On Monday, we had the chance to go visit the Corvette Museum and Plant. For you readers that do not know, Corvettes are made right here in Bowling Green, KY. At the museum, they had the Nano Exhibit. At the exhibit, the students got to learn about looking at very small objects.
TeachMeet Nashville I would highly recommend attending this conference. TeachMeets are great informal conferences that shares different apps and webtools. Each session is 20 minutes long. Check out the link and sign up!
My wife is on Pinterest all the time and I try to keep up with it. Here is a pointer she found on there. The kids really enjoyed reading with them and were able to keep up.
Here in the Unit, we teach a lot of content. But I also feel that it is important to teach the students about holidays we celebrate. The majority of the students have never heard of Halloween or Thanksgiving. Here in the unit, we celebrated St. Patrick’s Day. We studied who St. Patrick was and talked about the Irish. We even went out and searched for four leaf clovers. Check out the pics’
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-benefits-of-bilingualism.html?_r=1&smid=FB-nytimes&WT.mc_id=OP-E-FB-SM-LIN-WBA-0301812-NYT-
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I came across an interesting article from the New York Times today. The article discusses the various benefits with being bilingual. I thought it was interesting that being bilingual can delay Alzheimer’s.
I have some students that are struggling with skip counting. Here is a neat activity that gets students out of their seats and lets them toss around a ball. When the student catches the ball, they have to say a number that we are counting by. For example, if the student catches it they have to say 4. They throw it to the next student and they have to say 8. They keep on throwing it unit they get to 48. Here is the link to it: http://s1166.photobucket.com/albums/q613/bemiss1982/?action=view¤t=ec9fff7a.mp4
Brainpop ESL is website that has lessons for ELL students. I use this website has a whole class. We watch the movie, we do the lessons, we play the games, and we take the tests. The lessons are leveled, which means that it starts easy and then it gets harder. The lessons involve listening, speaking, reading, and writing. My students love this website. Brainpop ESL is $115 for a year for a classroom. It is well worth it though!
Pogoboards is a webtool that allows you to create talking wordwalls. You can print your wordwalls or email them too. Pogoboards has a built in database that searches the images for you. You can also us Google to find the images. Pogoboards is $69.00 a year but it is well worth it. I use it for all my classes. Check it out!
One of our activities that we do on Fridays is listening to music and singing it. This is an activity I stole from a fellow ELL teacher at Cumberland Trace. Every Friday, the class listens to a song and sings it. He usually finds songs on Youtube that has the lyrics posted. For example, our class listened to Adele “Someone like You”. The students listen to it the first time and the second time they sing it. Listening to pop songs help ELLs with fluency and helps them fit in with American kids. Since my unit is sheltered, this will help my ELL students fit in with American kids and also learn about American culture. I try to pick out songs that are approiprate and that are easy to follow along. I’ll post a list of songs that are great to use in the classroom.
bemissintensiveenglish 