I bet you thought that I was going to miss a month of posting, right? Maybe you thought I had abandoned this blog altogether? Fret not - Here I am! Read on to find some tools that may help you stay sane in spite of a hectic teaching schedule, and a big announcement.

Lest I miss the month of June all together, let me post a handy-dandy graphic organizer to assist students in analyzing (and hopefully internalizing) vocabulary. 

I used to have students compose and narrate stories using ordinary, boring, old PowerPoint, but these days, the web has many digital storytelling tools that can offer a lot to students. Read on to find four free web-based digital storytelling tools that will allow students to publish their work digitally and share it with classmates, friends, and family. 

The Illinois TESOL-Bilingual Education organization is starting an Early Childhood Special Interest Group!

I've had a crazy spring, with many courses, workshops, and illnesses; It seems like every time I turn around my kids are sick, or I am sick, or everyone is sick all together. In attempting to efficiently get work done while also caring for two sick almost-two-year-olds, I've unearthed some pragmatic tools I created to solve some of my own classroom needs. This oral response rubric is one of those. Hopefully it helps you manage oral response in your classroom as well. 

Online translators tend to be the bane of an ESL teacher's existence. Students misuse them to try to take the easy route to finishing their homework (why stretch the mind to write in English when you can write a paragraph in your native language and then copy and paste into an online translator). It doesn't have to be that way, though. Here's how to start using them the right way! 

I am presenting several professional development workshops and courses this spring and summer. Come learn with me! 

I came across an intriguing article today on the relationship between quality of talk and language development in children. 

People often ask me how I find the resources that I share. The Big Deal Media newsletters is one of them and is a great place for all teachers to find fresh resources and tools. 

The human vocal tract is capable of producing hundreds of different sounds, only about 44 of which are actually used in English - which may or may not be some of the same sounds as are used in any other language on the planet... As a classroom ESL teacher, I constantly found myself having to teach students how to pronounce the sounds of English (called phonemes, if you want the technical term). I still remember my students raising their eyebrows at my terrible drawings of how to position the tongue in the mouth in order to produce specific sounds. Then I found this website.