Travel and Sightseeing: Directions Through Town (2) Travel and sightseeing are always fun, but if you find yourself lost in a new city on vacation, you will probably have to ask for directions. Understanding directions is a big part of this. Look at the expressions below and be sure to understand the meaning of the places on the map before you begin the listening activity: Listen by pressing the "Play Audio" button. Then, choose TRUE or FALSE for each sentence, which may be missing one or more words. Press the "Final Score" button to check your quiz. [ Other Audio Options: Play RealMedia | Play Window Media ] Listen to the sentences again as you read the Quiz Script. Draw a neighborhood map of the area where you live (or a place you know well like a school or your work). Now, write your opinions on a similar topic at Randall's ESL Blog HERE. Randall's Sites: Daily ESL | ESL Blog | EZSlang | Train Your Accent | Tips For Students | Hiking In Utah
Travel and Sightseeing: Directions Through Town (1) Whether you are on a sightseeing trip through Europe or backpacking in Australia, finding your way around the city while on vacation can be difficult unless you know what to say. Understanding directions is a big part of this. Look at the expressions below and be sure to understand the meaning of the places on the map before you begin the listening activity: Listen by pressing the "Play Audio" button. [ Other Audio Options: Play RealMedia | Play Window Media ] Listen to the sentences again as you read the Quiz Script. Draw a neighborhood map of the area where you live (or a place you know well like a school or your work). Now, write your opinions on a similar topic at Randall's ESL Blog HERE. Randall's Sites: Daily ESL | ESL Blog | EZSlang | Train Your Accent | Tips For Students | Hiking In Utah
Train Tickets: Getting Around Tokyo Finding budget plane tickets, hotels, and tours packages might sound difficult in Tokyo, Japan. However, after you arrive, you still need to find your way around the city, especially like one as big as Tokyo. What are two of the most common forms of public transportation in your country? Would foreigners visiting your country have a difficult time using public transportation in major cities? Why or why not? Listen to the conversation by pressing the "Play Audio" button of the audio type you want to hear, and answer the questions. [ Other Audio Options: Play RealMedia | Play Window Media ] Listen to the conversation again as you read the Quiz Script. What are some ways you can prepare before traveling to another country? Imagine that you are have received $3,000 to take a three-week vacation to one or more of these cities: New York City, Tokyo, or London, and one city of your choice. Want to Tell People About This Listening Activity?
Close Reading Toolbox Freebie! | The TpT Blog This post originally appeared on the blog CreateTeachShare. Well, my school year has barely ended, and call me crazy, because I am already planning and creating for next year!! I have a list a mile long of new ideas that I can’t wait to try out for next year. My first one?!?! Close Reading Toolboxes!! Close Reading has become a huge reading practice in my classroom, and has helped my students to get through those challenging informational texts. While cleaning out my cupboards recently, I came across these photo cases that I never ended up using for anything. These photo boxes come in a larger plastic box, which holds six individual photo boxes. I created two labels for the outside of the larger plastic box, just to keep it fancy. Then I created a label to put on each of the individual plastic boxes… On the inside cover of each box, I created a reference sheet for the different tools that each box contains. What Goes in Each Box?!?! Putting it All Together!! And….TA-DA!!!
10 Word Cloud Generators You Have Probably Never Tried A few days back, we looked at five great ways to incorporate word cloud generators into your classroom. There are obviously many more uses out there for them – but that is a discussion for another post. We’ve mentioned most of these before – in a post from way back when – so I won’t go into too much detail about each individual one, but we’ve added a few notable ones to the list. (Of note, the list is in no particular order). The vast majority of them work the same: plug your text into the box, select a few options, and you’ve got yourself a word cloud. Some offer more options than others, some offer word clouds with words going in any and all directions, some offer shapes, others create much simpler word clouds. If you do a quick search for word cloud, you’ll see so many different types. Do you have a favorite word cloud generator from the list below? Wordle Jason Davies’ Word Cloud Generator WordSift WordItOut Tagul TagCrowd Yippy WordMosaic AbcYa Tagxedo VocabGrabber
11 Hilarious Hoax Sites to Test Website Evaluation In this day and age, where anyone with access to the internet can create a website, it is critical that we as educators teach our students how to evaluate web content. There are some great resources available for educating students on this matter, such as Kathy Schrock’s Five W’s of Website Evaluation or the University of Southern Maine’s Checklist for Evaluating Websites. Along with checklists and articles, you will also find wonderfully funny hoax websites, aimed at testing readers on their ability to evaluate websites. These hoax sites are a great way to bring humor and hands-on evaluation into your classroom, and test your students’ web resource evaluation IQ! Check out these 11 example hoax sites for use in your own classrooms: Of all of these, my favorite is always the Dihydrogen Monoxide website, which aims to ban dihydrogen monoxide and talks in detail about its dangers. Happy hoax-hunting! Like this: Like Loading...
Free Electronic Books Online Free Classic AudioBooks. Digital narration for the 21st Century Malala: The girl who was shot for going to school Image copyright AFP One year ago schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by Taliban gunmen - her "crime", to have spoken up for the right of girls to be educated. The world reacted in horror, but after weeks in intensive care Malala survived. Her full story can now be told. She is the teenager who marked her 16th birthday with a live address from UN headquarters, is known around the world by her first name alone, and has been lauded by a former British prime minister as "an icon of courage and hope". She is also a Birmingham schoolgirl trying to settle into a new class, worrying about homework and reading lists, missing friends from her old school, and squabbling with her two younger brothers. She is Malala Yousafzai, whose life was forever changed at age 15 by a Taliban bullet on 9 October 2012. The Swat Valley once took pride in being called "the Switzerland of Pakistan". I remember it well from childhood holidays in Pakistan. It is clear that her absence is keenly felt.
Present perfect aspect – tips and activities By Kerry G.Maxwell and Lindsay Clandfield Tips and ideas from Kerry Maxwell and Lindsay Clandfield on teaching the present perfect aspect. Introduction When teaching the present perfect, or explaining the present perfect, it is often easiest to focus on the use of the present perfect rather than the meaning. This is especially true for the first time students encounter it (usually associated with the use of talking about experiences). However, sooner or later you will be looking at different uses of the present perfect, and more often than not its relation with the past tense. An easy way of explaining perfect is to use the word before. Activity: experiences A frustrated teacher once asked, “How many activities can you make for the present perfect?!” 'Have you ever …' questionnaires are good for restricted personalised practice. Cinema experiencesHave you ever met a movie star? Activity: Why not? Because I’ve seen it a hundred times! Why don’t you want to see Mission Impossible 2? Example:
A huge bunch of resources for teaching the present perfect tense Almost universally, elementary learners of English are systematically introduced to the simple present and simple past forms. Then, somewhere around the end of what we consider to be elementary level and the beginning of pre-intermediate study, learners are introduced to the phenomenon known as the present perfect tense. In many cases, this is more than just a stumbling block on the road to learning English. This is primarily due to the fact that for many learners there is no tangible equivalent to the have/has + V3 in their first language. Even those languages that utilise a perfect tense may do so in a way radically different to English. What is the consequence of this situation? ESL teaching ideas for present perfect Present perfect grammar worksheets with accompanying written exercises Present perfect questions and classroom activities for teachers and learners Other speaking exercises Any more to add?