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Weekly UpdatesIn addition, several different types of listening and reading activities are available in the 2nd Period. First, the CD offers interactive vocabulary exercises. At the Peewee level, these include hockey-related vocabulary and clothing, such as skates, ice, hockey stick, cap, coat, and tie. In these activities, students drag and drop words to match with pictures. At the Junior level, the words relate to hockey and home, such as gloves, team, referee, sink, tablecloth, rug, and chest of drawers. Finally, at the Pro level, the vocabulary is related to hockey and clothing, such as the names of famous Canadian hockey players, in addition to plaid skirt, pleated skirt, felt hat, and overalls. In the vocabulary activities at the Junior and Pro levels, students match words to definitions instead of pictures. Overall, the words seem to have been selected randomly. While many are related to hockey, or an item or event from the story, many words, such as jar and tablecloth at the Junior level, are not mentioned in the story. In addition, consistent progression from level to level is missing. For example, nine of the ten hockey-related words for the Peewee and Junior levels are the same. At the Pro level, the hockey vocabulary activity requires students to know about specific famous Canadian hockey players, such as Abby Hoffman and Frank Boucher, about whom students read in the 3rd Period. This task is more a comprehension than a vocabulary activity. The majority of English language learners are likely to be familiar with neither hockey nor the players, so this activity is difficult to perform without reading about these players first. The instructions in the Help Menu tell students that the answers to the vocabulary questions for the Pro level can be found in the 3rd Period, but the Help Menu does not instruct students to read about the players in the 3rd Period before doing this activity. It would have been better to include the Pro level vocabulary activity in the 3rd Period instead of in the 2nd Period.
The second type of interactive activity included in the 2nd Period is a listening/reading comprehension activity. In this activity, students can read and/or listen to questions about the story spoken in standard English. Students choose the appropriate answer by clicking on one of four answer choices and are given feedback about why their choice is correct or not. Overall, there are twelve comprehension questions for each level, and the questions progress in difficulty from level to level.
The third kind of listening and reading activity available in the 2nd Period is cloze dictation, in which students listen to a short passage from the story and type in missing words on the screen. The Junior level includes two additional cloze activities: one is based on a poem located in the cultural section of the CD, and the other focuses on grammar in which students can choose to practice filling in either verbs, nouns, prounouns, prepositions, adjectives, adverbs, or conjunctions in a passage from the story. However, the words that students are required to supply and the passages that are chosen for the different levels do not seem to progress in difficulty from level to level. For example, at the Junior level, punishment is one of the words needed in the cloze activity, and the much more basic write is one at the Pro level. Both the spelling and meaning of punishment are more complex than those of write. One difference between levels is that the number of cloze blanks increases, albeit inconsistently: the longest passages can, interestingly, be found at the Junior level, not, as might be expected, at the Pro level. Another difference between the levels is that, at both the Peewee and Junior levels, students have the option of hearing the missing words in isolation, but this option is not available at the Pro level. Overall, the Junior level offers the most cloze activity choices as well as the most challenging ones. This may require teachers to provide students at the Junior level with additional support on those activities that are more challenging. Teachers may also need to create additional appropriate activities for the Peewee and Pro levels.
The final type of listening and reading activities included in the 2nd Period consists of two plot puzzles for each proficiency level. These puzzles invite students to listen again to the same short passages of the story that were used in the cloze activities, as well as an additional passage from the story. Students arrange sentences and phrases from the listening passages in the correct sequence, thus demonstrating comprehension. The difference between proficiency levels is that, at the Peewee level (Figure 3), students arrange words and short phrases in sequential order whereas at the Junior and Pro levels there is no focus on words, but only on phrases. However, again there is no clear progression in difficulty from the Junior level to the Pro level.
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Third Period
The 3rd Period on the CD-ROM contains information about Canadian culture and the sport of hockey. The first section, labeled simply "Hockey," includes fourteen reading passages related to hockey. These passages, written by the authors of the CD-ROM, require students to have a fairly good understanding of English because of the advanced vocabulary that is used. Most of the passages take up about one to two pages on the screen. While the texts are not accompanied by comprehension questions, the Teacher's Guide does provide a few suggestions for accompanying activities that can be done in the classroom. For example, one of the passages, "Forever Rivals," provides information about the rivalry between the Montreal Canadiens and the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Teacher's Guide gives the following suggestions:
The activities in the "Hockey" section are not specified for any particular level, but the passages provide information about hockey that might help students understand the story of The Hockey Sweater better. For example, there is a brief history of hockey, information about rule development, the hockey hall of fame, and the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The next section includes two short activities related to The Hockey Song, which was judged to be the song that "best capture[s] the spirit of hockey" (The National Film Board of Canada, 2007, p. 82). This song would probably be very familiar to Canadians but unfamiliar to ESL students. The first activity allows students to read the words to the song as they listen to it; the tune is catchy and students could enjoy learning the words as well as more about hockey. The other activity is a cloze dictation for the Junior level using words that occurred in the song. However, neither activity stresses comprehension of the song, only recognition and memorization of vocabulary items.
The third section available in the 3rd Period is entitled "The Stars". This section includes biographies, about three or four paragraphs in length, of 31 famous Canadian hockey players, mostly from the past, and a hockey card (or trading card) for each. A link to brief recorded, although inauthentic, fan comments gives students opportunities for more listening practice. However, some of the vocabulary, including adjectives and idioms in these comments, would require teacher explanations for most ESL learners. For example, fan comments include "Howe is a timeless, goal-scoring machine" and "He was a shooter's worst nightmare!" A "Who Am I?" quiz about the 31 hockey players can be accessed at any time by clicking on the "Who Am I?" icon at the bottom of the page. The quiz could be a useful comprehension activity after students have read the information about the individual players; nevertheless, some students may not find this activity interesting unless they are hockey fans.
The fourth section in the 3rd Period is "Eaton's Catalogue," an interactive activity which uses some of the actual pages from the department store Eaton's Fall-Winter 1946-47 mail-order Catalogue and which allows students to browse the catalogue and search for different items. This section of the CD-ROM includes two different types of interactive activities. The first one is a reading activity of the Top Ten Uses of the Catalogue. Students can learn about how people used the catalogue in 1946-47. Students may find the Top Ten Uses interesting because people do not use catalogues in the same way today. For example, the number 10 use claims that the catalogue was used to decorate the walls of outhouses and also as toilet paper, which students may find unbelievable. Due to the high level of vocabulary needed for comprehension, such as outhouse, strap, paper dolls, scrapbooks, and homesteaders, this section of the CD would be most appropriate for advanced-level students. The second interactive activity includes an Eaton's Catalogue order form, which students can use for simulated catalogue ordering. Three different order requests are presented for each level; these differ in the amount and type of detail that students have to find in the catalogue and keep track of. For example, at the Peewee level students are asked to order the most expensive sweater, whereas at the Pro level they are asked to order the most expensive item in the catalogue. This activity requires students to practice the skills of skimming and scanning. A teacher will have to check this assignment to see if students filled out their order forms correctly as no feedback is provided by the computer, perhaps a minor shortcoming. Two links connect Eaton's Catalogue to the clothing vocabulary activities in the 2nd Period. Potentially well intended, these links are, however, a little confusing because they seem to take students to new activities when in fact they are just links to what students have already completed.
The last section in the 3rd Period is entitled "Heritage". It includes nine readings (seven of which were written by the authors of the CD-ROM) about different aspects of Canadian culture and is similar to the first section, "Hockey." Just like the Hockey texts, these passages require students to have a fairly extensive English vocabulary. While they do not include comprehension activities, they do provide helpful and interesting cultural information about Canada that could help students understand the background and context for The Hockey Sweater. A good time for teachers to include these reading passages in classroom discussion would be while students are discussing the cultural notes from the "Explore the Story" activity in the 2nd Period.
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