ESL Teachers' Blog of Substance

Google Drawing Contest for K-12 Students

What if?  That is the name of this year's Google contest for students in K-12.  Doodle 4 Google is a competition where students reinvent Google's homepage logo.  The national winner will have his or her drawing displayed on the Google homepage on May 22, 2008.  Viewers can vote for their favorite drawings.  I just voted, and it was a lot of fun.  My favorite drawing is by Whitley Sullivan of Florida:

Wisdom At Your Fingertips

What if... What if wisdom and power were at your fingertips. You just might have the answer for everything - Google

Name: Whitley Sullivan

School: Boca Raton Community High School

State: Florida

Free ESL Bookmarks

ESL bookmarks are great rewards for good attendance or for winning a classroom game.  I just posted a set of bookmarks that can be downloaded for free.  These bookmarks are titled "20 Things to Say to Kids" and can be used for classroom speaking exercises.  Phrases include:  I love you!  I'm proud of you.  You did a good job. I like your new friend.  School is important.  Think for yourself!

Grammar Guy - Azar Level Skills - Wow!

Grammar Guy, a.k.a. Richard Firsten, sent me an email and introduced himself and his blog.  I didn't think much of it until I went to the site and read his most recent blog entry.   I was immediately blown away!  Richard is a true Betty Azar level grammar expert.  His blog is a candy treat for ESL teachers.  Richard tackles the tough grammar points and the fine nuances of English, and he writes in a fun, entertaining way.   If you're as in awe of Azar as I am, you'll love Grammar Guy's blog.   Unlike most of us ESL teachers who just happened to fall into our field, Richard must have set out from birth to learn our language inside and out.   I'm going to be spending a lot of time at azargrammar.com so I can get up to speed.  I invite all ESL teachers to read Grammar Guy's blog and visit the other features at the Azar Grammar website like Grammar Speaks and Teachers Talk.

Ken Beare's ESL Poll

Kenneth Beare, our favorite ESL Guide, over at esl.about.com posted an interesting poll about whether English learning sites should be bilingual or English only.  I found Ken's poll informative since I've been thinking about making this civics website available in several languages.   After reading Ken's poll results, I'm not sure if I'll follow through with my plan.  The cost for a hand interpretation for my front page is about $300 and each inside page would cost about $25.  Keep in mind that this would be for just one language.  Here are the results of from the About poll, so far:

Everything in English only 60%



Basics in English and other languages/Advanced English 21%



Everything in English and other languages 17%

Total Votes:  641

P.S. - I met Ken over on Twitter, and he's a great guy.  If you have a Twitter account, you might want to give him a tweet and introduce yourself.  He's been an  ESL About Guide since 1997, which is quite an accomplishment.  I also recommend signing up for his newsletter.  That's how I learned about this great poll. 

State Crosswords for ESL and K-12 Students

I've been slacking off on creating the state crossword puzzles, but I've got about 1/2 of them finished-23 out of 50.  Take a look and let me know if you find any mistakes.  As a one women show with no budget, I've got to rely on my 52 year old eyes and brain to catch all the mistakes.  If you're my age, you know what that means.  I'm trying to motivate myself to create one state crossword per day, but I stick to that about as well as I stick to my diet.  The puzzles include general facts about a state's symbols like the color of their flag, the state bird, animal, and longest river, etc.