One good thing about this week is I finally get to use a Russian dictionary. Why is that such a big deal? It's not really... but here's the story. About 10 years ago, I received 5 huge English/Russian Dictionaries by mistake. They were very nice hardbound dictionaries and I could not bring myself to send them back. I have never had a student who spoke Russian, until this year! When I met my student, who is from Uzbekistan (I now know where that is! Yay!), he probably thought I was off my rocker because I squealed and ran into the room that housed the Russian dictionaries and placed it on his desk with a big smile on my face. I can finally use one of my Russian Dictionaries! And he could read it, and taught the class a few words. Funny thing is, I just got news I will be getting another Russian student next week. You just never know!
There are many "Get to Know You" and "First Week" activities swimming around the web and I wanted to highlight a couple of great reading focused activities that seem to work great with the ESL students.
I like to grab them with some multimedia technology right away so they know that I will not be just a pencil and paper type of teacher and to get them excited about reading in general. I found a link to the animated short film, "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore" and after I watched the film I knew I needed to watch this with my students the first week of school.
The story starts out with a man writing his life story when a hurricane destroys the town and pulls all of his words out of his book and he is left sad and lonely. It's not until he comes across a lady with some flying books that he learns that books can bring color back into your life.
When I told the kids there were no words in this movie, they couldn't wrap their heads around that. No words? But after the movie started they were captured by the Oscar winning film. The fact that it has no words is great for beginning ESL students because they can capture the meaning without being frustrated by the language. Below is a link to the response worksheet I made which got the students thinking critically and thinking about books and reading.
The film used to be free on You Tube but due to copyright violations it is no longer free. You can download it from ITunes for $2.00. It's worth it!!
TAGXEDO! When I wrote this on the board, my students were confused and rightfully so because it doesn't look like an English word. Tagxedo is an online word cloud generator that lets you choose a shape to display the words. Here is one I made:
My students wrote down words that described them and their life and then they went online (www.tagxedo.com) and created their own tagxedo word cloud! It is really easy and most students were excited to go home and show their parents or brothers and sisters how to make one. I will show a picture on my next post as soon as I have them all displayed.
Have I told you how much I love the Pinterest website? I have found so much inspiration for my teaching from that site and that is where I found the two activities I highlighted in this post.
Happy teaching, I'm off to practice my Russian - до свидания (do svidaniya!)
Amy
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