AOK Basic Skills Project
Portland, Maine
E: kirkjohnb5@gmail.com
W: www.aokbasicskills.gratis
2021-11-20
Re: Improving Conversation with Educational Games and Pairwork
Dear Superintendent of Schools:
I’m a semi-retired ESOL teacher over 65 and lived in Ecuador for over 10 years before recently relocating to Portland, Maine in the U.S. I am the director of AOK, a charitable educational effort and my retirement project that was connected to my English school in Quito. AOK is not an organization. It specializes in teaching basic skills. During the past three years, I have written 20 AOK Basic Skills Workshops and before the Pandemic presented many of them throughout the Ecuadorian Sierra.
During the past three years, I have written 20 AOK Life Skill Workshops and presented many of them throughout the Ecuadorian Sierra. Recently, I have been working on an English workshop for Grades 1-12 that I would like to share with your district without cost.
Workshop summary
The workshop takes place in 50 minutes. Through Power Point, I explain how to connect the basic skills objectives of many English language public school curriculums with teacher-made games and pair-work. I also provide an 18-page archive of free English language learning websites for games. One topic of the workshop is how games lend themselves to being supportive to classes with slightly varied levels of students.
The provided file is organized around the theme of how to integrate vocabulary and grammar in conversation activities through educational games and pair-work. Through it I show the teachers how they can not only make their own games and pair-work activities, but also how they can use the file to download ready-made materials for their classes from free, internationally recognized sites.
Over the past few years the use of game and pair-work activities have been quickly growing in commercial texts and on free Internet sites. Teachers like to use them because they increase the use of the target language and energize their classes. Depending on the time allowed, there are possible follow-up activities immediately after the presentation, and I would be happy to work with the workshop director in this regard.
The long-term purpose of the workshop
The long-term purpose of the workshop is to encourage the UN to provide an independent language learning (ILL) website that provides language training and lists free, annotated websites that can help facilitate it. The UN would do this in support of its 2030 Sustainable Development Goal 4: Quality education.
I will ask the workshop director if the participants can take part in the project by completing a voluntary and anonymous workshop evaluation. If this is not possible, I would still appreciate the opportunity to present the workshop to your group of teachers.
Registration
Because the language study materials that I use are written for non-commercial purposes, I do not charge for the presentation. I was registered with the Dirección Nacional de Talento Humano in Ecuador.
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Sincerely,
John B. Kirk, Director
E: kirkjohnb5@gmail.com