Daily Routines

There we go with some links where you'll find some links to practise daily routines and hose chorus!

Daily Routine, by Elvira S.
Find this and other daily routines exercises in English Exercises .org
GALAXY 5-What´s for lunch?, by beny
Find this and other daily routines exercises in English Exercises .org
daily routines, by Cathrine Baldwin
Find this and other daily routines exercises in English Exercises .org
HOUSEHOLD CHORES, by Isabel
Find this and other daily routines exercises in English Exercises .org
Everyday Activities, by Anna Pessoa
Find this and other daily routines exercises in English Exercises .org

Scaffolding

How teachers interact with students as they complete a task is important to the students' ability to perform the activity. Scaffolding is an instructional technique whereby the teacher models the desired learning strategy or task, then gradually shifts responsibility to the students.

Clay and Cazden (1992) point out two scaffolding strategies in teaching reading: working with new knowledge and accepting partially correct responses. In the first strategy, when a teacher suspects the child does not have the ideas or words needed for a particular text, he/she may explain some part of the story or contrast a feature presented with something he/she knows the child understands from another reading. In the second strategy, the teacher uses what is correct in the student's response but probes or cues the student, so as to suggest good possibilities for active consideration.

Another scaffolding strategy is for the teacher to model the appropriate thinking or working skills in the classroom. Such modeling helps children learn to operate in the school culture. Harmin (1994) notes the applicability of Rosenshine's Guided Practice technique for developing student understanding and provides an actual example in language arts instruction in the classroom.

Recognizing what you do know in a problem, as well as what you don't yet understand, are aspects of metacognition in problem solving that are similar to a scaffolding approach. Perkins & Solomon (1989) point out that an expert's behavior appears to be strongly driven by prior knowledge. When faced with an unfamiliar problem, he or she may construct a similar but simpler problem. In this way, the expert learner manages his/her own gradual self-regulation and enables him/herself to grow to meet the new task successfully.

Source: http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/students/learning/lr1scaf.htm

Easy Vocabulary Quizzes with Pictures

Visit this page and refer it to you students for them to practise; you can find interesting materials and funny quizzes!

www.maythings.org

The Kingdom of Time

Teaching the time in English is sometimes a difficult challenge, since in some cases the kids do not even know how to express time in their own language!! My work mate Pablo had a lovely idea: he invented the Kingdom of Time and the characters King Past and Queen To, ruling on each half of the clock. I drew the illustrations for the idea. I tried to use colours that are normally a problem for the kids to remember, as purple or white or green and grey contrasted. I also combined dark and light colours to play on with the description of our characters, together with many details. Many clocks are drawn all over the poster and some hourglasses to introduce the idea of different means to measure time.

I upload here the pictures, even though, as Blogger resizes pictures, fell free to contact me if you want a larger size picture to use it in your class.

Prepositions of Place and Movement

From this activity here >> I got some sweet drawings for the creation of an activity to test... guess? Prepositions of place and movement :P

It's always good to look at things through a different perspective during the coffe break..

I some times really enjoy to read once and agian this comic strips on the cupboard doors in the staff room at the English School where I work. Since I satarted my new blog about photography, I take photos of EVERYTHING; and here we are... who is Jon Marks??
He is an ELT writer, illustrator and web-designer based in Italy. He has twenty years experience in TESOL, and has taught and trained teachers in several countries. We can check his web-site here >>.
And it can also be productive to check this other site, in which we can find funny and creative ideas arround the super-hero Grammarman for our English classes. Ihope you enjoy it!

Children Learn What They Live

If children live with hostility,
they learn to fight.
If children live with ridicule,
they learn to be shy.
If children live with tolerance,
they learn to be patient,
If children live with encouragement,
they learn confidence.
If children live with praise,
they learn to appreciate.
If children live with fairness,
they learn justice.
If children live with security,
they learn faith.
If children live with approval,
they learn to be themselves.
IF children live with aceptance and friendship,
they learn to find love in the world.
I want to teach my students
How to live this life on earth
To face its struggles and its strife
And improve their worth.
Not just the lesson in a book
Or how the rivers flow
But how to choose the proper path
Wherever they may go.
To understand eternal truth
And know the right from wrong
And gather all the beauty
Of a flower and a song.
For if I help the world to grow
In wisdom and in grace
Then I shall feel that I have won
And I have filled my place.
And so I ask for guidance
That I may do my part
For character and confidence
And happiness of heart.
Teaching is the choicest of professions
because everybody who is anybody
was taught how to be somebody by a teacher.
In the hearts of every teacher are the memories of a child.

This poem was read by Christine Brook during her seminars at the MacMillan's Teachers Training Day ongoing in Malaga on 14th Febraury of 2009.