by Kara Parker | Sep 8, 2015 | Speaking, Tomatina, What's New, Writing
My husband has an evening routine of watching “Pardon the Interruption” after dinner. I don’t love sports talk shows, but this one keeps my interest. Read on to see how I have adapted their “What’s the Word?” into a speaking/writing... 
by Kara Parker | Jan 4, 2015 | Intermediate Level, Listening, Reading, Writing
It’s time to try something new! That’s what a new semester encourages me to do. I love starting class with a hook (video, meme, song, article, etc. in TL of course!) that gets them curious about the culture. On the final, there was a “trivia”... 
by Kara Parker | Apr 18, 2013 | En el Tiempo de las Mariposas, Movies, Reading, Writing
I wanted the students to sum up the important points of the characters. Thanks to Twitter (aka best PD ever), I discovered 6-word memoirs, another ELA activity that easily works for us, especially as a reading comprehension or creative writing task. I searched #6words... 
by Kara Parker | Apr 16, 2013 | Family, Movies, Vocabulary Building, Writing
Now they need a task while watching the movie. A character map worked perfectly this time for my classes. Furthermore, it connects to English Arts and my unit on describing people. In fact, Selena worked so well, I don’t think I’ll ever teach a unit based... 
by Kara Parker | Dec 2, 2012 | Speaking, Writing
While helping an ESL student in class, I fell in love with this activity to encourage speaking in a creative and fun way. 1. Students are in small groups. 2. They have a bucket of some random pictures cut out from a magazine. 3. They create a short story using the... 
by Kara Parker | Oct 17, 2012 | Reading, Writing
Input is key to learning a language and we want to make it fun. To encourage reading, I’m always looking for what they like to read. Facebook is a big one and now I know an easy way to find what I need. Initially I “liked” the Tide Facebook page to...
