Happy Thanksgiving to all my students. May you enjoy the feast with lived ones.
0 Comments
Just a reminder that there is no school tomorrow, Tuesday, or any day this week! We have a Thanksgiving break. Rest and enjoy your mornings free. Many students have been coming to school regularly since early August when school started. That's a long time without a break. Come back to school on Monday, December 2. We will have classes for three weeks and then have our winter break. The winter recess lasts for three weeks as well. Sounds good to me: work three weeks then get three weeks off. Today's Assignments We did a lot of work today to prepare for tomorrow's test. We practiced regular comparative adverbs in one exercise, and then both regular and irregular in the second.
Sometimes we use comparative adverbs not to comparative how 2 people do an action, but to compare one person's action to the past or future. For example, someone says, "I have an easy job now. I worked harder in my last job." We're not comparing 2 people. He's comparing how he works now with how he worked before. We did a quick speaking exercise with the following dialogue: A: I work hard! B: You need to work harder. A: I exercise frequently! B: You need to exercise more frequently. Then, students took ideas I put on the board and wrote sentences with their opinions, using comparative adverbs. For example, I wrote, "JLo vs. Shakira dance--good?" Students would write, "JLo dances better than Shakira." Finally, students worked on the reading comprehension exercise for Fashion. Most didn't finish, so you can finish at home or I'll give some time at the beginning of class. We will have our first test tomorrow. Today's Assignment We had a very productive day, so I'm glad so many students were able to attend.
First, we corrected the Snoopy paragraph that we started but didn't finish yesterday. Second, I introduced Comma Rule 1. We use a comma when we have 3 or more things in a sentence. Finally, we looked at irregular comparative adverbs. These irregulars don't use the word 'more' or '_____ly' like the regular ones. Instead, we add 'er' to the end of the word. That 'er' means more. harder: She works harder than me. (no 'more harder', no 'more hardly') faster: He speaks faster than you. (no 'more faster', no 'more fastly') earlier: She wakes up earlier than us. later: She comes to school later than me. (no 'more later') better: I did better on the test than you. (no 'more better') worse: She did worse than me. (no 'more worse') farther: They drove farther than you. (no 'more farther') We will have our first test on Friday. A man from Kaiser hospitals came to speak about donating blood. Tomorrow is the day to donate. We continued to look at comparative adverbs. We did our first easy exercise to get a sense of it. To do it at home...... It should be pretty easy for you. The main problem students had was with the spelling. If you'd like more review, please click below: We read the 2nd part of the story on Fashion. It's about an exhibit at a museum showing how men wore skirts in history. You can find the story, and you can listen to me read it at Fashion. Also, on the same page I have audio recordings of my pronunciation of the vocabulary. Please practice. Finally, we talked about the 3 ways to end a sentence. We started working on a paragraph about Snoopy together where there are 33 sentences. You have to read it OUT LOUD to hear where the end of the sentence is. Students didn't finish in class, so I asked them to finish at home. To do this exercise at home, click on.... The work we did above in class is required by all students who missed class who want to be promoted to level 4. According to my records, the following students missed class today: Rosa, Lucia A, Kwang, Brenda F., Gonzalo, Carlos G., Lilian H., Vicenta H., Alicia, Isabel M., Elza, and Orlando.
First, I checked students' homework. About half the students completed it. I'm proud of that half! Minyoung said it took her an hour. Other students said it took about 20 minutes. That's not a lot of time to help you develop your English vocabulary. Doing the homework is a required part of the class in order to be promoted to level 4. Next, we did the second paragraph on capitalization rules. Again, I wrote on this blog that students who missed class should read the rules and do paragraph 1. Only a couple students did. That means it was very hard for many students when we did paragraph 2 today. Please take advantage of the fact that I am putting up the work we do in class online so you can learn more at your convenience at home. I took some time to talk about irregular adverbs: early, late, hard, fast, well, and far. These are different than most adverbs (slowly, easily, beautifully) because they don't use 'ly' at the end. They're also strange because the are written the same when they are adjectives. An adjective describes a noun: a person, place, or thing. She is a rich woman. An adverb describes an action: She drives carefully. But with the exceptions I mentioned in the last paragraph, they look the same, even if their function is different: She has a hard job. (hard= adjective) She works hard. (hard=adverb) I understand this is not easy for a lot of students. If you want more practice, click Adverbs Lesson 2 and 3 Students then did the vocabulary practice from Fashion. I believe students who did their homework had a much easier time. If you miss class, please do it at home. The exercise is on the back of the glossary. Students then did the vocabulary practice from Fashion. I believe students who did their homework had a much easier time. If you miss class, please do it at home. The exercise is on the back of the glossary. You can find it here I started class by going over basic rules of capitalization. Just make sure you always capitalize a name and the beginning of a sentence. I gave out a list of the rules and a page of exercises. In class, we did only the first paragraph. A lot of students missed class and need to do this work before coming back to class on Monday. Go to Writing Rules Lesson 1. (According to my records, these students missed class on Friday: Celestino, Catalina, Sandra, Veronica, Luisa, Brenda F, Natividad, Juana M, and Victoria M.)
Next, I gave out a glossary in Fashion Lesson 2 for new words that are used in the story on fashion. Each word has a definition and then an example. Everyone in the class must do the following homework: write the translation of each vocabulary in your own language on the glossary page. Although I try my best to make the meaning clear, sometimes you need to see it in your own language. Due Monday. Finally, according to the student profiles you filled out, only a few students have a job that requires them to leave class early. If you have an appointment, you should let me know at the beginning of the class. Otherwise, class goes from 10:15 to 12: 15. Similarly, many students were absent today. Yet, the profiles show only a few students can't make it on Friday because of work. Students who miss classes must do the work we did in class that I've posted on this website. Promotion to level 4 is dependent on both test scores and completing at least 80% of the exercises of this level. Have a great weekend. We have one more week to go and then we'll have a week off for Thanksgiving. I quickly reviewed the spelling rules for adverbs. Students did a worksheet that you can do here in Adverbs Lesson 1.5.
(According to my records, the following students missed class and must do the exercise linked above: Gabriela, Olga, Beatriz, Karina, Alicia, and Salma. ) We did a speaking exercise with cards. Students did a dialogue with cards that had many different verbs and adjectives. Students had to take the adjective and make it into an adverb: "Tell me the truth. How do I dance?" "Honestly, you dance strangely." Next, we looked at our first story about fashion. It's about how fashion is very important to teenagers and sometimes causes problems at schools. This morning I reviewed the rules for the new students. You can find them again on yesterday's post. (Right below this one.)
We started to look at adverbs: what their function is and how to spell them. If you missed class, you are required to go to Adverbs and complete Lesson 1 and bring it to me. (According to my records, the following students missed today's class and are responsible for bringing me this homework: Gabriela, Natividad, Catalina, Olga, Lucia, and Beatriz). I returned students' personal information papers. These help me understand you better, and then I'll be able to teach you better. Tomorrow we will read a story about Fashion. To prepare for this, we did a speaking exercise the last 30 minutes of class where students talked with different partners about clothes and fashion. Today we had a pretty big class: 32 students on the first day!
First, we talked about the materials you'll need to buy.
Next, we talked about class rules.
Every two weeks or so, we'll have a test. The test will be on the grammar, a story, the basic ideas and information, the vocabulary, and writing rules. I introduced myself to the class. And then we played a True False game to help people learn more about me and your fellow students. We had a great first class. Let's keep up the positive energy and motivation throughout the semester! |
Teacher BruceI teach ESL at Manual Arts Service Center in Mid-City Los Angeles. Archives
September 2017
Categories |