Prompt #6 On Inquiry and Problem Solving in the ESL Classroom

EGBERT Ch. 6. Inquiry and Problem SolvingRICHARDSON Ch. 8. Podcasting and Screencasting: Multimedia Publishing for the Masses
Describe an inquiry or problem solving activity appropriate for ELLs that you have used, participated in, read about, or just now thought of. Describe which critical thinking skills it requires students to use and develop. Then, describe how this activity supports language and content learning for ELLs. Finally, comment on how podcasting could be used within the inquiry and problem solving process in a manner which supports language and content learning for ELLs.

Just this past week I discussed the problem of getting junk mail with my adult ESL class. We started out defining the meaning of "junk". It generated some great examples and new vocabulary: junk food, garage sale and such. Then we read an article from Access Reading (a great book based on the Equipped for the Future Content Standards specifically designed for adult learners) about junk mail and scams. We finished the class with a guided-writing activity - we constructed a short paragraph together summing up the problem of getting junk mail. For the following class I brought in a bag of junk mail that I had recently "collected". I asked the students to help me sort my mail separating the junk mail from the important mail. They really enjoyed opening my mail and pointing out how much I was supposed to pay for this and that....
This activity involved some critical thinking, seaparting the useful from the useless and organizing information. Each student picked a word from the mail that they shared with the class. At the end of the class we made some suggestions on how to deal with junk mail. This was a follow-on for a previous activity when we had talked about using diffferent language stuctures to give advice.
It would have been great to use some technology to make this topic a little bit more intersting and relevant for students. It would have been interesting to find out about big companies' marketing expenses. We could have done a research on how to avoid junk mail e.g. discussing consumer rights. Podcasting would have been great to generate or share some ideas on the issue. We could have had a broadcasting on junk mail and encouraged listeners to contribute their ideas to our beatthejunkmail-wiki. It would have been a great way of combining different language skills and develop critical thinking together with language content through technology.