Monday 7 January 2019
Friday 21 December 2018
Sprinkle Excitement in the Classroom with These 8 ESL Spelling Games
S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G
C-A-N
B-E
F-U-N!
You read that right. When taught correctly, spelling can be fun for the whole class!
Even if writing isn’t one of your main classroom objectives, it’s still important for students to have a firm grasp on proper spelling.
Whether students find learning proper spelling easy or a nightmare, one thing’s for sure: most students will tell you that spelling exercises are rather dull. That’s why I recommend using some simple and easy games to get your students excited about spelling!
Wednesday 19 December 2018
How to Constructively Leverage Mistakes as Part of Your Teaching Strategy
Students are not perfect, and we spend much of our time correcting their mistakes. Our challenge is in correcting these mistakes in a useful rather than in a discouraging manner. Fortunately, as Dr. Richard Curwin argues cogently in his recent Edutopia blog post. There are ways that we can structure our classrooms and change how we view and talk about mistakes that will actually encourage learning. Here are a few ways to do just that..
Seven ways to give better feedback to your students
Research shows that constructive comments can bring a huge boost to learning – but they can also backfire. Here’s how to get them right..
Read more..
Why do we teach Grammar?
Why should we teach pupils terms for aspects of language use – a ‘metalanguage’, as it is sometimes called? For example, why does the teacher suggest that the pupil ‘use the past tense’, rather than saying ‘Write "ed" there and there, and "shook", not "shake", there’? The answer seems to be that the terms help the learner to generalise from that activity to all similar ones and thus have a specific way of thinking about such activities in future. This process also, presumably, serves to crystallise the learner’s knowledge about how this aspect of language operates, by making it specific and conscious, especially if similar instances are regularly identified and described in the same way, in similar contexts.
Is Teaching Grammar Necessary?
Many years ago, while visiting a grade 4/5 classroom in the school where I was principal, I listened to a group of children reading aloud the first drafts of essays they had written about various holidays celebrated in America. The children were helping each other to correct errors and make meaning clearer. In reading her essay one girl said, “In the United states we celebrate Christmas by giving and receiving gifts and sing Christmas carols.” Immediately, another girl in the group interrupted her,..
Why should we teach grammar?
There are many arguments for putting grammar in the foreground in second language teaching. Here are seven of them:..
Effective Framework for Primary-Grade Guided Writing Instruction
This article describes the theory and procedures (purpose, format, teacher prompting, and assessment procedures) for small-group writing instruction. Guided writing lessons are intensive, small-group activities that help create instructional support and interaction between teacher and students during writing.
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