I had to consider so many different constraints when creating this video-homework-task that it became quite difficult. Time will tell how effective it was. 1) The first constraint was actually time – I HAD to have it ready by Monday (two days ago). I’m trying to get my new students used to doing homework … Continue reading “Because I’m Happy” – New Year’s Activity
Music videos with holiday songs simply do not work with most of my deaf and hard of hearing students. I was only able to use Pharrell’s “Because I’m Happy” video back in September’s holiday season because that video is incredibly popular, has a simple word in the chorus (happy) AND I had a version … Continue reading A Non-Holiday Themed Video Lesson
I received a surprising letter a few days ago. I was informed that a writing competition of short love stories inspired by historic letters, had recently taken place. Someone was inspired by the historic letter I had posted and wrote a short love story, which won first place. The entries are still not available to … Continue reading WHO Were You, DORA? A Writing Competition for Love Stories Gives a “Voice” to Three “Forgotten Women”
“The Children’s Bible” by Lydia Millet WOW. This is certainly a clever book that packs a punch. Remember when Greta Thunberg thundered: “My message is that we’ll be watching you. This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all … Continue reading Books about Nature: The End of Nature, It’s Calming Effect & Human Nature
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng I believe that this book is very popular and is (or will soon be ) a mini-series available for online streaming. However, this book goes into my personal “you lose some” bin. I truly agree that a great deal of credit should be given to Ng for well-rounded characters … Continue reading Saturday’s Books: You win some, you lose some…
Note: The book I began reading on the very first day of “Sheltering in Place”, The Time of Our Singing by Powers has its own post (click on the title to view it). It took me time to read all 642 pages of it! Since then my pace of reading has picked up (even though … Continue reading One Pandemic – MANY BOOKS! Thurbon, Grossman, Gaiman, Castel-Blum & Patchett
Yes, I admit it. I’d much rather reflect on how the book I recently read ties in with “Women’s Day” (March 8) and what it has to do with me being a teacher, than dwell on the question of whether we’re going back to school as scheduled in two days despite the CoronaVirus. Stressful times … Continue reading “Women’s Day”, Being A Teacher & “The Mermaid Chair” by Sue Monk Kidd
I didn’t plan on having a “Korean Themed Month”. In fact, there weren’t any theme plans at all – it just turned out that way! It all began with the movie “Parasites” by Korean director Bong Joon Ho. There was a lot of favorable talk about the film after the Cannes film festival 2019 film … Continue reading It’s Saturday! TWO Movies, One Book & Half a Recipe – All Related to Korea!
Are you familiar with those reading comprehension exercises in which students are required to read the title of the passage, then copy the sentence from the text which answers the question in the title? Well, if this post were such an exercise, here’s the sentence you would need to copy: “I don’t know”. While I … Continue reading Vocabulary Retrieval Exercises; Paper vs Digital – Which is Better?
This is one of those times when I say; “Forget the students!” I actually eagerly sat down at first to read Kevin Stein’s free book (PDF or Ebook) “Just About Life” because I did have students in mind at first. Kevin wrote this collection of short stories (fiction) with controlled vocabulary and length, (as he … Continue reading Saturday’s Book: “Just About Life” by Kevin Stein