CONNECTING ESL Learners through Digital Storytelling

CONNECTING ESL Learners through Digital Storytelling
By Dr. Rose Reissman

ESL, ELA, and SS educators have always faced challenges in engaging students in activities to build first language content and skill expertise,  so that they may transfer that content learning to English Language mandated learning.

Currently, though, Chromebooks, or similar connected devices, are very commonly available for classroom instruction. With these, this difficult challenge may be tackled easily and successfully by offering second language learners, and their native speaker peers, activities that are rich and enjoyable. The key to this is Digital Storytelling and many free and highly effective resources to support it are available on the web.

Many educators rush to purchase special ESL learner specific software and texts, as well as online programs for reading comprehension.  These, of course, are often exclusively used with ESL learners even in a mixed classroom where they study alongside American born peers.  Ironically, even with all the differing levels of English language reading, speaking, listening, and product creating ability in a mixed learner class, one resource set is already available in the school that  can immediately connect ESL and American peers in literacy learning and sharing.  That tool is a Chromebook or laptop or tablet that can connect students to web-based resources guaranteed excite all learners in the guise of stories heard, stories told and stories produced.

Want a look at this dynamic digital story highway? Go to *’Digital Storytelling Site’ for a page of curated ESL Storytelling Resources. https://sites.google.com/site/digitalstorysite/training/resources-esl 

You'll find a curated list of ESL, ready-to-peruse and select, grade, age, topics, lessons and methods, plus step-by-step project instructions. Much of this can serve as a quick ESL tutorial or differentiation practicum for the educator who is new to ESL students. It can also serve the ESL educator who is eager to infuse peer ESL language learner materials into his or her teaching. 

Literacy learning involves listening skills which are required for all and that develop as they hear native English spoken. This is especially needed for ESL students, Unfortunately, this is something which for many students, including a sizable percent born in the USA, does not happen at home where their native languages are spoken.  The resource, Digital Storytelling Site provides both ESL teachers and teachers who have ESL students in their content classes with an array of free resources that provide good-to-go storytelling lessons on different ESL levels that will help their students get over this hurdle.

Teachers, even those who do not teach ESL students at all, will benefit from the extended body of ready ESL learner samples and the techniques mapped out from multiple respected sources such as those found at TESOL Journal  https://www.tesol.org/read-and-publish/journals/tesol-journal.  

Even better, the students – ESL, and those who can benefit from ESL emphasis on vocabulary, which will include many American natives, can immediately explore such resources as their teachers observe, and through the audio, manage learner responses and note individual listening strengths and deficits. 

The connected device, will help ESL, ELA and SS teachers to differentiate use of resources to best support individual learner vocabulary, conversation and comprehension of English, while allowing the teacher to maintain privacy of individual learner progress.  All learners -ESL and American born- become part of the classroom Storyteller circle on the connected device platform.

Instantly available, is audio of ESL stories to listen to, learn from, read along with, and react to. One good source for these is: Fluent U English Education Blog http://www.fluentu.com/english/educator/blog/esl-audio-short-stories/

For teachers, who want to engage students in listening to short timed stories from 1.5 minutes to 4 or 5 minutes there is an array of stories for this purpose complete with music and special effects, plus: detailed descriptions for the teacher to examine, topics relevant to curricula, exercises included to test comprehension, transcripts of printed texts for students to use as they listen (or to use as printed texts for teacher questions after listening), interactive reading (some of these stories can be read interactively by the students) which can be recorded for further fluency practice, and on some stories, there is a translation button which can translate a word into many native student languages.  

This plethora of ready to use items can inspire not only the target ESL learners but everyone in the class or grade to be part of the listening and reacting audience for storytelling. You’ll find some great ideas at sites like ESL Language Learner http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/archive/esl.html 

Of course, the end product of all literacy learning and evidence of second language acquisition plus writing skills is the creation, by the student learner, of a product, like a memoir or reflection or narrative story.  For American natives this is a challenging ladder of literacy. But ESL learners often have even more difficulty because they are navigating a second language

In addition, while their print textbooks offer artificially constructed, grammatically correct models, rarely are these contemporary, actual ESL learner digital stories.  However, using connected device resources, ESL learners can listen to peer Spanish or Turkish or other language ESL students sharing real ESL stories in their own voices. These models officiated through the digital platform of the Chromebook  truly inspire and concretize the literacy skills of second language within the context of first language experience and expertise for the ESL students.

With all these actual ESL learner generated and native language spoken content plus translation and music choices available, connected device use also makes literacy skills learning culturally consonant for ESL learners, plus adds cultural depth to the literacy studies of their classroom Chromebook connected American native peers.  Of course, those educators wanting to take additional coursework in ESL methods or buy print and software specifically designed for ESL learners to enrich the resources they offer students can and should do so.  But in the here and now of next period’s literacy class storytelling and story-authoring experiences for ESL learners and American natives to share together, the connected device can all of them onto the universal digital circle of storytellers and listeners. 

Making this competencies connection as one community is the ultimate goal of ESL second language acquisition!!  Why should connected device storytelling collections and activities be limited to ESL students only??  In this instance American born natives can join the circle as well! This use of technology converges cultures while concretizing unique cultural and community experiences through digital storytelling.

*Digital Storytelling Site is a page from Dr. Helen Barrett's Site on Digital Storytelling in ePortfolios  https://sites.google.com/site/digitalstorysite/

Dr. Rose Reissman is the founder of the Writing Institute, now replicated in 145 schools including the Manchester Charter Middle School in Pittsburgh. She is a featured author in New York State Union Teachers Educators Voice 2016 and was filmed discussing ESL student leadership literary strategies developed at Ditmas IS 62, a Brooklyn public intermediate school. roshchaya@gmail.com