Tag Archives: tips for teaching

Teachers, Training & Conferences

5 Powerful Questions Teachers Can Ask Students

Many would agree that for inquiry to be alive and well in a classroom that, amongst other things, the teacher needs to be expert at asking strategic questions, and not only asking well-designed ones, but ones that will also lead students to questions of their own.

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Keeping It Simple

Asking straightforward, simply-worded questions can be just as effective as intricate ones. With that in mind, if you are a new teacher or perhaps not so new but know that question-asking is an area where you’d like to grow, start tomorrow with these five:

 

1. What do you think?

This question interrupts us from telling too much. There is a place for direct instruction where we give students information yet we need to always strive to balance this with plenty of opportunities for students to make sense of and apply that new information using their schemata and understanding.

 

2. Why do you think that?

After students share what they think, this follow-up question pushes them to provide reasoning for their thinking.

 

3. How do you know this?

When this question is asked, students can make connections to their ideas and thoughts with things they’ve experienced, read, and have seen.

 

4. Can you tell me more?

This question can inspire students to extend their thinking and share further evidence for their ideas.

 

5. What questions do you still have?

This allows students to offer up questions they have about the information, ideas or the evidence.[/box]

In addition to routinely and relentlessly asking your students questions, be sure to provide time for them to think. What’s best here, three seconds, five, or seven? Depending on their age, the depth of the material, and their comfort level, this think time will vary. Just push yourself to stay silent and wait for those hands to go up.

Also be sure to vary your tone so it genuinely sounds like a question and not a statement. When we say something in a declarative way, it is often with one tone and flat sounding. On the other hand, there is a lilt in our voice when we are inquiring and questioning.

To help student feel more comfortable and confident with answering questions and asking ones of their own, you can use this scaffold: Ask a question, pause, and then invite students to “turn and talk” with a neighbor first before sharing out with the whole group. This allows all to have their voices heard and also gives them a chance to practice their responses before sharing in front of the whole class.

Teachers, Training & Conferences

New Year Webquest

This New Year webquest by Gabrielle Jones includes activities designed to inform students about the history of New Year celebrations and the traditions which are practised today in a variety of cultures.

teacher-webquest

 

Note: The teacher’s notes for this webquest can be found at the bottom of the page by clicking the button marked “Teacher’s Notes”. We have also included a link to a student-facing page which does not have any links to the answers. You’ll find it by clicking the button marked “Student’s Page” at the bottom of this page. We suggest that you send students the link to the student page to prevent them from finding the answers too easily!

 

Warmer

New Year is an exciting time and many cultures celebrate it in a special way. This may include special foods and drinks, parties, religious festivals and other traditions. Answer these questions in pairs or small groups:

  1. How is New Year celebrated in your country?
  2. Do you know of any similarities or differences in New Year celebrations in other countries?
  3. How do you and your family celebrate New Year?

 

Activity 1: The history of New Year celebrations

Visit http://www.history.com/topics/new-years and read the sections titled ‘Early New Year’s Celebrations’ and ‘January 1 becomes New Year’s day’. Look for the answers to these questions:

  1. When were the earliest New Year celebrations and where did they take place?
  2. What name was given to the religious festivity, and where did the name come from?
  3. How long did the original celebration last?
  4. When people began to develop their own calendars, to what events did they tie the beginning of a new year?
  5. What event marked the beginning of the New Year in Egypt?
  6. When was the city of Rome established?
  7. Who included the first two months of the year to the calendar, and what were the names of the first two months?
  8. Who introduced January 1 as the start of the New Year?
  9. What changes did Christian leaders make in the middle ages?
  10. When was January 1 reintroduced as the beginning of the calendar year?

When you’ve finished, discuss what you found out with your partner.

Discussion:

Discuss one other significant festival in your country – do you know how long it has been celebrated, and why it became important?

Activity 2: New Year’s Traditions

Now go to http://www.history.com/topics/new-years and read the final section of the page titled ‘New Year’s Traditions’. Answer the following questions and then compare your answers with your partner.

  1. What do Spanish people eat 12 of at midnight on New Year’s Eve and what do they symbolize?
  2. Which countries eat legumes and what do they represent?
  3. What do pigs represent in some cultures and where is pork eaten?
  4. Which countries eat ring-shaped cakes and why?
  5. What is hidden inside the rice pudding eaten in Sweden and Norway at New Year? What will happen to the person who finds it?
  6. Which people first made New Year’s resolutions?
  7. What did they promise to do?
  8. What’s the most famous symbol of the beginning of the New Year in America?
  9. How long has the event taken place?
  10. What alternative objects are dropped in other American cities?

 

Activity 3: New Year celebrations around the world

New Year is celebrated on different dates in different places, and often involves very different traditions. In this activity you and a partner will find out all about two countries and their New Year celebrations.

Student 1 – Scottish New Year

Before you look at the weblink, decide whether the following statements are true or false:

  1. ‘Hogmanay’ means the first day of the year.
  2. Scottish people used to celebrate Hogmanay more than Christmas.
  3. Strangers are not allowed inside people’s houses during Hogmanay.
  4. It is considered very unlucky to enter a household without any gifts.
  5. A lump of coal is a traditional gift.

Now visit http://www.scotland.org/features/hogmanay-top-facts/ to check your answers.

 

Student 2 – Jewish New Year

Before you look at the weblink, decide whether the following statements are true or false:

  1. Jewish New Year is a celebration of the creation of the world.
  2. The celebration lasts a whole week.
  3. Jews believe that God will decide what the next year will be like for someone.
  4. A special song called the ‘Shofar’ is sung in the synagogue.
  5. A round loaf is eaten to symbolize the circle of life.

Now visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/religion/judaism/rosh_hashanah.shtml to check your answers.

Compare your answers with your partner. Then together, copy the table below and fill it in using the information on the websites:

 

Scottish New Year

Jewish New Year
Name of celebration
Customs
Food eaten

Activity 4: Quiz: International New Year’s Eve customs

Use the following website to access this quiz based on New Year’s Eve customs around the world. In pairs, discuss each question and decide which option you think is correct. When you have finished, you can check your answers on the screen.

http://www.topics-mag.com/internatl/holidays/new-year/quiz/new-years.htm

Post-quiz discussion:

How many of the customs are also practised in your own country?

Activity 5: Round-up task

Imagine that you have friends from another country coming to celebrate New Year with you and your family. In pairs, plan the evening, considering the following points:

  • What kind of food are you going to serve?
  • Which local traditions are you going to show them?
  • Will you visit any special people or places?
  • What are you going to do at midnight?
  • Will you make any resolutions?

When you have finished, compare the plans you have made with another pair.

Optional activity

Make your own list of New Year’s resolutions. Compare your list to your classmates to see if any are similar.

 

We wish you a happy New Year!

[button color=”red” size=”small” link=”http://www.onestopenglish.com/webquest-new-year-teachers-notes/553260.article” target=”blank” ]Teacher’s Notes[/button]    [button color=”green” size=”small” link=”http://www.onestopenglish.com/webquest-new-year-student-page/553450.article” target=”blank” ]Student’s Page[/button]

[button color=”blue” size=”small” link=”http://www.onestopenglish.com/teenagers/topic-based-materials/webquests/webquest-new-year/553259.article” target=”blank” ]Source[/button]

Teachers, Training & Conferences

What I Wish I’d Known as a New Teacher

new teacher tips

By Elena Aguilar, Transformational Leadership Coach from Oakland, California

This can be a difficult time for new teachers. I know this from personal experience, and also because there’s a graph out there that shows the dip that new teachers take in the fall as their energy wanes. When I first saw this graph, I felt a tremendous relief: I’m normal! This is documented! Yes, I know that we don’t always need research to validate our experiences, but I did.

Now, almost two decades later, I wish I’d known a few things about myself, about teaching, and about my students. Some of what I wish I’d known could have been shared with me — some I just had to live and learn from. So I offer this reflection both for new teachers as well as for those who support them. And so if you work with a new teacher, I’m hoping you might stop by their room in the next few days and share some insights from your own experience. And if you are a new teacher, then I’m hoping these reflections might help you feel validated, hopeful, and resourceful.

 

1. This will get better. The first year of teaching is so, so hard. You don’t even know why it’s so hard — you can’t wrap your head around that because you’re in survival mode. It’s so hard because you are being asked to push your heart and mind and body in ways you never have. You are making thousands of decisions each day, and there are big parts of you that know you don’t know what you’re doing. So you question the decisions you’re making each day (questioning is good, it is) but that questioning also makes you feel tired and insecure. It will get better. You’re just overloaded. You’re learning so much (I know you can’t even recognize this because you’re so tired) but it’ll sink in as the months pass. Nothing will ever be as hard as the first year.

2. Always work from the heart. If your actions and words emerge from the heart, you can’t make too many mistakes. Let yourself love your students — don’t be afraid of falling in love with them. That’s the path to take as a new teacher. Get to know them, indulge your curiosity and spend time learning about who they are as human beings; the rest will follow.

3. They will remember this about you. Your students will remember how you made them feel, whether they felt loved and cared for by you. I know this: I’m in touch with dozens of former students who were amongst the first groups of kids I taught. They remember my love for them in various ways; they don’t remember the lessons that I botched, or that I didn’t return their homework within a promised two days, or my disorganization. When I listen to what they remember, I hear: it was my love for them. And I did love them. Deeply.

4. Be open to surprises. Students will surprise you — they will learn things you didn’t think they could learn, they will grow in ways you didn’t expect. You might think that a particular student will struggle later on (after all, he’s already been retained in second grade and he can’t spell his own name and clearly has a learning disability). And then you might find yourself ten years later at his high school graduation hearing that he’s been accepted to art college and there’ll be tears ruining your makeup and you didn’t bring tissues and when he sees you he grins and gives you a huge hug and says, “Ms. Aguilar, I’m so glad you came.” And you’ll still be crying and telling him how proud you are. It will truly be one of the most joyful days of your life. Truly — because it was a surprise! And he was from that first year, when you thought you’d ruined them all. “You were really nice to me and you encouraged me to draw,” he says, and you beam.

5. Find a coach. Find someone who can support your growth, someone who has training to be a coach, someone who will observe you and give you feedback and help you fulfill the vision you have for yourself as a teacher. You won’t be able to figure this all out on your own. You can’t see what you can’t see. You don’t know what you need to know. Ask for a coach, beg, search out all possible options — and find someone to help you grow.

6. And if you can’t find a coach . . . Move. Find another school. I’m serious. Find a place where someone will support you in your growth as a teacher. Ok, if it can’t be a coach, settle for a mentor, an administrator who will commit to supporting you in a non-evaluative way, or find a partner-teacher who might be a mentor, or a professional learning community of teachers who observe each other. You won’t be able to guide your own development by yourself; the weekly (if you’re lucky) or annual professional development won’t be enough.

As a new teacher you need a lot of feedback and support. Don’t stop searching out support until you get it. If you feel like you’re learning and increasingly meeting the needs of your students, you’ll feel good. You’ll stay. And kids need teachers who stay.

The first year (like a first love) has so many highs and lows and I still get both dreamy-eyed and panicky when I remember my first school year. Capture this year, share stories with people you trust, and then in twenty years, look back and write yourself a “What I Wish I’d Known” letter.

[button color=”blue” size=”small” link=”http://www.edutopia.org/blog/what-i-wish-id-known-new-teacher-elena-aguilar” target=”blank” ]Source[/button]

 

Teachers, Training & Conferences

5 Tips for Teaching Young Students Proper Grammar

Children can cope with learning grammar from the age of 5. Over the last 21 years, we have worked with schools to develop synthetic phonics programs and, latterly, grammar programs to cater for early years learning. We know that children at a young age display a good knowledge of how to use language: they already use perfect tenses such as “I have been playing”, they will use the continuous tense; “I was watching television”.

We shouldn’t view the teaching of grammar as difficult or something children will not be able to deal with but as something to get excited about. Grammar gives them a better understanding of what they are already using. Taking a child beyond their initial experience is all part of learning and hugely rewarding for child and for the teacher.

As the child constructs sentences with the tools they’re being given then a stability develops that doesn’t exist if the child is expected to just pick it up through reading in context.

 

[tabs type=”vertical”][tabs_head][tab_title]Nouns[/tab_title][tab_title]Verbs[/tab_title][tab_title]Adjectives[/tab_title][tab_title]Spelling[/tab_title][tab_title]Punctuation [/tab_title][/tabs_head][tab]Taking children through common and proper nouns, then moving on to abstracts and collective means that children become coherent in their use of language and grammar, and often their speech improves and they become adept at using language in a full and flexible way. We teach an action for proper nouns – you put index and middle finger where forehead meets nose – and we teach a different action for common nouns – tapping the top of our heads. We then play a game calling out proper noun or common noun and getting the children to use the corresponding action. You can add in verbs, adjectives etc as they are learned. This is also a good way of visually seeing who in the class is with you and who isn’t. [/tab][tab]When teaching grammar it’s helpful to explicitly teach what a verb is and use it in simple present tense, then build on this by looking to past tense then future tense. Even at an early stage children can learn how to conjugate regular verbs. Conjugating your verbs means saying the pronouns in order, with the correct for of the verb after each one. Understanding what it means to conjugate a verb will not only benefit the children’s literacy skills, but will also help them when they come to learn other languages later on. A good way to introduce this exercise is by demonstrating how to conjugate the verb to run in the present tense and by doing the appropriate actions for pronouns: I: point to oneself you: point to someone else he: point to a boy she: point to a girl it: point to the floor [/tab][tab]At first in the early stages of learning grammar it is sufficient to tell the children that an adjective describes a noun. Start by asking the class to think of a noun, for example ‘a cat’. Ask one child for a word to describe the cat, and say the words together, for example ‘a black cat’. Then ask another child for a second adjective and add it into the phrase, for example, ‘a noisy black cat’. After several examples the children will begin to understand how an adjective functions, especially when used directly before a noun.[/tab][tab]Spelling is an integral element of grammar and benefits from being looked at explicitly rather than in the context of a story-book. It is good to reinforce the letters for each of the letter sounds, including the digraphs. It’s then an excellent plant to look at finer spelling patterns as well as developing the number of tricky words recognized. Tricky words such as ‘you, your, come, some, said, here, there, they go, no, so my’ can be practiced using the ‘look, copy, cover, write’ method.[/tab][tab]Multi-sensory teaching works better than talk and chalk and it has been proven that children have accelerated learning if a kinesthetic component is introduced. The more links a child can make to a new piece of information the more easily they remember it. Punctuation is a key component in the teaching of grammar, and one which can benefit from being ‘acted out’. Say a sentence with your class, or choose a child to say a sentence. Write it on the board, discuss it and come to a collective decision on where it needs punctuation. Say the sentence aloud, pausing when punctuation is needed and doing the action (write the punctuation mark in the air), then carry on with saying the sentence. This is also a good activity when learning speech marks as well. [/tab][/tabs]

Teachers, Training & Conferences

8 Tips for Teaching Grammar without a Worksheet

1. Grammar instruction is most naturally integrated during the revising, editing, and proofreading phases of the writing process. During writing conferences, use various strategies to teach the concept(s) or skill(s) that would enhance the piece that the student is working on right then. Don’t overwhelm them with too many errors; focus on the most the corrections that will do the most to improve their work. Mini lessons with small groups or individual students are effective in integrating grammar into writing instruction.

2. Terminology is useful for describing and explaining sentences, not for writing and reading them. Don’t stress yourself – or the students – by worrying whether they can label a word an “adjective” or an “adverb”. Concern yourself with making sure they can use them successfully in their writing. The terminology will follow, especially if you model and discuss sample sentences of various structures and styles.

3. Guide students through activities in sentence combining, sentence expanding, and sentence manipulating. Research shows these activities are more effective than freewriting in enhancing student writing. These activities can be completed as a class – orally or in writing – and during minilessons or conferences. Use samples from student work (but get permission first) or from books they are reading.

Model Sentence, from Skinnybones:

I jumped out of bed and ran over to the goldfish bowl.

Expanded Sentence:

I quickly jumped out of bed and clumsily ran over to the overflowing goldfish bowl.

This could be a time to integrate the terminology into your discussion. We added the word ‘overflowing’. Why? What does this word do? That’s right. It’s tells us more about the goldfish bowl. It gives us a better description. Adding adjectives, or describing words, is a one way to expand our sentences and make them more interesting. What other adjectives could we have used? What words can we use to help readers get a good picture in their heads. Etc. etc.

4. Give plenty of opportunities for students to write for real audiences and real purposes. Create a postal system within your classroom, grade level, or department. Allow time for students to write letters to each other and have them delivered. Write emails to international pen pals, books reviews for Amazon.com, entries for a class blog, letters to local companies, stories for younger readers, etc. Don’t let yourself, as the teacher, be the only audience your students have for their writing.

5. Read aloud to students and provide time for them to read. Give them access to a variety of literature – stories, newspapers, poems, textbooks, plays, informational text, jokes, comic strips. Try to choose some selections that are more advanced than the students would read by themselves. Research has shown that extensive reading helps students, especially English language learners, acquire grammatical structure.

6. Lead exercises in sentence imitation using model sentences from authentic literature. Let students explore and play with language, considering various ways of expressing an idea.

Model Sentence, from Esperanza Rising:

When she realized she was crying, Esperanza wiped her eyes with a shawl.

Possible Imitation Sentences:

When she realized it was raining, she covered her head with her book.

When he realized it was snowing, he ran to find his sled.

Again, this is a great time to use that tricky terminology in your discussion.

7. Let students become sentence collectors. As they read authentic texts at home and school, encourage them to collect sentences interesting to them in meaning, function, or structure. Display these throughout the classroom for reflection and discussion. Why did they like the sentence? What about the sentence made it interesting? How is it different from other sentences? Why did the author use this sentence? What different parts make up the whole sentence?

8. Study language, as a whole. By studying about how language works – how words enter our language, how they change, why people speak differently, when people speak differently, how meaning can change over time, how nonverbal communication works, etc. – students learn more about how people think and how we communicate, helping them be more conscious of their own language decisions and hopefully making them as passionate about language as their teachers are!