Greetings & Introducing Yourself (7th Grade)

Hello Hello! For this post I thought of some activities for the 7th Grade topic, Greetings and Introductions.

I tested these activities out on Prezi and was really surprised how many cool tools this page has! 
Click on this link ----->PREZI and Enjoy my Prezi presentation about Greetings and Introductions!


I used all of the 4 skills so there's no need to go else where to make sure you covered your students' reading, writing, speaking and listening skills. 

I have a few ideas in mind for games you can incorporate into the presentation. 

• For the 1st Slide labeled "Costa Rica," introduce the topic by asking your students what are some common ways of greeting people in Costa Rica (between friends, family, or strangers.)

• Next, pick out students to read 1 sentence at a time. 
• Where ever there is a bold word with an asterisk, click to the next slide because the definition is going to show up next.  
• By clicking next, you'll be taken back to the short paragraph for the next student to read. 

• The same happens when reading about China. 

• Next the class will watch a video from Misterduncan from English on saying Hello & Goodbye. 
• You can stop the video whenever you want to ask your students questions however I have thought of some stops for you with questions. 

1. The first pause would be right before Misterduncan starts talking about greeting people when you are in a hurry. 
2. The next slide is a question.
1. This will give you a chance to "popcorn" your students with a stuffed pillow and ask them different ways to 
• say hello
• say a double greeting
• say a 1st time meeting greeting
• say a long time no see greeting. 

• The next slide will take you back to the video for the class to keep watching. 

• Again you will pause after Misterduncan has talking about greetings in a rush. 
• Ask your students if they can think of other ways to greet people when you are in a rush!

• Back to the video, for the last section which is all about "good-byes." 
• Click on the slide and it'll take you to a question for you to ask what were some of the ways that people can say bye. 

• Time to review the vocabulary words that were in bold from earliers reading sections about Argentina & China

• Time to learn how to introduce yourself! 
• Click: Watch the video on how to introduce yourself. 

• Click:As a class answer the questions and practice introducing themselves. 
• This is a great opportunity to incorporate a game. 
1. Have the students play "hot potato" in a circle with a toy while you play some music or tap on a desk. 
2. Whoever has the toy in their hand once the music or tapping stops has to introduce themselves. 
3. You can either have the students sit down once they have participated or keep playing, that's up to you.  

• To finish off such a great topic, ask the students to write a short dialogue or essay having to do with the topic. 

Let me know how it went if you used my presentation. I would love to hear from you! 

Famous Athletes and Musicians (9th Grade)

Hello again my beautiful teachers!

This time around we are going to tackle a 9th Grade topic that can always be a lot of fun! LIFE AND ACHIEVEMENT OF FAMOUS ATHLETES AND MUSICIANS. 


For this activity we're going to be incorporating some technology into it to make it that much funner!

To introduce the topic, we will talk about what famous athletes or musicians students like and what they know about them.

Students will then be paired up using the Stick-In-A-Cup method. (Every student picks a stick out of a cup. Two sticks will have the same number so once everyone has a stick they have to find their pair according to the number on the stick.)

Once the pairs are made, students will choose a famous athlete or musician to do a thorough research on their life because they will later be interviewing each "Famous Person."

After the students have researched their famous person they will decide who will be the interviewer and who will be the famous Athlete or Musician. The roles will interchange later on. 

We will watch a couple of short interviews using youtube to see what type of interviews can be done so that the students can start getting an idea of what type of questions to ask their partner. 

Working with their partner the students will type up a dialogue for an interview based on what they have learned about their famous person.

I will record the interview but the catch is that the students have to get into character and act or speak like their famous person.  The roles will then be switched so that the interviewer will then be the famous person.

After I have recorded all my students then I will make a one big video of all the interviews and share with the class.

 Here are two very short videos. One is of Bob Marley, a famous musician and Bethany Hamilton, a famous surfer. 

Bob Marley Interview

Bethany Hamilton Interview

I really like this activity because from the surface it seems very fun and simple but it involves so much more. It involves technology because the students will need to access the internet to research their chosen person along with being in front of the camera which indirectly they are in the presence of technology, something that they might not be in contact with every day. Also, it is asked that the students type up their dialogue which involved word-processing. They can easily write it down but being able to edit, spell check, play with graphics and the page layouts allows them to be more creative with their dialogue. 

If you try it out, let me know how it went and if you altered anything please go ahead and share what changes you did and it how it went. 

Class Bucket Lists (Any Grade)

Hello my curious teachers!

This morning I was stumbling upon different ESL websites and I found the facebook page of The English Student and I saw that they hade posted a graphic of a Bucket List.
This made me realize that I didn't have my own Bucket List and so I happily put everything aside to start thinking what my own Bucket List should look like.
After only coming up with 6 things I really want to do before I die, my future teacher instincts kicked in and I started brain-storming how can I incorporate a "Bucket List" into a classroom lesson. I came up with a "Students Grade Bucket List" which basicly sums down to things that the student wants to acomplish before the school year ends and they move on to the next grade.

This activity can be done with all grade levels, however it would be most meaningful with high school students which have an idea (more or less) of what they want, don't want, and why.
Also, this activity would be ideal to do within the first or second week of school after your students feel more comfortable around you to share their dreams and inspirations.

As a future teacher I would love to know what my students want from the school year so that I can try my best to help them achieve everything from that list.
Keeping in mind all the skills that need to be covered I thought of ways to add in Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing into the mix.


Listening: I'm still thinking of a listening activity.


Speaking: For speaking what I had in mind, so that you can also use technology, is to record your students with your digital camera while they read out loud their list (or if they can remember it, even better).
My plan is to individually record them saying their bucket list and then show them once the school year is over. Ideally it would be above and beyond to do this every year for the student and then at graduation give them a CD of the videos to see if they were able to accomplish a few things off their Bucket List.
Click Here


Reading:I'm still thinking of a reading activity.


Writing: To incorporate writing it would be perfect to have your students write out what their bucket list is going to contain. Since a bucket list is just a list (duh) of sentences you can ask your students to expand more on each item to practice more writing.
ex. I would like to sky dive.
I would like to sky dive with friends or I would like to sky dive for my 18th birthday off a super cool plane wearing a shirt that says #YOLO.


Enjoy your Bucket List!

North American holidays (10th Grade)

Why Hello! 

Here is a great Prezi Presentation I created for North American Holidays. You can use it when it comes times to teach this topic in high school.

All you have to do is click HERE

I hope you enjoy the presentation! And remember to give me your love if you used the presentation!

Using Facebook to learn about Antonyms and Synonyms (10th Grade)

This is an activity that can be used for your high school students that already have a Facebook account (what high schooler doesn´t have Facebook) to learn about antonyms and synonyms.

This activity can be done for students to do as homework and bring the next day or in class if you're in a computer lab.

The instructions are simple:

1. Have students log on to Facebook and go to their "wall."
2. Have them pick 10 facebook status.
4. Now, have them swap the some words. Swap 5 statuses with antonyms and 5 statuses with synonyms. 
5. Share with the class the funny Facebook statuses now that you have swap some of the words for their antonyms and others for synonyms.

Make sure that the statuses the students pick are appropriate so that they can share them with the class.

Here is an example I got from my very own Facebook "wall."



I can´t actually breath once again now that I started my paper...now it will be difficult
 going for the rest of the semester til I graduate.


Enjoy all the silly statuses with your students!

Toy Story 3: Listening Comprehension for Young Ages (Elementary Level)

Toy Story 3: Listening Comprehension

Language Level: Beginner

Age Group: Elementary 

This activitiy is to confirm that your students are understanding the English Language by answering simple questions that are related to the movie. 

As a warm up activity to introduce the lesson start a discussion on toys and what their favorite toy is and why. 

For this activity play the movie once to your students for them to meet the characters of the short film. 

Next, pass out the questions and read them out loud together. 

Play the movie one more time and ask the students to answer the questions related to the short film. 

Once the movie is over go over the answers and clear doubts.

1. Where is Andy going away to?
2. What is the little girl’s name?
3. What does Jessie, the roughest toughest cowgirl love? What is the name of her best pal?
4. What abilities does Buzz Light Year have?

Answers:

1. He is going away to college. 
2. The little girl’s name is Bonnie.
3.   Jessie loves critters and her Bulls Eye is her pals name.
4.   Buzz Light Year can fly and shoot laser.

Children See, Children Do

This video is amazing. 

Let´s be careful with what we do and say in front of our students.