In a world where the vast majority of texts our students are encountering and dealing with are visual texts or multimodal texts that use visuals, the importance of visual literacy increases greatly. In this session, we will explore what visual literacy is, why it is important in language education, how two new skills, viewing and visually representing, have been added to the traditional skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking in the English language curricula of a number of countries, and explore a number of simple, tried-and-tested viewing frameworks that help students become more active and effective viewers of photos, paintings, films and videos.

Teachers will go away from the session with a clear understanding of what visual literacy is and a number of tried-and-tested viewing frameworks to use with their students.

World communication has shifted to more visual content and consumption. As ELL educators, embracing this shift with the use of graphic novels is crucial to developing engaged readers and contextual thinkers. The visual nature of graphic novels results in a familiar format for readers to acquire information, which engages reluctant readers. In addition, graphic novels combine images and text to convey critical and contextual storytelling elements, supporting and strengthening ELLs’ comprehension. This workshop explores a variety of graphic novels and how they act as a medium for literacy development by appealing to visual learners. Participants will examine graphic novel adaptation of traditional literature texts and experience how to apply them in the EFL classroom. In addition, participants will discuss their students' needs and make connections to practical classroom application of graphic novels. MYSTERY EASTER EGG

In this presentation, we describe online materials designed for groups of sixth and seventh graders with diverse social, racial, and cultural roots. To help children depressed in times of loss, disease, and social distancing during the pandemic, we turned to Asian, African, and Native Brazilian stories of characters who faced hardships and made their dreams come true. The objective is to widen students’ reading repertoire and promote multimodal analysis. After storytelling sessions and discussions about songs, tales, poems, historical documents, and myths from different parts of the world, learners were invited to write back to such narratives, criticizing the texts and reconfiguring them in different discourse genres. Therefore, they had the opportunity of interacting with the stories, reacting to them, and acting socially (or even dramatically) according to the themes tackled. EASTER EGG 5

Currently I teach English to college students who major in early childhood education. However, my students dislike the textbook that I teach, but respond well to the activities. I have a background in holistic education. and I decided a new curriculum, with an active learning element would better meet their needs . Therefore, in order to improve the curriculum and add a more holistic approach I studied more about curriculum design and holistic education. I also interviewed students who graduated three years before and , who were in the workforce to find out if they could apply anything from my classes that they had learned. I interviewed these students by phone and in person. I went from a textbook based curriculum to an more practical and active curriculum. In this presentation I will explain what I learned from the research, the results of the student interviews, various activities I use to enhance learning, and how I improved curriculum. Finally, this presentation will show how holistic education best prepares students for a globalized workplace and a better future. MYSTERY EASTER EGG

ESL classrooms often follow a one-size-fits-all approach in terms of assessing and grading students. However, this can be quite demoralizing and even unfair to students of lower levels. In order to motivate lower-level students and create a more dynamic classroom, a variety of different assessment techniques can be incorporated. In this course, trainees will learn about different assessment strategies for both the online and offline classroom that go beyond tests and quizzes in order to learn how to truly gauge their students' level, check for understanding, and better their students’ language abilities. Trainees will first work on differentiating assessments for different levels of speakers, then they will work to create their own assessment. Finally, trainees will examine a baseline rubric (adapted from WIDA) and work on adjusting the rubric to fit students of all different levels and their own classroom environment, for both online and offline learning. EASTER EGG 7