How to learn from mistakes

Hello everyone! Today I received a very interesting and inspiring web-link about the art of teaching. The video is titled "How to learn from mistakes" and the speaker who is in the video is Diana Laufenberg. She herself is an educator and has been teaching for many years. One of the main points she emphasizes about how teachers should deliver instruction  is experiential teaching. What is meant by this is students should learn through their experiences. By experiencing a lesson, a topic, and a subject the student becomes owner of his or her education. When the student "owns" his or her education, the lesson learned becomes lasting almost permanent in their minds. This contributes to forming a solid, well-rounded, and grounded foundation of the student's learning experience. This foundation is what the student carries with his or herself all throughout his or her school experience. I have provided the link for you to watch. I would love to get your feedback and comments of whether you agree or disagree with this approach.

Thanks for reading my post. Until next time...

video link: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/1034

Vocabulary:

inspiring - (Verb) to produce or arouse (a feeling, thought, etc.)

web-link - (Noun) In computing, a hyperlink (or link) is a reference to a document that the reader can directly follow, or that is followed automatically. The reference points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document.

emphasizes - (Verb) to give emphasis  to; lay stress upon; stress.

experiential - (Adjective) pertaining to or derived from experience

well-rounded - (Adjective) fully developed; well-balanced.

foundation -(Noun) the basis or groundwork of anything.
 
Practice exercise:

Review the above vocabulary words and definitions and fill in the blanks of the sentences below.

The sight of the president giving his inaugural speech was ____________ to me.

 I clicked on the ___________ and was able to purchase the item of my choice.

My mother  always ___________ the importance of being clear.

I believe the ability to distinguish right from wrong is ___________________.

The _________________ student has an appreciation for academics, athletics, and music.

Love is one of the ______________ of a successful marriage.


Grammar point:
In order to develop your ideas and provide details and specifics, it's good to use adjectives. Adjectives not only will make your writing more interesting but it will also increase your vocabulary.
Adjectives are words that describe or modify another person or thing in the sentence.Read the above post again and see how many adjectives you can identify. Try to find at least 5 adjectives, write down the sentence where you located the adjective and underscore the word it is describing.

To learn more about adjectives, visit the following websites:
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/adjectives.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYzGLzFuwxI

Have fun!

Frustration!

  
Hello everyone. If you read my last post you saw how I was expressing the importance of maintaining balance in our busy lives. Well, yesterday was a day I should have heeded my own advice! As I also mentioned in my previous post, we have been trying to sell our home since November of 2010 and it's quite a challenge to say the least. It is definitely a buyer's market. The latest update on the house is a perspective buyer came to see our home this past Sunday.  She spent more than an hour, yes an hour, inspecting every nook and cranny of the house. Wow! The realtor and ourselves were very excited. We started to think, "could this be the one to make an offer?" At this point our realtor is salivating at the mouth and said "I'm all over this buyer like white on rice!" Well, yesterday I received a call from the realtor telling me that this perspective buyer wants to see the house again today at 5pm, except this time it's her husband coming to see the house because he was not able to see it the first time. So I of course said "absolutely!" I received the call at 11am, started cleaning the house like a mad woman, picked up my children at 4pm, lectured them to not mess up the house, make dinner, and be ready to show the house again at 5pm. Mind you, I have our class to attend at 5:25pm that same day. "Whew!" I'm so exhausted at this point. It turns out the perspective buyer's husband calls the realtor at 5:10pm to say he can't make it and can we reschedule the showing of the house. AHHHH! I screamed , inside my head of course, and told our realtor "sure, another time would be just fine." So where do you think I was today at 5:30am? Yes, that's right, you guessed it! Bikram yoga!

Thanks for listening to my rantings. Until next time ...


Vocabulary:

balance - (Noun) mental steadiness or emotional stability; habit of calm behavior, judgment, etc.

 

heed(ed) - (Verb) to pay close attention to (someone or something);heeded is the past tense of the word heed.


advice - (Noun) an opinion or recommendation offered as a guide to action, conduct, etc.

perspective - (Noun) a way of regarding situations, facts, etc, and judging their relative importance 
 
realtor - (Noun) a person who is in the business of selling properties i.e house, apartment, building, etc.

absolutely! - (Interjection) used emphatically to express complete agreement or unqualified assent
 
lectured - (Verb) to rebuke or reprimand at some length
 
rantings - (Noun) talk in a wild or vehement way  


Practice exercise:
Review the vocabulary words and definitions, then fill in the blanks in the sentences below using the vocabulary words.

I try to maintain  ____________ when juggling many activities in one day so I can feel calm.

I should have ____________ to my teacher's instructions to avoid making mistakes in writing my book report.

It's important to have a positive ____________ when you are going through rough time.

Century 21 is a company that sells properties. A person who sells property is called a ____________.

When my parents asked me if I wanted to go to Disney World I said ___________.

My mother ___________ me on why I need to keep my clean.

Elizabeth was so angry when she heard her car was damaged, her neighbors could hear her loud and furious _________.

Grammar point:
When you want to express a certain feeling in your speech or writing where your audience can tell you are mad, excited, happy, or sad you use interjections. Interjections are words or phrases used to exclaim or protest or command. You can use an exclamation point (!) to show strong feelings or a comma (,) when the feeling is not as strong after an interjection. They sometimes can stand by themselves or found within a sentence.

Practice exercise:

In my post I tried to express my feelings about having a bad day. Read my post again and identify 5 interjections throughout the post. Afterward, write a paragraph, using interjections, on something you feel very passionate about.

Have fun and maybe this exercise could be a good way to release any stress you may have.

Go to the following websites to learn more about interjections:

Interjections
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/interjections.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rP4N27kbMdk




















 

Finding balance in hectic schedules

Hello everyone! I hope everybody had a good week. I had a particularly busy week that involved chauffeuring my son and daughter to their after school activities (swim and diving team practice, piano, gymnastics, chess and robotics), attend to my mother who is 75 years old and lives in Jackson Heights, Queens, work on graduate course assignments, and prepare our house for a fourth open-house which we have been trying to sell since November 2010.

 I also substitute teach at two schools when they are under staffed due to teachers on vacation or on sick leave. One of the schools is a nursery school and the other is an adult ESL program at Belmont Racetrack. 

                Trying to maintain balance and sanity with all these obligations can at times be a bit hairy. Please understand that I am not complaining about my life, in fact I feel very fortunate for the life I have. I am very happy to be a "stay-at-home" mother so I can be there for my children whenever they need me. I also happen to have a wonderful husband who is very supportive and who enthusiastically encouraged me to pursue a second career in the teaching profession. Although my mother is 75 years old and has medical complications, she makes it possible for me to attend classes at night by watching my kids when I'm in school. So, even though I have a fairly busy schedule, life is still good.

                My point in sharing this with you all is to impart to you another thing that I practice that helps me maintain balance and a good outlook on life. This practice is yoga. I have been practicing various types of yoga for the past seven years. It has helped me both physically and mentally in staying strong and healthy. The current form of yoga I practice now is Bikram. I attend a 5:30am class, for two hours, from Monday to Friday, and I rest on the weekends, from Bikram yoga that is.

 Bikram is an intense form of yoga where classes run exactly 90 minutes and consist of a set series of 26 postures and 2 breathing exercises. Bikram Yoga is ideally practiced in a room heated to 105°F (≈ 40.6°C) with a humidity of 40%, causing it to be categorized as a form of hot yoga. Although this is an intense form of yoga there are other forms that are not as extreme, like Vinyasa or Hatha, where one can learn breathing exercises and poses (in normal room temperature) that help you to meditate, relax, breathe in a manner that reduces stress, and most important learn to empty your mind and go into a complete state of relaxation called savasana.

 I wanted to share this with all of you because we all lead very busy lives and can forget to take care of ourselves. Yoga has helped me and if you have an open mind and willing to try something new, like yoga, perhaps you can receive the same benefits I have been getting and achieve a life balance that can help you get through challenging schedules. Thanks for reading and... Namaste

(If I have perked your interest in yoga, go to the following link to get a primer on yoga
http://www.squidoo.com/yoga-101) 

or clink on this link http://www.squidoo.com/yoga-101

Grammar point - One of many fundamentals we all learn in the English grammar is recognizing different parts of speech, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, preposition, conjunction, and interjection. It is important to know these 8 parts of speech so one can analyze, understand, and construct good sentences. 

The following are definitions of the 8 parts of speech along with example words illustrating a speech part.  

Part of speech                   Function or "job"                                     Example words                

Verb                                    action or state(to) be,                                         have, do, like, work, sing, can, 

Noun                                   thing or person                                                    pen, dog, work, music,   

                      

Adjective                           describes a noun                                                  some, good, big, red, interesting

                                                                                                                           

Adverb                              describes a verb, adjective or adverb                 quickly, silently, well, badly, very

Pronoun                             replaces a noun                                                      I, you, he, she, some

Preposition                        links a noun to another word                              to, at, after, on, but

Conjunction                       joins clauses or sentences or words                 and, but, when

Interjection                       short exclamation,

sometimes inserted into a sentence               oh!, ouch!, hi!, well

Practice Exercise:

After reviewing these terms and examples, go back to my post and try to identify as many parts of speech in each paragraph. There are six paragraphs in the post. You can create a chart that has two columns to record your findings. One column is for the part of speech and the second column is for the examples you have identified in the paragraph. You may not find an example of all 8 parts of speech in every sentence so you can use the notation of "n/a" which means "not available" as your entry in the column of your chart. 

Have fun!

Example: Second sentence of the post reads:  

I hope everybody had a good week.

Analysis:

Speech part        Example

Noun -                  week

Verb -                   hope, had

Adjective -            good

Adverb -               n/a

Pronoun -             I, everybody

Preposition -         n/a

Conjunction -       n/a

Interjection -        n/a

After you have completed your chart analysis, create one sentence for each of the 8 parts of speech and underline the part of speech.

Example sentences:

Verb                      Ely’s ESL Space is a blog site. I like Ely’s ESL Space blog.

Noun                     This is my dog. He lives in my house. We live in London.

Adjective              My dog is big. I like big dogs.

Adverb                 My dog eats quickly. When he is very hungry, he eats really quickly.

Pronoun               Tara is Indian. She is beautiful.

Preposition          We went to school on Monday.

Conjunction         I like dogs and I like cats. I like cats and dogs. I like dogs but I don't like cats.

Interjection          Ouch! That hurts! Hi! How are you? Well, I don't know.