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 ]

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 ]

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 ]