Tag: teaching

Nowadays, anyone having anything to do with second language (SL) acquisition would likely agree that games support SL education. Plenty of research has proven that a relaxing atmosphere and released tension improve the effectiveness of teaching. Creating a friendly and often funny atmosphere, games enable students to memorize words and grammatical structures. Fun, moving, and visual materials stimulate the...

When I stood in front of a room of adult refugees with a wide range of life experience who spoke five different languages, and then tried to teach them to speak English, I was struck by how much of what I said was just noise. I saw polite, confused looks. For the first time in my teaching career, it...

Rumi in the Language Classroom Series Vol 1 See Vol 2 of the series here See Vol 3 of the series here Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, also known as Mawlana "our master" and more popularly as Rumi, was a 13th-century Persian poet, philosopher, theologian, and Sufi originally from, Khorasan, Iran. Originally written in Persian, Rumi's works have made a dramatic impact on...

As Franklin Roosevelt famously stated in his 1932 inaugural address, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” These ringing words probably also apply to the teaching of poetry. For a whole host of reasons, many people—not only teachers but general readers as well—feel intimidated by poetry. For teachers, a fear of this kind either inhibits their...

Teach for America is largely known for its Summer Training Institute, and this year the nonprofit is preparing to move its program online. Running June 11 to July 10, the full network of incoming corps members will participate in a virtual summer training program together. The institute will include members of 2,500 schools and 350 communities to participate in...

How surreal it was as we said goodbye to our fellow teachers. We had, of course, no idea that it would be so long before we would be seeing our students. Before we left, the kids in my Intensive Reading classes were responding to the situation with little emotion, or none, like most of the rest of us, not...

With school buildings closed across the country due to the coronavirus pandemic, a new poll shows educators and their students face significant challenges in making the difficult transition to distance learning. The poll, which surveyed 1,936 National Education Association members, shows the complexity of teaching students with disabilities, providing the same level of education to all students, and higher...

It has only been in the last decade or so that dyslexia has been recognized as a legitimate issue. In the past, dyslexia has been ignored, discounted, or morphed to fit under existing learning disabilities. With further research and clear evidence, it’s becoming not only recognized and understood but finally addressed in education. The movement is slow but powerful. States are beginning to compile...

How shall I talk of the sea to the frog,if it has never left its pond?How shall I talk of the frost to the bird of the summerland,if it has never left the land of its birth?How shall I talk of life with the sage,if he is prisoner of his doctrine?Chung Tsu, 4th Century B.C. (Fantini n.d., 26) Judging from...

Martha Edelson and Lori Langer de Ramirez share the consequences of motivation and affect in teaching middle school world languages and math As teachers of math and Spanish, we have both been approached on countless occasions by adults — friends, colleagues, parents — who share variations on the following statement regarding world language study: “I took seven years of Spanish,...