Cross-Borders e-pal Project !!!

I am looking for an e-pal class for a corresponded Project with my 6 graders. There are 34 pupils ages 11-12 in my class, but we can work in pairs if needed. It is the 3rd year I will be doing that project using our site forum. There is a lesson plan ready for the project and a letter to your school. At the en of the year we wil send a video clip of the school, the neighbourhood and the kids.

If you are interested please send me an e-mail to Roneet or write a comment. If there is more than one teacher interested in my projects there are 3 more classes that can take part as well.

Welcome Back to School

School has started a few days ago and I am busy like a bee!

Waking up at 6:00 am, leaving the house at 7:00, getting to school at 7:45 and at 8:00 the fun begins!!!

Wow!!! Working in 6 different classes, from 3^rd grade to 6^th grade – This is not going to be an easy year!!

The English room is not ready yet! Today I got 8 new laptops (RED ones!!! YAY)…. 2 tables are missing and assignment cards are yet to be laminated. Angels in Bar-Lev poster is not printed yet and I am missing about 10 little boxes for the pupils' names.

My school has a new English Inspectorate, who sent us some files to fill in and requested I send her the lesson plans for the whole year along with the individual lesson plans for the weak students! I haven't even printed out the screening tests…. and they want the results J

Anyway... Most of you already know I am going back to school myself… finally I have decided it's time for M.A degree and I was accepted in the Technology department!! YAY!! So, on October 21^st I am going to start the adventure and it will take (hopefully) 2 years till I get my M.A in Technology in Education…. So exciting!

At the first day of school the kids were welcomed with a rainbow of balloons and 2 huge Miki Mouse Balloons… They really liked that!! We put out a red carpet for them to enter the school on and handed everyone a mouse pad (as a gift for the beginning of the school year).

I would like to wish you teachers good luck and a lot of new ideas for the incoming school year.. Hope we can learn from each other and the more ideas we have the merrier I am J

Angels in Bar-Lev

Bar Lev is the school where I have been teaching for the past 8 years and surely I had many behavior problems to deal with during the years.
I found an idea on Pinterest that I adopted and made some changes into it.
That is the picture I've found:

Source: growingkinders.blogspot.com via Roneet on Pinterest

And my idea is to make it into a 'behavior design' kind of a thing... So I made this big poster

to hang on the wall in my English classroom (I will take a picture when it is printed). I took an empty

children shoe box and made the poster into a sticker (a small one of course) and glued it to the box.

In the box I have the names of all the pupils in class (I teach 6 classes and I haven't figured out how I should do it yet.....Should I have 6 boxes?) and every 2 weeks (or week or month?) I take  a name out of the box. If the kid behaved well during this period of time (week, 2 weeks etc) he gets to have his name hung on the wall of fame which is the Angels in Bar Lev wall in the English Classroom.

This goes along with my Our Stars poster:

Anyway - don't know yet what I will do... But most likely I am going to use the Angels in Bar Lev corner to deal with behavior issues.

What do you think?

Waiting to read your comments!

Classroom Makeover :)

I have been working on changing the appearance of the English room in my school for more than 6 months. I had so many ideas and things to buy.
Finally with all kind of changes here are the results:
This is the 'teachers corner' where pupils can 'send' letters and use the pockets to 'send' them to us.

This is the poster I've created for 'Our Stars Week Award'. Every week or two, we choose a star from each class, take his/her picture and paste it onto their class (in the small square). Then we have a poster with real pictures of our STARS pupils.

Too bad I didn't take a picture of the three cupboards before the makeover. They were really ugly. Kind of gray and old.

We colored them and that is how it turned out to be:

Then I added some letters to decorate them.

Coming up with a library for the English room was so difficult! I didn't have a clue for how difficult it would be!

So, I have started organizing the books (haven't finished yet) and labeling the books and dictioranries took a lot of time. (also I added my football collection with real signatures - the children LOVE them)

The cleaning company didn't show up so I had to clean myself :(

At last the sofas have arrived!!

I am still waiting for the round table to go in the library...

This is the Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary corner.

Each pocket is for a different grade and it holds laminated worksheets for the students to work individually.

View to the Writing corner.

I've also created a fun corner for young learners to play with letters.

I have bought a white board and hung it to the wall. I put those fun sofas around the board for the kids to sit on and also provided them with a lot of letters magnet so they can form words, sentences or names....

More pictures to come when the room is done!

Stay tuned.

a souvenir from my graduated pupils :)

You can see it's the end of the year! LOL

English Vocabulary

While looking to find interesting sites/application on Google Chrome's web store I've found this very useful site, called English Vocabulary where pupils can practice new vocabulary by writing it and listening.

First they need to add the new vocabulary and translation. Once they add a word, the system looks for a picture for you to choose and it also adds a voice to it (it will say the word).

Then they start practicing their new vocabulary. A great tool for dictation or getting ready for a test!

more new characters.... :)

Good Night

Before I go to bed I feel like it is going to take me some time to fall a sleep, so I started counting sheep....

I drew this today... Like it?
Nighty Night

Dr. Suess

Before you speak....

A great poster to hang in your classroom (English Room)

Source: nowserveme.wordpress.com via Alison on Pinterest

Great Idea...

I have found this wonderful picture while surfing Pinterest.
This is great for teaching the letters and sounds and here are some ideas I have:
1) You can ask kids to pick some stones and bring them to class (be carefull!!! Do that with a good class - you don't want them to start throwing the stones at each other) then ask them to write a letter or a word in each stone. (They can collect the stones in a jar or their pencil case, and so every time you teach a new letter they can add a stone untill they collect all 26).
2) With the letters on the stones ask them to make up some words. That can be done as a game. For example if I say a word and the first one to complete the word is the winner.
3) Ask them to order the stones according to the alphabet.
4) In groups, ask them to write sentences.
5) You can also have them write capital and lower case letters on each stone (from both sides of the stone).
I am sure there are many more ideas, so please feel free to leave a comment with your idea!
Oh.... and don't forget to follow me on Pinterest!

 

Source: thewritestart.typepad.com via Roneet on Pinterest

Using Paint in the ESL Classroom

Paint is a very simple, free application that can be found in every computer.

I believe that Paint has a lot of advantages and many activities can be done using it. 

One example is when you teach about body parts and clothes!!! You can give many creative assignments.

I usually give my students to draw themselves and color the clothes and the body parts (eyes, hair, skin etc) and then they write a short paragraph introducing themselves. 

Here is an example:

Children are so creative they will come up with many drawings and things to write about. It is important to include 'art' in the lessons for many reasons especially with the young pupils. 

There are many activities from coloring (if teaching colors/numbers/clothes/animals....) to writing and it all can be done using a simple program like Paint.

I miss you -- Olympic games

For 2 weeks I was glued to the T.V - trying not to miss any game :)
Cheering for my country although we haven't won  a medal....
I really love watching the athletes and of course I'm a bit jealous at them and their perfect bodies....
Well, not all of the athletes... (like the weight lifting ones..)
Anyway I changed the Olympics games sign to this.... What do you think?

My Characters....

Finally I got to sit and draw .... No, I am not good at it! 
I can really say I suck at drawing! I am the worst artist ever! I can't even draw a house, for real!!
Good for me, I have got Illustrator on my computer which is a great help :)
I am thinking of buying a digital ink pad or something... But the Illustrator at least corrects my crooked lines...
anyway  enough talking about that....
I sat and drew... I wanted something for my site and I wanted it to be about going back to school.... So I have the teacher (isn't she cute???)

and then I changed her....

Then I created this mom and daughter ...

This one is for my friend Orly's site

and the last one is empty for you to write whatever you want inside :) 

This is a brand new one... I still don't know if I like it or not :)