Teacher Talk

Working in a school is great for adults to learn things everyday too. There are always new strategies to be learned and there are a few new things that have been working really well in our classrooms that I wanted to share with my fellow education enthusiasts!

Since I work at an international school, most of our students are English language learners. We, the teachers, as well as the students try to be very mindful of our speech so that students are learning proper English and not too much slang. The biggest thing we have noticed lately is the use of the words "gonna" and "wanna." In an effort to eliminate or decrease our usage of these slang words in our speech, we started brainstorming on how we could stop it. We thought about having a jar and putting a coin in every time we said it but then the students actually came up with a great idea! Every time we hear someone say "gonna" or "wanna," everyone snaps their fingers. When anyone says, "going to" or "want to" correctly, everyone claps their hands. Not only is it a nice way to feel happy and proud of your accomplishment for remembering to say "going to" instead of "gonna" by hearing a class of students giving you a round of applause, it is really not that disruptive for the classroom and it has improved everyone's speech and learning of the language! I love it!

Another thing we have been trying to make more adults aware of is the improper use of the word "there's." If you pay attention, you'll notice that people are often saying things like, "There's a lot of students in this classroom!" Think about it - There's is a contraction for There is. Would you say, "There is a lot of students in this classroom"? No! You would say, "There are a lot of students in this classroom." This is a big pet peeve of one of my colleagues so I've been trying to be more aware of it lately. 

My big speech pet peeve which one of my students does constantly is shortening "Can I" to sound like "Cay" (rhymes with Tie). It drives me crazy to hear someone say, "Cay go get this out of my backpack?"

Anyway, another colleague sent out this great blog post about 20 Teacher Tips for Beating Fatigue which you can read here. It's good not only for teachers but it's good for any job you have and basically for anyone who feels tired! (Who doesn't?) 

Happy Tuesday to all my Teachers out there!