Creative writing prompts . com ideas for writers. Ethical Dilemmas Archive. #1: Jeff's best friend is getting into some pretty risky behaviors, including dangerous drugs. What can Jeff do to help his friend? #2: Jennifer knows her parents won't let her go to "the big party" if they find out the host's parents are out of town.
Should she lie about it? #3: What's the difference between cheating on a math test and lying about your age in order to save money on a movie ticket? #4: Julia's best friend has turned against her and is now organizing the other girls to bully and isolate her. What can Julia do? A Very Good List Featuring 40 Questions to Develop Students Reflective Thinking. LendMeYourLiteracy - Inspiring Young Writers. Overcome writer's block | site for writers | inspiration for writers | prompts writers | write prompts | prompts writing.
500 Prompts for Narrative and Personal Writing. Teaching Writing Part 2: Offering Students an... This post was written by Evan Wolkenstein, a ClassDojo Thought Partner who tweets regularly at evanwolkenstein and blogs at magnetiCClassroom.com. This is part 2 of a 3 part series. Read part 1, here. Maybe you’re lucky, and you have a curriculum that includes teaching students how to organize thoughts, how to ensure that you’ve backed up your ideas — most likely, it’s all part of a unit on how to write an outline.
And maybe you also have a golden Lamborghini and a pair of boots that can fly. And a machine that can make any kind of food you want. Students often do not know how to organize their thoughts or write an outline. But what I get often reads more like Kafka’s stream-of-consciousness diary entries. Now, I am not an English Teacher. But I have a background in English Lit. But what about the ideas? One year, a student with some learning differences bombed an essay test she should have thrived on.
Sure. But what about the other students? No! Here’s what I started doing. Someday. 7 Good Resources for Avoiding, Preventing, and Detecting Plagiarism. Thanks to an email from a kind reader I discovered that a couple of the resources about plagiarism that I reviewed in the past are no longer as good as they once were. Therefore, I have created this updated collection of resources for teaching students to how to avoid plagiarism along as well as resources for preventing and detecting plagiarism. Education is the best prevention:Purdue's OWL website is the number one place I refer students and parents to for questions not only about plagiarism, but also for questions about all parts of the writing process.A Magical Guide to Avoiding Plagiarism is an infographic guide created by Kate Hart.
A Magical Guide to Avoiding Plagiarism uses a Harry Potter theme to succinctly explain to students when and why they need to properly cite the sources of their information. I've embedded the infographic below, but I encourage you to visit Kate Hart's blog post about it as she goes into more depth on the topic of plagiarism. 8 Strategies for Teaching Academic Language. "Change your language and you change your thoughts. " -- Karl Albrecht Understanding Academic Language Academic language is a meta-language that helps learners acquire the 50,000 words that they are expected to have internalized by the end of high school and includes everything from illustration and chart literacy to speaking, grammar and genres within fields.
Think of academic language as the verbal clothing that we don in classrooms and other formal contexts to demonstrate cognition within cultures and to signal college readiness. There are two major kinds: instructional language ("What textual clues support your analysis? ") and language of the discipline (examples include alliteration in language arts, axioms in math, class struggle in social studies and atoms in science).
No student comes to school adept in academic discourse -- thus, thoughtful instruction is required. Where to Start Teaching Academic Language 8 Specific Strategies 1. 2. 3. 4. "The topic of my presentation is ______. " 5. HaikuContest.pdf. Grammar and Vocabulary. Six Alternatives to Book Reports | Education Rethink. When I was a kid, I hated book reports. I hated filling out a form describing what I read. I wasn't a fan of artsy crafty alternatives, like cereal box projects or dioramas. What I did love, though, was geeking out on what I read. I loved arguing about who was better, what they should have done, etc. This allows students to explore their favorite trends in books.
What makes this fun is that kids get to rethink the role of the setting in the book. I love the notion of universes colliding and characters exploring their shared experiences. I've always thought it would be cool if Ira Glass would interview the entire Weasely family. The antagonist is arrested at the end of the book. Write a review. I have a few other ideas that I've never tested out. Create a TED Talk from the perspective of one of the characters. John Spencer John Spencer is a teacher, author, speaker, and incessant doodler. 3 creative activities for practicing prepositions of place. I had to teach prepositions of place the other day and suddenly remembered something that I hadn’t done for years.
This can actually be a great grammar point which can be done in class in a really fun way… if you’re willing to get creative. Ok, here we go then with a short description of three fun but easy classroom activities. What do you need? 1. The ‘What’s in the room?’ You can set this activity up very quickly. Find an image of a room with ‘plenty going on’ in it.Get two identical copies of it.Now, imagine the image below is either being projected on to your whiteboard or is on a handout in front of the students.Explain that you will give a sentence and the students need to find the object you mention.All you have to do is give examples: ‘There is a cushion on the bed.’
This is a good one to do to inject a bit of energy into the lesson and to get the creative juices flowing. ELTPics courtesy of @fionamau 2. You can set this activity up just as quickly. ELTPics courtesy of @sandymillin. 5 great writing warm up activities... and what they lead to. I think you might want to download these activities so you can use them later… so here’s a handy PDF file of this blog post!
Warm up activities that get learners writing can be fantastic for getting the creative juices flowing while also giving a focused start to your lesson. A writing task at the start of class can be an effective way of leading into explicit grammar teaching or can just as easily be followed up with speaking activities. What’s more, many such activities are easy to adapt to be suitable for any type of learners, both adults and kids. Indeed, adding an entertaining element to writing activities will make them fun for everyone, as well as making them low pressure tasks which enable learners’ writing to flow freely.
Here are five of my favourites. 1. Ok, everyone in the world knows this classic set up: a genie has just granted three wishes to everyone in the class. Where can you take this? 2. You can examine the new adjectives used by the learners. 3. 4. 5. 5 great ice-breakers in 5 days: #1 Where in the World… Welcome back to my blog! Sorry that I appear to have been absent for most of this month, but believe me, I’ve been very busy elsewhere. As well as presenting at the upcoming ISTEK International ELT Conference, I’m delighted to also be part of the social media team, promoting and sharing the whole conference experience with the wider world.
This has meant me dealing with almost thirty pre-event interviews with speakers for the conference blog, which has obviously taken up a lot of my blogging time over the past week or so (please have a look at the fruit of my labors here). Anyway, I’ve decided that it’s time for me to refocus on my own blog, and what better way to get back in the saddle than with a blog challenge.
My good friend and blogging compadre Tyson Seburn has set his fellow bloggers the task of completing a five-day Blogathon: five posts in five days. To be honest, this is exactly what I needed after a difficult few weeks in which I’ve only been able to blog a few times. How to… I need to teach vocab but I don't even know how to begin! This post's for you. I hope there’s a little bit for everyone in today’s post. For teachers just starting out on their career, this whole post might serve as a useful guide in how to go about teaching vocabulary in the language classroom, while the experienced among us may wish to fast forward to the third section and explore the tools I suggest. Whoever you are, please drop me a line in the comments section and let me know if you found this post useful! Learning vocabulary is as important a step in developing future reading, listening, writing and speaking skills as any other aspect of language learning.
Consequently, in this post I’ll reflect on what we teachers need to do in terms of dealing with what learners need to know about the words we want to teach, and how we can effectively teach them. In part one I’ll cater specifically to newbie teachers and briefly consider some of the most effective ways of presenting vocabulary. Ok, ready? Part 1: Effective ways of presenting vocabulary 1.4 Mime 2.2 The form. Why has it taken me so many years to use songs in my teaching? Today, 28th October, 2011, I taught grammar through the medium of song for the first time. I have no idea whatsoever why it has taken me more than a decade to do this, especially now that I am able to reflect on how well it went. The grammar that I uncovered was that of the present perfect continuous tense and the song I chose was ‘In the air tonight’ by Phil Collins.
This tense is one of those funny ones which has very little difference – at first glance at least – to its non-continuous counterpart. Anyhows, Collins’ magnum opus offers a great, much repeated example of the most frequent verb which appears within the present perfect continuous: to wait. If you don’t believe me, watch the official video and count how many times ‘I’ve been waiting for this moment for all my life’ is reinforced.
So, this is what I did… I asked if the students would like to try some grammar uncovering through the medium of song (the day before). Let’s have a look at some of the things that came up. AgendaWeb. Infographic: adverbs of frequency. Today’s infographic focuses on the popular grammar point of adverbs of frequency. It is split into two parts. Firstly, it focuses on the common teaching point of ‘indefinite time’ adverbs such as often, always and rarely. The second focus is on the much less taught, but equally important ‘definite time’ adverbs like annually, daily and monthly. You can access and download the full size infographic here (800×2600). Alternatively, you can embed it using one of the many options from Flickr.
Finally, feel free to share the infographic with the QR code on the right. 6 Great ways to use Socratic questions in language classes. It’s a silly question to ask if you’re all familiar with Socrates, the Greek philosopher credited with being one of the founders of Western philosophy. Nevertheless, we might not necessarily be aware of how useful Socrates’ pedagogy can be to us in our language teaching. The Socratic technique includes using a series of questions that ‘guide’ learners towards the answers to questions. Socrates and his learners would conduct discussions in the public square in Athens; you can do exactly the same in your langauge class! Here’s how… 1. Ask questions for clarification These types of questions are used to dig deeper and prove the concepts behind a particular argument. “Why do you say that?” When to ask: Look at the typical comprehension questions you get with a coursebook reading text. 2. These questions are used to describe and discuss assumptions of what is said.
“What generalizations can you make?” ‘We’re all in this together’ by Chrysa Papalazarou from #ELTPics 3. 4. “What would happen if … ?” 4 steps to applying the Socratic Method in the language classroom. In my last post we looked at the way that Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates used the a technique of questioning learners to facilitate learning and examined 6 ways that we can do the same in our English classrooms today.
Through the Socratic Method, we as teachers constantly aim to elicit responses from our learners to lead them to logical conclusions: this is a technique we can actively exploit in language teaching. Learners are actively engaged and motivated to learn with this method. Here are four steps that we must consider to ‘Socratize’ our classes… 1. Active learning is not merely nice, it is a necessity Because Socratic questioning requires the participation of both learners and teacher, it is considered to be an early, if not the earliest, example of active learning. In order to participate appropriately, learners must therefore listen to each other and know that their ideas are being heard. 2.
‘Along those lines’ by Chrysa Papalazarou from #ELTPics 3. 4. Moving on and up. 5 ways we can apply Socratic Questioning to teaching language skills. Welcome back to my third and, probably, last post examining the benefits of adopting the Socratic Method in our classes. Over my last two posts we’ve seen that, even though the Socratic Method is typically used in the teaching of law and philosophy, it can also prove to be a valuable tool in teaching English. Our learners can benefit from continual questions that force them to deepen their vocabularies, sentence structures and develops their confidence in using English. When we as teachers use the Socratic Method, our learners are placed in a position where they have to find new methods of expressing themselves, rather than simply relying on the same words and constructions over and over again.
Basically, the Socratic Method is an excellent way to promote the practice of asking and answering questions among our learners, as they get to grips with the fact that there are different ways of responding to different types of questions. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Any more ideas? Kaizena · Give Great Feedback. Highly commended | Year 6RC. Passion Projects and Student Blogging | classroom chronicles.
My school’s homework policy is designed to ensure students only complete tasks that are meaningful, for the purposes of reinforcing classroom learning and building connections with home. This term Year 6 are once again completing Passion Projects. These projects are designed to be completed during the term, thus introducing them to tasks that take time. They are also designed to encourage reflection and to build their literacy skills. Our first Passion Projects were completed by last year’s students. In that instance we used Google docs as our means of tracking their progress. This year we have taken it one step further. This year our students are each using a student blog to document their learning. As yet our projects are only part way through and it is fair to say that some students are more engaged in the blogging process than others. If you are interested in Passion projects you can read my previous posts here and here.
How Wordless Picture Books Empower Children | SLJ Day of Dialog 2014. Homepage - ReadWriteThink. Writing prompts. Writing prompts. Writing prompts. Writing for a Purpose. Creative writing prompts . com ideas for writers.