Printing on Post Its

This is one very cool idea that I found on Pinterest.  You could use it for so many things, games, vocabulary matching, keeping track of students in the classroom and much, much more.  Go watch the video and spread the word.  http://www.buzzfeed.com/peggy/clever-classroom-tips-for-elementary-school-teachers 

Earth Day for ESL

When you think about Earth Day, what do you think about?  Planting a tree, recycling, donating time to clean a local highway or along a river?  There are a lot of activities you can join in on in order to celebrate Earth Day.  Getting your students involved is also easy.  There are a lot of learning opportunities on this special spring day.  Here is a link to a website you must be a member of to download the resources, but there are tons of them and it's not expensive.  https://www.esl-library.com/blog/esl-lesson-plans-for-earth-day/  While I'm telling you about websites you have to pay for, here's another http://www.edhelper.com/EarthDay.htm  It costs $19.99 per year and has lots of resources for teachers.
In my last blog post I introduced you to a British website which has resources for homeschoolers.  Here's the link to their Earth Day projects http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/earth-day  You have to join their group, but it's free and loaded with activities for all age groups.


Reading Activities
If you need reading activities for the class, here's a site that has a short article on Earth Day and activities that follow it.  Just copy, paste and print.  http://www.eslholidaylessons.com/04/earth_day.html 


Games
Are you looking for printable material?  One place to look is on this blog http://livespeaklove.com/2012/04/10/earth-day-activities/ She's posted a board game you can easily download and print.
Online Games
This website has a lot of online games for both children and 'young at heart'.  Go play and learn some English, too.
http://www.dltk-kids.com/crafts/earth/games.html


Poster
 If you're looking for a cool Earth Day poster to download and print, here's one http://www.henry4school.fr/Environment/earth-day/pict-posters.htm#poster


Crossword Puzzle
Here's a link to a crossword puzzle http://www.myvocabulary.com//index.php?dir=cross_word&file=attempt_crossword&theme_id=61 


Word Search Puzzle
Here's a link to a printable word search puzzle.  http://homeschooling.about.com/od/holidays/ss/earthprint.htm 


Video
If you want to show a short video about Earth Hour, the hour that everyone should turn off their lights, here's the link http://anglais.over-blog.org/article-earth-hour-a-quiz-47479834.html


Memory Game
I also found a really cool link to an interactive memory game.  http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/usa_game/holiday_memory/help_environment_memory.htm


Interactive Puzzle
If your students like puzzles, but you can't print them out and make them sturdy enough to reuse, here's a link to an interactive puzzle.  http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/usa_game/holiday_puzzles/earthday_tree.htm
Recycling Activities
http://innerchildfun.com/2013/04/recycled-crafts-for-kids.html


There are so many different resources on this site http://www.henry4school.fr/Environment/earth-day/earth.htm that you are sure to find something that you can use.  Go look, and I wish you a lot of fun on Earth Day!

Word Games for ESL

I found a couple of weeks ago a website for parents who are homeschooling their children in the U.K.  I really like the site because there are a lot of resources for young children.  Resources that are for young children are easy to use in the ESL classroom because even adults who are learning English learn like a child in some cases.  Visit Activity Village, join their group and discover the wonderful abundance of material there is to be discovered.  My favorite is the Word Wheel Challenge, where there's a letter in the middle of a circle and letters around it that form a wheel and the children have to come up with as many words as they can using the letter in the middle.  It's a lot of fun.  Take a look http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/word-wheel-challenge-9 

Classroom Instructions

Have you ever wondered why some students get much higher grades than others who seem to be on about the same level?  I definitely have.  One of my theories is that some students understand the instructions better than others do.  It's plausible that some students  simply don't understand the instructions, so they can't do the assignment correctly. 
An easy way to avoid having students get grades they don't necessarily deserve is to make sure that they understand the instructions without giving them in the student's native language.  Teach them the phrases and vocabulary they will need to function successfully in the classroom at the very beginning of  classes. 
Teaching them to ask questions in the correct form is important, even at the beginner level.  Here's a link to a page that will help you do just that.  http://www.eslgold.com/speaking/classroom_questions.html  At the bottom of the page is a link to more conversation practice material. 
If your students want or need to learn basic classroom vocabulary, here's a link that can help them.  http://free-english-study.com/vocabulary/academic-vocabulary-list-1.html  Of course, you could always make flashcards and have them play games with them.  One idea I had was to have students choose a card that is face down, so they can't think of a question ahead of time, and ask a question within a given time frame.  Here's a link to some pre-made flashcards.  http://esl-kids.com/flashcards/classroom.html  If you want to  make a bingo game for the students to play using the classroom vocabulary here's the place to go.  http://www.mes-english.com/flashcards/classroom.php There is also a place on the site to get worksheets that match the flashcards. 


I hope it's a fun time for teachers and students alike and no one gets bored or frustrated at the beginning of a school term.  Good luck!

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! :)