Edutopia

8 Essentials For Earning Your Students' Respect Every School Year – Bored Teachers This article was written by Adam Hatch - UC Berkeley graduate, son of a teacher, brother of a teacher, and a teacher himself. Adam started a unique English school in Taipei, Taiwan, where kids learn to research and write articles in English. The articles are published on the first ever English newspaper written by kids in Taiwan, called the Taipei Teen Tribune. The first day of class is the hardest day.

Free Printable Worksheets for ESL Teachers and Students Most of the free printable worksheets on EnglishHints.com can be used online or downloaded for use whenever you want. This page includes a list of links to the downloadable pdf versions. (Many of these ESL printables are also available on the related pages on English Hints.com.) You may use these ESL printables freely at home or in an ESL classroom as long as you keep the copyright notice on the bottom of each page. (You may not sell these or otherwise use them commercially or on another website, though you may link to the pages.)

15 Reflection Strategies To Help Students Retain What You Just Taught Them - 15 Reflection Strategies To Help Students Retain What You Just Taught Them by Terry Heick Reflection is a natural part of learning. We all think about new experiences–the camping on the car ride home, the mistakes made in a game, or the emotions felt while finishing a long-term project that’s taken months to complete. Below I’ve shared 15 strategies for students to reflect on their learning.

How to Use a Visual Dictionary It's important to know how to use a visual dictionary as an English learner. In fact, I'd say that along with a collocation dictionary, a visual dictionary can be a secret weapon when it comes to learning new vocabulary. Of course, you'll always need a standard learner's dictionary, but using these other types will really help you expand your vocabulary quickly. What's the difference between a Visual Dictionary and a "Normal" Dictionary?

Why Students Forget—and What You Can Do About It Teachers have long known that rote memorization can lead to a superficial grasp of material that is quickly forgotten. But new research in the field of neuroscience is starting to shed light on the ways that brains are wired to forget—highlighting the importance of strategies to retain knowledge and make learning stick. In a recent article published in the journal Neuron, neurobiologists Blake Richards and Paul Frankland challenge the predominant view of memory, which holds that forgetting is a process of loss—the gradual washing away of critical information despite our best efforts to retain it.

Concept Mapping for ELLs Make-a-Map, our IdeaphoraⓇ-powered concept mapping tool, is officially live on BrainPOP ELL! (You’ll find the Make-a-Map button on all BrainPOP ELL lesson pages.) The new tool lets students connect and organize clips from movies, keywords, and other elements as they construct visual representations of their knowledge. To help you get started with concept mapping, we’ve put together some best practices for using it with English language learners. Whether you’ve already explored Make-a-Map or you’re completely new to concept mapping, read on for background and implementation ideas.

'Teaching isn’t about the delivery of knowledge and information. It's about embracing, exploring and exploiting ignorance' Knowledge. Educators are obsessed with it. Compared to learning, that is. Improving Writing Skills: ELLs and the Joy of Writing "The meaning of even a single word is rather more complex than one might imagine." - Editors of the American Heritage Dictionary, 1980, p. viii "Teacher, do we need our pencils today?" my Puerto Rican elementary students would urgently ask when I came to their classroom to escort them to my English as a Second Language classroom. I was a student teacher in a Massachusetts elementary school, and it took me awhile to figure out the correlation between the pencil and hallway behavior.

edutopia "What makes me enjoy talking the most," explains Milo, a Year 3 student, "is that everybody’s listened to you, and you’re part of the world, and you feel respected and important." Oracy -- the ability to speak well -- is a core pedagogy at School 21, a London-based public school. "Speaking is a huge priority," stresses Amy Gaunt, a Year 3 teacher. Helping ESL students understand written texts Introduction Every day in school and at home ESL students have many different texts* to read. It is through reading that they acquire much of their knowledge and understanding of the different subject areas, and reading often forms the basis of follow-up work such as class discussions or homework questions. For these reasons it is essential that ESL students are helped as much as possible and necessary to understand what they read.

edutopia When presented with new material, standards, and complicated topics, we need to be focused and calm as we approach our assignments. We can use brain breaks and focused-attention practices to positively impact our emotional states and learning. They refocus our neural circuitry with either stimulating or quieting practices that generate increased activity in the prefrontal cortex, where problem solving and emotional regulation occur. Brain Breaks A brain break is a short period of time when we change up the dull routine of incoming information that arrives via predictable, tedious, well-worn roadways. Our brains are wired for novelty. Achieve3000 Access the right solutions to meet the needs of emerging, developing, and long-term English language learners Differentiated Instruction and Accelerated Learning for the Unique Needs of Your ELLs The goal of any ELD/ESOL program is to accelerate literacy and language gains for ELLs through targeted instruction in general classrooms or specialized classrooms. Achieve3000®’s family of Access solutions (KidBizAccess™ for grades 2-5, TeenBizAccess™ for grades 6-8, and EmpowerAccess™ for grades 9-12) is proven more than double the expected reading gains for ELLs – all in a single school year. Access accelerates results because it is built with Achieve3000’s patented methodology and world-class technology to deliver the same grade-appropriate lesson to the entire class, differentiated to the precise needs of each student. Access further supports language growth with a standards-aligned custom curriculum that integrates phonics and fluency practice.