Vocabulary

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Simple Definitions, Complex Thoughts

Monday, May 4th, 2009

Get them here or make up your own. You’ve got two ways to play this game. 1. Give these to your students as warm ups at various times but with one of the words blocked out and have them decide what it should be. 2. When they’ve got the hang of guessing, they start making [...]

Zombie Vocab – Castigate

Monday, December 1st, 2008

I know I should stop but I’m just so easily amused. Castigate WOD – Oct. 16th Image source – Neat Makeup by Doviende

Zombie Vocab – Reticent

Sunday, November 30th, 2008

As long as one other person is mildly amused, I might as well keep entertaining the two of us. Reticent – WOD Nov. 24th Image source- Doviende

Zombie Vocab – Accentuate

Friday, November 28th, 2008

My wife informed me that these are too violent to use in classrooms (she said something about “blood soaked” being a little inappropriate). I’d have used them but then again she taught in a very different environment. original image source Accentuate- WOD

Zombie Vocabulary

Thursday, November 27th, 2008

So in the theme of restrictions creating creativity and my own desire to be doing things more directly related to the classroom- I have decided to start Zombie Vocabulary1. I’ll take a few words from Merriam-Webster’s word of the day and create a zombie2 themed use of the word that I’d use with my students [...]

Playing with Vocabulary

Saturday, November 15th, 2008

I did this a while back but don’t think I ever posted about it 1. So vocabulary work often is one the most boring things an English teacher (or anyone else) ever does. The beauty of an English class is that you have a fair degree more flexibility when dealing with vocabulary than a lot [...]

More Limited Communication Purity

Friday, February 15th, 2008

Apparently, I really like the idea cutting down communication to it’s purest form. (that’s really pompous sounding)- I like short writing. I like the idea that you have to pack as much as possible in just a few words. Boing Boing has come through again by finding a book dealing with 6 word memoirs by [...]

The Terror of Concentric Circles!

Saturday, February 9th, 2008

Breaking News: Series Of Concentric Circles Emanating From Glowing Red Dot A great Onion news story. There’s enough vocabulary in it for a whole lesson and throw in a solid sample of parody as well.

Rap for English

Wednesday, September 26th, 2007

I’ve been playing around with the idea of doing a blog for my middle school focusing on using rap lyrics to get at daily oral language and to build vocabulary. I think the potential is definitely there. I’m worried about two things. Can I come up with material consistently enough to make it worthwhile for [...]

Vocabulary- Lost in Translation

Sunday, September 2nd, 2007

What happens when an English phrase is translated (by computer) back and forth between 5 different languages? Lost in Translation is a fun little web page that does all that translation for you using Babelfish. Why in the world would you want to do this? Well, it’s funny and while it can become nonsense very [...]

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