Co-Teaching with Padlet – The Meszaros Memo

What is Padlet?

Padlet is a website and Chrome extension that allows you to create a blank digital wall. You can add posts to your digital wall and then you can attach one file (image, photo, voice recording, video, drawing, map, screencast, doc, or another Padlet) to each post. You can arrange your posts on your Padlet in several different ways. Options include:

Backchannel: organize post like a chat.
Canvas: scatter or group content in any order you like.
Grid: arrange content in rows of boxes.
Shelf: stack content in columns.
Stream: organize post top to bottom.
Wall: pack content like bricks on a wall.

Access

Padlet is very easy to use. It works on any device, even old cell phones. Students do not need an email or Gmail account. They can access Padlet through the website, the app and through a QR Code.

The Co-Teaching Lesson

I use Padlet during my weekly co-teaching lessons. As the NET (Native English Teacher) in my school I go into each English class once a week to co-teach with the local English teacher. We use an adaptation of Co-teaching model 3: 1 teacher teachers, 1 teacher assesses. My local colleagues helps students with the technology, helps them understand instructions, and helps students compose their Padlet. This is usually done with the help of L1. As students work independently on their Padlet, I conference individually with each student in L2. During these conferences, I start by asking students several conversational questions (What is your name? How are you?) and then we would look at the students’ Padlet and I ask them questions about it. The goal is to give students an opportunity for authentic, meaningful interaction in L2 and prepare students for the speaking they would need to do later in the public exam. I also give students suggestions and help them with any significant language problems on their Padlet. For instance, one very common problem is that students forget to capitalize the first word in a sentence or they use Chinese punctuation marks in their writing.

THE TASK

My students use Padlet to create multimodal texts. These include writing, voice recordings and images. I set up the task on our class blog. For each project, I post:

Instructions
An interactive Thinglink mind map about the topic
An example (my own Padlet on the topic)
Screencasts videos of how to use Padlet
Useful vocabulary and sentence structures
Interview questions that I would ask students during our individual conference.
The grading rubric
Bonus tasks for students who finished early

The topics we cover come from the speaking tasks in our English language textbook. These are usually related to TSA speaking exam past papers. The TSA is a formative assessment that all students take at the end of Secondary 3 in Hong Kong.

Below is an example of a Padlet one student made about places they would like to visit.

Example: An Unforgettable Trip

Task

Students made a multimodal Padlet about 5 places they would like to visit. For each post, students were asked to answer the following questions:

Where would I like to go?
Who would you go with?
What attractions would you like to see?
What activities would you like to do?
Why do you want to go there?

They also needed to add an image and a voice recording. The bonus task was to post a reflection about the place the student would most like to visit and what they had learned from the assignment.

Why I like this approach

Digital Literacy Skills

Students have the opportunity to create a multi-modal text and are engaged in a student-centered, authentic, integrative, meaningful and creative task. Students need to navigate and follow the instructions on our class blog, listen to the instruction videos there, then create their own Padlet, add an appropriate title and description, compose their own written posts, add images, and create and post voice recordings. In the process, students also learn about usernames and passwords, how to navigate a digital text, click on links, search for images on the Internet, create a digital voice recording, and upload files to their Padlet.

Interaction

I have the opportunity to talk and conference individually with each student in English. I am also able to engage them in simple conversation, find out more about their interests as well as access their proficiency levels and identify any language problems. In my school, feedback on writing is usually written in L2. I suspect this feedback is something that many students don’t understand or give much attention. Conferencing, on the other hand, gives me the opportunity to actually show students what they could do to improve their writing. This also gives them practice asking questions, negotiating meaning, and hopefully helps motivate students and foster teacher-student rapport. I am happy that this is something supported by our new English curriculum here in Hong Kong: