011 : cool illustrations for visual aids in the class

Illustrations used in the texts to assist learners are usually pretty dull. Granted, they're usually black & white, so that leaves not much space for them to get our attention to begin with, but they could be spruced up a little, doncha think?

I was looking around the WWW for pictures for my assignment (which involves lesson planning) and I stumbled upon an illustrator by the name of Heather Sloane. She has a few sites under her wings; one of them is Mrs Pancake:

"Mrs Pancake is the teacher everyone loves. She's kind to the kids, always brings treats and just loves making Doodads - wonderful educational resources for parents and teachers."

The site caters to mainly younger children of literacy, numeracy and even for art&crafty subjects, though some things may be useful for the older students as well, like printable certs and some charts.

This site is such an adorable little space worth checking out! :)

[ link : mrspancake.com ]

010 : safe & sound - social responsibility

image by carf

The teaching course I am taking requires me to form a small group and give a small talk/microteaching skit on one of several given topics. To make a long story short, in the end we chose Social Responsibility as our topic.

Social Responsibility, in the most basic sense, makes the students the governor of their own behavior, and reminding them of it. The teachers and school admin are basically the models, 'reminders' and advocators of good behavior, and are also a huge chunk of Social Responsibility as well.

An episode of implementation of this is like thus:

1. Class rules are negotiated between T & Ss within a certain boundary (eg. school rules, legal laws etc are practised), and rules must include both T & Ss (eg. T & Ss must both be professional and respectful at all times).
   
   
2. It is important for Ts & school admin to explain WHY the rules are such. In essense, the focus of social responsibility is that everyone has rights, and if one person misbehaves (eg. steal, insult, bully), they are infringing on someone else's right. This refers to the Human Rights Act section 12 (I think?) where it says that children have the right to learn in a safe & comfortable learning environment.
   
   
3. When T/S fails to obey a rule, it means that they have willingly chosen to break it. Consequence will follow (if they continue) in a gradual state (reminded, moved to a different seat/position, detention/counselling, see the principal, call the parents/salary reduction, etc).

With this, Social Responsibility aims to make students know & feel that living in a society means independence AND interdependence. It also aims to ensure students to be more open-minded & mature when making decisions, because they will understand that decisions equal to implications (towards the self & others).

I think this is a crucial thing to teach & practise, particularly in the Malaysian classroom. Usually Ss are forced to follow the rules without being given the explanation of the rules and why they should be followed. Plus, as far as my education in the past has led to me to believe, the punishment system is only a consequence of rule-breaking rather than that of choice.

Please visit these for more info (and better clarification!):

[ link : esrnational.org ]
[ link : @bced.gov.bc.ca ]
[ link : @sfu.ca ]

May we all be socially responsible and respectful beings. Amin.

009 : funny education-related poetry

If you want to have a 'light' lesson, you may want a 'text' for an activity that can keep the students awake AND interested. A site worth checking is Poetry Teachers. They have a nice assortment of poetry that are quirky, fun and exploitable (in the sense that you can try to create lessons around them, eg. grammar), like this.

It's a cute site worth looking at, even if you don't have teaching intentions in mind :)

[ link : poetryteachers.com ]

008 : parts of speech, simplified

Need to refresh your mind on what nouns, verbs, adverbs, pronouns, etc are? Or just wanting to find worksheets useful to focus on lessons on these topics? This Enchantedlearning sub-site offers some nice material catering this, and they're also handy because they are explained in a simple way so that if your students are having problems with parts of speech, they can do it in their own time.

[ link : @enchantedlearning.com ]

007 : more resources for teaching!

Edhelper has puzzlemakers, worksheets, and other convenient stuff for your teaching needs. For the topical worksheets, they are graded according to the level of learners, so it makes it easier for you to suit/adapt the lessons to the needs and abilities of your students.

The site is catered for younger learners and offers stuff for English, Maths and a few other subjects. Their language resources in particular can also be good for ESL learners, regardless of their age.

Note : not all of their resources are free (like most teaching resources), but the ones that are available are worth checking out.

[ link : edhelper.com ]

006 : adjectives - think you know?

Until a few years ago, I never knew that multiple adjectives (English, at least) had a certain order when combined. This realisation came to me when I was tested for a job interview. I'm not sure how well I did on that test, but I did get the job, and I did learn that there was a proper order for adjectives, so all was good I guess. Haha.

Anyway, for the language teaching course I'm currently studying, we have to do a microteaching session as one of our course requirements. I think adjectives would be a good thing to focus on for this because it's easily underestimated but very much exploitable.

Here's a few links I found particularly useful to know about adjectives and their word orders:

[ link : @enchantedlearning.com ]
[ link : @learn4good.com ]
[ link : @grammar-quizzes.com ]

If you want to try more questions to check your understanding, go here:

[ link : @web2.uvcs.uvic.ca ]
[ link : @johnsesl.com ]
[ link : @edhelper.com ]

005 : some cool teaching resources for younger kids

This site offers (many, albeit limited) free resources for teaching. It has a lot of worksheets on many topics and subjects, so it is suitable for virtually any teacher whose students are in their teens and below.

[ link : abcteach.com ]

004 : fun with tongue twisters

I love tongue twisters! Although the words in them are usually easy to understand, they totally mess up your head! It's simple fun to get out of a bored state of mind or to freshen up sleepiness. Plus, it's good for fluency practice as well! If it doesn't, at least the students and you will be amused :)

Here's a site I found that's pretty cool for this, check it out:

[ link : @fun-with-words.com ]

003 : what is the longest word?

For English, AskOxford says, nobody can really decide.

"Most of the words which are given as 'the longest word' are merely inventions, and when they occur it is almost always as examples of long words, rather than as genuine examples of use..."

Quite an interesting (short) article :)

[ link : @AskOxford.com (sub of Oxford University Press) ]

~

For any language in general, however, there are many words which are loooong.

[ link : @fun-with-words.com ]

002 : learning the interactive way

Here's a blog about teaching languages using, mostly, interactive games. His ideas are mainly technology-based (eg. using the computers, internet, etc), and/but they're very entertaining. They can be used for days when you feel like stepping away from being at the front of the class, and letting the kids have fun (while secretly learning ;) ).

[ link : nik's daily english activities ]