Global Teacher Connect

Word Families have proven to be a universal tool for teaching English Language Learners.  I have used them to teach students from ages 4 – 15. The preparation  a training plan for each student is handled by the outline writing service, whose employees have significant experience in editing and publishing the necessary literary and methodological materials. In addition, multimedia tools are used in the course of classes. The pictures that I have for each word in the word family help them to associate the meaning of the word with the phonics clues.  This weekend my son helped me to make a video for you guys. Here’s the video:

You can grab the ACK Family Making Words Center for FREE at my Teachers Pay Teacher Store.  The other 40 Word Family Making Words Centers are $0.99 each, or you can get all 41 for just $12.00.

The school year is beginning in many places, and as schools begin around the world, the authors of Global Teacher Connect are gearing up with two different projects to share our schools with the world.

Project #1 is our Collaborative Project “This is What MY School’s Like”, which allows you to get your kids thinking about what makes their school the same and different as other schools.  This project will be open until the end of September, so there is plenty of time for classes just starting up to use this global, collaborative project to start out the new school year.

Project #2 is more teacher based.  In this project, teachers will take pictures of their classroom and/or their school and post them on their blog.  The blog may be your class’ blog or your teacher blog, or any other blog your maintain.  Please post a link to the this post in your blog post, and then add your link to the linky party below with your city, state, and/or country in the title so that everyone can see what a school in your area looks like.

In addition, all of the authors from Global Teacher Connect will be sharing their posts about their classrooms right here on Global Teacher Connect on their first day of school – so be on the look out for a peek into classrooms from Morocco to China to Canada to South Africa coming soon!

****  If you are a homeschooling parent and you have a classroom set up at your house – you are free to participate in both projects, we’d be glad to have you involved, and we’d love your children to be able to see what classrooms look like all around the world!  ****

Due to my recent move, I’ve had a bunch of time without internet, so I decided to use the time to get ready for the summer camp program I am teaching in next week.  We will have students with very limited English and we will be using the story of the Tortoise and the Hare to catch their attention and work on reading, writing, and vocabulary.  I put together this cute 20 page packet that we are going to work through a little at a time, which you can grab FREE at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

In addition to reading the Tortoise and the Hare, we are going to look at other “similar” stories from around the world – like the Fox and the Crab (where the crab wins the race by catching a ride on the Fox’s tail).  Does anyone have another “tricky race” type of story they could suggest for me?

Would it be great if we could take our kids to visit all the countries in the world?  There is so much that could be learned this way.  It would be a great way to help kids to understand that all areas are alike and different at the same time. Many kids do not get the opportunity to travel the world, but there are projects out there that can allow you to have your kids travel using the internet - all around the world “virtually”.

 Jo Ebisjum of JoJebi Designs is doing a “neighbourhood walk around the world”.  At her blog, you can find links to  neighborhoods all around the world, including places like Japan, Greece and Australia. At my personal blog – Journey to Morocco. - You can check out my neighborhood here in Casablanca, Morocco

Click on over and check out these great shots!

Ramadan starts next week, and the people here in Morocco are beginning to get prepared.  If you aren’t aware of what Ramadan entails, it is a month on the Arabic (lunar) calendar.  During this month (about 28 days), Muslims are required to fast from sunup to sundown, going without food or drink all day long.  Many people I know use this time to reflect, forgive, and pray. 

This will be my second Ramadan here in Morocco.  I am looking forward to the Iftar treats that are placed on the table during the first meal after fasts are broken and the absolute quiet that occurs when the prayer is called to signal the end of fasting, as everyone heads inside to eat.  I am also using this opportunity to talk with my children more about the meanings behind this and other Muslim holidays.  Here is a center packet I created for my students last year to discuss the three major Muslim holidays – Ramadan, Eid al F’tr and Eid al Adha.  Feel free to download it FREE from my Teacher’s Notebook store.