It’s hard to overstate just how important it is to learn our new students’ names as soon as possible. As Dale Carnegie said, “A person’s name is, to that person, the sweetest, most important sound in any language.” We want to create a welcoming community atmosphere in our classrooms, and learning students’ names—as fast as …
Author: Allison Lewis
How to Use Whole-Class Novels Without Killing the Joy of Reading
When we require our students to read a certain novel or other book together as a class, we are always at risk of committing readicide. The term “readicide” comes from Kelly Gallagher’s book, Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It. The author argues that many of the practices used …
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Game Idea: “Change Places If You…”
I’m always looking for activities that get students physically moving while also giving them exposure to meaningful language. Recently, I used a game that I call “Change Places If You…” It’s a game I played in my high school youth group, but I’ve adapted it a little to make it easier for language learners. In …
The Importance of Consistency in Free Reading Time
Students need time to read books of their choice. They need time to read in class, and it needs to be consistent. I’m talking about giving students time to read in class where they are independently reading books or stories that they choose, whether you call it FVR (Free Voluntary Reading), SSR (Silent Sustained Reading), …
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How to Do a MovieTalk with Full-Length Movies
In my first few years of teaching ESL, I always thought that movies and videos in English would be great resources to use in class. But whenever I tried to use them, it never worked well. The students could barely understand anything, and the whole experience just ended up being frustrating for both my students …
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Reading Conferences
In January, I started doing reading conferences with my students for the first time. There are two main schools of thought about what teachers should do while students are reading silently during independent reading time in class: one is that the teacher should read silently with the students to model and encourage reading (and prevent …
Valentine’s Day 2019
Valentine's Day is almost here! I posted some ideas for Valentine's Day back in 2017, but I wanted to post about some new ideas I have for this year. In my classes, I'm planning to use this Romantic World Records activity. It's a group guessing game I created using information from the Guinness Book of …
