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Tags: Accent Reduction Tips, American IdoLingo, Speaking in General, Vocabulary by Debra
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Teaching Haikus

Recently, I posted How Twitter Helps Writers, but soon I realized that teaching haikus follows the same concept–and the best part…it doesn’t matter where you teach or how limited your resources are!

Haikus teach kids (and adults) a way to re-word their thoughts to express their ideas in a controlled and limited space. Haikus also lead to phonological awareness (fitting quite easily into many grades’ curricula).

If you’re lucky, your students will think it’s fun and write haikus on their own, like this sixth-grader did…

Hi Mrs. Allen,
Your favorite color: RED!
Sincerely, Jenna

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Here’s Dan’s list of phrases that can be (and sometimes should be) substituted with just one word.

Tags: Critical Thinking, Reflective Teaching, Writing by Debra
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How Twitter Helps Writers

Dan Santow has a good point, which is to narrow down your two to three word phrases to one word. On Twitter, you only have 140 characters to say what you want. A lot of writers tend to add words to embellish their writing which, in the wrong context, can actually be a distraction from the topic. Twitter forces you to reconsider how you phrase what you want to say. It also requires more thought about including only the information that is necessary to make your point.

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Tags: Critical Thinking, Technology, Vocabulary, Writing by Debra
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-S Ending Pronunciation Activities

Here are some straightforward -s ending pronunciation activities. There’s nothing fancy here; just a list of words. However, included on all of these activities are audios for you to listen to and practice. Teachers, there are also printable worksheets for each of these activities for easy use in your classes.

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Tags: ESL Activities, Listening, Speaking in General by Debra
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Nashville’s Outcome for English Only Law

The United States does not have an official language at the federal level.

See the article here.

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For you students who are still confused, here’s an activity that might help.

Tags: Reflective Teaching by Debra
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Expressions with Go

Students encounter confusion with the word go. My experience with many, many students is that it has to do with the fact that go appears in not only the future with going to, but also in many expressions, some with gerunds, some with prepositional phrases, and some with neither.

In all of these phrases, the expression after go stays the same. In other words, if you see the word “go”, no matter what verb form or tense it is, the phrases after the word “go” cannot change.

Just because you go “to” work, it doesn’t mean you go “to” home.

go home
go to work
go to bed
go to the beach
go on vacation
go shopping
go skiing
go to the mountains
go to school

One more thing: when you need to change verb tenses, you can use the word go in the phrases above to do so. Just don’t change the phrase afterwards.

went home
am going to work
was going to go to bed
had gone to the beach

…and so on.

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Tags: ESL Activities, Grammar, Speaking in General, Writing by Debra
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Word Evolution

Thinking of warmer weather in the dead cold of January, I was reminded of a time when the web was something spiders spun, and spiders crawled outside, feed was something you gave farm animals, a mouse was a rodent, crop was something you grew and harvested, tweet was what birds did, post was delivered to your front door, load was something that was carried or hauled, link was on a chain, click was a noise, text was a type of book, dig(g) was done with a shovel, and logs came from forests. Words came from lexicons, PC was politically correct, and Mac was a hamburger.

The mouse, after hearing a bird’s tweet, ran from the crop he was feeding on, stumbled upon a spider web and a spider crawling around a chain link fence post. Immediately, he logged onto his Mac, clicked on a blog, charged his cell, and started texting a tweet so when his friends received his feed about the endangered farm, they could digg it.

Just when you think you’ve got the hang of it, words evolve. Make sure you keep up with changes so your usage remains up-to-date.

If you know of any more technology homophones to add, feel free to comment…

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Here’s an activity for students to practice the difference between the Present Simple and the Present Progressive.

Tags: Critical Thinking, Reading, Technology, Vocabulary, parts of speech by Debra
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Present Simple vs. Present Progressive

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Tags: ESL Activities, Grammar by Debra
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What are you doing to make history?

Barack Obama reminds me of the guy who does more before 9:00 am than most other people do all day. In his life so far, he attended Columbia and Harvard Law, became the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review, practiced as a civil rights attorney, worked as a community organizer, taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, served on the Senate and is still making history, at the age of 47, as the first African American president of the United States.

We can’t all have a paragraph in future history books dedicated to us (or a chapter in Barack Obama’s case), but if you could, what would yours say? What are you doing in your classes that creates history?

source

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Tags: Reflective Teaching by Debra
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Martin Luther King, Jr.

The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

The time is always right to do what is right.

We must use time creatively.

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

source 1; source 2

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