Last week, I met up with ESL Library's CEO, Ben Buckwold, at the annual BC TEAL conference. Because our team is located all across Canada, conferences are the only chance we get to hang out in person. Ben works in our head office in Winnipeg, Manitoba, while I work in Vancouver, BC. Head writer Tara Benwell, who lives in Kitchener, Ontario, was sorely missed, but at least we'd had the chance to catch up in person at the TESOL 2016 conference in Baltimore earlier in April.

BC TEAL's conference theme was building community, and we certainly felt that to be true for us with all the Canadian connections we made at this conference!

Left to right: ESL Library editor Tanya Trusler & CEO Ben Buckwold

More Canadian Content

If you subscribe to ESL Library, you'll notice we provide American, Canadian, and British English versions of most of our lessons. Though we have subscribers in more than 100 countries, we are a Canadian company, so we feel it's important to keep up with what's happening in the ELT field in Canada.

The BC TEAL conference provided us with a great opportunity to find out what's new with the Canadian Language Benchmarks (CLB) and to strengthen our connections with Canadian teachers and administrators. So far this year, we've been hard at work adapting our lessons to better meet the needs of Canadian teachers, and this BC TEAL conference was an excellent opportunity to find out from teachers and CLB experts how we've been doing and how we can improve even more.

Keynote Speakers

We also had a chance to finally meet one of our long-time guest bloggers, Shelly Sanchez Terrell. Shelly and Lindsay Clandfield were the keynote speakers at this conference, and their presentations were as inspiring as we expected!

 

Left to right: ESL Library editor Tanya Trusler, keynote speaker Shelly Sanchez Terrell & ESL Library CEO Ben Buckwold

Lindsay Clandfield spoke about Critical Thinking in Critical Times. He offered up many great activities to get English language learners to think outside the typical ELT-activity box. Find more about Lindsay and his amazing work in our field at lindsayclandfield.com.

Shelly Sanchez Terrell spoke about The Power of a Goal-Minded Teacher. She shared how her 30 Goals Challenge can motivate teachers to try things they haven't tried before, especially when it comes to using technology in the classroom. Find more about Shelly's engaging work at 30Goals.com. Both Lindsay and Shelly are published ELT authors.

Shelly Sanchez Terrell explaining her 30 Goal Challenge for teachers

BC TEAL

We had the chance to meet many members of the BC TEAL board, including retiring president Shawna Williams, key conference organizers Nathan Hall  and Alex Bale (who went out of their way to make us feel welcome), new president Joe Dobson, and board members Sandra Boehm and Scott Roy Douglas. Apologies to those I didn't get to meet and therefore didn't mention—I know it takes many people to run a successful conference such as this one!

The conference this year took place at the Surrey campus of Simon Fraser University (my awesome alma mater), and the location and volunteers (SFU students) were top-notch. Overall, we had a fantastic time at the sessions and events, and we enjoyed meeting teachers from across Canada and finding out how our lessons could be adapted to meet their needs.

Sessions

I attended many excellent sessions and I learned so much about CLB and PBLA (portfolio-based language assessment). Here are some key takeaways from the sessions I attended:

1. Understanding & Creating Assessment Tools (PBLA)

with Lisa Herrera, Caroline Pendleton & Claire Pinkett

• CLB is about improvement and keys to success, not about pass or fail, so we are moving away from numeric assessment. (E.g., a score of 9/10 isn't helpful for the student if the mistake was a key element to success—for instance, if you missed filling out a key part of a bank loan application, you wouldn't get the loan even if the rest was filled out correctly.)
• Low levels of CLB need learner-friendly language on the assessments.
• Comprehension tasks should not just check for content—they must be clearly linked to CLB criteria in the assessment tool.
• For split-level classes, put assessment criteria for each level on separate sheets so students only focus on the criteria that's relevant for their level.

2. Community Building and Growing Intercultural Competence in Language Classrooms

with Taslim Damji

• Community can be defined as a sense of belonging, and it applies to the classroom as well as the outside world.
• Intercultural competence is the ability to move between cultures with sensitivity and respect.
• Say to students, "This is the way it will work for you in this country," not "This is the right way to do it."

3. Writing Effective CLB Aligned Comprehension Questions

with Lisa Herrera

• The goal when writing comprehension questions is to try to measure if students can complete a real-world task goal in the real world at the standard of their CLB level.
• Make the wording of questions simple and clear so students know what's being asked.
• Matching/sequencing questions are good for skill-building but not great for assessment.
• Use True/False questions sparingly because they're difficult to write well.
• Fill-in-the-blanks are good for detail questions.
• Short answers are good for single ideas.
• Multiple-choice questions are great for checking students' knowledge (i.e., they might know the answer, but they can't always produce it, which is problematic in other types of questions).
• There are not a lot of CLB materials out there right now. (This is where ESL Library comes in very handy!)

4. Assessment Tools That Support Student Growth in the Classroom

with Svetlana Lupasco & Shawna Williams

• Use assessment to develop skills, not to test skills.
• Desconstruct assessment into a series of manageable steps.
• Be sure to engage students in feedback, and follow up on the assessment/feedback.

5. Integrating PBLA into Your Everyday Classroom

with Pat Marilley-Bodner & Astrid van der Pol

• Good guidelines to follow for PBLA: Include 8–10 artefacts (assessments) per month if you teach full-time (5 days or 15/hrs/wk); include 6–8 artifacts if you teach part-time.
• Each real-world task can include multiple artefacts, so aim for 2–4 real-world tasks per month.
• Use the CLB book for guidelines for assessment tasks.

6. In general:

• There was a great deal of talk in many of the sessions of moving away from numerical and pass/fail scoring vs. measures such as achieved, achieved with help, needs improvement; just beginning, on my way, and success (Lupasco); or images of a seed, a sprout, and a plant (Williams). The purpose is to get students to think of success in terms of accomplishing a real-world task and not a grade. Because not all teachers have implemented this change, we at ESL Library have tried to create assessment templates that offer both choices.

• The focus of all Canadian LINC classes should be on real-world task goals. There is an important shift from typical classroom textbooks/activities to real-world tasks that would happen outside the classroom. Everything, from skill-building tasks to skill-using tasks and assessment tasks, should apply to real-world tasks. (This seems like a lot of work for teachers, so ESL Library will strive to create or adapt more lessons that focus on real-world tasks!)

Pecha Kucha

My first Pecha Kucha was a lot of fun. Pecha Kucha is a six-and-a-half-minute presentation where the speaker has only 20 seconds to talk about each slide. There is an emphasis on silliness and fun with these kinds of presentations, and the BC TEAL Pecha Kucha presentations were no exception!

Shelly Sanchez Terrell giving her Pecha Kucha on funny would-be apps for teachers (vacation app: yes!)

A funny and touching Pecha Kucha tribute to retiring BC TEAL president Shawna Williams (image of Shawna and current BC TEAL president Joe Dobson)

BC TEAL 2017

Next year marks BC TEAL's 50th anniversary, and the CarnivEAL (love this idea!) conference will take place at Vancouver Community College. Our ESL Library team will be on hand to reconnect with Canadian teachers and have some more fun with the BC TEAL board members. Between now and then, please contact us with any other CLB requests or needs. Our goal is to make teachers' lives easier, so we love hearing from our subscribers to find out what they want and need!