How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!
How it clatters along the roofs
Like the tramp of hoofs!
How it gushes and struggles out
From the throat of the overflowing spout!
Across the window-pane
It pours and pours;
And swift and wide,
With a muddy tide,
Like a river down the gutter roars
The rain, the welcome rain!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
April Rain Song
Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.
The rain makes running pools in the gutter.
The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night –
And I love the rain.
Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
Read the poems. List all the verbs that the poets use for the rain. Describe the images of the rain in each poem. Are there any similes in the poems? Compare the two poems: how are they similar/different? What feelings do you get from them?
You can copy these poems on a template or write your own and create some art. Get inspired!
Would you do it? Would you deny regular home space and fit your needs into the size of, say, a roomy shed? In fact, this is already happening around the globe. The tiny house movement has been swelling in the past few years while lifestyles, needs and consequently house sizes are shrinking. This trend has even found ground at schools as a project idea.
Imagine every cup of coffee that consumers discard turning into a beautiful tree. Imagine the immense problems of deforestation and overgrazing being tackled by just sinking your empty cup of coffee into the ground. How cool would that be?
Well, a company in California called Reduce. Reuse. Grow has already imagined and designed a biodegradable coffee cup that has seeds embedded in its walls so that it can be planted and grown! There are instructions on the bottom of the cup about how you do it.
The whole project was placed on fund raising some months ago and is now 100% funded waiting for the next step to be taken: commercial testing and potential partnering.
Come on! Don’t be a couch potato! Before exclaiming: “I’m done with figurative language!” take some time to STUDY the following resources. Then check yourself. I’m sure you will find it a piece of cake in the end!
Working in Primary Education last year gave me the chance to create various worksheets which I’d like to share in the hope they will help more students and teachers out there.
The worksheet I developed is based on the Coursebook that Greek students follow in Grade E. There is a model postcard text providing a few phrase choices and a lined space where students can write their own postcard.
I hope you’ll find the Model Holiday Postcard and Worksheet to be as useful a resource as I did! If this is the case, please share the link back to my site rather than give the document away. Happy postcard writing!
From “Which make better pets, cats or dogs?” to “Truth: Is it absolute or relative?” the list of opinion essay topics can be infinite. An opinion essay is a type of formal essay where the writer expresses their personal viewpoint on a particular topic.
The essay can be short or lengthy, depending upon the range of ideas or the word limit according to a particular exam type. Whatever the case, follow the regular essay guidelines and stick to your topic. Be clear, support with examples, use connectors to smoothly link one point to the next, avoid repetition and always prepare a plan to follow. Here’s a simplified one for you:
Are you more of an audio-visual type? Watch the following video to clarify any points on how to write an opinion essay.
Are you looking for a fun way to introduce some seasonal vocabulary, customs and activities to spend this year’s last school day? Well, how about watching a Mr Bean episode with your class? That’s what I did last year with my Grade 6 pupils and it was great success because it seems they are never bored with Mr Bean. Moreover, they were really motivated to do the worksheet activities since they all enjoyed the story.
After teaching English to Senior High School students for fifteen years, I had a one-year shift to Primary School, which proved really educational for me. Among other things, it gave me great insight into how roles and relations shape up from an early age. This experience together with some sad incidents in my neighbourhood’s playgrounds set me about searching and reading about relational aggression, a type of bullying.
Open and direct forms of bullying like insults, pushing around or hitting may be easy to detect and acknowledge but there are sneakier ones that cause as much pain and even greater, because they are discrete, subtle and often go unnoticed by adults and even other peers. These forms of bullying target the social sphere of the victim and are all described within the term of “Relational Aggression”.
According to the article It’s “Mean,” But What Does It Mean to Adolescents? RelationalAggression Described by Victims, Aggressors, and Their Peers (published by Journal of Adolescent Research http://jar.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/25/2/175) relational aggression includes “negative social behaviors that are intended to harm relationships, social roles, and/or social standing (Crick & Grotpeter, 1995).” These behaviours may come up as “exclusion from activities or a desired friendship group, the silent treatment, and spreading false rumors.”
The targeted child often goes through gossip, purposeful avoidance and telling peers not to associate with them, backstabbing, using code names to talk about others, whispering, etc. What makes such behaviors even more agitating is the fact that they often come from assumed friends.
Relationally aggressive behavior worries and disquiets me the most, for a number of reasons. First, it goes beyond overt aggressiveness; it is carefully organized and disguised so as not to be easily detected. Second, research supports what I sensed through my own observations: relational aggression has been shown to deplete mental health and other aspects of child and adolescent socioemotional functioning, exactly like any other type of bullying. Third, it seems to be increasingly exercised by boys, too (it has been traditionally thought to be exercised by girls mostly). Finally, it becomes even more pervasive with the spreading use of social media so that it forms a whole separate type of bullying, that of cyberbullying.
Instead of letting this delicate subject for the anti-bullying school day, I think I can take advantage of its dynamic and inject it into my EFL classroom, as it can provide lots of material to discuss and work on.
Having these in mind, I collected some resources and lesson plans to get ideas and use. Some lesson plans refer to bullying prevention in general, but we can focus on the relationally aggressive behaviors according to the students’ age. It is important for the children to understand what relational bullying is and is not, because some practices, like gossiping for example, are thought to be Ok. I like the following chart which explains the differences between teasing, conflict, a mean moment and bullying, found at a relevant page of mssepp.blogspot.gr. There are more ideas and activities, too.
However, it shouldn’t slip our minds that these resources will only be beneficial if we practise empathy and teach respect on every day basis. This cannot be done in a one-day lesson. It takes time and effort on our part, because we must model, discuss, expect and acknowledge respect and every other positive behavior daily.
Visuals can easily be transformed into great prompters or even full lesson plans. For example, the following poster from stopabully.ca is ideal for younger EFL learners and it can generate Present Tenses practice:
1) Speaking: Where are the children?What is the teacher doing? What are the two boys at the back doing? Have you ever seen or done something similar? Has this ever happened to you? How do you feel when…?
2) Writing: The students may write the poster story, add speech bubbles or write a diary entry from the point of view of the different students involved.
Of course, videos are always engaging and they can be used as warm-ups. For instance, the following video can generate discussion on all aspects of relational aggression.
Let’s keep a positive mind and an active stand with the help of these resources. Remember to check copyright before using them!
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