Previous For REEAL Webinars
A closer look at the lives and literacies of gamers as second language users and teachers
For REEAL Webinar - 6 June 2023
Raúl Alberto Mora is an Associate Professor at the School of Education and Pedagogy at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in Medellín. He chairs the Literacies in Second Languages Project (LSLP) research lab, working with prospective and practicing teachers as #TeamLaV in Colombia. Through this webinar, Raúl talked about how his team of gamers as actual researchers study the connections between gaming and second language literacies and shared the work done by his team. Raúl also explained what it means to "gamify" ESL teaching and learning and what "winning" means in the learning process.
Arts-Based Pedagogies for Language Education: Potential and Problems
For REEAL Webinar - 2 May 2023
Monica Waterhouse is currently director of ESL teacher education program at Université Laval. She has over 20 years of English language teaching experience in diverse contexts. Through this webinar, Monica talked about arts-based pedagogy in the context of language education through diverse examples drawn from classroom-based research. Monica illustrated how various art forms such as music, poems, drawings, among others, can be used to support language teaching and learning.
So my students are using technology outside of the classroom, what does that mean for me in the classroom?" Connecting Research to Practice
For REEAL Webinar - 4 April 2023
Melanie M. Wong is an Assistant Professor of Teaching at the University of British Columbia. Through this webinar, Melanie talked about how to utilize different technological tools to maximize student engagement and learning and to bridge home and school environments. Using concrete examples, Melanie illustrates how digital technologies, such as padlets, ChatGPT, digital community mapping, among others, can be used in language and content learning in critical and thoughtful ways.
Children’s Literature with Emergent Bilinguals
For REEAL Webinar - 7 March 2023
Geneviève Brisson is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Education at the Université de Sherbrooke and director of the ESL teacher education program (2021-2023). In this webinar, Geneviève talked about how to use children’s literature with emergent bilinguals, mobilizing their plurilingual knowledge and resources to read English and/or bi/plurilingual books and engage in learning activities that can promote their metalinguistic awareness
Building a Strong Sense of Self – Owning the Words You Use: An adaptation of the Aware-Explore-Apply Model for the classroom
For REEAL Webinar - 7 February 2023
Joanna Rowe is Education Consultant for Nunavik School Board Kativik Ilisarniliriniq. Through this talk, Joanna shared an adaptation of Niemiec’s Aware-Explore-Apply model to help students read and explore the strengths of characters in novels or short stories. Students have the opportunity to reflect and discuss how they use their own strengths in various aspects of their everyday lives. Joanna also shared how to design lessons to engage students in comparing and contrasting strengths and values as conceived by the English and Inuktitut cultures, and how they themselves reconcile the two worlds.
Plurilingual approaches to ESL teaching and learning – what, why and how?
For REEAL Webinar - 10 January 2023
Sunny Man Chu Lau, Full Professor in the School of Education at Bishop’s University, Québec, is Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Integrated Plurilingual Teaching and Learning. Through this talk, she explained what plurilingualism means and its implications for teaching and learning. Multilingual students come with a wealth of linguistic and cultural resources. Yet traditional ESL classrooms often default to “English only” as the best teaching practice. While there is merit to monolingual practice and target language models, students’ language competences developed inside, and outside school can be more fully leveraged to support higher-order complex language learning and concept development. This webinar answered various queries asked by in- and pre-service teachers and educators as to how we can utilize students’ plurilingual competences for in-depth learning while promoting target language development and overall metalinguistic awareness and skills.
21st Century Second Language Learning: The eTandem Approach
For REEAL Webinar - 6 December 2022
Susan Parks is an Associate Professor at Université Laval and is mainly involved in ESL teacher preparation and practicum supervision in Quebec schools. In collaboration with colleagues, Sabrina Priego and Laurence Capus, she co-founded the Tandem Canada Platform. In this webinar, she explained the principles of the tandem approach to pair ESL students with English language speakers who are learning French or another language. The paired classes will be engaged in activities that maximize learning of the respective languages. Dr. Parks also discussed how the Tandem Canada Platform could serve to facilitate the management of such exchanges.
Using Virtual Reality in the Language Classroom: A Task-based Virtual Journey - Robin Couture-Matte
For REEAL Webinar - 1 November 2022
Robin Couture-Matte is a sessional lecturer and a PhD candidate at Université Laval (Quebec, Canada). In this webinar, he introduced participants to the use of high-immersive virtual reality (HVR) for language learning. Through using head-mounted displays (e.g., Occulus Quest 2, Windows Mixed Reality, Oculus Rift), his HVR based projects enabled ESL students to carry out engaging communicative tasks and creative writing projects. The speaker also discussed the challenges and opportunities for HVR use in the language classroom.
A stranger on Indigenous Land: Indigenous Perspectives in Language Teaching - Nancy Griffith- Zahner
For REEAL Webinar- 4 October 2022
Nancy Griffith- Zahner is the Head of the Languages Department and core French teacher at Charles Hays Secondary School in Prince Rupert, British Columbia. She started this workshop with her story of gradual decolonization as a white settler who engages Indigenous ways of knowing and Indigenous content to create a classroom which values local culture and place- based learning. The webinar also delves into the ways that second-language classroom can be used as a vehicle for holistic learning and deep appreciation of indigenous content and ways of knowing.