Articles by January, 2016

Classroom demographics change ever year. Changes in the typical classroom mirror changes in society. The National Center for Education Statistics reported that nearly 10% of all US students actively participate in an English Language Learning (ELL) program.
Whether you are a veteran teacher, or a brand new one, you will need resources to help students who are not proficient in English or are current ELLs. Regardless of your methodology, helping ELLs to acclimatize to regular classroom instruction requires not just skill, but also charisma and creativity. Here are some tips that will help ease this process.
1. Tag and Label - Make your classroom print-rich by labeling every area and as many objects as possible. This will be beneficial not only to ELLs but also to students who have limited recognition of sound and symbol. The more exposed students are to print, the more opportunities they get to store it in their long-term memory.
2. Pictures cues - Use pictures with your vocabulary ...

With the increasing accessibility to Internet among the masses, online education has been embraced by numerous educational institutions, schools and colleges worldwide. If we talk about intervention of electronic learning in a learner's formative years of education, then K12 learning services cater to learning requirements of students at school level.
What makes e-learning a success? Well, online learning explores a dozens of e-learning technologies like electronic books, simulations, pod casting, wikis, blogs etc. How this aspect of employing an array of online technologies into learning enhances its scope? Let's find out what facts and figures have to say regarding existing trends and scope of e-learning.
A study of the existing trend in e-learning
A recent survey in United States revealed that more than 2.35 million students enrolled themselves for various online programs. The survey also concluded that online education is becoming an integral part of many educational institutions. ...

Education is an important tool that is applied in the contemporary world to succeed. The word education means 'to bring up'. Education provides the basic knowledge that makes a human a human. Since the start of human history people have been learning and educating. People in the past struggled very much to get education. Education has progressed from that time. In the present time only educated people can get success in the world. Without education success is impossible.
Education helps an individual to live a respectful life. Educated people are more helpful in the progress of a country. It is playing an important role in the economic and social prosperity. Career wise, education is the foundation of developing individuals by providing knowledge regarding humanity all over the world. Individuals in the society acquire new approaches in life that build opinions on the economical and social life. Education enables the society to interpret the world around them rightly, innovating to ...

The relationship between neuroscience and education is becoming ever closer, with the latest findings from the science starting to influence how teachers and other educators approach their profession. It is sometimes called "neuroeducation" for short.
With neuroscience uncovering more about how the brain works and our preoccupation with how to teach and learn more effectively, it was almost inevitable that the two fields would meet.
But not everyone's happy. In fact in some quarters the application of 'unproven' or 'misunderstood' neuroscience has been getting very bad press.
What's the myth and what's the reality?
Bad neuroscience in education
A study from the UK's Bristol University published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience found that a large proportion of teachers in Europe and China believe commonly-held myths that may be applied in their teaching.
Teachers from the UK, Turkey, Greece, China and the Netherlands were presented with seven myths about the brain and asked whether they ...

For ESL readers, learning to read can be difficult because it is a skill which requires time outside of the classroom to improve upon. Unlike writing, listening, grammar, and vocabulary, reading encompasses all of these skills and makes the reader have to comprehend English as a full language. Below are five key reading strategies to help any ESL reader to gain confidence in reading and improve their reading abilities.
#1 Motivation
The most important strategy towards reading in English is having the right mindset when reading. Being forced to read in class prevents you from gaining the full potential the book may have on you. For most of us, we can remember reading books in school, but how many people can remember what most of those stories were about in detail? Motivation plays a large role in determining how much effort you will put into a book. If you are motivated and willing to make mistakes and learn from the material, you will have an overall better learning experience and ...

English is the global business language of the day. Many schools, colleges and universities are all offering English teaching for students and business professionals. With the growing demand for English, many ESL teachers are also trained to meet the global demand of ESL training needs.
For example, in many Asian and African countries, the English language is being taught as the Second or Third Language. Also, there are many varieties of English given the mother-tongue influences in countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand, India, Brunei, Australia and Canada. As an ESL teacher, you will find that this ESL teaching guide provides you with a quick checklist of tips, helping you to make your ESL classes fun and easy for foreign students.
1) Understand Your ESL Students:
Basically, you will have two types of students - school students and corporate clients. ESL school students are those who do not have English as the mother tongue. They need help with Basic English grammar as ...

As a professor of arts integration, I often use storytelling as a teaching tool and have recognized that as I demonstrate various methods to tell a story, I use at least one of Howard Gardner's eight multiple intelligences.
Gardner defines an intelligence as the capacity to solve a problem or create a product in a naturalistic setting; in other words, according to Gardner, the question is not whether someone is intelligent, the question is how someone is intelligent. To answer this question, Gardner professes that we all possess eight intelligences, although some of us are more dominant in some than in others. From this, I surmised that every time I diversify my storytelling methods, I am essentially giving my students an opportunity to show me new capabilities and strengths.
Below are eight methods I've used to teach storytelling with examples of how each connects to one of Gardner's eight intelligences.
1. Traditional Storytelling with Words Only: Students tell a story based upon ...

Abstract: How to assist in getting English language learners help by building strategies into your lessons, and using these tools to create vocabulary and increase fluency.
Scaffolding Instruction for English Language Learners
As in any good building, if you want to begin properly, you need to build a solid foundation that will support it through the construction process. Similarly, if you want a student to build a foundation of knowledge, you need to construct a base of learning that will see that person through to understanding of the material. In both cases, this is where scaffolding comes into the picture. Whether you are using verbal scaffolding to model how to pronounce a new word, to instructional scaffolding to intentionally use graphic organizers to prepare students for the content of a new chapter, or building strategies into a lesson is critical for ELL/ESL students. One solution to a student not being able to pronounce a new word correctly, even after several attempts, ...

IELTS - International English Language Testing System
IELTS is one of the most popular English language tests. More than two million students take this exam every year. It is one of the pioneers which has been implementing four-skills English language exam for about 25 years ago. It still sets the standard for English language testing today.
International English Language Testing System is owned jointly. The owners are British Council, Cambridge English Language Assessment, IELTS Australia. Tests regularly take place at more than 1000 exam centres and locations in over 140 countries.Taking this test brings you an opportunity to live, study and work around the world. It is accepted by more than 9000 organisations worldwide.
All countries that require English for immigration procedures, accept IELTS only. Government, NGOs, academic and employment institutions recognize it as well. This testing system is made to help students to their English in their new life abroad.
There are Academic ...

The elements involved have to be well-known to better appreciate the scope of this emerging philosophy:
Actors: teachers, students and parents. Each one of them will see things differently, and knowing how to make them buy your new proposition will be the key to your success.
Processes: lesson preparation, outside of classroom time, inside of classroom time, evaluation.
WHAT
It's an alternative to the traditional teacher/lecture centered approach. In a flipped strategy classroom contents are multimedia based and are accessed through some LMS outside of school. Classroom time is used to deepen that home-acquired knowledge using other strategies, as project based learning, collaborative tasks, etc.
For teachers it is a great way to improve lessons' structure. Resources can be mapped from the syllabus and new activities can be implemented for classroom time. For students it can be challenging, after all you are taking them out of their classical school environment. But they are also ...