Annotating Together: An Activity for Building Reading Strategies
Do you have students who are hesitant to write on a text? Use this classroom activity to help emphasize the importance of annotating while reading and help students build a repertoire of annotation strategies.
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The Parking Lot: A Place for Untimely Questions
As teachers, we need to stay on task for the sake of the whole class while still making sure all of our students feel that they’re heard and their questions, unrelated as they may be, are important. Check out this simple, yet effective, way to put unrelated questions on hold without forgetting them.
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Student Feedback Form: Class Norm
Getting feedback from our students during the semester is very helpful. It also gives students a chance to express their feelings or possible concerns about a class. Check out this idea for an open form where students can submit feedback anytime they feel the need.
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A Dinner Party: Creative Analysis Activity
Help your students build analysis of multiple sources with this engaging activity that uses art to help students draw connections between multiple readings.
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The Accelerated Instructional Cycle
The accelerated instructional cycle is a way to approach an integrated reading and writing course to help students gain a deep understanding of texts and work to write complex and rich writing assignments.
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Learning is Confusion Figured Out
How can we design ESL curriculum that is relevant and engaging to students? Check out this post for some ideas.
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5 Collaborative Class Routines
Are you looking for some engaging ways to get your ESL students to work collaboratively? Check out these five ways to get students working and talking together.
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Creative Reading Responses
Engage your class with these great idea for using various genres as reading responses.
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Three Strategies to Improve Student Writing
Learn about three valuable writing tools you can use to help students improve their writing and overall reflection and metacognition skills.
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Writing Partners: Contextualizing Written Communication
Add this collaborative activity to your class to give your students engaging and authentic writing practice.
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Redesigning Peer Review
Do you have conflict or struggle with peer reviews in your course? Check out this post to learn two new …
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Vocab Building Flashcards
Help your students grow their English vocabulary with these flashcards designed to help them grow their word knowledge in a collaborative way.
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The Affective Side of Things
Learn about effective classroom routines to support students' affective needs and promote retention and success.
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Word Webs: Vocabulary Routine
Although we put a lot of effort into helping our students learn words, I would venture to guess we don’t often stop to reflect just how these words are stored our minds. What does research of the mental lexicon show and what classroom practices can come from this knowledge? Read to find out.
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SPUNKI Reading Response
You can use this collaborative sharing activity to get students to see their classmates' reflections on a particular class reading. It's a great way to start a discussion of a class reading.
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Five Introduction Icebreakers
Having students introduce themselves and learn a bit about each other is a first day of class staple. Of course, there are many different ways this can be done. This post shares a few of my favorites that I’ve heard about throughout the years.
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Position Posters Debate
The art of argument isn’t always easy to master, especially when you’re doing it in another language. This poster position debate is a fun and engaging way to scaffold this skills whether the end goal is an essay or an oral debate.
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5 Awesome Vocabulary Websites
The more I teach and study language, the more I believe in the power of words. There are many great websites that can help you when creating vocabulary activities for your class. Here are some of my favorites.
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Fantastical Stories: Past Tense Fun
"How can grammatical knowledge be transferred to oral fluency?" I don't have all the answers, but this past tense activity will certainly get students chatting.
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Flash Card Vocabulary Exchange
This is a semester-long assignment that helps boost students vocabulary a lot. I've been doing it in my class this semester with great success and plan to keep it as a norm in all of my future classes.
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