60 During the three-week exercise – which took place about four months into the program – we began by taking the last 20 minutes of each class to plan and prepare. As we got closer to the event, we found ourselves devoting a quarter, then half, of each class to preparations. One group activity early on was using a SmartBoard connected to a laptop to design a poster advertising the Community Fair. Students gave their input on how the poster should look as I captured their ideas on the SmartBoard. We used language appropriate to CLB-3 students to make sure it would be accessible to most learners in the school. Early in the week before the event, each student pair used one of our class periods for a self-guided field trip to meet face-to-face with representatives of the community group or business they had contacted. The students used the meeting to gather additional information about the organization and pick up items such as brochures and give-aways. The students came back glowing with excitement at how well it had gone, how welcoming their contacts were, and how successful their English had been. With that came an epiphany: I can do it! It’s the kind of moment that sticks in your mind. We then took two full days of class time during which students practiced how to introduce themselves, make small talk with visitors, explain the purpose and activities of the organization they represented, and answer follow-up questions. To simulate the event, we set up display tables and students took turns playing the roles of presenters and visitors. Some 200 students from the school attended our Community Fair. Many of the visitors signed up for community programs and joined community groups as a result. They became Big Brothers and Big Sisters. They enrolled their kids in martial arts programs. They signed up for library programs. They gathered handouts about community services they had not previously known about. It became a community building exercise as much as a language learning exercise. I facilitated the exercise, but the students lead the charge. I had envisioned that they would all have a table with a single-page information sheet. But, as things ended up, everyone’s table was covered with things to take away. They made multiple-page English information sheets. Some tables raffled items such as T-shirts and mugs, requiring students to write their name and contact information on the ticket (building on the CLB writing competency). Everyone at the event was speaking English. There was lots of food and drink as well – food prepared at home by participants and drinks donated by a grocery store where one of our students worked. To avoid the possibility that everyone would bring sweets, I had set up a Choice activity in Moodle. After a short tutorial on how to use the activity, students were given a list of choices to select from, with a limit on how many students could choose any one item. That way, we got some carrots and broccoli in addition to cookies and pastries. Students found the idea of creating a custom activity for this purpose intriguing! In the weeks following the Community Fair, I arranged a time for each student pair to tell me about their experience – the best part, the worst part, what they would do differently next time. Using the BigBlueButton video meeting platform, I video-recorded each self-assessment feedback session, then placed the video file in each team member’s private ePortfolio as a permanent memory. The number one thing I heard in the feedback was that the students felt empowered. A lot of them said “I didn’t know I could do that!” I remember two students in particular, who had chosen to represent a library reading group. As a result of this experience, they said they began to realize that they could get people to join them in an activity or cause. Their reading group ballooned, which was a source of great pride for them. Were there any downsides to the exercise? When we far exceeded our attendance expectations, things got very crowded in the classroom used as the venue. On the fly, we had to assign students to keep visitors moving along more quickly than they might have liked. When the next class arrived to CC-BY-NC-SA 2025 New Language Solutions Avenue Instructor Standards for Technology-Enhanced Language Learning, version 1.2
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