Teaching Tips and ideas

[JT]

I would like to put a positive swing on this... Lets use this area to post tips, tricks, websites and ways to improve our classroom skills


This month KOTESOL is having their yearly conference and workshop to help us do our jobs better and give us an effective edge in Korea.

www.barryfunenglish.com this is a very useful site if you have access to internet in the classroom. It has a ton of useful games, printouts, powerpoints, tools and whatnot to make your classes more fun and interesting.

www.xtranormal.com I use this one to play around with the dialogues for my students. You can create your own animated movie that uses your own dialogue that you type in.

These are just a few that I can think of off the top of my head, but let's keep the ideas coming!

[Ulsan]

Bogglesworld
great one for elementary kids, saved my life on more than one occasion
http://bogglesworldesl.com/

[Deelicious]

I use the Discovery Kids puzzlemaker tool (just google those words).

You can use the vocabulary your kids are working on to create word-searches, crossword puzzles and the like.

My coworker also once showed me this really great version of Jeopardy that you basically make up out of the books the kids use  - it's an awesome way of reviewing before a test, or a good game for game day that your boss and the parents won't complain about... Basically you write the 5 categories on the board. I use "Spelling" - give the kid a word and they have to spell it out loud, like at a spelling bee,  "Hangman" - put blanks and letters on the board and they have to guess what it is,  "Picture" - draw a picture and they have to guess, "Sentence" - give a word and they have to use it in a sentence, and "Quiz" - ask a question about something in the book. Under the categories you put the scores - 10 - 50 or 100 - 500 or whatever. If they choose 10, it's an easy question, and it gets harder as the points go up. I let my kids answer one word answers for 10 - 20 points, but after that they have to use complete sentences.

The best part is it takes as little preparation as you want to give it- you can just draw it on the board and make up the questions as you go if you want to. You can even pick one or two students to be the quiz masters if you so choose.

[Molly Kolodny]

Hi All,

I want to put together a list of, oh, ten or so  English novels for my upper grades elementary/middle-school kids. I'm particularly interested in recent titles - i.e. published in the past five years - and in particular those which might (hopefully!) engage the boys interested in computers, soccer etc.  The lists I've seen are mostly older titles, and while I'm all for 'the classics'  (in which I include e.g. 'The Outsiders', Anne of GG, Mary Poppins, et al) I'd love to find some contemporary stuff that's Well-Written.

Thanks!
Molly

[martypants]

It's still a few decades old, but I always liked Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea."  While I read a lot of other, more contemporary, things than that, I doubt there's one appropriate for young minds