Episode Transcript
Ixchell Reyes
The DIESOL podcast

Brent Warner
Digital Integration in English as a Second or Other Language,

Ixchell Reyes
Episode 29 Zoom Games with Robert Jonte.

Brent Warner
Hello, and welcome to DIESOL. This is Episode 29. We are your hosts, I am Brent Warner,

Ixchell Reyes
and I’m Ixchell Reyes. Hey Brent.

Brent Warner
How are you?

Ixchell Reyes
I’m glad that it’s almost 2021

Brent Warner
Thank you everybody for voting. We are here on episode 29 kind of we’re… man… Yeah, time’s flying. Now these last these last few minutes here. So Ixchell anything new with you.

Ixchell Reyes
Um, nothing new, again, just wrapping up the year trying to sort of reflect on what best practices we’ve learned in terms of, you know, teaching through an online platform. And, you know, how long are we going to be doing this and just sort of reflecting, you know, end of the year stuff.

I did hear a little rumor from one of our other local colleges that they might be closed until 2022. Now they’re starting to come out. So we’ll see what happens.

Well, it’s it’s

Brent Warner
speechless. Yeah. All right. So let’s take a look here. Oh, we have a little thing. So if you listen to this episode, soon after the release, so we leave on release on Monday on Tuesday, you and I are doing a little quick PD session.

Ixchell Reyes
Mm, 30 minutes Orange County CUE, we’re calling it an Orange Slice of PD. And so Brent and I will be doing a presentation.

Brent Warner
You sound so excited

Ixchell Reyes
No, I thought you were gonna come in.

Brent Warner
Oh, you want me to jump in on that? Yeah, so we’re gonna do if you like the the Eduprotocols, episode with Jon Corippo, we’re going to be doing some Eduprotocols in ESL. And so if you have, if you want to look at some basic implementations, how these things actually look. And like I said, it’s just short, it’s 30 minutes in and out, you can have dinner while you’re watching. You can jump in and, you know, talk to us if you want to. But that’ll be at six o’clock on Tuesday, the 17th. I believe that is and you can follow us. You can go get the link from us on Twitter, or you can find it we’ll put it in the show notes as well.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, and that’s 6pm, California time. 8pm, Texas, time, central time, and I guess nine if you’re in New York or the East Coast.

Brent Warner
Awesome. Okay, so let’s get into it.

Ixchell Reyes
Well, today we have another special guest, and I’m actually pretty proud of the salon. We have my colleague here, Robert Jonte. Hey, Robert. Good morning.

Robert Jonte
Good morning. Thanks for having me.

Ixchell Reyes
Thank you for making time on the Saturday to come and record. Robert and I teach together. And I happen to see on one of the workshops that was being offered that he was doing one on games with zoom. So automatically, that caught my interest because number one, I like games. And number two, the number one question right now is how do I keep my students engaged while teaching on zoom or whatever platform you’re using? And also the second question is usually how do I do that without spending all this exorbitant amount of time at recreating things right because you’ve got zoom fatigue and everything else, so we have him on the show. So let me give him a formal introduction. Robert Dante has been teaching English for over a decade, he earned a CELTA from the Prague International House in the Czech Republic before moving to South Korea. He currently teaches with the Defense Language Institute in San Antonio, Texas, and that’s where I met as well. That’s where I met him. He has taught and visited countries across Europe, the Middle East, Central and Eastern Asia. Besides teaching English Robert enjoys painting and making music, the neighbors do not enjoy the latter, he says…

Brent Warner
what kind of music are you making?

Robert Jonte
A lot of noise mostly. Okay. This is a good time of year to go look for pedals for your guitars because people are trying to get inventory in and out for Christmas. So I like to have little noise boxes to stomp on and I don’t know if everyone appreciates it as much as I do.

Brent Warner
Like when you’re saying noise Do you mean actually like noise core type of like, like funky stuff or are you or is that just like a polite way of saying the people don’t like listening to you, your neighbors don’t like listening to you.

Robert Jonte
Probably both. I will play more traditional kind of rock or metal stuff. But I also like I’ll say ambient noise but also, I’m aggressive in your face.

Brent Warner
All right. Is any of that available? Do you have a SoundCloud?

Robert Jonte
I am super lazy, and you’re gonna hear this. It’s totally a part of making these zoom games. The laziness is a strong factor, here.

Brent Warner
Awesome. I like that “The laziness is strong.” That’s a that’s gonna be a new, a new sticker

Robert Jonte
The laziness is strong with this one.

Brent Warner
All right, awesome. So that sounds cool. So when when you become uneasy, and if you do make a SoundCloud someday, we’ll also link to the music so people can get a sense of that. But for now, let’s jump into things. Okay, so the topic is zoom games. Robert, let’s talk a little bit about this. So how did you get started making games? And, you know, obviously, we all we all did this transition, but some people did it more successfully in different areas than others. And it sounds like from what he’s saying, from your sessions, and what your students responses are, that you have very successful. Some of these things work. So can you share just kind of about your first just games in general? And then your approach to bringing them online?

Robert Jonte
Sure. Well, I, I kind of think that our students are just not prepared for some very difficult games. You know, there’s a lot of explanation that needs to go into it. So just just keep the game super simple. And make it up as you go. If you have to think about kids playing games, they don’t make sophisticated rules, they just make it up as you go, Hey, you can’t do that. That’s illegal. And now we’ve got a new rule. Your students are happy to do that, too. So you don’t have to invest too much, really, if you’re feeling a bit creative, and your students get that bug as well.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, that

Robert Jonte
development more organically.

Ixchell Reyes
So, Robert, so I know that you’ve got lots of ideas you’ve got already, I don’t know, if you’ve made some of them up, or you’ve transferred some of them into, or, like you said, you make you make them up as you go along and change and adjust. But what has been your experience so far with those games?

Robert Jonte
Good experience, there is always a learning curve, as I mentioned, and zoom makes things a little more difficult. You know, it’s just another buffer between you. But keep the game simple. And students pick up on it, and seem to have a good time.

Brent Warner
All right, so let’s get into some of the specifics. Um, let’s let’s go to your default game. If you if you have a default. What are you doing? And how do you how do you get it set up? And how do you get your students rolling with it?

Robert Jonte
Well, typically on Monday morning, if I have new students, I’ll kind of prepare them for zoom. Hey, let’s try the annotate button. And can you share your screen with me that kind of thing? So I want to get just a baseline level of ability. Um, I always think all there are five minutes left in class, is this going to be teacher time? I’m going to tell my goofy story, or can we just jam out a quick game? And I think we can all agree the second is better. So I started thinking how can we have just simple games. So often on the classroom, we just write stuff on the board. We’ve got a chat right here. Go to games, things like hot seats, or maybe apples to apples, you can do those in the chat without you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. I think about the flipped classroom. And with hot seat, you know, typically the word is behind the student in the hot seat, and the other students are giving hints we just kind of flip it one student gets the word and must explain it to the others.

Brent Warner
So you send it to the student through through the private chat option then

Robert Jonte
yes, I send them a private chat and say hey, look at the chat. That’s your word and start talking. You could also do taboo but you know that just takes a few seconds for all the teachers Part A think oh, what are the words Connect? What are the easy ones?

Brent Warner
So let’s let’s break these down for people who haven’t played these games before or haven’t you know haven’t refreshed themselves so hot seat words hidden behind the hint that hidden behind that student right and or sorry, they get they get to see the original word. And then Hold on.

Robert Jonte
Let me explain so hot See, I’ve got a whiteboard behind the student and it has a vocabulary word on it. The other students can see the word and they try to make the one student guess. You could also do them teams. Right, right. And in this case, I just flipped the idea. I send one word to one student, and they try to get the others to elicit it.

Brent Warner
Okay, and then do you how do you set up any parameters as you’re going around with that? Or is it just like, hey, just go for it, just just see what you can come up with as long as you don’t say the one word.

Robert Jonte
And that’s it, keep it simple.

Brent Warner
Awesome, then then with taboo, then the version on taboo for this is, you’re also adding a number of words that they’re not allowed to say at the same time, right? Correct. So

Robert Jonte
taboo would be something like a, the word is submarine. You could not say torpedo, I can think of a bunch of ocean words you couldn’t say. Maybe you shouldn’t say torpedo or Navy. So if you said boat underwater, that would be okay. That’s a pretty simple version of taboo. But yeah. So I would send you in, in the chat something like, this is the word. And then below that, don’t say this doesn’t.

Ixchell Reyes
You know, I like that you’re mentioning. Number one, you’re still keeping it simple. Because as we know, the real taboo has maybe like five words that you can’t say, right? So if you’re if you’re, if you’re limiting it to just a couple, that’s great for students who suddenly get nervous when they have to describe something. And they of course, want to say the word that’s listed. And, but it also makes it a little bit more challenging. So if a teacher had more than just the five minutes and or you’re repeating this activity over over a few days, and the students would, would catch on and get better at describing?

Robert Jonte
Definitely. And as someone who teaches the same group of books over and over again, you slowly start to build your repertoire or your I don’t know got like a Word document full of vocabulary words, you could just add the taboo words that copy paste.

Brent Warner
Yeah, that makes it really easy, then, I mean, that’s seriously zero prep. Well, the hot seat is 00 prep, right? You’re just like, here’s the word here it is right, the tab is low prep, still a couple of minutes. And and like you said, if you haven’t already from previous experience, then then you’re real quick to go on to it. I love that that that would play one of these next week. I think,

Ixchell Reyes
for me. For me, this sounds. For me, it sounds particularly useful, because not all of the students in every school have access to a computer. So I do know of cases where some students are simply using mobile devices. And so this makes it very, very stress free for the teacher. I know a lot of a lot of teachers may be turned off to other games, because maybe that platform is not available on the student’s mobile device. So that sort of, you know that that would mean number one, the teacher is not preparing too many things. And also, there’s no stress on like, Hey, is we’re gonna have a glitch because the only glitch is really the microphone, right? If you’re, and I guess if you’re using the count,

Robert Jonte
well, there could be other things going on, I found that everyone’s name is a little bit different.

Ixchell Reyes
Yes, it’s really

Robert Jonte
hard to know what the students see. I like to watch other teachers teach just so I can see their screen. Um, lots of differences between my zoom and other teachers zoom, lots of differences between what I see as the host, and what students see as I guess I’ll say a guest. But using the chat, it’s simple. Everybody knows how to do it. I told you I’m really lazy.

Ixchell Reyes
So So those are some great ideas for vocabulary games. Are there others that you use also to target vocabulary or maybe, perhaps other other content areas, or other games?

Robert Jonte
I really like mad libs. I think Mad Libs are fun. Sometimes I’ll type in just to kind of fill in the blank in the chat as something funny to do and just see what people come up with. They don’t have to use the vocabulary words. But uh, now that I’m thinking about it, you could make a kind of apples to apples Madlib game and get more points that they use the target vocabulary.

Ixchell Reyes
And so, are you familiar with apples to apples?

Brent Warner
Um, I don’t know if I’ve played it. I’m aware of the game. I don’t think I’ve ever actually played it though. How does it work?

Robert Jonte
Let’s do a quick one. Okay, we’re in.

Yes. Hi. I’m going to give you aware. Okay. And then both of you will submit Another word, that other word is somehow connected to my word and whatever I think is the best one. I choose it. So I can be a student. And my word is clown. Go ahead. Car.

Ixchell Reyes
Funny.

Robert Jonte
I get clown car. And of course clown and find makes sense. You know what I’m gonna have to give Brent the point? Yeah, clown car could be. I don’t know, it’s idiomatic. But clown college, I would have given, you know, top top prize.

Ixchell Reyes
Okay, picture again, again, again, can’t win this one.

Robert Jonte
Yeah, and that’s the thing, it’s up to you to decide how close the word is. Um, I could say, a lumberjack. And someone could say x, another person, say beard. Another person could say flannel. And I guess all of those could describe a lumberjack, I’m gonna go with a flannel. You could have debate among students about what’s right and wrong. And I always encourage that.

Brent Warner
Yeah, that’s cool. I like that, too. I now now that I’m thinking about it, you could also have, for example, if you only had a handful of students, or if you only had a handful of students that are able to make the guesses in one in one section, so you’re gonna say, hey, students, ABC, you guys are going to be the ones that are going to be contributing the answers, then you could also, if you already had your poll set up inside of zoom, you could let the rest of the class vote on which ones they liked. So you could just say, you could just have a simple poll, ABC ready. And you could say, you know, hey, all right. You know, Guillermo, you’re a, you know, Joe, your B, and C tshwane, your C, right? And then, and then the students could just vote on those. And you could get a class full class participation in there at the same time without without much extra prep.

Robert Jonte
You see, it’s, I mean, you’re doing the exact thing that I do, I don’t put too much effort into it. Because I’m just going to be devastated when that lesson or game doesn’t come across. I try not to get too invested in it. Because if it’s not working, forget it. Move on to the next thing. But already, you’re kind of coming up with new ideas. I hadn’t thought about that. But the poll?

Brent Warner
Yeah, that’s interesting. I,

Ixchell Reyes
I could, I could see where the bait part would be awesome. Because I like the bait as well, especially, you know, when students get really into it, but you talked a little bit earlier about, you know, having those pockets of time and whether that time is going to be teacher time, talk, you know, giving a story, or the students doing the talking themselves. And I really like that one of those little simple activities in the chat can turn into that, because that’s a challenge that language teachers always face. Right? We end up filling up the empty pockets of time with what we think they want to hear when they should be practicing. So that’s, that’s really cool. I like it.

Robert Jonte
douleur Bueller? Guys, talk to me. Okay, well, let’s play a game. And then once they’re invested, they’ll get very worked up, you’ll get that discussion.

Ixchell Reyes
So you may want it to go back a little bit to Mad Libs, because now I’m interested in that one. And so could you describe like you said, you’d choose something just for the heck of it. Right and and have them? Can you give an example maybe

Robert Jonte
last night, I dreamed about blank, or I dream that blank. And when I woke up, my blank was missing, and dreamed about eating marshmallows and my pillow was missing?

Ixchell Reyes
You know, I,

Robert Jonte
I do not eating? My gosh, what am I missing out?

Ixchell Reyes
You know what I like about that? I just thought those are great. If you want it to target a specific grammar point, and you’re practicing or following up the next day to see if your students internalize something or what they’re still missing because you just said I last night I dreamt that so that gives you a noun clause, right? Or you could have what was the end of your sentence and my brain was missing. But you could do all sorts of things like parallel structure, or you could do sentences, passive sentences and jerison infinitives. This just came to my mind because we know that students often you know, have trouble getting those down.

Robert Jonte
I use the structure that’s in the book or whatever you’re using. You can post it on the zoom whiteboard, so everyone can see it clearly or just throw it in the chat as is and as the answers roll. mentioned them, talk about them in your feelings and hopefully the students will do

Brent Warner
I like that a lot. So that, you know, that’s the prompt that you gave is great too, because you could then turn that into like, hey, this becomes a story writing prompt, right, and you guys create it, you guys created the, the parts of it through a Madlib activity. And now you could theoretically put people put small groups into breakout rooms and say that’s your prompt, tell it create the story. And then we’re going to come back and tell it. There’s a couple other ways to look at this too. Because that could also be dictation. So if you’re not writing it out, but you’re saying, hey, you need to make sure that you’re hearing me well enough and then type the answers into the chat. Right? And or I might repeat it a couple of times. But then I want to hear that full sentence what I said written plus your added part as a proper dictation activity. Yeah, there’s a lot of cool, cool and quick ways that you could jump around with that without you Without having to again, same thing, right, not not doing too much prep. My first thought was, Okay, I’m gonna make all these slides and then each slide, they’ll go to the next one. No, no, hold on. Let’s pull all that back. And do the least possible.

Robert Jonte
To make it simple, silly. Yeah, I like that a lot. Well, on that note about writing stories, I hadn’t thought about this. But have you heard of Twitter stories? people on the bus going to work or will just post online of their novel? Let’s say, you could do the same thing in the chat tell write a short story over the course of the day. I love that idea.

Ixchell Reyes
Twitter stories? I never heard of that.

Brent Warner
I mean, I’ve heard of people writing like, like the Twitter, Twitter novels, but you’re saying like, that’s a collaborative activity for the for the class?

Robert Jonte
Yeah, that’s an idea, just just from what you said, yeah. And about telling stories, I have another idea for that kind of away from the chat. Now, a little more advanced would be to have your students share their screen. They can, of course, share pictures and stuff, whatever you want. But I think it’s neat to have them tell a story. And to do this, you could give them a prompt. And let’s say for example, on where did you go this weekend? And what did you do? Tell me, you know, like, breakfast, morning activity, lunch, midday activity and dinner, evening activity kind of thing. And they will just look for pictures online, I had Eggs Benedict for breakfast. So I’m gonna go type in Eggs Benedict and click on the image. After students have gotten pictures for their stories together, they will just click from tab to tab on their browser, or they can just share the pictures anyway, really, and tell a story with those pictures.

Ixchell Reyes
You know what that again, so. So I think Brent and I, we go from like, we are used to using slides and apps and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But not everybody’s comfortable doing that. And not everybody has the time to do that. And again, like we said, Sometimes that’s just not going to work on the platform that the student is using on their end. And as soon as you said, students are sharing their screen and clicking from tab to tab, that automatically

Brent Warner
then downloading the picture, putting it into the slides having the slides in order, right, like

Ixchell Reyes
yeah, or having or if the student is the one telling the story. Now, there’s very little stress on there. And especially if you’ve got a student who’s not familiar with saving the image importing the image, I know that I have all sorts of, you know, experience with students from different levels of, of ease with technology and for, for our students to that’s that’s a lot that adds a lot of stress if they feel like they don’t know how to do something that the rest of us might say, well just copy and paste. Like, um, but

Robert Jonte
we’ve had students who were a little frightened when we told them to, you know, use the mouse, what mouse? They’re around here. Technology is difficult for everyone in one way or another.

Brent Warner
Yeah, yeah. Right. You know, it’s it’s funny, because now too, I mean, it’s even hard for me sometimes. Now Google many images. If you’re doing like a Google image search, and you want to pull down an image, it pulls down, like you try to drag it off. And it does like the web three thing. Like it doesn’t let you pull the image code. Yeah, so there’s all sorts of little so so again, you’re avoiding all of that just by having a the most direct way to get that get access to those images.

Robert Jonte
And I was that clear the steps of doing this?

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, and Robert, again, is very clear. And I’m coming up with a new like a twist on that. So sometimes you know when we have you gave the example of sequence of events or you know, retelling something, with a clear beginning, middle and ending and of course, We’re focusing on verb tenses, or if we’re focusing on transition statements, or transitional words, this is something where if a student has the tabs in order, it helps them also to internalize the order of something. Or now you could say like, All right. Let’s switch those tabs around. Now retell the story and whatever order that is. But you could throw also, I mean, I guess if people wanted to increase the difficulty of something, or Yeah, throw it throw and make it harder.

Robert Jonte
That would be well, here I have them giving their own story, that teacher or another student could pick a series of images. And then they had that’s kind of a challenge to make up a story quickly.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, so that reminds you of like, we haven’t, we talked about this in one of our episodes, the emoji power paragraph, Brent. That’s one of the major protocols. And that just again, for teachers, I actually did a work a little workshop on on the emoji power paragraph, and one of the instructors was, was telling me, I hate emojis. So I said, oops. But you don’t need to use emojis, you can use images, just pull them up on the tab. And that, again, that’s your randomizer, you’ve got, you’ve got your random images, and you can start telling a story. And then I don’t know if you guys do this, but what I like to do, when students are speaking, either I have the rest of the class retell, because you know, then they have to, now they’re going to give you different details or forget things. And then the third layer of that would be let’s write it together. And then let’s insert things because everybody’s going to remember things differently and report them differently. But now you could have something that is, is collaborative, or built together, co constructed with the students. And you’ll have your your speaking and your writing, and maybe some editing, for grammar, if you’re you know, targeting grammar or targeting certain structures.

Robert Jonte
And doing something like that telling a story with this pictures is hard the first time, I always model it. And then I give them a prompt, usually that same one breakfast, morning activity kind of thing. It’s easy to find it’s easy to follow. And you do have to give them time to go, you know, pick up the story and search for those images. But after that first one, I find that it really helps them tell stories, they of course, go find your pictures faster after that first time. And I forgot the third thing I was gonna say

Brent Warner
I love it. I mean, this is this is just like, yeah.

Robert Jonte
Yeah, it was just so simple. And then Nextel comes up and she’s like, Oh,

Ixchell Reyes
no, no, no, no, it’s because I’m thinking again, like I said, teachers often come to me or colleagues and I often like to see what else what other gadget what other tool what how are they doing this. But the issue we’re always trying to come back to is how do we keep our students engaged? And how do we make that time worth it? And also, how do we give them more time, more time to experience and practice the language, right? And so sometimes we get, I’m thinking, Man, there has been times when I know, I already know that it’s gonna take a while for the students to learn technology and all that. And I expect that but if I can just cut that out, and throw in something like this, that works, that that does that fulfills the goal, right? Like with the Twitter stories, we can’t sit around in class and pass out the piece of paper and fold it and then say, continue the you know, continue it. But you can still do that in the chat, you can still do that on the whiteboard annotation, or the other whiteboard tool

Robert Jonte
does take a little more effort to not prepare it, but just explain to the students and making sure it’s clear, you know, in class, you can just throw out those little strips of paper here, you it’s not like you need to do more prep work, but you do need to do a lot more explaining.

Brent Warner
Yeah. I mean, all these things are quickly like, yeah, I think just the way that that our brains work is like okay, what other variations of these that might work for my class. And I was thinking to on the Twitter stories that people were using Padlet then you could have like, five or six people create the first sentence, right? And then, and then students could choose different ones when they have an idea for the second sentence across the different across the different columns. Does that make sense? So so that that way you could have like, Hey, we can have we can create a bunch of different stories and you can jump around to see and that would also be challenging them to be thinking credit or you know, thinking flexibly, as they’re looking at different changing stories. So that doesn’t, doesn’t always go the way that they want the concern that I would Have around, the chat only would be that someone puts in a sentence and then someone else had written their sentence, they lose it or it’s like someone got it in before me. I mean, it could still be fun. But like, yeah, it’s just different ways to look

Ixchell Reyes
at that. I’m thinking. So for people who don’t use Padlet, especially if you don’t have the paid version, you’re limited. So I’ve sort of shied away from Padlet. But just a simple as a Google Doc, a Google Doc, and I just reminded me of an activity or I have students go in there and find a picture or write a sentence. But now if you’re doing Twitter stories, and each student is assigned a page or something, or even a slide, I guess, if you wanted to go with Google Slides, and your foot in the students could be flipping between the stories or among the stories and writing out different sentences. And as their, you know, once, let’s say on page one, you have a couple of lines already written, by the time they get to page four, that story has already changed the course of where the story’s going has changed. And by the time you get back to number one, and you’re reading your own story, so it just, you know, I could see that being really fun. After you do it a few times, too, because I could also see it just being so much fun that we start writing things and then you’ve got to wrap up the story. So it has an end. Well, and

Brent Warner
also as the teacher, you could go in and kind of mess with their stories, right? Like you could go in and throw in a sentence that like, totally skews it. Because one thing that I have with my students is like, it takes them a while to feel brave in creativity. Sometimes, you know, like, as we’re dealing with adults, right? Like kids, I think will go crazy and do anything but like, but with adults, they sometimes kind of go for like, Oh, I went to the store, and then I bought bread. And then I went to the checkout, and then I went to my car. And it’s like, okay, but like, but where are the aliens popping in to destroy all of the bread in the in the you know, whatever it is so right. So I think as a teacher, you could go in and really kind of mess with them really and change that around and then have some fun with seeing how they continue to use language to make adjustments to your your distractions, I guess inside of there.

Robert Jonte
Have you ever heard of the improvisation game? Yes. And

Brent Warner
yes. And please tell me about.

Robert Jonte
It’s an amazing game and way to get engaged students. I use it all the time.

Brent Warner
Oops. Robert, we lost your audio here. Hold on. Go ahead

Robert Jonte
and give me a date. Yes. Oh,

Brent Warner
yes. And sometimes, it makes me want to jump up and down doing jumping jacks.

Robert Jonte
Yes. And you know, I have to get in my exercise. So we’re just kind of making up stuff and saying, Yes, I agree to that idea. And here’s more. Well, that’s something you can do with students and going from this ray as his idea. Hey, throw them a curveball. Don’t tell them Yes. And say but for for all. VO as if they’re if you really want to start writing stories, start throwing them those calls. And that’s one way to do it. I love it. Yes, and but using but or one of those other connecting words.

Ixchell Reyes
I like that because so we’re doing speaking practice. But sometimes you’ve got discussions where students have to hit specific language functions or know how to disagree diplomatically know how to compliment someone, and also know how to take a compliment stuff like that. And I sometimes through zoom, that’s, that’s I haven’t, I haven’t had a chance to revisit but now I’m thinking if you were to play that, in zoom, and especially now where I think on, I’m gonna guess that if everybody’s updated to the latest zoom, you can arrange the titles of the pictures on your screen. Mm hmm. And so you, you can randomize or you can now call on someone and as a teacher, if you’re throwing them a curveball now you can say, you know, whatever it is that you’re targeting, it could be a transition or it could be like what the but yes, but because now you’re forcing them to think in that subordinating the hierarchies of grammar. So that’s a cool one. I’m gonna use that just for fun in regular conversation.

Robert Jonte
Yeah, lots of times people don’t use the target grammar. You know, it’s our target is what we want to study. Their grammar is fine and totally valid. We’re just not practicing that now. So if they kind of get away from the not the topic, but from the target grammar, and you can just use something like that. I’ll put in the chat or just straight out button to say yes and or Yes, bye.

Ixchell Reyes
That’s really cool. Any I’m now I’m also thinking. So we talked about how sometimes it becomes difficult for students to be creative, you could also have them do the same things with a partner in a breakout room, and then you can come back together. And now I bet that the second or third time after they’ve done it with different partners, they’re going to be a lot more smoother and a lot more quick on their feet to come up with something. And that gives them the confidence to be able to do that together as a group. So I’m, I like that idea.

Brent Warner
I also like the idea that these are kind of short and fast activities, because because they can get more comfortable with it over a couple of times, I think Robert liquids was saying earlier is like, if you do an activity that you put all this effort into, and it blows up, then as a teacher, you’re not really motivated to try it again, right. But if you’re like, hey, it just took a couple of minutes. And now let’s have you guys do it again, and do it a different way. And then they kind of, you know, they get their footing with the activity, and then they start to build their creativity and their language and you know, all the parts that we’re hoping for, then it feels a lot more satisfying. And we’re not as like, Oh, I spent this time I built it all and it didn’t work. And now I definitely don’t want to do another 20 minute activity that’s going to fail again, right?

Robert Jonte
It’s practice makes perfect. And you just have to walk into it knowing I’m gonna lose time. From the first zoom class, I did it, I walked in thinking I’ve lost like an hour from the day just just because of the platform, and you have to come to terms with that and, and deal with it as best as you can. But put in that time with the students. Like I said, Every Monday, even if a patent before, I’ll be like come on, share your screen, annotate. I’ll even do remote control with them. But after you put in that effort, it makes things a lot better, a lot easier, a lot smoother. Practice makes perfect. I love it.

Ixchell Reyes
You know what else I love about these ideas? Because again, I’m going from like, okay, teachers asked me, How do I use Google this and Google that and Google whatever, to create this. And I want it to do that. And I just think Well, why don’t you just a document. So I’m either simplifying it for them. So they don’t feel like they’re not performing well, because that’s also a real teacher anxiety. But if that’s the teacher, then the student also now has to if the student can’t use it now, as you said, it’s set up to fail. But I like that you can throw a bunch of these in one day, and every at the end of every hour, that’s your like transitioning activity. And by the end of the day, you’ve done through our four different ways three or four different games, and you’ve targeted different areas. So I kind of I wish I don’t have students at the moment, but I kind of want to try

Robert Jonte
and target or not just have fun.

Brent Warner
Yeah, and call your friends and do a little zoom happy to play these games. We can do it a drinks with DIESOL.

Ixchell Reyes
Hey, there

Robert Jonte
we go.

Ixchell Reyes
We should totally do that. Well, now we know we’re gonna do Drinks with DIESOL

Brent Warner
I guess we are doing the November drinks with DIESOL. About 100 games here. Okay, so Robert, anything else? I mean, it sounds like you’re, you’re like a treasure trove of all sorts of activities, what anything else that’s, uh, that you really like or that you think is worth sharing?

Robert Jonte
Let’s see, so I’m sharing the screen telling the story. You could also do a scavenger hunt that way. I always kind of when I was looking for zoom games, I would see a lot of things intended for elementary school children really, it’s still applicable towards our classes. One thing was a scavenger hunt. And you could look around the room. Or you could just get a picture online, do the same thing as before. But you could also do a scavenger hunt. Combined with apples to apples. Maybe you share a picture or a word and then you have them go find something else to

Brent Warner
Oh, okay, so like a little twist. So I’m gonna say like, here’s my, here’s my item, right? And then you guys got to go find an item that can that can be combined with it somehow.

Robert Jonte
Yeah, so Brett’s holding up a green glass bottle. And I have here a glass of water. So I could hold that up and say, oh, water goes on the glass. Okay. It still got some coffee. I don’t think that matters, as well. But it’s up to Brent. just writing today,

Brent Warner
right? And someone might bring a flower or something and then say, Oh, that’s gonna become a vase or you know, yeah, that’s

Ixchell Reyes
and and you said you could be doing that with images, right? So students could go out and Google the image, share the image and then do you vote? Does a teacher decide does a class as well?

Robert Jonte
Make it up as you go?

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, also that

Robert Jonte
you know, the whole idea of getting pictures really came from my students giving their presentations, and it’s on zoom. So I can look at you read and that’s fine. But you make use of the platform and it’s not too hard sharing some pictures to go with your presentation. And this one student, he gave a presentation on the Harlem Globetrotters dice. And he had exactly one black and white picture that stayed up the entire. So when I was giving him my critique, I didn’t have my camera on. I just shared the screen of the Harlem Globetrotters like best up video, and it was just slam dunk after slam dunk, as I was explained to him, you know, you gave us some good information, but it was a little bit dry. I thought, you know, why did he make use of the internet, you’ve got everything at your fingertips. So I just used that as a way to get students to spice up the presentations originally. Really?

Brent Warner
I love it. Yeah, that’s, you know, I think once people start realizing a lot of times, again, more, maybe more of an adult thing. But like, they don’t realize or don’t don’t kind of focus on how much information and how much access they have right there to be able to share and to be able to build and create with, which I think is one of the great things about classes these days for me is once they start recognizing they’re like, wait, I can do this sounds like I can do that. And like, you can do anything. And then, you know, then they start really enjoying the process a lot more. Because I think that for many years, students have been trained to work with dry or minimal access to information and materials. And now that it’s all out there, there’s so much fun for them to have, right.

Robert Jonte
It’s kind of overwhelming, really. I I like books, they’re my friends. But they’re very boring for some people. You don’t have to read a book people are reading all the time on on Facebook or Twitter or anything. I think just like teachers with technology students are sometimes reticent to dive in. And these little these little baby steps can help everybody.

Ixchell Reyes
Thank you thinking, as we’re as we’re talking about the simplicity of the games. That’s right, when we first started teaching from home, or teaching through zoom, it was just a monumental task to try to figure out how to do all these things. And I remember the one thing that kind of solved all my issues or when I when I sort of felt a little more relief is all I need is to be able to share the screen. And to use the chat. As long as they can hear me, right. I mean, to get the very minimal, because at first it was try, try and fail and try again, try and fail and try again. And so again, all of these things you could do without having to you just need the material that you’re using from whatever curriculum you’re you’re teaching, right? Because all of these can then turn into Okay, now you guys are gonna type out a story or type this out or expand on it for homework. So you can do this simple game in class and then expand on it at a later hour or in a follow up activity, which I really like. Because you’re

Robert Jonte
you have these things here, you’ve got the chat available, you know, you haven’t erased the board.

Ixchell Reyes
Right, right.

Brent Warner
So Robert, one thing that you’re saying to us really stands out to me is let go of the rules, right? Let go of like, there must be this and it must be that and I think you’re kind of, you’re kind of layering that in as Ixchell and I go into, like, you could do this and this and this and you’re like you could or you could simplify and just make it you know, like I mean, and and both ways are great, right, depending on what you’re trying to do and how quickly you’re trying to do things.

Robert Jonte
Yeah, be ambitious. Mm hmm.

Brent Warner
Yeah. So there’s a lot of fun things. Um, I think there’s a just a great starter. And I hope that like, as we were going through an ACL, I’m sure you’d agree with me like, it starts sparking ideas, right? Because when you start simple, it’s easy to spark ideas from simple right when when you’re like, Okay, I’m gonna set up this board and then this board is going to link you out to 10 different websites and those 10 different websites is each getting it’s like, hold on a second, that’s not simple. That’s not a simple start, right? And so, I like this idea of, you know, I’m gonna really encourage people to go back and listen, because each of these kind of like sets your mind onto like, where you want to go and what you’re trying to do with your students. And there’s just so much potential for creativity and student engagement with with a basic starts and, and, and kind of, well one zero prep, but also kind of easy expectations for the students to where they don’t don’t really have to spend too much time figuring out what you’re trying to do.

Robert Jonte
Yeah, little to no prep. And after one two examples, the sheet students should be able to pick it up pretty easily. And you know, you had all those back pocket games for those last five minutes. You’ve got an awesome

Ixchell Reyes
Mad Libs. I love that one. And again, Mad Libs have been there forever. But Mad Libs gives me all sorts of great ideas.

Brent Warner
Okay, so Ixchell, we have gotten a review!

Ixchell Reyes
Oh, what?

Brent Warner
From Emily Minerva, thank you so much for sharing. It’s short and sweet. And we are grateful for it. So So yes, thank you great for all teachers, but especially for ESL and ELL truly. Thank you. So Emily, if you are listening to this episode, please feel free to reach out. Don’t “feel free.” I mean, please reach out because we would love to send you the pin. As a thank you for coming on. And leaving that review for us. All of these reviews really help us out and help other people find the show. So thank you so much.

Ixchell Reyes
All right. It is time for our fun finds. And Brent, you’re going to kill me for this one. Because it’s coffee related. And it’s I recently got really lazy and I don’t like to go get I usually have an iced coffee in the morning to get my day started, but–

Brent Warner
You’re not gonna recommend instant coffee, are you?

Ixchell Reyes
I’ve never had instant coffee. I’ve never done wait and it’s worse it’s Starbucks.

Brent Warner
Wait what you’re really in your your your fun find is a Starbucks instant coffee?

Ixchell Reyes
We’re going with lazy and simple right?

Brent Warner
Oh my god.

Ixchell Reyes
Guess what I have this morning.

Brent Warner
So this is like powder that and hot water that you put in?

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah. That’s that’s the state of as I said 2021’s gotta be better.

Brent Warner
Okay, I don’t know if I can accept that. But all right. Okay, so tell us about why this is so fun and enjoyable for you.

Ixchell Reyes
Um, because I don’t have to do any prep. It’s just the water and —

Brent Warner
some things are worth prepping for.

Ixchell Reyes
You know, as you know, I’m getting sometimes it’s like what I have to get in my car drive out there. And that’s kind of where it’s like, nope, let me just save a little money and mediocre coffee. If you accept mediocre. Alright. No Brent’s a coffee snob.

Brent Warner
I don’t know what to say about. I mean, I certainly get the idea of not wanting to leave the house early in the morning though. So I understand. All right. So my fun find is the show Ted Lasso if you haven’t seen this on Apple TV, so I know a lot of people don’t have Apple TV. But if you are going to go get yourself a Christmas gift of some sort of Apple product, I think they’re giving Apple TV for free away with that. Or if you get the one month free subscription or whatever that is, this first show I would recommend watching is Ted lassa. It is truly joyful. It is like is like the character, the Jason Sudeikis who plays the main character, he’s like this very positive and, you know, guy who’s always trying to look on the bright side of things. And he’s moved to England to become a soccer coach where he doesn’t know anything about it. Because he’s been a football coach his whole life an American football coach. And so it’s a great show. Like really just his joy and positivity is like something we really need these days. And I was incredibly impressed with how well done the show is still modern. It’s not like a cheesy and cheeky like, oh, like everything’s all great all the time. There’s there’s ups and downs in it, but I can’t recommend it highly enough. Outstanding. So Ted last Oh, Robert, do you have a fun find something that you’d like to share?

Robert Jonte
Voting! Voting works! We found out this past election, that voting matters. No, it doesn’t matter if you were for Trump or Biden, we see how close it was across all the states. Voting is a fun find. We are finding out that it works. It’s important and it’s a way to get your voice heard. And in America we’ve always got an election coming up. So pay attention to the local election.

Brent Warner
Absolutely. Awesome.

Ixchell Reyes
Thanks so much for listening to the show. As always, you could win a one of a kind DIESOL pin by leaving us a review on Apple podcasts. And if you’re giving us a shout out any other way Make sure you tag us on social media so that we can get that out to you. Otherwise, we don’t know that it exists somewhere. We also sent out a kind of a poll on whether we should have a drinks with DIESOL because it falls on the day after Thanksgiving, which is Black Friday. And we decided that if we had enough interest, we would hold it. And I think, Brent, have we come to a consensus on this? I think we’re leaning towards.

Brent Warner
Yeah, I think we’re leaning towards

Ixchell Reyes
leaning towards Yes. So again, it’s just every fifth Monday of the month, which happens maybe twice or three times, in this case this year, we just have kind of like an one hour get together with our listeners, we play games, we do prizes, and then we connect listeners from from all over. So we’ve now got a little group of listeners that talk to each other outside of outside of the show. So that’s kind of cool. So we’re connecting you there. So for information on that, please. Of course it will be on our website drinks. It’ll be DIESOL.org slash drinks. Or I know of course we’ll be sending stuff out through our social media channels.

Brent Warner
Yeah, so you can sign up at DIESOL.org slash drinks and be reminded of it to by email in case you forget because that is Black Friday and people might be distracted with other things on the internet on that day, but But yeah, Drinks with DIESOL. We are leaning towards a yes for sure. So sign up if you want to participate. For show notes and other episodes, please check out DIESOL.org slash 29 the number two nine or of course you can always listen to us at voice at Canada. That’s a voice at vo ic ed.ca. You can find us on Twitter. The show is @DIESOLpod D I E S O L pod and I am @BrentGWarner.

Ixchell Reyes
You can find me, Ixchell, at Ixy underscore Pixy that’s I x y underscore p i x y and Robert How can people get in touch with you?

Robert Jonte
I am not a social media person. They could directly email me if they like is R W Jonte. That is Romeo Whiskey Juliet Oscar November Tango Echo@gmail.com.

Brent Warner
Thanks!

Robert Jonte
In Czech, thank you is Děkuju. Děkuju for tuning into the DIESOL podcast.

Brent Warner
Thanks, everybody. Take care guys.

In this episode we meet up with ESL Instructor, Robert Jonte, to discuss several games that translate well into Zoom! He discusses how to recreate classic favorites as Zoom versions; best of all, these require little to no prep because as Robert shares, all you need is the ability to share a screen, annotate, and use the chat function. Listen in as we dive into ways to use up those few minutes left of class and target specific language areas!

Robert Jonte has been teaching English for over a decade. He earned his CELTA from the Prague International House in the Czech Republic before moving to South Korea. He currently teaches with the Defense Language Institute in San Antonio, TX. He has taught and visited countries across Europe, the Middle East, Central and Eastern Asia. Besides teaching English, Robert enjoys painting and making music. The neighbors do not enjoy the latter. Contact Robert by email: rwjonte@gmail.co
m


ZOOM GAMES

  • Hot Seat: Whiteboard behind the student; Student cant see the word, but the audience can. Students in audience describe the word until the person in the hot seat guesses!
  • Taboo: Similar to Hot Seat but with limitations on what can be said in the word description; one student describes while others guess.
  • Mad Libs: Sentence starters, “Last night I dreamt that _______ and when I woke up, my ________ was gone.”
    • Target grammar structure review
    • Dictations
    • Creative Writing
    • Debating different responses
  • Twitter Stories: One-sentence line stories that students add onto; revise at the end, or vote on which is the class favorite!
  • Apples to Apples: Teacher picks a word and students give another word connected to the topic. Teacher picks a winner– students can debate which word is better connected. Flip it around and have the activity be student-led.
  • Telling Stories: Start with a prompt; allow students to write and find images to tell their story by sharing their screens
  • Improvisation game: “YES AND? / YES BUT?” 
  • Scavenger Hunt …with Google Images!

FUN FINDS

Orange Slice: Eduprotocols in ESL

Come join Brent & Ixchell on Tuesday, 11/17 at 6 pacific for a quick grab-n-go PD session. We’ll be talking about using Eduprotocols in ESL to engage and build your students’ skills.

Sign up at: https://bit.ly/eduprotocolsinesl

DRINKS WITH DIESOL

We sent out a survey and looks like there is enough interest in a virtual Drinks with DIESOL on Black Friday, Nov. 27. We’re leaning toward yes at the moment, but we’ll let you know if it’s a go in a few days. In the meantime, sign up for a reminder: DIESOL.org/drinks

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *