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Where to Find Listening Activities For Middle School
Finding listening activities for middle school can be as easy as getting online and doing a search on a website such as Google.com or Bing.com. There are many different websites designed to help teachers with their various classroom activities, ranging from math and science to listening. Many bookstores also carry books about fun and educational things that teachers can do in their classrooms. There might be a teacher resource store near where you live as well if you cannot find any listening activities online that you would like to use in your classroom. Some websites that might have listening activities for middle school kids are as follows:
- Teacher's Corner.net
- Learning Through Listening.org
- 123 Listening.com
- Ok Career Tech.org
- Teaching Ideas.co.uk
- Local School Directory.com
There are also instructive videos for listening activities on websites such as YouTube.com that can help to give you ideas or even improve your own listening skills. Sites like Amazon.com may also carry books or DVDs that can help you plan classroom activities based on improving listening skills. It is important to have good listening skills in high school and middle school because if a student misses what a teacher says, he or she may get a lower grade on a test. Listening is an important skill to have throughout the rest of the student's life as well.
Ideas for Classroom Activities
When planning to talk about your middle school class about listening, having a fun and engaging activity will help to keep the attention of the students on you, rather than whatever it is that they might distract themselves with. Making a game into a listening activity will also keep kids entertained, especially if they know it is a competition game. Rewarding the game's winners with candy or small prizes can help to motivate the students. Here are some game ideas to get students to listen or to stay quiet:
- Give oral instructions throughout the class, such as asking the students to draw an animal in a certain corner of a sheet of paper, then rewarding the student with the most correct paper at the end of the class.
- Playing "the quiet game" in which the teacher challenges the students to see how long they can all go without making any noise, the winner is the last child to speak or make noise.
- Have students stand in a line and whisper a phrase in the ear of the student in from of them, if the phrase is correct by the time it reaches the end of the line, then the game was successful
The Tenses
It's all about time. Things can happen now, in the future or in the past.
The tenses simply show the time of an action or state of being as shown by a verb.
The verb ending is changed (conjugated) to show what time it is referring to.
Time can be split into three periods The Present (what you are doing), The Past (what you did) and The Future (what you are going to do, or hope / plan to do ).
The tenses we use to show what time we are talking about are split into the Simple, Continuous and Perfect tenses.
In English we use two tenses to talk about the present and six tenses to talk about the past. There are several ways to talk about the future some of which use the present tenses, these are:
Simple Tenses
The simple tenses are used to show permanent characteristics of people and events or what happens regularly, habitually or in a single completed action.
Continuous Tenses
The continuous tenses are used when talking about a particular point in time.
Perfect Tenses
Sometimes you need to give just a little bit more information about an action or state...and that is where the perfect tenses come in.
The perfect tenses are used when an action or situation in the present is linked to a moment in the past. It is often used to show things that have happened up to now but aren't finished yet or to emphasize that something happened but is not true anymore. When they end determines which of them you use.
Perfect tenses are never used when we say when something happened i.e. yesterday, last year etc. but can be used when discussing the duration of something i.e. often, for, always, since etc..
The Future Tenses
Discussing the future in English can seem complicated.The present simple, present continuous, present perfect simple and the present perfect continuous can all be used and often it is possible to use more than one structure, but have the same meaning.
- See more at: http://www.learnenglish.de/grammar/tensetext.html#sthash.SmRi2pLs.dpuf
Teaching Reading
Strategies for Developing Reading Skills
Using Reading Strategies
Language instructors are often frustrated by the fact that students do not automatically transfer the strategies they use when reading in their native language to reading in a language they are learning. Instead, they seem to think reading means starting at the beginning and going word by word, stopping to look up every unknown vocabulary item, until they reach the end. When they do this, students are relying exclusively on their linguistic knowledge, a bottom-up strategy. One of the most important functions of the language instructor, then, is to help students move past this idea and use top-down strategies as they do in their native language.
Effective language instructors show students how they can adjust their reading behavior to deal with a variety of situations, types of input, and reading purposes. They help students develop a set of reading strategies and match appropriate strategies to each reading situation.
Strategies that can help students read more quickly and effectively include
- Previewing: reviewing titles, section headings, and photo captions to get a sense of the structure and content of a reading selection
- Predicting: using knowledge of the subject matter to make predictions about content and vocabulary and check comprehension; using knowledge of the text type and purpose to make predictions about discourse structure; using knowledge about the author to make predictions about writing style, vocabulary, and content
- Skimming and scanning: using a quick survey of the text to get the main idea, identify text structure, confirm or question predictions
- Guessing from context: using prior knowledge of the subject and the ideas in the text as clues to the meanings of unknown words, instead of stopping to look them up
- Paraphrasing: stopping at the end of a section to check comprehension by restating the information and ideas in the text
Instructors can help students learn when and how to use reading strategies in several ways.
- By modeling the strategies aloud, talking through the processes of previewing, predicting, skimming and scanning, and paraphrasing. This shows students how the strategies work and how much they can know about a text before they begin to read word by word.
- By allowing time in class for group and individual previewing and predicting activities as preparation for in-class or out-of-class reading. Allocating class time to these activities indicates their importance and value.
- By using cloze (fill in the blank) exercises to review vocabulary items. This helps students learn to guess meaning from context.
- By encouraging students to talk about what strategies they think will help them approach a reading assignment, and then talking after reading about what strategies they actually used. This helps students develop flexibility in their choice of strategies.
When language learners use reading strategies, they find that they can control the reading experience, and they gain confidence in their ability to read the language.
Reading to Learn
Reading is an essential part of language instruction at every level because it supports learning in multiple ways.
- Reading to learn the language: Reading material is language input. By giving students a variety of materials to read, instructors provide multiple opportunities for students to absorb vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, and discourse structure as they occur in authentic contexts. Students thus gain a more complete picture of the ways in which the elements of the language work together to convey meaning.
- Reading for content information: Students' purpose for reading in their native language is often to obtain information about a subject they are studying, and this purpose can be useful in the language learning classroom as well. Reading for content information in the language classroom gives students both authentic reading material and an authentic purpose for reading.
- Reading for cultural knowledge and awareness: Reading everyday materials that are designed for native speakers can give students insight into the lifestyles and worldviews of the people whose language they are studying. When students have access to newspapers, magazines, and Web sites, they are exposed to culture in all its variety, and monolithic cultural stereotypes begin to break down.
When reading to learn, students need to follow four basic steps:
- Figure out the purpose for reading. Activate background knowledge of the topic in order to predict or anticipate content and identify appropriate reading strategies.
- Attend to the parts of the text that are relevant to the identified purpose and ignore the rest. This selectivity enables students to focus on specific items in the input and reduces the amount of information they have to hold in short-term memory.
- Select strategies that are appropriate to the reading task and use them flexibly and interactively. Students' comprehension improves and their confidence increases when they use top-down and bottom-up skills simultaneously to construct meaning.
- Check comprehension while reading and when the reading task is completed. Monitoring comprehension helps students detect inconsistencies and comprehension failures, helping them learn to use alternate strategies.
What is academic writing?
Writing is a skill that is required in many contexts throughout life. However, academic writing does many of the things that personal writing does not: it has its own set of rules and practices.
- These rules and practices may be organised around a formal order or structure in which to present ideas, in addition to ensuring that ideas are supported by author citations in the literature.
- In contrast to personal writing contexts, academic writing is different because it deals with the underlying theories and causes governing processes and practices in everyday life, as well as exploring alternative explanations for these events.
- Academic writing follows a particular ‘tone’ and adheres to traditional conventions of punctuation, grammar, and spelling.
Structure
Some kind of structure is required, such as a beginning, middle, and end. This simple structure is typical of an essay format, as well as other assignment writing tasks, which may not have a clearly articulated structure.
Academic writing structure [hide]
Typical university assignments follow a formal structure, which is often more formal than in personal writing.
Essays
- In the case of an essay, the introductory paragraph informs the reader about the nature of the topic, which is discussed and evaluated in the middle of the essay, also referred to as the body.
- The introduction may also summarise very succinctly, in a sentence or two, your position on the issue, which is then elaborated on at length in the series of paragraphs that make up the essay's body.
- The final paragraph constitutes a conclusion in which you may summarise the overall points made.
- The concluding paragraph is also a good point at which to move the essay forward to touch on implications or future advancements surrounding the issues addressed.
Reports
- Another type of structure, common in university assignments is that of a report, often organised around the identification of problems or difficulties and corresponding solutions.
- Unlike most essays, a report is divided according to clearly labeled sections, such as “Introduction”, “Discussion”, “Conclusions”, and “Recommendations”.
- Further, unlike an essay, reports allow for bulleted points with respect to the conclusions and recommendations sections.
Referencing
A significant difference between academic writing and other writing genres is based on the citation and referencing of published authors.
Referencing and citation [hide]
- If you make judgments about something in academic writing, there is an expectation that you will support your opinion by linking it to what a published author has previously written about the issue.
- Citing the work of other authors is central to academic writing because it shows you have read the literature, understood the ideas, and have integrated these issues and varying perspectives into the assignment task.
- The importance placed on referring to other authors in your work can be reflected in the elaborate referencing conventions that have been created within different disciplines, such as APA (American Psychological Association) referencing, which is used in psychology, education, some social sciences, as well as for business.
Abstract thought
Traditionally, academic topics have focused on abstract things, like ideas and concepts, which cannot, necessarily, be given in a concrete or physical form.
Hence, while writing meeting minutes or covering letters of CVs draw on physical, practical, and functional tasks, academic writing is often more likely to focus on abstract processes and relationships. Yet, despite the abstract, non-material structure of some academic topics, you may be able to borrow concrete and physically oriented words to explain these abstract ideas and the relationships between them.
Abstract thought [hide]
- Typically, academic writing requires you to clearly describe abstract forms and their component parts, their links to other abstract forms, as well as where they are positioned in relation to a general, overall system.
- Even if you are dealing with a practically oriented topic like economics, computer science, rehabilitation, nursing, or teaching, the academic practice of learning about these things will likely require you to delve into theories, philosophies, concepts, and other abstract ideas that underlie the practical nature of the activities concerned.
- Therefore, the very nature of academic writing is also different from many practically-oriented or socially-oriented writing tasks. This is because academic writing tasks require you to look beneath the surface for underlying principles, theories, and concepts that can offer mainstream as well as alternative explanations for common practices, processes, and procedures.
Academic tone
Like all varieties of writing, academic writing has its own tone, which dictates the choice of words and phrasing.
Academic tone [hide]
Academic writing typically aims to be:
- objective (e.g. using inclusive language)
- concise
- formal (e.g. avoiding slang, exclamation marks, contractions)
The tone of academic writing can also vary significantly depending on the subject-area and the academic discipline you are writing for.
The readings, textbook, and study guide of your course show you what tone is expected in the paper, so study their style carefully.
The audience
It is important to remember who you are writing for. Being conscious of academic tone suggests that you are aware of your audience and respect the formality normally associated with academic writing.
When writing academically, you must target a more general audience than just your lecturer and/or marker. You should assume that your readers will be intelligent thinking people, but they may not be specifically informed of your topic. Do not presume that your reader knows all the terms and concepts associated with your work.
Punctuation and grammar
In academic writing you should always follow rules of punctuation and grammar, especially as the end-user or consumer of your writing, unlike a friend, is likely to be very different from you and will not always know to what you are referring. Hence, it is vital that you are clear. Punctuation and the conventions of grammar are universally known systems (within English speaking cultures) that maintain clarity and avoid ambiguity in
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