Using movies to teach grammar

This is a great new website I stumbled upon today. It has a pretty extensive list of grammar points with clips from movies that provide great prompts for teaching the grammar. Seems like this site could be really useful for lesson planning in a pinch. Check it out: Movie Segment to Assess Grammar Goals

Jane's notes from TESOL

Check out the links to Jane's notes and handouts from TESOL.

Notes
Handout 1: Pass or Fail? Making tough end-term calls
Handout 2: Case studies for Pass or Fail?
Handout 3: More Pass or Fail?
Handout 4: Towards Excellence: Preparing for CEA Review of Academics
Handout 5: Sample Student Report
Handout 6: Beyond Namegames: Breaking the Ice in IEP Classes
Handout 7: Classroom Observation Task Description (this one got scanned in upside down - oops!)
Handout 8: Cultural Differences

Virtual tours of DC landmarks

Found this through Twitter, and it's a great collection of links to virtual tours of all the great places to visit in DC - The White House, the Capitol, the Museum of Natural History, etc. Definitely worth checking out; could be really fun to use in class!

How to use social networking in the classroom

Here's a link to an interesting article about using social networking with your students.

New Year's class activity with Calvin & Hobbes

I love Calvin & Hobbes, so when I came across this post on Twitter, I knew I was going to like it.  (Again, you should all be on Twitter - if I ever have an amazing idea, I probably got it from Twitter.)  A teacher posted an easy, quick New Year's-themed class activity with a Calvin & Hobbes comic strip.  Loved the idea, and I think I'll use it on the first day of classes next week.  I think it could work well in all classes and at a variety of levels.

Here's the link.

And here's the website of the teacher who tweeted it.

Fun new resources

Just wanted to share a few fun new resources I found through Twitter (really, you should join Twitter!)

Vocab Genii - a fun vocabulary building game online. I played it and came across several words from the Academic Word List, which I use with students all the time.

Room for Debate - a wonderful resource from the New York Times, with articles about current events and controversial issues. 

StringNet - great tool that allows you to see how words are used in context.  This would be excellent for vocabulary building.

Classroom 2.0 - a social network for teachers who are interested in using technology and social media in the classroom.  I just joined, and there are lots of great groups discussing many different issues in educational technology.

Jokes and the Linguistic Mind

A new book Laura mentioned - looks entertaining!

Create your own comic strip

Found this cool tool today from ReadWriteThink: It's a Comic Creator, and it looks like a really fun way to practice vocabulary.  Students can create their own comic strips online.  What a fun way to make vocabulary teaching more dynamic! If you try it out, let me know.  I'd love to know if students enjoy this activity.

I originally found all of this from a nice blog post on another blog about teaching vocabulary. I liked this quote from their post:

Multiple-choice tests aren’t necessarily bad, but there are many other ways you can go about creating authentic assessments when determining the level of reading comprehension.  The same is true and possibly more important for evaluating vocabulary comprehension.  Retention, not just memorization, is key.

Do you have any interesting articles or blog posts to share?  Please leave a comment!