Just reposting from the discussion section hopefully put together shorter with some tips.
Just reposting from the discussion section hopefully put together shorter with some tips.
As per Penny’s advice I did the recall and share drill with my students with a series of words from the superlatives and comparative adjectives. I also added her advice of trying to teach different levels by having them choose three words from the list of words and making three personally true sentences about them or their friend. If they could do 3 sentences quickly then I had them take the adjective and change it into another that was not from the list.
Similar tip from Penny that I have done before in other classes is to Dictate the instructions to the students and have them write them out before doing the exercise. This allows the ones who can do it easily to move onto the activity while letting me see who needs more help and make the instructions be a teaching tool at the same time.
Video-taping classes is one of the best things teachers can do to help improve our teaching. I think that we do have to get away from saying this was good or bad but move to observations like when I did x the students did y. Then play with what we could change and see how the students change or not. We can also use them to plan for future lessons.
Shows I can recommend for students (mostly younger kids) to get exposure to English outside the class should mostly focus on their being interested. I would recommend staying towards i+1 or +2 rather than going towards Comprehensible Input of i-1 as they usually motivated to watch. I agree cartoons like Looney Tunes are good but it is better I think to go for more exposure and higher levels as they are very motivated to watch.
Some Titles are: From Netflix; The Magic School Bus series, Give a Mouse a Cookie series, as these can be tied to the books. Puss in Boots the Interactive version on Netflix is great as the students get to choose what happens and my kids did it repeatedly to find all the answers and show me the different choices. Trollhunter is another series that I found interesting watching with my kids.
Youtube has a lot of videos out there by teachers that are quite good but just review them. I can say Fluency MC has some good songs. Similar to Extensive Reading the fun part is the most important factor I think.
More than video if they have the chance I would say EnglishCentral as a great site to watch videos and learn. They can click on any word in the videos and a short popup window comes up with the word, its morphemes, the whole word sound, its definition, part of speech, and the word used in the sample sentence. You can also type in the words missing from the video and then you can record yourself saying the lines where they use an algorithm to check your pronunciation. It is a pay site but limited so safe for kids and the apps let them be used on cellphones and tablets, too. Some other sites I can recommend are http://mrnussbaum.com/ which is made for regular elementary school kids in the US but are free and well done. https://www.apps4efl.com/ also has some good activities as well as http://www.manythings.org/ but I highly recommend that they be guided when using the computer or a tablet.
Thanks, Scott. That's awesome information. Moms ask sometimes about things they can do at home to increase their kids' contact with English and I have been at a loss, not being a mom myself.
http://www.manythings.org/
As per Penny’s advice I did the recall and share drill with my students with a series of words from the superlatives and comparative adjectives. I also added her advice of trying to teach different levels by having them choose three words from the list of words and making three personally true sentences about them or their friend. If they could do 3 sentences quickly then I had them take the adjective and change it into another that was not from the list.
Similar tip from Penny that I have done before in other classes is to Dictate the instructions to the students and have them write them out before doing the exercise. This allows the ones who can do it easily to move onto the activity while letting me see who needs more help and make the instructions be a teaching tool at the same time.
Video-taping classes is one of the best things teachers can do to help improve our teaching. I think that we do have to get away from saying this was good or bad but move to observations like when I did x the students did y. Then play with what we could change and see how the students change or not. We can also use them to plan for future lessons.
Shows I can recommend for students (mostly younger kids) to get exposure to English outside the class should mostly focus on their being interested. I would recommend staying towards i+1 or +2 rather than going towards Comprehensible Input of i-1 as they usually motivated to watch. I agree cartoons like Looney Tunes are good but it is better I think to go for more exposure and higher levels as they are very motivated to watch.
Some Titles are: From Netflix; The Magic School Bus series, Give a Mouse a Cookie series, as these can be tied to the books. Puss in Boots the Interactive version on Netflix is great as the students get to choose what happens and my kids did it repeatedly to find all the answers and show me the different choices. Trollhunter is another series that I found interesting watching with my kids.
Youtube has a lot of videos out there by teachers that are quite good but just review them. I can say Fluency MC has some good songs. Similar to Extensive Reading the fun part is the most important factor I think.
More than video if they have the chance I would say EnglishCentral as a great site to watch videos and learn. They can click on any word in the videos and a short popup window comes up with the word, its morphemes, the whole word sound, its definition, part of speech, and the word used in the sample sentence. You can also type in the words missing from the video and then you can record yourself saying the lines where they use an algorithm to check your pronunciation. It is a pay site but limited so safe for kids and the apps let them be used on cellphones and tablets, too. Some other sites I can recommend are http://mrnussbaum.com/ which is made for regular elementary school kids in the US but are free and well done. https://www.apps4efl.com/ also has some good activities as well as http://www.manythings.org/ but I highly recommend that they be guided when using the computer or a tablet.
Thanks, Scott. That's awesome information. Moms ask sometimes about things they can do at home to increase their kids' contact with English and I have been at a loss, not being a mom myself.
http://www.manythings.org/
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