Take The Quiz! Parts of Speech, Part I

What Are Nouns?

We've been doing a basic Parts of Speech review to kick off our grammar unit. We started with nouns, which everyone seems to think are easy, but are actually more tricky once you get into the different kinds of nouns! To illustrate our understanding of these noun types, my ESL classes have collaborated on a slideshow with pictures and explanations of various nouns.

What Does A Good Blog Comment Look Like?

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Welcome, everyone! The week before Winter Break, we did some lessons on writing blog comments. Here are the things that we discussed in these lessons, and the ideas and suggestions that you guys all came up with (good job!):

WHY should we comment on other peoples' blog posts?

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 Blogging is an activity that is meant to be more than just a place to put your work from your classes. It should be seen by more people that just you and your teacher. Blogging should be an activity that connects students with the outside world, and gives them an audience so that they realize that their work, words and thoughts are actually meaningful. The more people read a blog, the more the blogger will want to post on it. It is as simple as that!  So read other peoples' blogs, and comment on them so that the bloggers KNOW that you are reading them, and hopefully the same will happen to you. Remember that if you want people to comment on your blog, a good way to do this is to end your blog post with a question for them to respond to.

What should blog readers do when commenting on someone's blog post?

If you are reading someone's blog and want to comment on a post, there are three things that you should always do:

1.) Read the whole post before you comment.
2.) NEVER, EVER write a comment when you are upset, angry, sad, etc. because you might write something that you will be sorry for later.
3.) Talk about specific things from the post.


You keep talking about writing meaningful blog comments. What does a meaningful blog comment look like?

Excellent, excellent question! I talked about this with all of my classes, and this is a summary of all of the answers that I got from you guys:

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A good or meaningful blog comment...

- Talks about the content that is in the post and mentions specific things.
- Is respectful and appropriate.
- Does not go off-topic (keep the focus on THE POST!).
- Gives specific details (example: I agree with you when you said _________ because _______).
- Adds new information about the topic of the post (if possible).
-Has constructive criticism (you don't have to like what the blogger is saying, or agree with it, but you should say this in a positive or helpful way).
- NEVER, EVER contains personal information of any sort (names, addresses, phone numbers, email, etc.)
- NEVER, EVER contains gossip or says bad things about other people.

What should I do if someone writes a rude or inappropriate comment on my blog?

Hopefully this will not happen to you, but in case it does, here are the step that you should take if you get a comment like this on your post:

-DON'T approve it!
- DON'T delete it (you will need it to show to an adult).
-DON'T respond to it or confront the person who wrote it.
- DO show it to an adult.

Important! Remember that if you approve a rude or inappropriate comment and it shows up on your blog, you are just as responsible for it as the person who wrote it.

Welcome Back!

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Welcome back to all of my returning and new students! I hope that you all had restful and relaxing holidays, and that you are ready to jump right in to our new grammar review unit! We will be starting with a review of the parts of speech (if you are not sure what I mean by this, you may want to look it up before class, because I'll be asking!).

Below is a little video I want to share with you that I saw and thought was very funny. If you are a person who is good with technology (also known as a "techie"), then you may relate to the way the tech instructor here is feeling. If you are a person who is not so great with learning new technology, you may not be aware that your teacher/friend/sibling/parent is trying VERY hard to keep their patience when they are trying to teach you how to do new things!

Which of the characters in the video do you think you are? Can you explain why?




Enjoy the video, and welcome to second semester! Let's have a great one!