More ideas for a Thanksgiving Day lesson!

Check these ideas for a Thanksgiving Day lesson plan:

Tip one:

7 Thanksgiving Crafts and Games Your Students Will Be Thankful for. Available at busyteacher.org

Tip two:

TURKEY DAY is only a week away! Have you ever wondered WHY WE EAT TURKEY ON THANKSGIVING? Find out the answer at Wonderopolis. Wonder of the Day® #53 explains: http://bit.ly/hn4sGf

These sites always bring awesome ideas. Add them to your favorites, facebook contacts or follow them on Twitter!

Global Competence – Educating for the 21st Century

Why does learning in many schools around the world still looks very traditional, lacking the rigor and purposefulness required to prepare students for the 21st Century? Have you ever made this question? Does it sound familiar?  Understanding exactly how to develop the knowledge, skills and dispositions students must possess to be successful in the 21st century has become a common discussion point in many schools worldwide. Some teachers express a desire to help students become better problem-solvers, to be collaborative and to think critically. Developing instruction that engages students with an issue of local or global significance, provides them an opportunity to apply content knowledge in a meaningful way and allows multiple opportunities for reflection, refinement and self-assessment all serve as ways to engage students in deeper learning while giving them a purposeful way to apply 21st century skills. To make this all possible though, it's important to take into account some issues as teachers plan and instruct. The main objective is to create an environment for learning and development in which every student is prepared to develop global competence. Have you ever heard of it? 

Global competence is best defined as a student's capacity and disposition to understand and act on issues of global significance. Instruction that supports the development of globally competent student provides multiple opportunities to investigate the world, recognize and weigh diverse perspectives, communicate ideas and take action.

The core learning approach provides clear criteria and a reliable process for students to produce work that demonstrates knowledge readiness and global competence. In a practical sense, the strategy used to help guide teachers planning is to ask them to reflect on the SAGE elements of a learning task:

Student Choice: The task calls on students to plan and assess their work over time through reflection. During the task, students are asked to make key decisions about the direction of their work, focus, and presentation. To support this, the task provides opportunities for teachers to deliver formative and summative feedback to the students throughout the learning process.

Authentic Context: The task provides an experience that resembles what adults do in the real-world. This requires students to communicate, collaborate, think critically, be creative, negotiate with other people, and use digital media in ways that support knowledge building.

Global Significance: The task fosters the capacity and dispositions to understand and act on issues of global significance. Ideally, the task stimulates students to build knowledge that is cross disciplinary.

Exhibition to an Audience: The task provides students with opportunities to showcase or present their work to an appropriate/relevant audience beyond the teacher and classroom. Students are provided opportunities to discuss their work and receive feedback that holds them accountable for their claims.

For more information about global competence or structures that promote globally-focused instruction, you can download a free copy of the book, Educating for Global Competence by Veronica Boix-Mansilla and Tony Jackson. The book is really worth reading and it broadens our minds in the sense of reflecting on our role as educators for the 21^st century students. I do recommend!

Meet 4 reasons for vocabulary meaning changes

According to the examples  shown on the last post published on Nov 8, many people view semantic change with strong emotions. The discussion of meaning change is often emotionally charged, with the meanings perceived as "improving" (amelioration) or "worsening" (pejoration) over time. Try this: flip through the dictionary and look at random for a word with four or more meanings, preferably a word you think you know. Chances are you will find that it has an unlikely hodge-podge of meanings, at least one of which will surprise you. The next paragraphs will attempt to provide a more clinical overview of how words change meanings.

1)    Pejoration is the process by which a word's meaning worsens or degenerates, coming to represent something less favorable than it originally did. An example of this process is the word silly which in older times meant naïve.

2)    Amelioration is the process by which a word's meaning improves or becomes elevated, coming to represent something more favorable than it originally referred to. An example of this process is the word silly which in older times meant naïve.

3)    Generalization is the use of a word in a broader realm of meaning than it originally possessed, often referring to all items in a class, rather than one specific item. For instance, place derives from Latin platea, "broad street", but its meaning grew broader than the street, to include "a particular city", "a business office", "an area dedicated to a specific purpose" before broadening even wider to mean "area". It’s important to point out that Generalization is a natural process, especially in situations of "language on a shoestring", where the speaker has a limited vocabulary at her disposal, either because she is young and just acquiring language or because she is not fluent in a second language.

4)    Specialiazation The opposite of generalization, specialization is the narrowing of a word to refer to what previously would have been but one example of what it referred to. For instance, the word meat originally referred to "any type of food", but came to mean "the flesh of animals as opposed to the flesh of fish". The original sense of meat survives in terms like mincemeat, "chopped apples and spices used as a pie filling"; sweetmeat, "candy"; and nutmeat, "the edible portion of a nut". Other examples of specialization, from the development of English are: starve, which meant die; forest, which meant countryside and deer, which meant animal.

For more examples, check the post “vocabulary meaning curiosities” on this blog!

English vocabulary change curiosities!

Check here how the meaning of English words changed over time!

Did you know that in English:

* the word "with" meant "against". This meaning is still preserved in phrases such as "to fight with".

* gay, originally meant "merry", but because some people are a little too merry came to mean "wanton", and because some people are a little too wanton came to mean "homosexual", which is the sense almost exclusively used now.

* the word silly meant in Old English times "blessed". But how did a word meaning "blessed" come to mean "silly"? Well, since people who are blessed are often innocent and guileless, the word gradually came to mean "innocent". And some of those who are innocent might be innocent because they haven't the brains to be anything else. And some of those who are innocent might be innocent because they knowingly reject opportunities for temptation. In either case, since the more worldly-wise would take advantage of their opportunities, the innocents must therefore be foolish, which of course is the current primary meaning of the word silly.

* The word gaudy was derived from the Latin word gaudium, "joy", which was applied to praying (as a type of rejoicing). Because the most common prayers in Middle English times were the prayers of the rosary, Middle English gaude came to be associated with the rosary and came to mean "an ornamental rosary bead". Unfortunately, not all who prayed with the rosary were genuinely pious; many were like the Pharisees of old and just wanted to be seen praying -- religion for them was decorative (ornamental) rather than functional. As a result, modern English gaudy gradually acquired its current meaning of tasteless or ostentatious ornamentation.

* priest is descended from the Greek word presbuteros, "older man, elder", a comparative form of the word presbus, "old man". Because churches of most religions are headed by elders and not youth, and because age is often equated with wisdom, the Greek word gradually acquired the meaning of "church leader, priest".

The following words show other examples:

* enthusiasm meant "abuse"

* queen meant "woman"

* vulgar meant "popular"

* crafty meant "strong"

* harlot meant "a boy"

On the next post, I will be talking about the processes that influence these changes. Don't miss it! It will be available on the blog on Nov 10.

source: thefreedictionary.com

Tailoring your class to celebrate Thanksgiving day!

Learning language is important, but so is learning about the culture from which it comes. It might be interesting, even, to plan a class based around various holidays common in English speaking countries and discuss their origins. Classes focusing on the history, or on different types of celebrations, are often a great way of expanding the students’ knowledge of another culture. Therefore, let's not miss this opportunity and get the most of the upcoming celebration: THANKSGIVING DAY!

 A quiz can be a great way to get your class to compete, hence getting and keeping their attention. The more heated the quiz becomes, and the more involved the students are, the more frequently they will slip into English. Of course, beforehand it might be a good idea to give them a brief overview of what Thanksgiving is. Below you will find a list of quiz activities and a text about the history and origin of Thanksgiving day:

http://funschool.kaboose.com/fun-blaster/thanksgiving/quiz/index.html

http://homeschooling.about.com/library/quiz/blquizholthanks.htm

http://www.theholidayspot.com/thanksgiving/quiz.htm

http://home.aristotle.net/Thanksgiving/trivia.asp

http://thanksgiving.spike-jamie.com/quiz.html

A brief overview of the history and origin of Thanksgiving day

Almost every culture in the world has held celebrations of thanks for a plentiful harvest. The American Thanksgiving holiday began as a feast of thanksgiving in the early days of the American colonies almost four hundred years ago.

In 1620, a boat filled with more than one hundred people sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to settle in the New World. This religious group had begun to question the beliefs of the Church of England and they wanted to separate from it. The Pilgrims settled in what is now the state of Massachusetts. Their first winter in the New World was difficult. They had arrived too late to grow many crops, and without fresh food, half the colony died from disease. The following spring the Iroquois Indians taught them how to grow corn (maize), a new food for the colonists. They showed them other crops to grow in the unfamiliar soil and how to hunt and fish.

In the autumn of 1621, bountiful crops of corn, barley, beans and pumpkins were harvested. The colonists had much to be thankful for, so a feast was planned. They invited the local Indian chief and 90 Indians. The Indians brought deer to roast with the turkeys and other wild game offered by the colonists. The colonists had learned how to cook cranberries and different kinds of corn and squash dishes from the Indians. To this first Thanksgiving, the Indians had even brought popcorn.

In following years, many of the original colonists celebrated the autumn harvest with a feast of thanks. After the United States became an independent country, Congress recommended one yearly day ofthanksgiving for the whole nation to celebrate. George Washington suggested the date November 26 as Thanksgiving Day. Then in 1863, at the end of a long and bloody civil war, Abraham Lincoln asked all Americans to set aside the last Thursday in November as a day of thanksgiving.

source: http://www.homeschooling.com/

Golden rule for effective classroom management.

According to Augusto Cury in his book Pais brilhantes, professores fascinantes, more than 90% of the times teachers reprimand disruptive behavior in the classroom, they are, as a matter of fact, not educating but invading their students’ privacy. Why they do so? Because they aim at solving the situation rationally while they should be first interested in finding out which feelings or emotions are triggering that specific disruptive behavior. The attention must be drawn to the student and not to the behavior, so that the student can feel that we worry about them and as result, listen to our advice. If this connection is not stablished and the student feels that the teacher is only concerned about his attitude, he will not listen to what the teacher is advising and will keep on having the same behavior. We should always remember that education is best taught by role modeling and to serve as role models for our students we must be admired by them in some way. Giving long speeches about  the desired behaviors for our classrooms will be pointless if we are not emotionally connected  to them. It is easy to see why emotion is so crucial to making good decisions and thinking clearly. Emotions can disrupt thinking and learning. When we are happy we have a "clear mind" but when we are upset we can't "think straight". Positive emotions such as joy, contentment, acceptance, trust and satisfaction can enhance education. Conversely, prolonged emotional distress can cripple our ability to understand things. We all know how hard it is to learn or remember something when we are anxious, angry or depressed. So, next time you think of reprimanding a student, think carefully about the way you do it and remember that a nice away to approach this student is speaking to him privately and asking if everything is ok and what you could do to help. Acting this way you show that you are confronting the behavior and not the student and for sure you will have won the first round!!

Expression of the Week Overview!

Can you identify in the picture above the 10 expressions posted on this blog so far? If yes, here is a chance to revisit them and, if not, you have now the oportunity to enhance your vocabulary.

#1 fat hangover : The horrible feeling after indulging on too much food

#2 eyepopper: something or someone that catches your attention.

#3 clique: a group of people which is very reluctant to accept new members (panelinha).

#4 Don't cramp my style: don't expose someone into an embarrassing situation (não queimar o filme)

#5 the last straw: The last of a series of annoyances or disappointments that leads one to a final loss of patience, temper, trust, or hope. (a última gota d'água)

#6 back to square one: if you are back to square one, you have to start working on a plan from the beginning because your previous attempt failed and the progress you made is now wasted (de volta a estaca zero)

#7 born with a silver spoon in your mouth: If you are born with a silver spoon in your mouth, you are born into a rich family. (nascido em berço de ouro)

#8 good-for-nothing: someone who doesn't take any responsability and is unable to live up to anyone's expectations. (zero a esquerda)

#9 between a rock and a hard place: In difficulty, faced with a choice between two unsatisfactory options. (entre a cruz e a espada)

#10 hit below the belt: act in a cruel and unfair manner (golpe baixo)

For more information on these expressions, go to Vocabulary Hints section on this blog!