Word of the year - Sky- crapper!

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.

 

 

Also, here's a catchy song to use when studying adjectives.

  

 

 

 

"Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand." Chinese Proverb

 

Happy Teaching!!

 

Amy

It's not as easy as you think!

I am having fun teaching my giggly 6th graders and swaggering 8th graders.  One boy said to me the other day, "I have learned something new every day in your class!"  Wow!  What a compliment!  But the pressure is on and I've got to keep that momentum up for the rest of the year. 

Being an ESL teacher is not as easy as it looks.  We cannot just pull out the textbook and teach a concept as is, there are countless modifications to make and I find myself pulling from many different sources.  I have become an expert in making my own worksheets and figuring out what would work for my students.  This takes lots of  - TIME!   Time is a luxury most teachers do not have and with some teachers having well over 100 students, modifying and figuring out how to help their ESL students can be a daunting task.

My job is not just to help the students in my class but also to help teachers with ESL students and help them find simple and effective ways to help their students.  Here's how I used to give them information - I would copy lots of information about student levels and lists of modifications, staple it all together, and put it in the teacher's mailboxes.  Guess where those papers went - on the pile with all the rest of beginning of the year correspondence, and eventually ending up somewhere on the bottom or lost. Then two weeks later I would get questions about things that were answered in that packet and it became apparent that it was not the best way to get information to the teachers.

So now I send a newsletter every month by e-mail, and I give them all the necessary information they need at different times of the year.  It also serves as a reminder to the teachers that yes, they still have ESL students in their classroom and they shouldn't forget to give them support.  Here are pictures of my first newsletter (names have been taken out for privacy).

 

I also put in names of any new ESL students who enroll in our school, strategies and interesting links for teachers.  So far, I've gotten very positive feedback!


My next venture is using something I saw on Pinterest , ANGRY VERBS!  I think my students will love it, I will keep you posted.


Amy