I was searching the Net to nick pictures to do a hot potatoes exercise for my elementary students on parts of the body when I bumped into this cool site. It’s called Kids Front and although it’s for kids ,I’ve found plenty of funny exercises to use in my classes.
Shall I suggest: Form a New Word or Homonyms or the more serious Match the Prefix ?
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Now, as if I didn’t have enough to do I’ve become sort of hooked on this Facebook thing,which is packed with silly quizzes. I think I’m on my way to become a total nerd if I don’t put a stop to the time I spend on useless pastimes. Anyway, never in my life had I seen such a load of quiz tests . There are tests for everything , ranging from telling you what sort of person you are based on a quiz on the shoes you like to telling you what your day is going to be like when you open (virtually speaking, of course) a cookie. It can be fun at first but then it gets really tiresome.
I have found where some of these quizzes come from. Quizzes can be fun ways of learning new vocabulary and questions, at least this is the reason that has prompted me to write this post. So, visit here http://www.funquizcards.com/ and treat yourself to some fun quizzes
But there is something else : this site also allows you to create your own quiz and this is what I have done. This time a bit more educational, though.
I don’t like this idiom, the only reason being the rodent in it… yes, I am that girlie!!
Now and then, and as part of the continuous asssessment, I ask my students to write something at home to be marked later and very often and mainly when it is writing about a celebrity, a book or a film they nick from the Internet. Setting this task when I know pretty well they won’t be able to resist the temptation of copy-pasting from the Internet is a bit of a wicked of me ,to put it midly, but life is hard, isn’t it?
To smell a rat= you know instinctively that something is wrong or that someone is lying to you.
So when I start reading essays and some words trigger all my sirens, then this is the tool I use to catch you red-handed.
It’s called Plagium
It is not the first time I ‘ve used this tool, but it is the first time I’ve used it to revise vocabulary. I like it because it is easy to use and also attractive and we all know that students appreciate it when you give them something different.
How does this tool help me? Wordle is a “toy” for generating “word clouds” from the text you provide.
In the past I mainly used it to decorate some posts and in class to retell a text. It is a great tool for retelling as the clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.
But today I’ve discovered a new use to Wordle. I needed tor revise some vocabulary. I normally do it as a competition game with strips of paper and the word to be revised written on them. But today I tried writing the words to be revised and this is the result. I’ve created two word clouds as I am going to split the class into two and let them compete against each other by giving them a maximum of two minutes to try to define the words to their team. So, I’ve printed the word clouds and used it in the OHP. Hope they like it! I had a great time too tweaking the fonts, colours and layout.
Related entries:
Karaoke on line
Fancy doing a dictation?
Warhol
You know that I have been for some time now trying to improve your written work making you aware of the fact that you always tend to use the same simplistic words when you write, even though we both know that you have a wider range of vocabulary. So why not use it? Look at this text and try to replace the verbs “say” and “look” with some others.
Click here when you finish to see my suggestions.
“Watch out” ! I said at the top of my voice; but it was already too late. Jim and I both stood there looking at the cyclist flying off his bike and hitting the enormous hole in the road. “Is he hurt?” Jim said quietly, trembling with fear. “I don’t know” I said softly. At that moment the young man slowly lifted his head and looked at us in confusion. “What happened?” he said, in pain. “Where am I?”
Here’s another one. This time replace the words underlined to make it more interesting to the reader. Click here when you finish to see my suggestions.
It was a nice sunny morning when we set off on our journey. The sky looked very blue with only a few small clouds on the distant horizon. The ship we travelled on was big and had good cabins. We must have been halfway there when I was roused from my nap by a bad scream. It took me a while to come to my senses, but then I saw a small woman in front of me, looking very scared.
And now an entertaining task online that shows you how you can develop a simple sentence like ‘I made tea.’ into a detailed text. Go to the website: http://www.telescopictext.com/. You will see the sentence with shaded words, click ing on a shaded you’ll see that part of the sentence expand. Read the new sentence and then choose another part to click on
Homework: Create your own detailed sentences from one of these:
– I went to the beach.
– I saw a film
Once you have finished your sentence you can post it in the comments below and I’ll publish it.
