The Best Visually Engaging News Sites This is a one-of-a-kind “The Best…” list. I don’t think any of the sites on this list are very accessible to English Language Learners. Those sites can be found at The Best News/Current Events Websites For English Language Learners. This list is just a collection of links I’ve been accumulating for applications that visually represent current news in particularly unusual ways. It’s pretty difficult for me to describe them, so I’ll just list them here and let you discover how they work on your own. Here are my choices for The Best Visually Engaging News Sites: * News Map * Interceder * Newser, This site shows a large grid of news photos, along with a headline, short description, its source, and how long ago it has been published. Breaking News is a current events news-reader designed in an intriguing way. Ten By Ten HeatMap News shows spots on a world map where most news reports are coming from at any given moment (based on Google News). Feel free to offer additional suggestions. Related
New & Useful Resources On Bloom’s Taxonomy Here are new additions to The Best Resources For Helping Teachers Use Bloom’s Taxonomy In The Classroom. Most, thought not all, of these new resources relate to Bloom’s and ELLs: EFL Classrooms Can Teach Higher Order Thinking Skills is an article from Humanising Language Teaching. Asking The Right Questions Using Bloom’s Taxonomy with English Language Learners Bloom’s Taxonomy classroomsnextlevel.wordpress.comSAMR App Dice1Samantha Morra21st Century Classroom Related Bloom's Taxonomy For Language Learners The New Jersey World Languages Curriculum Framework is a PDF document with a lot of interesting stuff. July 22, 2009 In "teacher resources" The Best Resources For Helping Teachers Use Bloom's Taxonomy In The Classroom Bloom's Taxonomy is talked about a lot in educational circles. May 25, 2009 In "best of the year" New Bloom's Taxonomy Resource A Three Story Intellect!
Stories, Stories, Stories Using photos in EFL Classroom, part 3 We are all stories, right? We tell a new story, the same story, another story all the time and we do it in the class too. Today I’m going to mention activities that can be used to create new stories for the theme “Using Photos in EFL Classes”. You can either ask your students to bring some photos they have taken or you can choose the photos you’ve taken or as usual, go to #ELTpics and tell them to choose the pictures they want to think about and write their stories. You can tell them to write 6 word stories (6 word stories) watching the sea from a distance Twitter stories, that is 140 characters only per photo On a cold sunny day in January, I took the tube to go to Covent Garden, I walked around a little. A mini saga, which is a short piece of writing containing exactly 50 words, plus a title of up to 15 letters. Going HomeIt was summer, a hot day in August.
Leoxicon: Be like Bill for grammar (and vocabulary) practice The third person singular of the Present Simple tense is known to be particularly problematic for learners and when the "Be Like Bill" meme took social media by storm last week, I thought that it presents a wonderful opportunity to practise the problematic structure. Background If you don't know Be Like Bill, it works something like this: you see in your feed an image one of your Facebook friends has posted which looks like this. You click on the image and after being redirected to the meme generator, you enter your name and gender, and the app generates a similar nonsensical story about you which always ends with "(Mike / Jane / Leo / Farouk) is smart. Be like (Mike / Jane / Leo / Farouk)"and has a stick figure sporting a bobble hat. But what if you could get your students write their own "memes"? Activity Level: Elementary - Pre-intermediate (A2) Focus: Writing Aim: Practise affirmative and negative sentences in the Present Simple - 3rd person Procedure Vocabulary to pre-teach Writing activity
CristinaSkyBox: A Perspective on Geography Home. A place where one returns to when the day is done, a place which evokes childhoods and familiar environments. Home is also broader than the individual experience. It is our planet, in all its fragilities and strengths, its beauty, mysteries, cultures and eco-systems. Geography is a wonderful way of discussing environmental issues, of learning about cultures, and thinking about solutions for problems which affect our planet. GeoGuessr and Smarty Pins are both free online games which learners can play either on their own or in pairs. which offers a variety of games on animals, and other topics related to geography and our planet. World Geography Games is another resource for games but better still, why not ask students to work in small groups and create their own geography games? For the ESL/EFL classroom, learners need to think about the structure of questions, vocabulary and overall challenge they can pose to other groups. Home from Future Of StoryTelling on Vimeo. Further Suggestions:
6 Ed Tech Tools to Try in 201 6 About a year ago, I published an e-book called the Teacher’s Guide to Tech. Over the last month, I have been updating it for 2016, adding over 30 new tools and refreshing the information I had about the original ones. I have to say, the 2015 version was excellent, but now it’s SO MUCH BETTER. In the process, I discovered some tools that I absolutely fell in love with, and I wanted to share them with you here. Let’s take a look. Listen to this post as a podcast: Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:24 — 47.6MB) Subscribe: iTunes | Android | One key to improving student writing is to have students write more often. Students browse through a growing collection of writing ideas, each one paired with a visually compelling image, and write about them.Finished posts can then be shared with just one class or made publicly viewable (see examples). The free option allows for 40 students and a limited number of posts; paid packages offer greater capacity for students and posts.
Demonstration Speech Assignment www.EFLSensei.com Students prepare and deliver a demonstration speech about a topic of their choice. Includes assignment, sample speech topics, and evaluation forms. Level: Any Topic: Demonstration speech Time: Extended Demonstration Speech Assignment Demonstrative Speech Topics Peer Evaluation Form Oral Presentation Rubric Self Evaluation Form Preparation Make one copy of Demonstration Speech Assignment for each student. Procedure Explain Assignment Pass out the Demonstration Speech Assignment to each student. Topic Selection Ask students to choose a topic for their speech. Presentations Pass out the Peer Evaluation Form to each student. For the teacher: Use the Oral Presentation Rubric to evaluate the students’ speeches. Evaluations Collect the peer evaluations. Notes: Assign one or two students to keep track of time during the speeches. Extended Practice Pass out the Self Evaluation Form to each student. See Your Activity on EFL Sensei Upload Here Like This Lesson?
Learn English Paraphrase Writing Paraphrase writing means you take a sentence and change some words but keep the same idea. It’s a good skill for ESL students because it helps them learn English words and different ways to write a sentence. These ESL teaching materials provide writing students with 4 strategies to paraphrase sentences. What is Paraphrasing? Paraphrase writing is actually quite difficult. It involves several tasks. find and keep the main ideachange the key wordschange sentence order Paraphrase Practice Questions Here are 4 sets of paraphrase practice questions. Part 1. Isolate key words and phrases and replace them with words that express a similar idea. For example: Several high school students are taking pictures of themselves in front of a coffee shop.Quite a few high school students are taking selfies in front of a cafe. Practice Writing Questions Part 2. Change a sentence written on the passive form and make it active. Many buildings were destroyed by the earthquake.The earthquake destroyed many buildings.
Speaking For An Audience These new kids need more public speaking skills than us. They will work on projects in teams, they will present their projects and they will need to be more confident in front of an audience. Thus, as teachers we can encourage our students to speak in front of an audience by assigning weekly projects. Friday afternoons can be a great time for doing this as on the last day of the week they feel tired and demotivated. You can find a lovely box, or a jar and put the project ideas in and ask them to choose the one for the next week. Here are some suggestions but we can add more, Every week students choose a song which tell a story and prepare a 3-minute presentation about the song.