Teacher Discussion Forums

Hi everyone!

I just found this board and I'm very excited about all the resources it provides. I'm happy that I've found an active board with other teachers that I can bounce ideas off of. I thought to start off I'd offer a few ideas I've had and see what other teachers and students thought of them. I've made 2 activities about the earthquake in Haiti and I put them on my website to share.

The first one is based on the brand new song, "Hold On" by Wyclef Jean. He has dedicated it to the Haitian people and it is very moving. I have put up the video on my site and written a couple of short paragraphs with key vocabulary defined and questions for discussion included at the end. Here's the link for that one:
http://zachary-jones.com/english/2010/0 ... g-hold-on/

The other activity I made is a "Choose the Correct Word" Activity. In this one, I thought that it would be good to make an activity that focuses on the relief efforts instead of just the bad news that we are inundated with every day. Students read an article and choose the correct word or phrase that makes a correct sentence at key points in the article. Here's the link where you can download it:
http://zachary-jones.com/english/2010/0 ... -activity/

I hope that these are helpful and I would love to know how they work in your classrooms!

Dear Zachary,

When reading your post I immediately paid a visit to your site, because I am always looking for ideas.. I don't teach at school anymore after an early retirement, and my present activity is teaching at home, from small kids to adults. I do tutoring by helping students with their tasks from school, and I also teach my own methods, developed during the many years I taught (elementary, junior high and high school).

I like the activities you mentioned, they are very useful, and besides, they talk about reality, not the regular fairy tales or boring "unseens" we see everywhere, with unrealistic sentences and impossible situations, just for the sake to teach a structure and grammar.

But something on your site drew my attention, and when I read, my eyes shone:

"Learn English for free online with WordSpark! Fun activities for learning in the ESOL classroom and at home. Learn English with music, movies, art, reading, puzzles, cloze worksheets, labeled pictures from the day's news, and unique activities for ESOL teachers. Fun online communicative English language learning!"

Wow.. I confess I thought I was one of the only "crazy" idealistic teachers to do something of the kind, and for free. Although my rational is a little different from yours, you can read it here:

http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewtopic.php?t=8833

but the purpose and style are almost the same. I've neglected my site for a while, but I intend to go back to action very soon, one of my ideas is to open a section with links to good websites, and yours will be there for sure!

Keep up the good work!

best,
Syl

Syl,

Thanks so much for the kind words! I haven't been doing the site for long, so I appreciate the encouragement. I checked out your site - it's fun and I especially liked your idea of creating stories with pictures! Thanks for the comment on my site and you and your students are always welcome to leave comments on my site so we can interact from afar.

Hi, Zachary

I haven't replied to you, thanking you for the nice words... that's too bad

What I want to say is that I have looked all your last posts, and activities, they are awesome. Thank you so much for sharing!