strong>Join us at ElliiCon2022!</strong></p>

<p>Want to attend Dr. Welch&rsquo;s presentation?&nbsp;<a href="https://www.airmeet.com/e/0ee877b0-e369-11ec-b1b2-394b94cc9521" target="_blank">Register for ElliiCon2022</a>&nbsp;(it&#39;s free!).</p>

<p>To learn more about Dr. Welch, visit her <a href="https://www.welcheducation.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">website</a>. You can also follow her on <a href="https://twitter.com/drkatiewelch" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Twitter</a>.</p>
</blockquote>


ElliiCon2022 Speaker Spotlight: Dr. Katie Welch

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<div class="white-box">
<p>This September 15 and 16, 2022, we&rsquo;ll be hosting&nbsp;<a href="https://ellii.com/conference/2022" target="_blank">ElliiCon</a>, a free, two-day virtual conference to explore simple, effective, and practical strategies that will help you build stronger relationships with your students and engage them in a more meaningful way. This article is part of a series of posts introducing some of the conference&nbsp;speakers.</p>
</div>

<p>Karina Zew was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and raised in New Jersey, United&nbsp;States.</p>

<p>&ldquo;My passion for languages occurred to me while I was looking the other way,&rdquo; Karina said. &ldquo;As a bilingual child, I had always taken languages for granted. Learning how to speak English was something that just happened to&nbsp;me.&rdquo;</p>

<p>After high school, Karina moved back to Argentina. Like most young adults at this age, she was trying to figure out what she wanted to&nbsp;do.</p>

<p>&quot;In the meantime, I needed a job . . . ,&quot; said Karina. &quot;So that&#39;s how I started to teach.&quot;</p>

<p>Over the years, she&rsquo;s taught Business English classes at international companies and general English to young&nbsp;learners.</p>

<h2>The beginning of a new chapter with&nbsp;Bridge</h2>

<p>Today, Karina works at <a href="https://bridge.edu/" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Bridge&nbsp;Education&nbsp;Group</a>.</p>

<p>She&#39;s a tutor for Bridge&rsquo;s online TEFL/TESOL courses and&nbsp;an ESL instructor for BridgeEnglish in Latin America. In these roles, she interviews and recruits teachers, observes classes and provides feedback for teachers, and tutors online TEFL students from around the&nbsp;globe.</p>

<p>&ldquo;I really enjoy being able to share with others what I have learned throughout these years, both from experience and from academic training,&rdquo; she said.</p>

<p>Karina&#39;s also spoken at many TEFL/TESOL conferences, sharing the knowledge she&rsquo;s gained from over 30 years in the field of English language teaching. She&rsquo;s lectured on a variety of topics, from teaching methodologies and lesson planning to scaffolding and using technology in the&nbsp;classroom.</p>

<p>&ldquo;Before COVID, online classes were quite frowned upon,&quot; said Karina.&nbsp;&quot;However, nowadays, they&#39;re actually many people&#39;s preferred method of learning. This opens up a whole new world! For example, our students who live in Chile have the possibility of taking lessons from teachers who live in South Africa. They exchange cultural experiences and share their views. This is beneficial not only for language learning but for life in general. It also forces us to become more familiar with new technologies, of&nbsp;course!&rdquo;</p>

<h2>Learn about fostering 21st-century skills with Karina at&nbsp;ElliiCon2022</h2>

<p>On September 15, Karina will be joining us at ElliiCon2022 to talk about fostering 21st-century skills for academic and business&nbsp;success.</p>

<p>She&rsquo;ll share how you can teach 21st-century skills&mdash;like communication, collaboration, leadership, innovation, and digital literacy&mdash;in the classroom and help prepare your students for success in academics, business, and&nbsp;more.</p>

<p>You&rsquo;ll also&nbsp;learn useful tips and techniques that you can implement to help your English language learners of all ages cultivate necessary, real-world&nbsp;skills.</p>

<blockquote>
<p><strong>Join us at ElliiCon2022!</strong></p>

<p>Want to attend Karina&#39;s presentation? <a href="https://www.airmeet.com/e/0ee877b0-e369-11ec-b1b2-394b94cc9521" target="_blank">Registers&nbsp;for&nbsp;ElliiCon2022</a>&nbsp;(it&#39;s&nbsp;free!).</p>
</blockquote>


ElliiCon2022 Speaker Spotlight: Karina Zew

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<p>On the Ellii platform, you&#39;ll find thousands of relevant lessons and several types of digital tasks where English learners can practice different skills, including reading, writing, speaking, and listening.</p>

<p>If you&#39;ve ever assigned your students a digital task through Ellii, then you may have already noticed that many digital task types get <strong>auto⁠⁠-⁠⁠corrected</strong> by the platform. That&#39;s because there&#39;s only one correct answer (e.g., fill in the blanks, multiple-choice, true or false).</p>

<p>However, there are a few task types that require <strong>manual&nbsp;scoring</strong> (e.g., writing and speaking), which can be time-consuming for teachers to grade.</p>

<p><img alt="requires manual scoring" src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2598/content_Ellii_Task_Requires-manual-scoring.jpg" /></p>

<p>This means that when you assign a full lesson with multiple tasks, including open-ended speaking and writing tasks, chances are you&#39;re spending more time grading assignments than you&#39;d like to.</p>

<p>Realizing this has led us to ask&nbsp;ourselves the following question:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>How can we make this easier on teachers and reduce grading time?</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Triggered by this question, the developers kick-started their&nbsp;mission to figure out a way to make some manually scored tasks auto-scorable, paving the way for Ellii&#39;s new <strong>Auto-Scoring (AI) feature</strong>.</p>

<p>Here&#39;s a behind-the-scenes look at how we developed&nbsp;Ellii&#39;s Auto-Scoring (AI)&nbsp;feature:</p>

<h2>Phase 1: Research</h2>

<p>We started by talking to the Publishing team about how these manually scored&nbsp;questions are created in digital lessons and how they work&nbsp;internally.</p>

<p>We identified&nbsp;two types of written responses:</p>

<ul>
	<li><strong>Opinion questions </strong>(or open-ended questions)

	<ul>
		<li>Example: <em>Do you like pizza?</em></li>
	</ul>
	</li>
	<li><strong>Correct/incorrect questions </strong>(or closed questions)
	<ul>
		<li>Example: <em>What is the man in the video doing?</em></li>
	</ul>
	</li>
</ul>

<p>Every month, students answer nearly <strong>half a million </strong>questions in writing.&nbsp;More than 80% of those are closed questions.</p>

<p>Since written responses&nbsp;are the most assigned task and take the most time to grade, it made sense for our team to start thinking about getting these auto-scored&nbsp;first.&nbsp;As for grammar, vocabulary, and spelling tasks, we will consider&nbsp;auto-scoring for them&nbsp;in the future.</p>

<p>After doing extensive research on written responses, our team realized we could use <strong>artificial&nbsp;intelligence&nbsp;(AI)</strong> to match the student&#39;s answer to the correct answer (i.e., the suggested answer that shows up on the platform).</p>

<p>There&rsquo;s a common term in the AI world known as <strong>Natural&nbsp;Language&nbsp;Processing&nbsp;(NLP)</strong>.</p>

<p>Wikipedia defines NLP as follows:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>&quot;. . . interactions between computers and human language, in particular how to program computers to process and analyze large amounts of&nbsp;natural language data. The goal is a computer capable of &quot;understanding&quot; the contents of documents, including the contextual nuances of the language within them.&quot;</p>
</blockquote>

<p>In short, we decided to use NLP to <strong>semantically</strong> match the student&#39;s answer to the correct answer. In other words,&nbsp;the NLP is able to gauge the meaning behind the student&#39;s response against the provided answer without having to match it word for word.</p>

<p>Here&rsquo;s an example of what a semantic match looks like:&nbsp;</p>

<p><img alt="semantic match chart" src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2604/content_Ellii_semantic-match.jpg" /></p>

<h2>Phase 2: Analysis</h2>

<p>Up until this point, our research was all theory. We now needed to put it&nbsp;into practice.</p>

<p>The first thing we did was take a small sample of different types of written responses: complex ones, simpler ones, and ones where the answer is a list of items.&nbsp;Then&nbsp;we took random student answers&nbsp;for those sample questions and began analyzing them.</p>

<p>We ran multiple NLP algorithms to test them. Our developers compared student answers to the correct answer and took notes on the score&nbsp;the AI was assigning.</p>

<p>We manually analyzed all the answers one by one&nbsp;to see which algorithms made sense. Since we&#39;re developers and not teachers, we also took into account the score the teacher gave the student for a particular question.</p>

<p>In doing so, we quickly noticed that one of the algorithms was looking very promising.</p>

<p>Let&#39;s see it in action! The following examples show how writing tasks are scored by AI vs. a teacher:</p>

<h3><strong>Question 1</strong></h3>

<p><em>What happened in the boss&rsquo;s office?</em></p>

<p><strong>Ellii&#39;s suggested answer</strong></p>

<p><em>He tripped over a phone cord and fell in the boss&rsquo;s office.</em></p>

<p><img alt="suggested answers vs AI" src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2600/content_Ellii_Ellii_auto-scoring-Ai.jpg" /></p>

<p>You&#39;ll notice that even if the student&#39;s answer&nbsp;doesn&rsquo;t fully&nbsp;match the Publishing team&#39;s suggested answer, the AI does&nbsp;consider the meaning behind the sentence&nbsp;and sets a score accordingly.</p>

<h3><strong>Question 2</strong></h3>

<p><em>Why does the reviewer mention food labels? Use the word &quot;disclose&quot; in your answer.</em></p>

<p><strong>Ellii&#39;s suggested answer&nbsp;</strong></p>

<p><em>The reviewer compares how app makers have to disclose what data is shared in their apps, just like how food sellers have to disclose information about what&#39;s in the food. Later he says that in their privacy label requirements, Apple doesn&#39;t ask app developers to say who they share data with. The reviewer says this is like having a nutrition label without listing the ingredients. He sums up by saying that we deserve an honest account of what&#39;s in both our food and our apps.</em></p>

<p><img alt="Complex AI Scoring" src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2601/content_Ellii_Ellii_auto-scoring-Ai-1.jpg" /></p>

<p>This is a very complex question and answer.&nbsp;You&#39;ll notice the NLP service was able to compare the semantics of the student&#39;s response against the suggested answer.</p>

<h3><strong>Question 3</strong></h3>

<p><em>How does the reading end?</em></p>

<p><strong>Ellii&#39;s suggested answer</strong></p>

<p><em>The reading ends with a question worth pondering. Since it is the migrant who has to take the action and send the money home, what happens if he/she decides to cut the family off? Do his/her dependents have any way to coerce the migrant to continue funding the family back home? Imagine what happens when a migrant remarries in a foreign country. Will his/her new family agree to share the family income?</em></p>

<p><img alt="AI Score chart" src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2602/content_Ellii_Ellii_auto-scoring-Ai-2.jpg" /></p>

<h2>Phase 3: Closed beta</h2>

<p>The results were very promising at this point, but we were not 100% confident about how useful this feature would be and how good the AI scoring was.</p>

<p>So we decided to do a <strong>closed beta test</strong>. This meant selecting a handful of Ellii teachers&nbsp;and inviting them to test the feature.</p>

<p>We ran the closed beta in May 2022, and teachers were very happy with it according to the feedback we received from our beta test survey.</p>

<p>Here are some notable statistics:</p>

<ul>
	<li>4,340 questions were answered and auto-scored during the month of May 2022</li>
	<li>Teachers changed the AI score&nbsp;in only 3.2% of questions</li>
	<li>66% of surveyed teachers said they would love to have this feature be permanent</li>
	<li>33% said they don&rsquo;t have a strong opinion on whether AI was useful or not&nbsp;</li>
</ul>

<p>After thoroughly analyzing the results, we&nbsp;noticed a few areas where we could improve the AI to provide teachers and their students with more accurate scoring.</p>

<p>We worked on these improvements, and now we&#39;re ready for the next phase.</p>

<h2>Phase 4: Open beta</h2>

<p>As of now, we&#39;re officially doing an<strong> open beta test </strong>of the Auto-Scoring (AI) feature. This means that Ellii teachers will be able to opt in to use this feature in their classes.</p>

<p>You&#39;ll find the&nbsp;auto-scoring opt-in checkbox when you create your class and edit&nbsp;it. Note that you need to opt in for each class and assign to students within a class in order for the AI to work.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>

<p><img alt="Class Edit Settings" src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2603/content_Ellii_auto-scoring-opt-in.jpg" /></p>

<div class="white-box">
<h5>Have you tried Ellii&#39;s Auto-Scoring (AI) feature yet?</h5>

<p>Share your feedback with us in the comments! Let us know what you loved and what you think needs improvement so that we can continue to make grading easier for you.</p>
</div>


Research Behind Ellii's Auto-Scoring (AI) Feature

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<p><strong>Graphic organizers</strong> are visual tools which support learners in&nbsp;processing, ordering, and recording information.&nbsp;</p>

<p>They include diagrams, flow charts, mind maps, tables, vocabulary organizers, visual calendars, and Venn diagrams.&nbsp;</p>

<p>Often, they&#39;re supported by simple icons to <strong>activate schemata</strong> and <strong>aid&nbsp;understanding</strong>.&nbsp;</p>

<p>I love using graphic organizers&nbsp;because they...</p>

<ul>
	<li>help learners to focus their ideas&nbsp;</li>
	<li>are versatile and can be adapted and reused in many&nbsp;ways</li>
	<li>use minimal text so they reduce the processing load on learners with dyslexia or literacy&nbsp;needs</li>
	<li>make information clearer&nbsp;</li>
	<li>aid memory and comprehension</li>
	<li>encourage critical thinking</li>
	<li>are engaging</li>
</ul>

<h2>4 activities for using graphic organizers</h2>

<p>Here are four&nbsp;activity examples&nbsp;of ways you can&nbsp;use graphic organizers using Ellii&#39;s&nbsp;lessons:</p>

<h3>1. Sorting and categorizing information</h3>

<p>This activity supports learners to categorize American words. You could provide interactive feedback on this by drawing the table on the whiteboard. Then give each student a pen and ask them to add the words in the correct&nbsp;category.&nbsp;</p>

<p>Check out Ellii&#39;s&nbsp;<a href="https://ellii.com/courses/75/lessons/2277" target="_blank">American Citizenship</a> lesson from their Living in English section.&nbsp;</p>

<p><img alt="" src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2697/content_Ellii_American-Citizenship_graphic-organizer.jpg" /></p>

<h3>2. Visualizing information</h3>

<p>This activity uses a family tree diagram to check learners&rsquo; understanding of reading about a family tree. They can then draw their own family tree and describe it to other&nbsp;students.&nbsp;</p>

<p>Check out Ellii&#39;s <a href="https://ellii.com/courses/75/lessons/1655" target="_blank">Family</a> lesson from their Living in English&nbsp;section.<b>&nbsp;</b></p>

<p><b><img alt="" src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2698/content_Ellii_Family_graphic-organizer.jpg" /></b></p>

<h3>3. Scaffolding conversations</h3>

<p>This lesson uses a graphic organizer to focus students&rsquo; discussions on housing. The words on the left can be used as question&nbsp;prompts.</p>

<p>To support your language learners, you could elicit and drill the questions they need to ask before they start their paired&nbsp;conversations.&nbsp;</p>

<p>Check out Ellii&#39;s <a href="https://ellii.com/courses/75/lessons/1652" target="_&quot;blank&quot;">Housing</a> lesson from their Living in English&nbsp;section.</p>

<p><img alt="" src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2699/content_Ellii_Housing_graphic-organizer.jpg" /></p>

<h3>4. Finding comparisons and&nbsp;similarities</h3>

<p>Venn diagrams are excellent visual tools for comparing, contrasting, and finding similarities. They can be used to analyze information after a reading or listening task&nbsp;or to compile thoughts before a writing or speaking activity. You can ask students to draw their own or use this printable, blank&nbsp;worksheet.&nbsp;</p>

<p>Check out Ellii&#39;s <a href="https://ellii.com/resource_categories/107/resources/3086" target="_blank">Venn Diagram</a> resource from their Visual Learning&nbsp;section.&nbsp;</p>

<p><img alt="" src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2700/content_Ellii_Venn-diagram_graphic-organizer.jpg" /></p>

<h2>Draw your own graphic organizers</h2>

<p>Graphic organizers are perfect for <strong>tailoring to your own&nbsp;needs</strong>.</p>

<p>You can draw them yourself on paper or on whiteboard and then have students copy them. You could also create your own using Powerpoint, Word, or online tools such as <a href="https://miro.com/" nofollow="" noreferrer="" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Miro</a> or <a href="https://www.mural.co/" nofollow="" noreferrer="" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Mural</a>.&nbsp;</p>

<p>The following is an example of a hand-drawn graphic organizer.</p>

<p><img alt="Five speech bubble, labled as Who, What, When, Where, Why" src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2701/content_Ellii_hand-drawn-organizer.jpg" /></p>

<p class="caption">Example of a hand-drawn graphic organizer by Emily Bryson.</p>

<p>It can be used in many ways. One idea is to give students a text or audio and have them write the answers. It could also be used to prepare for a speaking or writing activity where students tell a&nbsp;story.&nbsp;</p>

<h2>Related posts</h2>

<ul class="resources">
	<li class="blog-post"><a href="https://ellii.com/blog/7-activities-for-engaging-students-this-school-year" target="_blank">7 Activities for Engaging Students This School Year</a></li>
	<li class="blog-post"><a href="https://ellii.com/blog/10-activities-to-increase-understanding-while-reading" target="_blank">10 Activities to Increase Understanding While Reading</a></li>
	<li class="blog-post"><a href="https://ellii.com/blog/bell-ringers" target="_blank">Bell Ringers</a></li>
</ul>


Using Graphic Organizers for Language Skills Development

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<div class="white-box">
<p>This September 15 and 16, 2022, we&rsquo;ll be hosting&nbsp;<a href="https://ellii.com/conference/2022" target="_blank">ElliiCon</a>, a free, two-day virtual conference to explore simple, effective, and practical strategies that will help you build stronger relationships with your students and engage them in a more meaningful way. This article is part of a series of posts introducing some of the conference&nbsp;speakers.</p>
</div>

<p>Readers of our blog will surely recognize this speaker! Emily Bryson is one of our Ellii bloggers. She writes&nbsp;<a href="https://ellii.com/blog/authors/emily-bryson" target="_blank">educational ELT articles</a> where she shares tons of insightful teaching tips, advice, and inspiration.&nbsp;We&#39;re thrilled to have her join us at ElliiCon2022 on September&nbsp;16.</p>

<p>Emily&rsquo;s teaching journey began in Poland where, during her summer break in university, she taught at a summer&nbsp;school.</p>

<p>&ldquo;I loved it so much that when I graduated, I took a job teaching young learners in Daegu, South Korea,&rdquo; said&nbsp;Emily.</p>

<p>In addition to being one of Ellii&rsquo;s bloggers, Emily is now an ESOL lecturer, ELT author, teacher educator, and graphic&nbsp;facilitator.</p>

<p>Her favorite part about being an ESOL lecturer? The&nbsp;students.</p>

<p>&ldquo;I&#39;ve taught some really wonderful people from all over globe,&quot; she said.&nbsp;&quot;We&#39;ve had a lot of fun, and I&#39;ve learned a lot about things I could never have&nbsp;imagined.&quot;</p>

<h2>The importance of literacy, diversity, equity, and inclusion in&nbsp;education</h2>

<p>Emily is particularly interested in literacy, accessibility, graphic facilitation, and <a href="https://ellii.com/blog/support-english-learners-from-refugee-backgrounds" target="_blank">supporting learners from refugee&nbsp;backgrounds</a>.</p>

<p>She spoke at length&nbsp;about the importance of adult ESOL&nbsp;literacy.</p>

<p>&ldquo;It&#39;s an underfunded area,&rdquo; said Emily. &ldquo;There must be so many learners in the world whose first script is not Roman, yet publishers mostly overlook things like phonics, handwriting, and very&nbsp;basic punctuation. So many of my learners have jagged profiles. Even at the intermediate level, I&rsquo;ll find students writing letters from right to left, struggling to read, or putting capital letters in the middle of words as they haven&#39;t had this explained. It&#39;s not covered in so many courses. I&#39;d love to see learners whose first script isn&#39;t Roman having the support they&nbsp;need.&rdquo;</p>

<p>She&rsquo;s also incredibly passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion in the language&nbsp;classroom.</p>

<p>&ldquo;It&#39;s important that our lessons reflect the reality of our learners and give them a voice,&rdquo; said Emily. &ldquo;Talking about global issues in the classroom such as female empowerment, [LGBTQ+] rights, and refugee matters can lead to positive change and students who can advocate for&nbsp;themselves.&rdquo;</p>

<h2>Graphic facilitation is a powerful teaching&nbsp;tool</h2>

<p>Emily&rsquo;s workshops and training courses in graphic facilitation for ELT professionals have received rave&nbsp;reviews.</p>

<p>&ldquo;Graphic facilitation is my passion and my superpower,&rdquo; Emily said&nbsp;proudly.</p>

<p>&ldquo;When I did my first GF course, I&#39;d been teaching for years. I was in a bit of a slump,&quot; she admitted. &quot;But it rejuvenated me and reactivated the excitement I felt when I first started teaching. I realized how powerful [graphic facilitation]&nbsp;was as a teaching tool. A simple drawing can make everything instantly clearer. It makes learning more accessible, fun, engaging, inclusive, interesting, and creative. It helps learners remember and reduces processing&nbsp;load.&rdquo;</p>

<p>Graphic facilitation uses&nbsp;simple drawings to provide a template or prompt for&nbsp;learning.</p>

<p>Emily explained that this can support reflection, planning, ideation, or focus students&rsquo;&nbsp;thoughts.</p>

<p>&quot;The drawings are not art&nbsp;but a visual vocabulary which can be learned just like any other language, so anyone can draw to communicate,&quot; she&nbsp;said.</p>

<p><img alt="A schetch note with a list of nine accessible teaching tips for ADHD, autism, digital skills, dyslexia, dyscalcula, literacy, sensory impairment, mobility, and study skills." src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2651/content_Accessible_Learning_Tips_EmilyBrysonELT-com.jpg" /></p>

<p class="caption">One of Emily&rsquo;s sketch notes is pictured&nbsp;here.</p>

<h2>Learn more about graphic facilitation for ELT with Emily at&nbsp;ElliiCon2022</h2>

<p>On September 16, Emily will be joining us at ElliiCon2022 to talk more about how you can use simple drawings to engage learners. You&rsquo;ll learn about simple facilitation techniques such as visual templates, capture sheets, graphic organizers, and&nbsp;sketchnoting.</p>

<p>&ldquo;I&#39;ll be showing some&nbsp;basic GF techniques and tools which can save teachers time and make lessons engaging and accessible,&quot; said Emily.&nbsp;&quot;I&#39;ll be demonstrating some simple drawings too, so it&#39;ll be a really practical and fun&nbsp;session.&quot;</p>

<blockquote>
<p><strong>Join us at ElliiCon2022!</strong></p>

<p>Want to attend Emily&#39;s presentation?&nbsp;<a href="https://www.airmeet.com/e/0ee877b0-e369-11ec-b1b2-394b94cc9521" target="_blank">Register for ElliiCon2022</a>&nbsp;(it&#39;s&nbsp;free!).</p>

<p>To learn more about Emily, visit her <a href="https://emilybrysonelt.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">website</a>. You can also follow her on <a href="https://www.instagram.com/emilybrysonelt/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Instagram</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/Emilybrysonelt" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">Twitter</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/brysonemily/" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a>.</p>
</blockquote>


ElliiCon2022 Speaker Spotlight: Emily Bryson

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<p>At Ellii, we enjoy&nbsp;using our creative skills to develop materials that teachers and students love! Let&#39;s go behind the scenes to see a fun project the Publishing team worked on this&nbsp;year.</p>

<h2>Genius Hour</h2>

<p>Did you know? Ellii&#39;s popular <a href="https://ellii.com/courses/136/lessons" target="_blank">Story Prompts</a> and <a href="https://ellii.com/courses/132/lessons" target="_blank">Picture Stories</a>&nbsp;sections were born out of Google&#39;s&nbsp;<a href="https://sites.google.com/a/sduhsd.net/genius-hour/what-is-genius-hour" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Genius Hour</a> concept&nbsp;where staff are given free time to&nbsp;create.</p>

<p><a href="https://ellii.com/courses/136/lessons" target="_blank"><img alt="Story Prompts lesson section on Ellii" src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2703/content_Ellii_Story-Prompts.jpg" /></a></p>

<p>Ellii&#39;s illustrators, Saori and Steve, were given creative license to come up with their own ideas for lessons while playing with some new illustration&nbsp;styles.</p>

<p>After spending time experimenting with some visual concepts, they&nbsp;worked with Ellii&#39;s writers and editors to build out templates that eventually became full lesson&nbsp;sections for beginner-level&nbsp;learners.</p>

<p><a href="https://ellii.com/courses/132/lessons" target="_blank"><img alt="Picture Stories" src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2623/content_Ellii_Picture-Stories.jpg" /></a></p>

<h2>A hackathon for Ellii&#39;s Publishing&nbsp;team</h2>

<p>A few months ago, Ellii&rsquo;s Publishing team heard that our Product team of developers was going to try a hackathon, which is a time set aside for them to play with code and aim to build something fun or solve a problem.</p>

<p>The Publishing team decided they wanted to do something&nbsp;similar.</p>

<p>At the TESOL conference earlier this year, Tara, our VP of Publishing, was&nbsp;inspired by the theme of <strong>wordless stories</strong>, which came up in some&nbsp;sessions.</p>

<blockquote>
<p><strong>Wordless story:</strong> a book&nbsp;without text where the story is told solely through the&nbsp;art</p>
</blockquote>

<p>She divided the Publishing team into two groups (Wordless Video team&nbsp;and Wordless Picture Story team) to explore this idea.</p>

<p>In addition to giving creatives a chance to do something new and fun, this&nbsp;project gave team members an opportunity&nbsp;to collaborate with people they may not work with every&nbsp;day.&nbsp;</p>

<p>Here are the finished products:</p>

<h3><a href="https://ellii.com/resource_categories/107/resources/4187" target="_blank">Wedding Receptions</a>&nbsp;</h3>

<h3><a href="https://ellii.com/resource_categories/107/resources/4187" target="_blank"><img alt="Wedding receptions video lesson description" src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2620/content_Ellii_Wedding-Receptions.jpg" /></a></h3>

<h3><a href="https://ellii.com/resource_categories/107/resources/4193" target="_blank">Think inside the Box&nbsp;</a></h3>

<p><a href="https://ellii.com/resource_categories/107/resources/4193" target="_blank"><img alt="Think inside the box (print version)" src="https://esllibrary.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/ckeditor/pictures/2621/content_Ellii_Think-inside-the-Box.jpg" /></a></p>

<h2>Wordless picture stories and their&nbsp;benefits</h2>

<p>When each team had finished their product, they presented it to the entire&nbsp;Publishing&nbsp;team.&nbsp;</p>

<p>Here is some useful background about the <a href="https://ellii.com/resource_categories/107/resources/4193" target="_blank">Think inside the Box</a> wordless picture story lesson, which was inspired by an article about <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/jan/28/schools-killing-curiosity-learn" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">schools&nbsp;and&nbsp;curiosity</a>.</p>

<p><strong>Lesson objective:</strong>&nbsp;To promote creativity, develop new&nbsp;vocabulary, practice basic tenses, check understanding of Wh-questions, and assess speaking skills. This story can also be used to promote social-emotional&nbsp;learning&nbsp;(SEL).</p>

<h3>How wordless lessons develop creativity and&nbsp;SEL</h3>

<p>Creativity needs to be an active part of learning&mdash;not something that&rsquo;s nice to have if time&nbsp;allows.</p>

<p><a href="https://www.iste.org/explore/5_Reasons_Why_It_Is_More_Important_Than_Ever%20_Teach_Creativity" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">ISTE&rsquo;s research</a> shows how integral creativity is in healthy socio-emotional growth.&nbsp;This applies to learners of all ages. Emotional development and self-esteem are promoted through creative learning.</p>

<blockquote>
<p>&ldquo;Teachers who frequently assign classwork involving creativity are&nbsp;[more likely to observe] higher-order cognitive&nbsp;skills.&rdquo;</p>

<p class="attribution">&mdash;<a href="https://www.gallup.com/people/item.aspx?a=100174" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">Lydia Saad</a></p>
</blockquote>

<p>Wordless stories encourage students to be the&nbsp;storyteller.</p>

<p>This kind of activity builds on&nbsp;students&#39;&nbsp;prior knowledge, activating schemata and developing language/communication&nbsp;skills.</p>

<p>For WIDA teachers, this kind of activity takes student assets into account&nbsp;as the story can be told from&nbsp;students&#39; perspective. Furthermore, the same story can also be told in many different ways&nbsp;with the target language scaffolded by the teacher (can focus on simple adjectives, tenses, questions and answers, adverbs, sequence markers,&nbsp;etc.).</p>

<h3>Wordless stories and Bloom&rsquo;s Taxonomy</h3>

<p>Ellii&#39;s wordless stories will allow&nbsp;students to develop <a href="https://www.teachthought.com/critical-thinking/blooms-taxonomy-verbs-2/" rel="noreferrer noopener nofollow" target="_blank">higher-order thinking skills</a>&nbsp;as well as to review and strengthen the lower-order&nbsp;skills.</p>

<p>Providing a cognitive challenge will help&nbsp;students develop their language and communication in addition to their socio-emotional&nbsp;skills.&nbsp;</p>

<blockquote>
<p><strong>Remember:</strong>&nbsp;<em>What happened before? Who are the characters? What did they&nbsp;do?</em></p>

<p><strong>Understand:</strong>&nbsp;Predict what will happen next. <em>Describe what&rsquo;s happening&nbsp;now.</em></p>

<p><strong>Apply:</strong>&nbsp;Organize the story and&nbsp;arrange the sequence. <em>Write a brief&nbsp;description.</em></p>

<p><strong>Analyze:</strong>&nbsp;Compare your story with a classmate&rsquo;s.<em>&nbsp;How are they&nbsp;similar/different?</em></p>

<p><strong>Evaluate:</strong> Reflect on your story.&nbsp;Go back and apply feedback from classmates and&nbsp;teacher.</p>

<p><strong>Create:</strong> Propose the next part of the story. <em>What happens&nbsp;next?&nbsp;</em></p>
</blockquote>

<h3>Task types in Ellii&#39;s Think inside the Box&nbsp;wordless lesson</h3>

<p>Every task type plays a specific role&nbsp;in developing your students&#39; literacy skills and supporting their language-learning journey.&nbsp;</p>

<h4>Warm-Up Questions</h4>

<ul>
	<li>serve&nbsp;to activate prior knowledge</li>
	<li>take&nbsp;into account student assets and backgrounds</li>
	<li>provide&nbsp;a hint as to what the content is going to be&nbsp;about</li>
</ul>

<h4>Image Match</h4>

<ul>
	<li>provides some of the language students will encounter and&nbsp;use</li>
	<li>allows for&nbsp;students to interact with the&nbsp;vocabulary</li>
	<li>encourages students to&nbsp;ask&nbsp;questions</li>
</ul>

<h4>Picture Story</h4>

<ul>
	<li>enables&nbsp;students to use the language and respond to the prompts</li>
	<li>encourages creativity and collaboration&mdash;students can work together or individually to think of the story</li>
	<li>encourages the target language&nbsp;(the teacher can direct this however they see fit&mdash;e.g., parts of speech, colors, sequence markers, Wh-questions,&nbsp;etc.)</li>
</ul>

<h4>Speaking Task</h4>

<ul>
	<li>encourages&nbsp;students&nbsp;to remember what was discussed in&nbsp;class</li>
	<li>allows students to reproduce the story with their own ideas</li>
	<li>gives students a chance to use their own&nbsp;creativity</li>
</ul>

<h2>Virtual classroom and&nbsp;in-person classroom ideas for wordless&nbsp;lessons</h2>

<p>These activities can be modified for either context. Students in an <strong>online&nbsp;classroom</strong> can work together in breakout rooms in&nbsp;synchronous class sessions. The teacher can share their screen and then assign the tasks to students individually or in pairs/small&nbsp;groups.</p>

<p><strong>In-person or face-to-face (F2F) classes</strong> can use the digital activities easily by projecting the images onto a screen and encouraging students to collaborate. Live F2F classes can also take advantage of the in-person element by encouraging role-plays&nbsp;and then acting out&nbsp;the&nbsp;storyline.</p>

<p>Regardless of whether students are in virtual or live classes, creativity can be encouraged in many&nbsp;ways.</p>

<p>Ask students to find a real box (tissue box, TV box, etc.) to use as a prop for their story. Adding a tactile or kinesthetic approach&nbsp;can help facilitate learning by engaging other&nbsp;senses.</p>

<div class="white-box">
<h5>Share your thoughts!</h5>

<p>Wordless stories and videos are a tool that you can adapt and use to fit your students&#39; learning goals and objectives.</p>

<p>By taking student assets into account and engaging creativity, the teacher encourages students to take part&nbsp;in their own &quot;Genius Hour.&quot;&nbsp;Teachers, give it a try! Let us know what your students&nbsp;created.</p>
</div>


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