The End!

Unbelievable but true! I finally finished my ACE course! A sense of relief, and a sense of achievement. I actually survived! And I feel so empowered to have learned about so many tools. I am looking forward to using these in my teaching.

This is exactly how I feel:

“The feeling is less like an ending than just another starting point.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Choke

 

Academic Vocabulary

I keep asking my students to use academic vocabulary in their writing. While I hand out the AWL at the beginning of each semester, I still feel that there’s something lacking.

Click here to help your students practice their academic vocabulary.

 Do you have any other similar resources?

Ducks!

Taking inspiration from a classmate's video of a bird tweeting in her backyard, I'm uploading a short video I took of ducks in a small stream about two blocks away from where I live.

Besides the quacking, you will hear my nephews squealing at the sight of so many ducks!

 

Teaching online

In the few years that I have taught online, I have found the most challenging thing is to keep students engaged. I have tried ways and means to do this by making lessons more interactive and by giving activities where students need to do something hands-on rather than listen to a ‘lecture’.

Having said all that, I sorely miss the face-to-face interaction that a real classroom offers.

How does one deal with that? Or is it just me?

Do you have any suggestions?

 

In the meanwhile, here's a short video on the differences between teaching online and face-to-face:

Online vs F2F

Being close to nature

Something I love and enjoy doing is hiking. When I achieve my goal after the exertion of a hike, the feeling of accomplishment is incomparable.

Hiking keeps me in touch with nature and its beauty. As I walk along, I make it a point to notice the blades of grass, the branches of trees laden with wild fruit and flowers, the way sunlight peeks through the thick foliage... I make sure I don’t miss listening to the sounds of nature - the rustle of the leaves, the birds singing... The smell of the fresh, crisp air, unpolluted by vehicular traffic never fails to refresh me. When I hike, I take a break from technology… and I survive!

Hiking is such an exhilarating experience, and I am always game for a hike…

Here’s one of the pictures I took when I went hiking in the mountains of Santa Monica last summer.

 

Listening resources

Two good resources I heavily rely on when I do listening activities for my students are:

http://www.esl-lab.com/index.htm

http://www.elllo.org/english/home.htm

They have good audio files and comprehension and vocabulary activities based on these files.

Could you suggest websites to use for listening activities?

Festival of Colors

While we wait here patiently for spring to arrive, people in India are already celebrating its arrival – with the festival of Holi today.

When I was growing up, Holi used to be such a fun festival. Spread over two days, the second day would always be the best for us as children. On the first day, there would be a huge bonfire symbolising the victory of good over evil. We would also throw corn and coconuts in the fire so that they would get roasted. The taste of these still lingers in my mouth! But the next day would be the fun day… we would wake up early in the morning and knock on our neighbors’ doors and call everyone out only to smear them with powder paint and splash them with colored water. We would throw colored water-filled balloons on unsuspecting passersby – some would take it sportingly and some wouldn’t. But then who cared? We were having fun!

While the festival of Holi has religious significance for some, for most people it is a time for fun.

When I think of how we used to celebrate this festival in India, I feel nostalgic …I wonder how those days of the carefree abandon of childhood flew by so quick...