The ESL Experience: Word of the year

One of my students was trying to read the word skyscraper and it came out as sky-crapper. Needless to say, the rest of the class cracked up and now whenever we see that word or even if they just need a laugh, they will say sky-crapper. Can't wait for the day my principal comes in and my students are saying sky-crapper over and over again. Secretly it makes me laugh, but I hope we get a new word soon! I'm just glad my students feel comfortable enough in my classroom to make mistakes, laugh at themselves, and support each other.

As promised here is a picture of the Tagxedo project the students did at the beginning of the year. They made a tagxedo word cloud in any shape they wanted, then put the shape onto a T-shirt. Then I took a picture of them and blew up the head. The students loved the finished project. You can also see my vocabulary tree beside some of the students. The tree gets more leaves everytime they learn new vocabulary words so it is constantly growing.

To study spelling words and vocabulary I have the students use the website Spelling Vocabulary City. www.spellingcity.com It has tests and fun games they can use to practice from any computer. We are in the process of buying the premium services so I will let you know if that is a necessity or not. There are a few games free. They also have a free IPAD app and the students had a ball using the IPADS to study their words. Below is a couple of pictures of the students using the IPADS.

Next up is a couple of weeks of adjectives activities. English language learners come with a limited amount of vocabulary so identifying adjectives is difficult and using interesting adjectives in their writing is also difficult for these students. I love lists, so I am arming them with a list of adjectives that I found from another blog. http://mrsrojasteaches.blogspot.com/2011/10/lots-lots-of-lists-11-freebies.html

To get into the holiday spirit I am going to adapt a descriptive writing lesson called "Haunted House for Sale" from the clutter free classroom blog. Students describe their haunted house using tons of spooky adjectives and create their own haunted house. Should be a fun way to incorporate adjectives into their writing.