Feed Your Brain and the World!

Feed your brain, and help feed the world by visiting Free Rice.   While you’re feeding your brain with information on a variety of topics, you are also donating 10 grains of rice for each question you are able to answer correctly.  Currently the rice is going to Pakistan where food is so badly needed due to the recent flooding.

The game is addictive and fun.  Choose your questions from a variety of topics such as Art, Chemistry (chemical symbols), English (grammar, vocabulary), Geography (identify countries on the map, world capitals), Language learning (French, German, Italian, Spanish), and Math (basic pre-algebra and multiplication).  There are sixty levels of difficulty.  The difficulty increases as you continue to get answers correct.

“Addictive, yes. But . . . each correct answer results in the donation of rice to help feed the hungry around the globe. Perhaps that qualifies the game as a good addiction . . . one with redeeming qualities, something that’s, oh, didactic and edifying.” – Kansas City Star

BrainPOP ESL

Earlier I posted a video about the H1N1 flu from BrainPOP, an award winning, curriculum-based site BrainPop, developed by Dr. Avraham Kadar, M.D., an immunologist and pediatrician, as a creative way to explain difficult concepts to his young patients.  But, I didn’t give you any information about the latest addition to this site.  BrainPOP for ESL is an educational resource featuring games, lesson plans, activities and animated movies currently in BETA form for level one ELLs.  It is designed for K-12, but our adults can benefit as well.  This would be a great site not only for developing English skills but for getting students started on the computer as well.  Language/memory games such as Concentration are perfect for helping the students learn to maneuver the mouse.

BrainPOP ESL focuses on reading, writing, vocabulary building, grammar and pronunciation.  There is an opening video for each of the five lessons with or without closed captions.  The lessons consist of word lists and flashcards, phonetics help, grammar charts, hear it and say it lessons, printing lessons, listening exercises, and comprehension quizzes. There are Teaching Tools to assist the instructor in using this and expanding it in the classroom.

Currently, this only exists for level one students.  Hopefully, more lessons will be added soon.

Have fun with this!  Your students will!

Things We Say Wrong

Annotated Bibliography – Twitter, Social Networking, and Communities of Practice

TESL-EJ posts an Annotated Bibiliography-Twitter, Social Networking, and Communities of Practice by Kristi Newgarden about social networking tools such as Twitter as learning tools, specifically for language learning.  Not an easy read, but an interesting one of you are considering using Twitter in your classroom.

Real English

Real English is gold for ESL because it contains short videos for all levels of students which focus on bits of language and culture.  The language portion is supported by the cultural information shown in the video-almost like being there.  What’s more, the video includes clips from a variety of English-speaking countries and sub-cultures as well as helpful notes to teachers.  Did I mention that it’s free?