Crazy Artists

Crazy artists?  Some of you folks agree, but the others are artists.  For the nitty gritty you can read this article about the mental state of many artistic people.  Let's remember the important things in life-doing what you love no matter what people think!

TPR

Total Physical Response

I start each ELL lesson with a quick TPR activity and the students respond so well to it! For my newcomers, the commands are simple and I do the actions with them. Today, my newcomer group worked on commands such as:
-walk to the computer
-touch the mouse
-hop to the flag
-run (carefully!) to the door
-open the door
I also try to include commands that the students find silly such as "touch the ceiling," or "raise your nose." These catch them off guard and they realize they cannot do the action. 
For newcomers, these activities help them feel successful. If they are unsure of what to do, they simple watch me or a classmate. They have also picked up a good deal of vocabulary through these activities. 

For my higher level students, I often will link several commands together or use more detailed commands such as:
walk to the desk, choose a red pencil, hop to your seat and sit down

Also, TPR can be tied to other content. When working on adverbs, I gave the command to run slowly or color quickly. 

The link below is a great article about TPR and also has some great scripts for various TPR activities. I will definitely be adding it to my blog! 
http://www.springinstitute.org/Files/tpr4.pdf

I also found it interesting that Diaz-Rico and Weed (2010) suggested using TPR for reading. I never thought of doing that and it seems so obvious! Writing simple commands on the board and having students read and follow them helps to improve reading comprehension skills. TPR activities, whether used as a listening activity or a reading activity provide a great way to involve all students in a low anxiety environment. It is engaging and the students really seem to enjoy it.

Learning vocabulary is so important for ELLs, if they are ever to catch up with native speakers.  There are a variety of ways to improve the vocabulary skills of ELLs:

• Say the word clearly and show its spelling
• Provide a definition or examples
• Show or draw a picture
• Act it out, use gestures
• Give examples of the word in use
• Translate the word into L1
• Present the word through chants and songs.

This was all on page 79 of the Diaz-Rico and Weed book.

Keep speaking Spanish!

Keeping your original language is not always easy, but that heritage and culture will go far in your future.  Many immigrants come to America and then lose their first language.  Read more here to see why you should continue to speak your native language at home even when the pressure is on to speak English!

English is Easy? Think again!

So, you think English is easy?

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.


2) The farm was used to produce produce.


3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse. 


4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.


7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.


 A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
  

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let’s face it, English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, 

nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English

muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France .

Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat.

We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find

that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig

is neither from Guinea nor is is a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t

groce and hammers don’t ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t

the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese?

One index, 2 indices? Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but

not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all

but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats 


vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the


English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally


insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a


recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and 


feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and

a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a

language in which your house can burn up as it burns down; you fill in a

form by filling it out; an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the

creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all.

That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the

lights are out, they are invisible.

PS. – Why doesn’t ‘Buick’ rhyme with ‘quick’ ?

You lovers of the English language might enjoy this:

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other

two-letter word, and that is ‘UP’

It’s easy to understand UP meaning toward the sky or at the top of the


list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP?


At a meeting, why does a topic come UP?


Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it


UP to the secretary to write UP a report?


We call UP our friends.


And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver; we warm UP the

leftovers and clean UP the kitchen.

We lock UP the house, and some guys fix UP the old car.

At other times the little word has real special meaning.

People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and

think UP excuses.

To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.

A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.

We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!

To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the

dictionary.

In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can

add UP to about thirty definitions.

If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP

is used.

It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don’t give UP, you may

wind UP with a hundred or more.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP.

When the sun comes out we say it is clearingUP.

When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.

When it doesn’t rain for awhile, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I’ll wrap it UP,

for now my time is UP,

so……..it is time to shut UP!

Now it’s UP to you to decide what to do with this

Virtual Vincent van Gogh

Think about ELLs lives

This video helps us understand (and pulls on our heart strings) how our English language learners' lives may be so different from what we think.  Let's do something to help the future!

http://learning.snagfilms.com/film/immersion#comments

Into the Book

Into the Book is a reading comprehension resource for K-4 students and teachers.  The focus is on eight research-based strategies: Using Prior Knowledge, Making Connections, Questioning, Visualizing, Inferring, Summarizing, Evaluating and Synthesizing.  If your student is having difficulty with any of these skills, this site can be a great way to enhance or further your lessons.