Vocabulary Exercise with Word Cards

It's the end of week 3, Unit 3 of the TESL Teaching In Practice - Reading and Vocabulary course through U of Manitoba Extended Education. This activity uses a Task-based lesson plan from Citizenship and Immigration Canada and is inspired by the discussion in the "Which Words are Worth the Worry?" video. The lesson plan is presented as a cloze exercise for myself and a small group of peers. We completed the exercise using a shared Google doc, but I do not yet have permission from the group members to share it here. 

The assignment here is to develop a vocabulary lesson based on the above lesson plan.

I would have the students do this vocabulary activity before playing the Nutrition Facts snap game in the lesson plan.

Adapting a Reading Exercise

Today I writing for an assignment in week 2, Unit 2 of the TESL Teaching In Practice - Reading and Vocabulary course through U of Manitoba Extended Education. Here I will discuss how I would adapt a reading exercise published by the British Council on their Learn English Teens website. The exercise is called Reading Skills Practice: Foreign Exchange Emails. The exercise can be done interactively on the website or downloaded as a PDF worksheet. I will work with the downloaded worksheet.

The British Council material is copyrighted, so I must be careful to adhere to the instructors' Fair Use guidelines published by the University. If I was going to use the exercise as-is, I could share the above link with my students and have them complete the exercise online. However, since I need to adapt the exercise and make some changes to the PDF copy, the guidelines allow me to do that because this single exercise is part of a larger set (less than 10%) on the British Council website. Even after making changes, I would  give credit to the original source by including their web address and the copyright notice.

Back on the other side of the desk

I'm partway through my first week as a student in the TESL: Reading and Vocabulary course through U of Manitoba Extended Education. It has been a busy week, as about half of my study time has been taken up in getting back up to speed in using all the forms of communication required in taking an online course. I took an Introduction to Teaching Online course at Butler Community College about three years ago when I was teaching there, and last used their platform (Canvas) about two years ago, when I taught my last math class at Butler. It was not an online course, but all instructors were required to use the platform to communicate grades to students and to upload final grades to the college system.