Motivate Students to Use Class Blog - Part 2

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6. Reccomend Online Resources for Learning
I highlight lists of Blogs and Websites with useful resources for my students.  There are so many sites out there it makes it difficult to find the ones that are truly useful.  My students ask for recommendations, so this way I can have somewhere to refer them to and it's always there not lost in an email. To get students more involved in this process for my advanced classes I ask them to find and recommend useful websites. I am pleasantly surprised at the great resources they recommend.

7. Post Unit Vocabulary
Posting the vocabulary online is another way of getting them to review it.  One good thing of posting it online is that I post the pronunciation and they are able to hear it as many times as they need to. I also embed Quizlet into my posts with the pertinent vocabulary. We play the games in class and my students use them to review for tests on their own. My scores for vocabulary have gone up since I began using this.

8. Post Unit Grammar
Sometimes our book does not give an in depth explanation of how to use the grammar we are studying. Also some students may need more help understanding these concepts.  I sometimes post my grammar lesson straight from my class or find other resources online that give a good explanation and link to it. Some of my students like to get extra grammar exercises, so I provide links for these too. Some of my students don't look at the blog until it gets close to test time. They tell me it's a great resource for them to review for tests.

9. Connect to Book Resources Online
If the publisher has taken the time to create resources for the units in the textbook make it easy for your students to find them and encourage them to use them. Some of the resources are boring, but some are games and are a great way to help students with the material your are studying.

10. Humor 
I post pictures of bad translations I find. I encourage my students to send me same and then we talk about them in class.
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Motivate Students to Use Class Blog Part 1

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To motivate my students to use the class blogg the most important thing I do is to make sure that whatever activity I do on the blog is helping them improve their English. In the end this is their main motivation. This keeps me on my toes to be more efficient with how I use my blog in my classes.  Here are some of the ways that I have been using it.

1. Uploading their Writing
Uploading their writing on the blog has various benefits.  One is that overtime students can see the progress they are making in their writing. It works like a writing portfolio.  The other thing is that students like seeing their work published.  At first I was posting all the writing in one post with the students names on it (omitting the last names), but then I began creating individual posts for each writing and labeling it with the student name and the writing assignment.  This motivated them to turn in their assignments otherwise their page was empty. I choose one or two writing assignments on the blog to go over in class. This puts pressure on them to do their best on their assignment and to implement the feedback I give them.

2. Respond to Reading
I post real news stories on themes we are covering in class and ask students to comment on these.  I also ask students to post their Response to Literature writing.  Each student has been reading a novel (leveled) and have been creating poems, character bios and more and they post these to the blog.

3. Encourage Classmate Feedback
Getting feedback on their writing from their teacher is important for English learning students. However, it is also helpful for them to look at their classmates writing critically and catch some of the mistakes they might be making themselves.  Peer feedback is also important for the writer, as long as you set some guidelines as to what is appropriate feedback.  I recommend that my students find two things to complement the writer and one comment that they can grow on. Advice them not to make comments personal and to keep them constructive.  I assign partners to comment on each other and rotate partners so that they are getting feedback from different people.

4. Get them Thinking
In our textbook we are practicing phrases for giving their opinion, so I'm thinking of posing thought provoking questions and have students comment on these using the phrases we have been practicing in class.

5. Videos and Powerpoints that Illustrate
One of the great advantages of a blog is to be able to post videos.  I recently posted videos that illustrated stormy weather vocabulary like moonsoon, hurricane and tornado.  Since these are not natural occurrences in the country my students live they were not really familiar with these. This was a great way to illustrate it for them. Before I created my blog I had created a PowerPoint to illustrate textile nouns and adjectives I then emailed it to all my students.  Now that I have my blog I can just post it and we can easily refer to it.
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Unexplained Phenomena - Language of Speculation

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What is the difference between:
a fact - something that can be observed or measured and
a theory - a possible explanation that has not been proven

Watch the video and see which are facts and which are theories in these mysteries. What language of speculation are they using.
 Remember speculative words and phrases are often used such as:
may                             might              could
It seems/appears...       It´s possible...
We suspect...               We think/believe




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Common English Adjective Suffixes

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Understanding the meaning of Suffixes can help us understand the meaning of words and expand our vocabulary. Here is a list of Common English adjective suffixes.

Adjective Suffixes
-able, -ible capable of being edible, presentable
-al pertaining to regional
-esque reminiscent of picturesque
-ful notable for fanciful
-ic, -ical pertaining to musical, mythic
-ious, -ous characterized by nutritious, portentous
-ish having the quality of fiendish
-ive having the nature of creative
-less without endless
-y characterized by sleazy
Source: http://grammar.about.com/od/words/a/comsuffixes.htm



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