Friday, February 28, 2014

ESL and Dr. Suess

Growing up in the States I listened to and read Dr. Seuss stories all the time.  He was my own personal hero for almost my entire childhood.  Sure, Mark Twain, Charlotte Bronte and Edgar Allen Poe were in the mix, too, and I loved reading them all, but Dr. Seuss warmed my heart, taught me a lesson and made me laugh the whole time. He did this for at least two generations. 
As an ESL teacher, I try to make my classes fun and interesting for all ages.  I have a Dr. Seuss flip chart with all the basics for a beginner's level course, like colors, months, days of the week, numbers, letters of the alphabet and some basic shapes.  So far my adult students have loved it.  While roaming through a homeschool website I found some other fun projects from Dr. Seuss.  I will put them up here and I hope that they inspire someone to teach their students using one of his wonderful stories.  Please keep in mind that some of the vocabulary he uses isn't real, so the students will need a bit of an imagination to participate in the activities.  If you have a Pinterest account you can find literally hundreds of free downloads for your classroom.  All you have to do is login and search.  I hope you try  using Dr. Seuss in your classrooms and leave me a message as to how the kids (big ones, too) liked working with the materials.


Link to Dr. Seuss lesson plans and activities: http://www.seussville.com/Educators/educatorClassroomResources.php?id=printables
Here's a link to a project page for The Lorax, one of my favorite stories.  You can get your students involved in an eco-friendly project and teach language skills simultaneously. :)
http://www.seussville.com/loraxproject/


Have fun!

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