Differentiating Instruction Whether you teach first grade or AP Calculus, your class is certain to have a variety of learners. Perhaps you have some ESL/ELL students, some learning support, some emotional support, some gifted, and some very “average.” TeachersFirst has resources to help you understand and adapt for student differences, including general ideas for any and all students and for specific student needs. For Any and All Students: Browse examples Many TeachersFirst resource reviews include differentiation suggestions and practical ways a resource can help you meet individual needs. For Specific Student Needs: Autism and Aspergers Find resources and information to help you understand and work with this increasing population. Adapt-a-Strategy for ESL/ELL Adapt your existing lesson plans using these simple strategies to help ESL students. Gifted Special Ed Special Ed regulations change frequently, and many are specific to your state.
5 quick games for vocabulary revision for current unit Purpose: vocabulary revision for CURRENT UNIT To see vocabulary revision for MORE THAN one unit, please click HERE Any level but for some games students need to have practised techniques for categorising words (this is a verb, an adjective, this is a past simple...) Timing: about 10 minutes No material needed A) Word telepathy Have a volunteer sit at the front of the class with his/her back at the board. B) Sentence telepathy The same as before but with a sentence. C) Lip reading Tell the student the category of the word (words related to hair, sport...). D) Today’s question The question is on board when students arrive. E) Stepping stones Tell the students the vocabulary class of the exercise. Draw this on the board: TEAM A) o o o o TEAM B) o o o o Students need to cross a dangerous river stepping on the stones:the os. Imagine the word to guess is SPIDER The teacher writes S on the blackboard. F) Crazy eraser Source: MacMillan teacher training (Barcelona 2006?)
Sentence Length Today's topic is sentence length. This episode was written by Bonnie Trenga, author of The Curious Case of the Misplaced Modifier. I was glad to hear from those of you who enjoyed Bonnie's writing last week. I'll be back as the writer next week, but Bonnie and other writers may continue to fill in for me on occasion as I start working on my next book and head out this summer for my book tour. Long Sentences My dad has a memorable poster in his bathroom: a diagram of a ridiculously long sentence by Marcel Proust. Sentence Fragments I have to applaud Proust for being able to keep everything straight in that sentence—because he sure used a lot of semicolons, commas, clauses, and other tricks to lengthen it. All of this Proust talk is making me hungry for a madeleine, a small shell-shaped cake that had a starring role in In Search of Lost Time. Finding the Proper Length Proust’s enormous sentence is an anomaly, but long sentences certainly haven’t disappeared. Finding and Fixing Long Sentences
What Is Your Learning Style? What Is Your Learning Style? This quiz asks 24 questions and will take less than five minutes to complete. Try not to think too hard -- just go with your first thought when describing your daily activities and interests. By the end, you may have some new insights into your learning preferences. Editor's Note (2013): There is no scientific evidence, as of yet, that shows that people have specific, fixed learning styles or discrete intelligences, nor that students benefit when teachers target instruction to a specific learning style or intelligence. IPA: The theory and beyond. Is knowing the IPA essential? Do you use phonemic script in class? Why or why not? #ELTchat Summary 22/02/2012 Full title of #ELTchat on February 22nd 12.P.M. GMT This summary was contributed by Rachel Appleby, alias @rapple18 Introduction Dealing with pronunciation in the classroom is one of those things that comes naturally to some, is consciously avoided by others, and is a bit of a bête noir for a few. The ELT chat on this involved some 15-20+ participants from all leanings, promoting plenty of meaty discussion. The issues covered, in a nutshell, included Do we, teachers, know all the symbols? Image from Peter Ladefoged’s home page For those needing a bit of background and unpacking, the IPA, or International Phonetic Alphabet comes up on Wikipedia as follows: The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet. Extract from Wikipedia Adrian Underhill’s Phonetic Chart Terminology, as such, didn’t come up (phew!) Starter questions: How’s your knowledge? Demise of IPA
18 Fun and Simple Creative Writing Activities Some of you teachers may be a John Keating in the making. Still more may need a little help. Here are some creative writing activities and prompts that will honor your students’ imaginations. Let them free their muses to soar. I had great creative writing teachers when I was in high school. They were very passionate about literature. Creative Writing Activities to Explore This terrific list of activities come from Marcus Roskilly in the UK: Free Writing—5 minutes to write on a “spark word” determined by the teacher. Other Engaging Approaches Here are some select writing activities from Caroline Swicegood: Life is Not Like a Box of Chocolates: Use the prompt: “Life is like a box of…” You fill in the blank and go from there.No-Send Letters: If you know you’ll never send a letter to someone of your choice, what would you write on it? Creative Writing Prompts Some prompts from Buzzfeed’s 23 Of The Most Creative College Essay Prompts From 2014–2015
Halloween Complex TestsTestsExamsEnglish Lessons English ForumTalksDownload WorksheetsWritingGames ParentsTeachersPupils/Students Literature/BooksDictionairiesRead Top News NewsletterEFL/ESL SitesGuestbookFAQSitemap Press/AdvertisingPrivay PolicyImprint/Contact Search website: Custom Search Does grammar matter? - Andreea S. Calude Spoken language has been neglected and marginalized for much of our history on account of its perceived inferiority in comparison to written language. Written language was historically regarded as the language of the ‘learned,’ given that few people could read or write. It also had permanence (written records can be preserved for hundreds of years, and it is only recently that speech recordings became an achievable technology for most of us), and it was thought to be of a higher standard and quality (often summed up as having “better” or more “correct” grammar). You can read more about this biased view of written language over spoken language in the online book “The Written Language Bias” by Peter Linell. We all know that languages differ with respect to their grammar – we have all tried to learn another language only to be baffled not just by new vocabulary but also by the order and other quirks of how that language organizes its vocabulary – but what can and what does actually vary?
Emphasis - Focussing with cleft sentences We sometimes use constructions called cleft sentences when we want to focus on a particular part of the sentence. These are used both in written and spoken English. There are two main types of cleft sentence, it- clefts and what- clefts (and a variation of what-clefts, all-clefts). What- clefts and variations on them are often referred to as pseudo clefts. Read all about clefts and try some exercises. Introduction What a cleft sentence does is to cleave (split or divide into two) a sentence into two parts in order to emphasise one of the parts (underlined). Warsaw Will writes this blog. It's Warsaw Will who writes this blog.it-cleft - uses a type of defining relative clauseWhat Warsaw Will does is write this blog.wh-cleft - uses a type of nominal relative clause If we want to emphasise nouns and other parts of a sentence other than finite verbs, we can use an it-cleft. If we want to emphasise finite verbs or actions, we need to use a wh-cleft. What's a nominal relative clause? Other wh-clefts
Why is there a "b" in doubt? - Gina Cooke This is a map of the wheel-ruts of modern English. Etymologies are not definitions; they're explanations of what our words meant and how they sounded 600 or 2,000 years ago. We all know certain spelling errors are very common, such as miniscule or geneology. But how common exactly, and are they getting more or less common as time goes on? Spelling is the writing of one or more words with letters and diacritics. On the history of spelling. by the Rev. Real Spelling www.realspelling.com WordWorks www.wordworkskingston.com Real Spellers www.realspellers.org This is a past TED conversation. For other language and literature lessons from TED-Ed, check out this YouTube playlist: