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!

Changing the Way We Teach

I have to say that having students come in, sit down, get out their paper, pens and books and listen to me talk for an hour and a half isn't the way I teach.  I thought is was so very boring when I was in school and I think most kids (big kids included) want to do something in class, have fun, set their own goals and work to reach their goals.  I normally teach adults and I know that older people aren't as rambunctious as children.  However, like the lady in the video, I make my classrooms as open and non-constricting to movement as possible.  I want people to get up walk around talk to people and ask questions, but most of all, I want them to be empowered enough to become, more or less, their own teachers.  Yes, I play an important role in the classroom as the only native speaker of English, but they should spend more time talking than I do.  In lower levels, it's difficult to step aside, especially when the grammatical mistakes seem to multiply exponentially, but sometimes allowing students to talk freely helps them build confidence.  Try letting other students be the ones correcting their peers.  Split them into small groups, and have them work together to complete a project, like a role-play. It's a lot of fun for them and it will be fun for you too because you can see in real-time what your students have learned.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fMC-z7K0r4

ESL Gerund forms with 'Get'

Here's a link to a video where a teacher is explaining all of the various ways you can use 'get' in phrasal verbs.  It's informative and I hope you can learn something with it.  I like it because the slang forms are also covered and this is something all students like.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6f6gPG3p60 Once you watch the video, you can take a little test to see if you really understood the  meanings.  http://www.esl-lounge.com/student/phrasal-verbs/4pv17-get.php. If listening to the explanation isn't enough, then try reading it.  Here's a link to help http://www.5minuteenglish.com/apr3.htm


If you happen to be a teacher, here's a link to a page with a fun exercise for students.  It's called 'the get report' so you have to scroll down the page a little to find it.  http://www.teach-this.com/resources/phrasal-verbs  If that isn't enough practice you can find more exercises here, http://www.learnenglishfeelgood.com/esl-phrasalverbs-toget1.html, http://www.learnenglishfeelgood.com/esl-phrasalverbs-toget2.html  I would copy them to a word doc and print it out for students to do in class.  Of course giving it as an online homework assignment isn't a bad idea either. 


If you are looking for a wider variety of phrasal verbs, not just 'get' check out Lanternfish.  It's one of my favorite websites.  http://bogglesworldesl.com/phrasalverbs.htm


Okay, get down to business and teach something now! :)

ESL Creative Writing

I've been looking for a way to engage my students outside of class and to expose them to English on a daily basis.  The 90 minute classes every week is simply not enough to get them speaking fluently and without being afraid of mistakes.  I've thought about setting up a weekly meeting, but that requires me to free up time most likely on a weekend and I haven't had the time lately. My plan is to start at the end of February, though. 


In the meantime, I've been perusing the web in search of fun ways to get them involved in English speaking activities that are stress-free and fun.  A few days ago I stumbled across Storybird.com.  I absolutely love it.  I created an account and will begin inviting students next week.  The platform is simple and creative.  Basically, you choose a picture and use it to help you write something creative.  Easy, Fun, and Creative is the ticket! I hope they enjoy using it as much as I've enjoyed discovering it :)  Go check it out! http://storybird.com/

Present Perfect tense

One thing that I learned during my study of German is that it's not easy to say things right in a foreign language.  Especially if  you want to be grammatically correct.  I know why it's difficult for German native speakers to get this tense correct, but it's an endeavor worth undertaking.  I will simply upload a lot of files that teachers can use to help with this topic.  Some are worksheets, some are explanations of the tense and others are games that I either made myself or found online.  Have fun. :)


Present perfect tense

ESL Business English: Giving Feedback

One thing that I've noticed while teaching in Germany is that the people here are very honest.  This is an awesome trait to have, but there are times in business when you need to, oh, let's say, be gentle.  You want to give corrective feedback in a way that it is corrective and not destructive.  Yes, this is an art and it takes time to develop the skill.  Here's a video that will help students along the way to learning this powerful skill.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sbVJDXj_T4

ESL Material

I promised that I would upload files for a wide variety of teaching topics and, yes, it's taken a while, but it's done.  Go look and see if there isn't something that will help you teach a class.  Have fun and good luck!

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B91PszKtVKWkekNuY0x1Q0xEMjg&usp=sharing

ESL Lesson Plan: Food

For level A1-A2: 
Ask "What do you eat for breakfast/lunch/ dinner?"  Show pictures of breakfast/lunch/dinner foods.  A good resource book is Longman's Photo Dictionary (ISBN 978-1-4082-6195-8) In section 8 you will find pictures of food.  Ask each student to tell what they eat for each meal.  Then introduce foods that weren't mentioned.  Ask them to write down what they think people eat in 3 other countries.  Pair the students up and have them tell their partner which countries/ foods they wrote down.  Students report to the class about their partners choices.  Hand out cards with different foods on them and ask students to walk around and ask "Do you eat______for breakfast/lunch/dinner?" If the student being asked has the matching card they answer yes and give the card to the student asking the question.  The student who is the first to match all of his/her cards wins the game.


For level B1:


Begin a conversation about what students normally eat for breakfast/lunch/dinner.  Ask if they shop everyday.  Ask students where they buy their food.   Then give them copies of pages 84-87 of English the American Way (ISBN 978-0-7386-0676-7)  Ask them to look at the words in bold first and tell in their own words what they mean.  If there are words that no one knows, tell them what they mean.  Then have them read the article out loud.  Discuss the contents briefly and then tell the students they will hear a short dialogue between a woman and a farmer at a farmer's market.  Play track 26 and then ask the students to summarize what they heard. 
Tell them they are going to then learn phrases dealing with eating together.  In the book Conversational American English  ( ISBN 978-0-07-174131-6) # 423 begins with phrases used to tell someone you are hungry.  Have students read the phrases orally, then tell them to choose a partner and write a short dialogue about food/hunger.  Then have the students read their dialogue to the class.
In the book 101 American Customs (ISBN978-0-8442-2407-7) you can introduce students to typical American 'table manners'.  Begin a discussion about good and bad manners in different countries.  One possible activity is to give students a country and have them find out about good/bad manners and report to the class.  Another variation is to have them tell the class about how to prepare their favorite food. 


For level B2:


Begin the conversation by asking students what traditional foods they eat on their holidays.  Have them tell what ingredients are in the food.  If they don't know the English names, google them.  Then put the students in pairs and give them a holiday.  Tell them they are to research the history of the traditional foods for that holiday.  Give them 30 minutes to do this.  Then have them report to the class their findings.

ESL Basic Introductions Level A1

Teaching beginners is a difficult task if you are a native speaker, because it's difficult to remember what it was like to be a baby learning a language for the first time.  I'm facing that challenge now, but I plan to conquer this challenge.  I've been brainstorming ideas of how to make it fun for beginners to introduce themselves.  One idea is making up cards with  names of famous people and having students use them to introduce themselves.   I've used it in the past and it works well, especially if the famous person is a bit eccentric. Here's one I created without famous people, I simply went to clipart and used pictures which aren't copyrighted.   https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B91PszKtVKWkVHctMC0yWFI2N3M/edit?usp=sharing  If you don't have time to do that, here's a worksheet that you can use to have them ask for basic information during a first introduction.  https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B91PszKtVKWkVldzNTFnbjRTZzQ/edit?usp=sharing

Present Simple sentence/ question structure

I'm teaching a class of beginners at the moment and I haven't taught this level in a very long time.  I'm looking for a way to help them put simple sentences together.  One idea that I've used in the past is to print question words and other vocabulary that I know they will be familiar with and laminate them so that I can use them repeatedly.  I put the cards in the middle of the table and ask each student to choose words and form questions or sentences with them.  If you use this idea, make sure that you cover basic sentence structure and questions beforehand.  Depending on how many cards you make it could last 10-20 minutes. 


I also found a fun game for students to play online to help them practice this form.  It's here: http://www.eslgamesplus.com/present-simple-tense-action-verbs-interactive-monkey-game/