QR Code Scramble: Using Smartphones for Good

Left to Right: Ali, Khalid and Mazi unscrambling a text, 21st century style

Everyday we have to tell our students to put their phones away. ARG! After all they distract them from learning!

Despite our best pleas and threats, our good-cop and bad-cop discussions, we can't win this struggle.

Technology is obviously omnipresent, and, in fact, it is so embedded in students' lives that they think about, learn about and understand their word through those pesky little devices that can drive us insane.

So why NOT use them instead of forbid them? Furthermore, while we obviously have to make sure they don't abuse the power they have in their palms, there are ways to incorporate them into our instruction while engaging our students. ...

Links and Resources for Increasing English Language Proficiency

Speaking/Pronunciation

Manythings.org provides pronunciation of commonly mispronounced words. Students work in pairs and quiz each other on their proficiency.

http://www.manythings.org/pp/

This Web site is a guide to help students pronounce English vowels and consonants. This site provides audio clips, video clips and descriptions of how to make proper English sounds.

http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/frameset.html

Merriam Webster provides this helpful resource that provides explanations and handy quizzes to help students with pronunciation and vowel and word stresses.

http://www.learners-dictionary.com/pronex/pronex.htm

More Resources after the jump!

Word Doc version
Research Tips sheet

Reading Log 1

For your first reading log you will need to find an article that is related to the topic you chose for your Cause and Effect essay. Below the jump are the prompts you will need to fill out. ...

Also, from this reading you will want to chose FIVE vocabulary words for your word study.

 Please post your word study and reading log in on a blog post by Friday, June 29.

Word Study Guidelines for Blog Posts

Similar to Vocabulary Cards, we will be making blog posts where we learn new words related to our study topics. After the jump is an example of how this looks and a template you may use to fill yours out. 

Word Doc version

Welcome Summer 4.2 Reading/Composition!

I am very pleased to have you in class. Please let me know how I can help you achieve your goals in this class. ;-)

Multimedial Portfolios for 4.3 Reading-Composition

Here are links to their portfolio projects. In many ways this was a pilot run since we've never done exactly this before, so thanks to them for their hard work and commitment to making this a success.

Student Portfolios: 
Jingjin's
Hanseul's
Jiongming's
Jing's
Xingze's
Qianran's
Xiaohan's
Abuagila's
Hadeal's
Yushen's
Aziz's
Aziza's

Class Pics -- Spring 2012