ESL Teachers' Blog of Substance

You are welcome to email me with your questions and ideas.

Teachers Paying Student Fees

November 19, 2009

My school district, like many others, is now charging ESL students a small fee for classes. I work in a poor area and students can't pay fees each session. I'm tempted to write a check for the costs in order to keep my class open. I want to keep my job. There aren't many jobs for 54 year olds who work in a declining field. This is really unfair for teachers, but what else can we do? We're on "foods" right now and when I surveyed my class by asking "What did you eat for breakfast this morning, ten out of eleven students ate nothing. Only two of the ten drank something. They didn't bring food for break either. It's a small offsite CBET class. I think I'm going to use some of the money I earn from this website and cover the $10 per student fee for this nine week session. Maybe things will get better next year, but this year there's not much choice for part-time Adult Ed teachers.

WIA Title II Cut

November 8, 2009

Film Capitalism by Michael Moore

October 30, 2009

Back to Blogging

October 26, 2009

ESL Blog - Back Soon

October 17, 2009

I moved recently and don't have my Internet connection working yet. That's why I haven't been blogging as often as usual. I hope to be back up and running soon. In the meantime, I've been creating Read Aloud worksheets. I'll post them as soon as I can. I've completed a whole batch of them. Most of them are on lifeskills subjects. I'll also update the Halloween unit as soon as I'm connected. My sister said I need to get on Facebook, too. I'm not sure about that.

One-room Schoolhouses

September 25, 2009

One-room schoolhouses where teachers taught five to eight grade levels in a single classroom are rare in the US, but they are still used in developing countries. I was thinking about my multi-level ESL classroom and the similarity between my portable classroom and the old one-room schoolhouses of the past. Here is an interesting article about the history of one-room schoolhouses. Someday, I'll get around to creating a civics lessons on the subject and posting it on this website. There are so many worthy subjects I'd love to be able to cover on this website, but there is never enough time. I'm still plugging away on the new ESL section for beginning level students.

Corrected Halloween Bingo Game

September 25, 2009

I corrected the Halloween lesson so that the bingo game is about Halloween and not Thanksgiving. Thanks to Jacquline, an ESL teacher in Alabama, who wrote and told me about the mix up. I also added a printing worksheet with holiday vocabulary words. Don't forget that there are some PowerPoint presentations on the bottom of the lesson pages. PPTs show really well if you have an interactive whiteboard in your classroom. And lucky you, if you do.

Voice of America - Intermediate ESL

September 24, 2009

Voice of America has been around since 1942. It's a well known news site and works well in Intermediate ESL classes. Since their articles are posted in 45 languages, students can read an article in their first lanugage and then read the same article in English. Not all of the articles are presented in all of the languages, so teachers would have to preview the site before handing out assignments.

Decline of Cursive Lessons

September 22, 2009

Some grade schools aren't teaching cursive writing anymore. I think schools should continue to teach cursive handwriting along with printing and keyboarding. Cursive is easy and fast to learn, and it's a good cognitive workout for developing minds. MSN has an article about the decline of cursive handwriting in US schools. I have a page with some free downloadable tracing worksheets for handwriting practice. Some are in print and others are in cursive. Help yourselves.

PowerPoints in ESL Classrooms

September 20, 2009

I showed a few PowerPoint presentations in my ESL class this morning. The students liked them. Subjects included: classroom items, days of the week, calendars, and common activities. Slideshows are convenient for teachers because once you create them you can re-use them over and over again. This saves busy teachers a lot of time from having to create new material. It also allows students to review past lessons throughout the school year. I wish we had a computer lab in my program. I'm offsite, so NO COMPUTER LAB AND NO INTERACTIVE WHITEBOARD. Bummer~! Here is a link to my ESL PowerPoints. Feel free to use them.

ESL Lessons

September 18, 2009

I added a new section to this website. It's called "ESL Lessons" and it has basic vocabulary lessons for beginning level students. Instead of using photos I used clipart to illustrate the words. Each of these lessons comes with a matching PowerPoint slideshow. The ppt presentation is very similar, but in some cases it presents a few extra vocabulary words. The best way to use the new section is to first show the website lesson pages on an interactive whiteboard and then show the PowerPoint to reinforce the vocabulary. I hope ESL teachers find it useful. Students who have computers at home can access the pages for extra reinforcement.

Eyeglasses for ESL Students

September 16, 2009

I have two adult ESL students who couldn't fill out the class registration form yesterday because they couldn't see the writing on the page. I lent one of them my reading glasses and it solved his problem. The student was surprised when I explained that I bought them at the dollar store. It dawned on me later that I could pick up a few pairs of reading glasses from the dollar store and keep them on hand. Some of our students aren't aware that they can buy glasses for such a low price.

CBET Class

September 15, 2009

I started my CBET class yesterday. As usual, the students are really nice. About half of them are returning students from last year and the other half are new students. I'm a little worried about holding onto the class because this is the first semester that there is a class fee. The fee is $5 for the ID and $10 for the nine-week class. That's probably enough to cover the cost of the paper and maybe a little more. I'm going to be creating more PowerPoint presentations this year. They add a nice variety to the lesson. I don't have an interactive whiteboard, but I do have a projector. We don't have screens so I just show the presentations on the regular whiteboard. It works. I hope all you ESL teachers are off to a good start this 2009-2010 school year.

Secretary of Education - Arne Duncan

September 14, 2009

The head of the US Dept. of Education is called the Secretary of Education and he or she is part of the President's Cabinet. The current Secretary of Education is Arne Duncan. He took office January 21, 2009, and serves under President Obama. Duncan was the CEO of Chicago Public Schools. (I'm from Chicago, too.) He graduated from Harvard with a degree in sociology. At any rate, teachers should read Duncan's biography at Wikipedia to keep up with things. By the way, I love Wikipedia. It's making the world a better place by offering free information to all who can access a computer.

Low Paying College Degrees - 5 Lowest

September 13, 2009

There's an interesting article by Don Asher at Encarta MSN. It lists the five lowest-paying college majors. He says that according to the book "College Majors Handbook" by Neeta Fogg, Paul Harrington, and Thomas Harrington, the lowest paying degrees are: Social work, special education, elementary education, home economics, and music and dance. The highest paying is chemical engineering. I didn't add a link to the article because I read that MSN is closing Encarta because it doesn't make money. That's a bummer because it's well written and useful. I'm not sure if all their articles will be deleted or not.

ESL Classes - Budget Cuts

September 10, 2009

It's the start of a new school year and like most ESL teachers, I've been FEELING the budget cuts. One of my night jobs isn't hiring me back this year, so I'll be down to one part-time job. As all of you ESL teachers know, there aren't any full-time jobs for Adult Education teachers. Of course, districts manage to hire the secretaries and janitors full-time with health insurance, so it makes one wonder what's going on when the 'support staff' is full-time and the teaching staff is part-time. At any rate, this website will continue to provide free support material. The cool thing is that you don't have to sign up for anything and you don't have to donate material. Hey, you don't even need a password. I like to keep things simple and easy. If you have an interactive board, you can show the photo lessons on the board. I'm adding a new section to the site, but I'll write about that later. Good luck, teachers. I hope we all have a great year and our classes last the next round of budget cuts.

President Obama's Speeches

September 7, 2009

Happy Labor Day! Just finished listening to President Obama's Labor Day speech. I need affordable health care, but it doesn't have to be free. At any rate, Obama's speech was good, but there were a few patches where he went on too long. Also, I read a copy of Obama's Back-to-School Speech. It's about kids working hard and staying in school. The main message is about not giving up. Obama talks about when he was a kid and his mom made him wake up early to study. I like the message, but it should be shorter. Secretary Duncan, I'm available to create material for kids. Call me. I mean it. I can write lesson plans, create photo lessons and PowerPoint presentations, and keep it short and sweet for kids. Look around my website for proof. Waiting!! Help...suppose to work 12 hours per week in Compton. Not even sure if that job will last. More California budget cuts are on the horizon, and I'm worried.

ESL Blog for Teachers

July 4, 2009

Happy Fourth of July! I can hear the fireworks outside my window here in California. It's been a tough year for the United States. Our economy is hurting and people are losing their jobs or having their hours and health care cut. ESL teachers have been hit hard with layoffs and reduced hours and pay. I'm dedicated to my field and to all of the fellow teachers out there, so I thought you'd like to know that this EL Civics website will continue to provide free lessons for ESL teachers and students. I was using Yahoo blogging services, but they have closed their blogging program, so I'm going to try creating my own blog page using old fashioned html. This won't allow visitors to leave comments, but few people left any comments anyhow. That's pretty much the norm. I visit other ESL websites from time to time and see that there are very few comments being left on other sites either, so I don't feel too bad about it. Also, since a lot of schools block blogs, I decided to host my blog on my own website so teachers can read the content while they're at work. However, if you want to leave a comment, you'll have to email me with your message. I'll try my best to respond in a timely manner.

Copyrights to the pictures and photos on this ESL/EL Civics website belong to individual photographers. We have purchased the rights to use them. Do not copy the pictures/photos on this site. Permission is granted to copy any of the worksheets for classroom use. Please visit my other EL Civics website at tinkerbellchime.com for more EL Civics lessons, resources, and pictures. Permission is granted to link to any page of this website. Contact Christina Niven, Web Developer, at christina@elcivics.com. Please send corrections, comments, greetings, and requests for new units. Copyright © Christina Niven, 2007.