Want Your Students to Have Fun Over the Break? Check These Items Out:)

Well, winter break will be here in just a few days. Many teachers would love to have their students continuing to hone their reading, writing, and vocabulary development skills over the break, but wonder how to motivate their students to want the same.

AUDIOBOO This site will let students record music, conversations, interviews, radio shows, etc. What could teachers suggest here for its use over the break? How about having them interview older family members about important events in their lives? What about interviewing younger siblings and sharing the recordings with family members? How about encouraging them to write a poem and record it to possibly share with the class in January? Most likely, students would have far more ideas of what to do with this tool than I have shared here:) Though anyone can use this tool, very young students will need assistance.

STORYBIRD Collaborative story telling is the beauty of this site. Take the tour to see all the rich features offered. Basically, students can create stories along with artwork online. They can even invite people to collaborate with them (parents can check on friends here so it is a safe site). There is even a "library" of stories written on the site and open to all to read. Here students would have practice in reading and writing with a goal being to make a story that inspires:)

VISUWORDS This is an online graphical dictionary and thesaurus. With this site, students could check for synonyms or antonyms to use in the written work. They could also monitor overuse of weak vocabulary by checking those words here and finding appropriate substitutions for them.

Yes, students will be on vacation, but they can still keep their skills sharp AND have fun doing it:)

Enjoy.

Denise

ELL TEACHER PROS

For All of You Word Lovers: (aka Lexophiles) :)

Learning the English language can present some frustrating situations from time to time for all of us--English learners and native speakers alike. It can often seem that there are more exceptions to rules than followers of them. The irregular past tense can easily bring tears to the eyes of some students:)

Well, why not enjoy the craziness of the language for a bit. In this site, you will find 46 sentences that need to read carefully since within each is a found a play on words. Some may require a couple of re-reads. If you teach intermediate and beyond ELLs, you could select some of these as warm-ups after the break (or to kill time if they have finished their finals). Have students (with partners) explain the humor (or try to). Encourage students to play with words here:)

LINK:

LEXOPHILES

My favorite sentence is #30-". The roundest knight at king Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi." FULL OF MATH--a great one to use in geometry class as an introduction to circumference!

Enjoy!

Denise

ELL TEACHER PROS