Using AI to Illustrate Student Generated Sentences

(TESOL Ideas--Useful Websites, Writing)

I've got a lot of mixed feelings about AI but, it is a thing that exists, and I suppose we might as well take advantage of it when it's useful.

One use of AI that I've recently realized is that it's very useful for creating pictures to show students the meaning of their sentences.  

In the past, whenever my students messed up the syntax of a sentence, I used to spend a lot of time trying to explain to my students that their sentence meant something completely different than what they thought it did.
For example, I remember back in Cambodia I taught an advanced level writing class for many terms, and the students had to write an essay on the topic of deforestation.  For whatever reason, every term several students would write something like "the trees are cutting down."  And I would always go around to the students and say, "No, no, the trees aren't the ones who are doing the cutting.  What you've written looks like this..." and then I would try to draw a picture of a tree with arms cutting something down with a saw.  I'm not much of an artist, though, so I'm not sure my students go the point.

But if I was teaching that class now, I could simply put the sentence into Google Gemini and ask Gemini to create a picture for that sentence. 

The idea of trees cutting down people is of course nonsense, but I've discovered that Google Gemini is actually pretty good about illustrating nonsensical sentences.  For example if you give it a sentence like: "The hotdog is writing a book" or "The chair is riding a bike" then it will create images with an anthropomophic hotdog or chair doing those things.  

This can be good for teaching parts of speech with madlib style sentence games in which you are encouraging students to put together nouns and verbs in creative or humerous ways, and then show them the results, and I've recently used it successfully with 5th grades.  Gemini is also pretty good with illustrating adjectives, so you can encourage students to add in extra adjectives like "The old smelly angry chair is riding a bike", and then you and the students can have fun viewing the result.

In my experience, it sometimes takes Gemini 30 seconds to a minute to generate an image, but I will use this time to get the students to tell me what kind of image they think Gemini will produce.  Then when the image does generate, we check our predictiosn agains the result.

I've also been using word cards to aid low-level students in creating these sentences, but more on that in a future post.

Roll-A-Story:

I was substitute teaching the other day, and the teacher I was covering for was using a writing prompt called "Roll-A-Story".

I thought it was an interesting idea, so I wanted to add it to my own lists of writing ideas.

The idea appears to come from this website here: https://msjordanreads.com/roll-a-story-writing/.  You can buy pre-made worksheets from her store, but you could just as easily create your own using the same format.

Extend the Story: Communicative Follow Up

(TESOL Ideas--Communicative Follow Up)

Sample: docs, pub

One communicative follow up for reading or listening lessons is to expand on an element of the story.  This, obviously, is most appropriate for reading or listening texts that have some sort of a narrative element to them.

Here is an example from the Impact 4 textbook.  In this reading, the students have to read about Nizar Ibrahim and the search for Spinosaurus.  A key point in the story is when Nizar Ibrahim accidently runs into a man with a mustache that he has been looking for.  I asked the students to expand this scene into a movie script.

Imagine you are making a movie about Nizar Ibrahim and the search for Spinosaurus.  Below is the opening of one of the key scenes, in which Nizar Ibrahim finally finds the man from Erfoud.

Scene: Nizar is sitting at an outdoor cafe, drinking tea with his colleague.

Colleague: So, Nizar, how has your search for Spinosaurus been going?

Nizar: Oh, it’s all useless. I travelled all this way to Morocco, but I still can’t find the man I’m looking for.

Colleague: That’s too bad.  [Takes a drink of his tea, and then looks up.] Oh, look at that funny little man walking down the street.  Did you ever see such a distinctive mustache?

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Retell the Story from a Different Perspective: Communicative Follow Up

(TESOL Ideas--Communicative Follow Up)

Sample: docs, pub

One communicative follow up for reading or listening lessons is to retell the same story from a different perspective.  This, obviously, is most appropriate for reading or listening texts that have some sort of a narrative element to them.

Here is an example from the Impact 3 textbook.  In this listening, the students have to watch a video in which explorer Paul Nicklen is talking about his encounter with a leopard seal.  For the communicative follow up, the students have to write the story from the perspective of the leopard seal:

You have listened to a video describing the story from the perspective of Paul Nicklen.  But how do you think the story would sound if it was the leopard seal who was telling the story?  Write the same story, but from the perspective of the leopard seal.

Hello.  My name is Sally, and I’m a leopard seal from Antarctica.  One day I was swimming, when I saw this strange looking human in the water…

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Form for Feedback on Writing

(TESOL Ideas--Writing)

I wrote previously that for my Interesting Input plus Production Prompts, I was trying to primarily use Grammar Auctions as the main way to do feedback on writing accuracy.  And so I was for several weeks.  But recently I've been feeling that my students have been getting a bit sick of grammar auctions.  Plus, it can eat up a lot of class time.

So, I've been experimenting with a new way of giving feedback on writing: a simple form:

Name:
Comments on Story
Language strengths
corrections

I type one of these up for each student on a single Google Doc.  Then I print out the document, cut up the sheets (multiple student feedback will be on a single sheet of paper) and distribute them back to the students.  

I had previously said that I liked to do short handwritten messages, and well I believe that handwritten messages often convey more warmth, I tend to type faster than I write, so typing it up instead of handwriting saves me time.  Plus, another advantage is that I can save a copy of all my feedback, which is useful when it's time to write reports on the students' progress.  

Years of experience have taught me that less is often more when it comes to giving students feedback on their writing.  If you give them feedback on all of their mistakes, they won't absorb any of it.  If you give them feedback on just one mistake, they might absorb it.  So I make it a point to limit myself to just one language error per writing.  (Also, this is for Interesting Input plus Production Prompts writing, in which the focus is on fluency more than accuracy anyway).

Below is a sample of how I used this feedback form recently on student writing.  All the student names have been deleted to protect student privacy, but you get the idea.  This was feedback for the Write Your Own Twisted Fairy Tale Writing Prompt: docs, pub

Name:
Comments on Story	This appears to be written in a poetic style, is that right?  I don’t quite understand it, but I suspect that this is because I am not familiar with the original story
Language strengths	Good use of advanced vocabulary: column, rafter, toss, etc
corrections	“Plays drum”--countable nouns need articles, or need to be put into the plural form. I.e. “plays drums” or “plays the drums”

Name:
Comments on Story	At first, I thought you were just retelling the original story.  But the, out of nowhere, came that sudden twist at the end, which brought a smile to my face as I read it.
Language strengths	Good use of phrases for story telling–e.g. “On the way”, “not even” “out of the house”, etc
corrections	Careful on the tenses.  You are switching back and forth between past and present tense.  Ordinarily we would use the past tense for storytelling

Name:
Comments on Story	I liked the way you changed the hungry wolf to the greedy wolf.  I also thought that was a funny ending when you said that the wolf wasn’t even interested in the straw house.
Language strengths	Good use of advanced vocabulary, and complex sentences.  Also good use of connectors to organize your writing.
corrections	You can use “break into” in this story, instead of “break in” or “break inside”

Name:
Comments on Story	This is an excellent retelling of the original story.  You’ve taken the original structure, but given it a completely new setting and characters, with humorous results.  Well-done.
Language strengths	Lots of good sentences in here.  Your first sentence especially is very well written
corrections	“Say hello with him”--you can change to “say hello to him”

Name:
Comments on Story	This is an interesting story.  Now, in this case, I don’t actually know what the original is, so I can’t appreciate what you’ve changed, but I still thought it was interesting.
Language strengths	Lots of advanced vocabulary here: gratefully, shrug, burn out, coffin, etc.
corrections	Fly is an irregular verb: fly (v1) flew (v2) flown (v3)

Name:
Comments on Story	I love how you took the original story, and then gave it an unexpected twist.  Your ending also seemed to incorporate the dialogue from the Gingerbread Man, so good job putting together two different fairy tales.
Language strengths	Good use of collocations, e.g. hear about, as fast as he can, care about, suddenly appeared,
corrections	“He didn’t told it to the rabbit”--you can use V1 after “didn’t”--i.e. He didn’t tell”

Name:
Comments on Story	Great job on taking a familiar story, and changing it to make it different.  I love how in this version the turtle is dishonest, and the rabbit is the one who is the hero.
Language strengths	Simple sentences are mostly accurate, and you have some good vocabulary (e.g. honesty, cheat, competition)
corrections	“Because of” is used for noun phrases (e.g. “because of the bus”).  “Because” is used for clauses (e.g. “because the rabbit knew the turtle will run faster”)

Name:
Comments on Story	An interesting twist on a familiar story.  The story zigged and zagged in a number of directions, and, while it got a bit dark at the end, it was certainly creative.
Language strengths	Good use of the “get passive” in the line “The 3 little pigs get eaten by the wolf”
corrections	“The wolf were trying”--”wolf” is singular here, so it should read, “the wolf was trying”

Name:
Comments on Story	This was a good retelling of the 3 little pigs story.  It followed the original enough so that it was familiar, but changed the key details just enough to make it interesting–like the act that the second pig died in the fire instead of being eaten, or that the last pig didn’t care about his brothers.
Language strengths	Good use of collocations: fly away, stable house Good  use of reported speech: “their mom said that they have to build a stable house”
corrections	“The pig was die in the fire”--”die” is actually a verb here, so you don’t need the “was”-- “the pig died in the fire”

The Gingerbread Man and The Stinky Cheese Man: Write Your Own Twisted Fairy Tale

(TESOL Materials--Time Fillers, Writing, Storytime, Interesting Input plus Production Prompts)

Google Drive Folder HERE

Slideshow: slides, pub

Worksheet: docs, pub

This is the latest entry in my Interesting Input plus Production Prompts collection.

The input is a reading of The Gingerbread Man (link to PDF HERE).  Then, I ask my students how the story might be different if the Gingerbread Man was made out of stinky cheese instead.  Then we go to the Stinky Cheese Man (link to picture book HERE--skip to p.36.)

Then the production prompt is for students to write their own twisted version of a famous fairy tale: docs, pub.

In my class, they were having trouble thinking of ideas, so I gave them a few more examples from the Stinky Cheese Man book.  First, I asked them if they knew the story of the Frog Prince.  They said they did, and I asked the class to tell it to me.  Then, I showed them the version on pages 18-19.  I did the same thing with the Ugly Duckling (p.14-17) and The Princess and the Pea (p.12-13), etc.

In fact, once I got thinking about it, there's no shortage of examples of subverted fairy tales out there:

This Playlist of Fractured Fairy Tale Cartoons, for example, could also be used as input.

Or this copy of The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig.  

In fact, as I thought about it, I remembered I had even written a subverted fairy tale back in 6th grade: The True Story of Little Red Riding Hood--which I then went on to film and add to my Storytime collection.

Think of a well-known fairy tale or folk tale.  Retell the fairy tale, but give it a twist to make it different than the original

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The Monkey's Paw: Reading and Writing Prompt

(TESOL Materials--Time Fillers, Writing, Interesting Input plus Production Prompts)

I'm continuing to look for new materials to add to my "Interesting Input plus Production Prompts" project.  I was searching around on esl-bits and found the original version of The Monkey's Paw.  

It seemed like a good story to use: nice and short, and also suitably creepy.  (As I've mentioned before, my teenage students love horror stories.)

The original ungraded version could almost be used in the ESL classroom (with a high level class, of course.)  The sentences are pretty short and simple and easy to understand.  An advanced level class could almost understand it without help.

There's just some vocabulary that would need to be adjusted to make it more comprehensible for an ESL class.

I was in the process of trying to re-write the story myself, when I thought to myself, "You know what?  I bet somebody's done this already."

So, I searched for "The Monkey's Paw ESL" and sure enough, found a pretty good version here.  For the most part, it manages to preserve the vibrancy of the original text, while also simplifying the vocabulary where necessary.

For the purposes of sharing this version with my students, I took the liberty of copying and pasting it over to Google docs, so I could print it out and distribute in in my classroom (docs, pub).  While I was at it, I also edited it slightly--e.g. cleaned up a few typos and grammar mistakes that had been in the original.

I distributed the google document to my students, and we read it together in class.

The production prompt, then, is to write about what happens to the Monkey's Paw next.  The Monkey's Paw finds a new owner, who will make new wishes.  How will these new wishes go wrong?

For the purposes of giving my students maximum freedom, I left the prompt as wide open as possible--i.e. I didn't specify who the new owner would be.  But for students who were having trouble getting started, I gave them some helpful ideas.

"Imagine there's a Vietnamese boy who wishes to be a gamer.  But then" (spooky voice) "the wish goes horribly wrong."

or "Imagine there's a Vietnamese boy who wants to be a famous tiktoker.  So he makes the wish but then" (spooky voice) "the wish goes horribly wrong."

Etc.  Other ideas I gave were students who wished to get a band 9 on the IELTS, or become a successful businessman, or get into a top university, etc.

[Sidenote: The original story of The Monkey's Paw states that the paw was only cursed for 3 owners, and that this old couple is now the 3rd owner, so presumably in the original story the curse of the Monkey's Paw is now finished.  But I just ignored this little detail when designing the production prompt, and so far my students haven't noticed the contradiction.]

Production worksheet is here: docs, pub

Now, imagine that someone else finds the Monkey’s paw, and tries to make three wishes.  Write about what will happen next.

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