Grammar Goodies

As the year winds down (we go until June 24th because of snow days), I begin to start thinking about my summer teaching gig. For the last three years I have taught ESOL for advanced language learners during an intense summer school session that lasts about five weeks. One of the areas that I harp on with my students is building up their knowledge and comfort with English grammar. I emphasize from day one that learning grammar is a process that will last for one's lifetime. I like the idea of turning learning grammar into short activities and/or games. From my observations, students are more likely to enjoy learning grammar using electronic activities than paper worksheets.

I am including some of my favorite websites I use for teaching grammar. I have used some of the activities from these websites and transformed them into Kahoots too.  I hope you find a gem or two from my list of resources:

* Grammar Bytes
* English Grammar Pass
* Grammar Monster
* City University of Hong Kong
* University of Bristol
* Parts of Speech
* OWL Writing Lab for ESL Instructors (or anyone who wants grammar help)

Writing Well...

I was sad to learn yesterday that the legendary William Zinsser died the other day. I first heard of his writing strategies a few years ago. After reading his famous book, On Writing Well, I was hooked. What struck me about Zinsser is how he so adeptly describes the struggles English Language Learners encounter when writing in English. Using his book as a guide, I created the simple poster above to regularly remind my students (of all levels) what principles they should follow when writing. 

If you teach older students in any content area, I highly recommend you get a copy of Zinsser's book. His simple principles will give you a better way to teach writing!

A Shout Out from the Great Ken Halla!

I was honored to win a small contest run by Ken Halla's US Government Teacher's blog recently. He asked for submissions of the best review materials to help students prepare for the AP US Government and Politics exam quickly approaching. I sent him my centralized resources and he declared me the winner ;) Not only did I get a nice write up on his blog, but I won a copy of his great new book, Deeper Learning Through Technology: Using the Cloud to Individualize Instruction. It is a terrific and timely resource for teachers who want to learn best practices of using different technology resources within their classroom, school, and community.

If you do not subscribe to Halla's social studies blogs, you are missing out on great (and practical) resources for your classroom. Here is the nice post he wrote about my winning resource.

Also, here is the Google document my students are using to prepare for the AP US Government and Politics exam. May 12th is almost here!!