When I started researching for this post, my mind came up with dozens of ideas for using digital flashcard apps. Naturally, you can use flashcards for vocabulary and definitions. But the other possibilities are endless. Imagine, as teachers develop lessons, they create sets of cards that cover their lecture notes at the same time. This would take just a few extra minutes as the details are already typed up. After teachers use traditional means to teach the facts, they assign the cards for students to study.
Decks can contain anything from simple multiplication fact practice to learning complex sets of information such as features of each planet in our solar system. History teachers can create cards with famous people and their accomplishments or events and their significance. Are you beginning to think of ideas too?Continue Reading
English is a mix of several languages including French, Italian, Greek and Latin, Vietnamese and so on. This makes the number of words linguists estimate the English language to have extremely large…approximately one million words. About 170,000 of these words are in current use. The average adult English speaker has a vocabulary between 20,000 to 35,000 words. Ninety-five percent of everyday writing and speech in newspapers, most books, movies, etc. use only about 3,000 words. So…how do we prepare our students for college entrance exams when everyday life exposes them to such a narrow list of vocabulary words? —- We teach students prefixes, suffixes, and Greek and Latin roots. Continue Reading
Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom is a novel about the students in Mrs. Jewls’s class. Her classroom is on the top floor of an unusual school that is 30 stories high with one classroom on each floor. Several plots arise featuring the students of this class.
Some students seem as if they learn multiplication facts overnight. Others struggle for months and months. Flashcards, using Brain Gym exercises while repeating facts, and catchy songs work with a few students. One method that works for many students is learning rules. Here is the list I have tried with success. Below is an instruction video that contains even more tricks or rules.
Rules for Learning Multiplication Facts
Rule #1 – Any number times 1 equals the other number.
An understatement is a figure of speech when a speaker makes the situation seem less important or severe than what it is. The remark makes something seem smaller. An understatement adds humor to serious situations. When verbal, the speaker delivers the statement without expression for effect.
Think of an understatement as the opposite of hyperbole.Continue Reading
Effect vs Affect – How many times have students struggled with this troublesome pair? How many papers have you graded that confused these words? Before Common Core State Standards, our state standards gave a long list of troublesome word pairs students had to learn. Teaching this skill was monotonous for both students and teachers. Because of this, I experimented with different teaching methods. This skill hasn’t gone away with Common Core. Instead, it has become more general.
Sarcasm is a difference or contrast between expectations and realities in a circumstance. Irony is often only recognized well after an original statement or occurrence since it often takes current events to realize the previous remark was completely wrong.
Sarcasm is a remark that people use to say the opposite of what’s true with a purpose to amuse or hurt someone by making them feel foolish.Continue Reading
