Sunday, August 21, 2011

Why I’m Not Buying Colored Pencils Tonight

School starts tomorrow.

School starts tomorrow at the public schools here in Texas, and I am not buying Office Depot pocket folders or Staples' eraser packs for a penny apiece today. I'm not even driving from one Target to another so I can pay a nickel per spiral and buy 30 or 40 in a day. (Yes, I do that.)

School starts tomorrow and I didn't spend my weekend setting up a classroom or an office.

For the first time since 1988, school starts tomorrow and I won't be there.

Instead, I have an afternoon appointment at the Texas Workforce Commission's orientation for the unemployed.

Irony of Ironies.

I am not alone though. According to the Texas Tribune,
The Associated Press reported that up to 100,000 of the state's 330,000 teachers might lose their positions. Officials at the Texas State Teachers Association estimate that about 12,000 teachers have lost their jobs so far, and they warn more teachers could be laid off in the second year of budget cuts.

Back in 1988, I accepted a Title VII fellowship from the federal government that paid for my teacher certification program in exchange for an agreement that I would teach ESL or bilingual education in a "high needs area" for three years. The government got its money's worth from me as I extended those three years into 21 years and never left. Until now.

Some years I spent more of my time tutoring small groups, testing, mentoring new teachers, evaluating high school transcripts from 45 countries, acting as a counselor and administering a newcomer program, but mostly I've been in the classroom. Since arriving in Texas in 1998, I've become something of a specialist in teaching SIFE: Students with Interrupted Formal Education, kids with a five year (or more) gap in their education. That is to say, I have become very good at working with war refugees and students so poor that their families couldn't pay for their textbooks or uniforms beyond third grade. I've developed curriculum to help make up for four or five years of middle grades math in a year or two, while integrating English, life skills and US culture. In the past few years, I added English-keyboarding and computer skills to the mix.

But this year, the State of Texas decided that education is not important enough to fund, and my services are no longer required by my district.

What does this mean for the state and for the students?

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Thursday Homework

1) Finish the powerpoint presentation, practice it, and mail it to Betsy and Randi.

2) Answer each of these questions in a complete sentence.

Vacation starts Friday afternoon.


  • What are your plans for the weekend?
        I will ….
        I plan to ….
        I’d like to ….
        I might ….

  • Where will you be next week? I’ll be in __
  • Where will you study next semester? I will study at __

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Tuesday Night Homework

1) Find some images (pictures) and youtube videos that represent your country well.  You may want to look on tourism sites, and search for them by typing the English name of the website.
2) Please practice the tools in google documents, and see if you understand how to make a google presentation. Read this.

If you have powerpoint on your computer, you may work with that instead.



3)  Please bring a laptop to class tomorrow if you have one and if it's convenient.  If not, we can work in pairs.  You may want to bring a thumb drive, or else you can email your finished presentation to me and Randi.

Our Sample Presentation

Monday, August 8, 2011

Google Presentations

Grammar Homework for Monday 8/8

Today's sentences and questions from class are here.

Tonight you are completing the first page of the workshop on negative sentences & questions in the past tense. Here's another website you may want to use for practice. There are other grammar exercises here.

More here:

IRREGULAR PAST TENSE FORMS (MIXED)

Sunday, August 7, 2011

After the Trip -- Lots of Writing Monday




We took a field trip on Friday and have a lot to do to catch up with our grammar lessons first. But before that, let's talk and write about where we went, what we saw and did, what surprised us, what amazed us, and of course the maddening heat.

After we process through all that within ourselves and within our group, it's time to write a thank you note or two. The first one is required, and that's the one for Richard, our tour guide from Whole Foods


. Listen here for some ideas on how we might do that.





Let's learn the form and format for thank you notes in general, and narrow it down to what elements we want for our class thank-you note.

I will also be thanking Tali, who woke up very early for a vacationing teenager, Pushed my chair around in 100 degree heat, was helpful in every way I asked, and was a pleasant traveling companion for all of us. Perhaps, you can each write a sentence or two to tag onto a bigger thank-you-card from me.

As you know, I am Ms. Electronic Gadget for nearly all of my communication, but for this task I use pretty stationery and nice pens.


Wednesday, August 3, 2011

One more video about the Indonesian Smoking Baby

Read the story here.


2. CHAT: In pairs / groups, decide which of these topics or words from the article are most interesting and which are most boring.
images / toddlers / smoking / addicted / nicotine / nasty habits / throwing tantrums / worrying trends / statistics / smokers / tobacco companies / sponsors / challenges
Have a chat about the topics you liked. Change topics and partners frequently.
3. ADDICTIONS: Do you have any? Complete this table. Show your partner what you wrote. Change partners and share what you heard.
Addicted to…
Yes / A little / No
Wanna stop?
How to stop?
nicotine
television / gaming
alcohol
chocolate
shopping
the Internet
shopping
love

Field Trip Info for Friday

The trip is FRIDAY!
PLEASE Come to school on time, bring money, and wear sunscreen and a hat or a cap. You may want to bring a water bottle.

1) 8:35, we will walk from school to the bus stop with Betsy and Tali. We will ride 338 Bus Southbound
8:54am - 8:58am (4 mins, 4 stops)
2) 9:00-9:25 Book People - a book store
We will look at books about Texas, movie books, movies, recipe books
You will complete the activity handout.

3) 9:30 Whole Foods - an expensive, healthy grocery store
We will meet Randi at 9:30 at the service desk in the produce section. This is near where we pay for vegetables, fruit, etc.
We will have a tour from 9:30-10 and then complete the handout until 10:30.



4)  At approximately 10:30 (maybe 10:45), we will go to Waterloo Records and look at movies and CD's.

Quiz Yourself


Quiz yourself here on verb tenses. When you're done, print the screen, or copy the results and email them to me.

A fun word find on the irregular past tense verbs.

Test yourself and a friend on the irregular past tense.

Another very useful website.

Past Tenses : past simple, continuous, present perfect etc.



Thanks!

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Irregular Verbs for Wednesday and Thursday

Activity 1:  What do they mean?


Activity 2: When do we use each in the past tense?


Activity 3: PAIRS  Testing each other for meaning, pronunciation, and spelling (flash cards)


Activity 4:   Classification:  THINK, PAIR, SHARE

  • What are five you know how to do? (answer in present)
  • What are five you did this week? (answer in past)
  • What are five an animal can do? (answer in present)
  • What are five you did as a child? (answer in past) 



Activity 5:  PAIRS  Testing each other by offering definitions first.


Activity 6: Negatives and Questions, pages 46-47.



Verb
Past Tense

become
became
break
broke
drive
drove
fall
fell
fight
fought
fly
flew
hide
hid
hit
hit
lose
lost
put
put
speak
spoke
stand
stood
teach
taught
think
thought
win
won
eat
ate
come
came
do
did
drink
drank
give
gave
get
got
make
made
meet
met
run
ran
read
read
see
saw
swim
swam
take
took
go
went
write
wrote