Biopoems: The Movie

Here's the video of students reading their biopoems! I think they did an awesome job. Listen for how well they pronounce "snakes" :-)

Biopoems — Beginning ESL

A biopoem, or technically speaking, an autobiopoem, is a poem about oneself. Click here for a PDF of all the poems from the class.

This is my classmate...

It's a new semester and a new class at SWK. Making introductions helps new and returning students get to know each other while they become more confident speakers of English.

New on the blog

Searching for info — Since I started this blog a litle more than a year ago (October 2007), it has grown to a searchable size. If you're looking for a particular post, you can always enter a key word or phrase in the Search box at the top of this page, and then click SEARCH BLOG. Today I added a Labels section on the right-hand side of the blog. This is an index to the posts by keyword. For example, if you want to see all the posts that have something about holidays, scroll down to the labels section to holidays and click.

The 12 Days of Christmas — 2008

This song is by now a traditional end-of-semester performance (this being the third class that's done it, and in my family anything that gets done at least twice becomes a tradition). If you love it, you can also see the performances from 2006 and 2007. Challenge question for those who love math: How many gifts did True Love give?

The Gift of the Magi 2008

Our final project for the fall 2008 semester was a reading of an adaptation of O'Henry's "The Gift of the Magi." In the slideshow below, two groups of students spend time rehearsing before the camera starts rolling.

The result is a "walk-through" reading of the play.

Green Eggs and Ham 2008

When I was as the TexTESOL state conference earlier this month, I saw a demonstration by John Schmidt (Texas Intensive English Program) that I knew I had to try with my class. He and a volunteer did an interpretive reading of "Green Eggs and Ham" by Dr. Seuss — good for practicing American English vowel sounds. It's a long poem, so I divided it into six parts and had a different pair of students read each part. Here's how it came out with my beginning ESL class...