Spelling Bee What are the different ways to play the Visual Thesaurus Spelling Bee? There are two different ways to play. In the Tournament Spelling Bee, you'll be challenged by a series of words, with the spelling difficulty adapted to your skill level. The more words you get right, the higher your score will go, on a scale from 200 to 800. You can also try a Community Spelling Bee generated from one of our subscribers' word lists. How does the Visual Thesaurus Spelling Bee work? Each turn, you'll hear the recording of the word and see its definition (with words suitably omitted that might give away the correct spelling). In the Tournament Spelling Bee, the more words you get right, the higher your score will go. If you play a Community Spelling Bee, the words from the selected word list are presented in random order. What happens if I misspell a word? If you spell a word incorrectly, you can keep guessing for as long as you like. How does the scoring work? How do I get on the high score list?
12 ways of creating stories with your EFL students I’ve been reading a fair amount recently about the value of storytelling – and, in particular, the telling of vivid and emotionally-engaging stories – to memory in general, and vocabulary-learning and grammar practice more specifically. It certainly seems that learning new words from a list is a duller and less efficient alternative to acquiring and retaining new vocabulary than involving your learners in narratives using the target words. With this in mind, here are four ways you can involve your learners in creating stories around particular lexical or grammatical themes, and a list (and brief descriptions!) of eight other methods from various corners of this site: Stories from boxesDraw eight rectangles on the board, with space between each one.Invite student volunteers to come and draw one thing, each in a different rectangle. Note: The two ideas above come from Creating Stories with Children by Andrew Wright. Stories from blank paper Show your students a blank sheet of paper.
Cartoons - Toondoo Teaching With a Mountain View: Top 10 Tips for Building Fluent Readers + Link Up! We have all heard about the shift that happens, usually between second and third grade, when students (should) go from learning to read to reading to learn. Unfortunately, for some students, their ability to read to learn is stifled by their inability to read fluently. Even for those kids who can read at an average pace, the faster and more accurately they can read and decode, the more effectively they can comprehend. When I taught third grade, and now as an interventionist, the importance of fluency is empathized more than ever (and has definitely met some critics). I know that fluency is NOT the end-all, be-all, but a lot of research proves that it is important, and a lot of schools are trending toward fluency being a high priority. 1. I know what you’re thinking—this is obvious. Update: I now have a FREE download that includes the above anchor chart! 2. Have you discovered the Super Speed games from Whole Brain Teaching? 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. Day 1 of new passage ONLY: Every Day: 8. 9. 10.
Spelling Practice Spelling Quizzes with sound Level 1: #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 Level 2: #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 Level 3: #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 Level 4: #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 Level 5: #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 Quizzes with no sound Level 1: #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 Level 2: #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 Level 3: #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 Level 4: #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 Level 5: #1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 Games Crossword GameJust like an old-fashioned word search! Using the mouse and the wordlist, find and highlight the hidden English words in the box! As the levels get harder, the words start appearing in different orientations. But hurry, the clock is running!
Beginning the School Year: It’s About Connections Not Content Most classes, starting with about middle school, begin the school year with reviewing the content to be covered, expectations regarding grades, and other academic information provided by the teacher or instructor. The human or social element is often disregarded. What is interesting is that most learners enter the classroom wondering who is in the course. Because of this belief, I begin all classes focusing on having the students make connections between themselves and me. You are the focus of the class not me.You are important as a learner in this class.You will be expected to engage in the learning activities during class time. Based on age/grade level, I have begun my classes in a variety of ways. Team Contract Class members meet in small groups to develop guidelines for making the classroom a safe place to learn and to take risks. Team Building Games There are tons of team building games that can be used in the classroom. All About Me Activities Some example activities I have done:
Bringing Back the Pen Pal: 9 Creative Ways to Send Snail Mail First duct tape envelopes and now professing our love for snail mail – it seems we've officially gone postal! While we love using technology to keep in touch with friends and family, there's still something incredibly special about sending or receiving an actual piece of mail. At this point, almost all of the "real mail" 2.0ers tend to send and receive is related to weddings, but we think it's time to bring the pen pal back for more than just nuptial events. Here are 9 creative ways to send snail mail to the important folks in your life, from a pie you can mail to our adorable pop-ups and two modern takes on the classic message in a bottle. (Mail pro tip: Buy stamps on USPS.com to avoid post office woes – we're partial to this summer's Celebrate Scouting set.) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.
An Original Writing Lesson on Metaphors from Corbett Harrison For this lesson's notebook page, after we explore Pat Benatar's metaphor in her song "Love is Battlefield," my students create original and interesting metaphors for the topic of love in their writer's notebooks; on a notebook page, each metaphor is established and extended upon with two details. Once students have practiced extending original love metaphors, they are asked to create new metaphors over the month that are more appropriate to their other core content areas: math, science, and social studies. Once a week in Language Arts class, students polish a new metaphor they have created outside of English class, then publish and illustrate it on a designated page in their writer's notebook. After the two-page notebook spread is complete, students can be reminded/prompted to use more metaphors during writing or during processing in the future. In 2012, I added a poetry extension lesson, which you can find below in the write-up. Idea #1...Teaching a Four-Metaphor Poem From day
8 Great Free Tools to Improve your Students Spelling Skills 1- Spelling Match This is a great game where learners can improve their spelling based on matching activities. It has different levels and grades. Scholastic provides three awesome games to improve spelling skills. This one here has 6 word games and some of them are spelling activities such as : Miss Spell's Class. This is a great website for both spelling and vocabulary practice. Spell Bee provides different spelling games for students to play. This is an awesome game where students get to practice their spelling abilities. Synonym Card Game There are 30 pairs of synonyms here (for a total of 60 cards) that can be used to play the games Fish and Memory. Students have to find the synonym card to the one that they have. The synonym pairs covered here are: large/big, tiny/small, noisy/loud, silent/quiet, quick/fast, sick/ill, leap/jump, push/shove, pull/tug, sprint/run, afraid/scared, spooky/scary, cold/chilly, home/house, rock/stone, garbage/trash, rug/carpet, kid/child, clever/smart, happy/glad, street/road, and throw/toss. You can use the game Fish or memory to practice this game. Fish goes likes this: A: (Has the card for 'fast') Do you have quick? B: Yes, I do. If the answer was yes, B gives the card to A and A gets a point. As well, these two worksheets review the vocabulary covered in these cards and will be useful for playing the game: Synonyms Vocab Worksheet 1 Synonyms Vocab Worksheet 2
Elimination games with young learners | Super Simple Learning Blog ♫ One potato, two potatoes… ♫ Many of us remember playing elimination games like Musical Chairs and Simon Says when we were young. These are games where you start with a group, and each round, one or more players is “out” and eliminated from the game. As you get closer and closer to the end of the game, the tension builds, and it can be a lot of fun (and beneficial for young learners). However, for some very young learners, these kinds of elimination games can be very upsetting. There are a few ways to handle this. 1) Demonstrate how to “lose” positively If you do play a game where participants get eliminated, be sure, as the leader, to eliminate yourself first. 2) Make getting “out” fun When a child does get eliminated in the game, give her a high five, let her sit in a special chair, make a silly noise, maybe even give her a sticker. 3) Eliminate the elimination For very young learners, often there is no need to have a winner or any sense of competition to make the activity fun.
Quest - Write text adventure games and interactive stories Quest lets you make interactive story games. Text adventure games like Zork and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Gamebooks like the Choose Your Own Adventure and Fighting Fantasy books. You don't need to know how to program. All you need is a story to tell. Your game can be played anywhere. Watch a quick screencast ...and you're free No restrictions. This means you can download and modify the Quest source code, and do whatever you want with it. You can sell the games you make with Quest. You don't need to ask for permission - you already have it. Get started quickly You don't need to know how to program to use Quest. Everything about your game is displayed in plain English, but the source code to your game is also viewable and editable for the more technically minded. A full tutorial is included, and help is always available on the forums. Ever wanted to... Ever wanted to create your own game, but were put off by complicated programming languages? Surprisingly powerful Any language