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English for Kids

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freepik.com Teaching English for kids is fun. You can hear their laugh in the colorful classroom. It's a really good vibe. However, teaching kids is a little bit tricky. You have to provide suitable activities that can engage their interest, so they will not feel bored. You can read some strategies below to teach them. 1. Make the classroom fun! Children really like fun things. You can get them to play interactive games, let them express their creativity through arts, invite them to learn outside, sing songs and dance together, and many more. 2. Make the classroom active! Make the children involve every activity actively. You can provide some materials that can attract their interest. Provide pictures, tell stories, or you can provide mystery boxes. 3. Avoid putting pressure on them The important thing is you don't need to press them. If they don't want to study, gently persuade them. Don't judge their mistake, give constructive feedback. If they make a mess, for exampl...

Let's Start Blogging!

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freepik.com What is a blog? Blog or weblog is an online journal or information website displaying information in the reverse chronological order, with the latest posts appearing first. A blog is a platform where a writer/s share their views. ( firstsiteguide.com ) What is blogging? Blogging is activities to fill in the blog, like writing, posting, sharing, and linking the content to the blog. Evidently, a blog can be used in the classroom as a media learning. Teachers can publish materials, media, resources, and even assignments through a blog. Moreover, a blog can be used to publish students' writing so that it will improve their skills in writing. Students can develop their creativity and boost their communication skills. The most common blogging platforms are WordPress and Blogspot . You have to choose whether the blogging platform you will use to start blogging. To create a blog in Blogspot, you have to sign in to your Google account first. Then create your blog with filling t...

Podcast for Improving Listening Skills

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Freepik.com Regarding learning English, there are several tools that can be used to improve listening skills. One of them is podcasts.  Before we go, we have to know the meaning of a podcast. A podcast is an episodic series of spoken word digital audio files that a user can stream or download to a personal device for easy listening. (Wikipedia) A variety of podcasts can be found, you can choose which podcast is suitable to improve your student's listening skills. But, how if you want to make it by yourself? Yes, you can. You can come up with a concept first, prepare the script, and then record and edit your audio files. You are allowed to use editing software, like Audacity . With this software, you can record your podcast, add audio, songs, cut the audio, add effect, and many more.   After editing the audio, you can find a place to host your files, like SoundCloud , Spotify , Buzzsprout , PodBean , and so on. You can listen to my podcast below. Nadia Luthfa · KASADA CEREMON...

Interesting Media To Teach Reading; Comics

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joelcorcia.tumblr.com Students may struggle with reading as they don't understand what should be going on in the reader's imagination during reading. In addition, they may have difficulty understanding the story. The use of comics may help students to better understand the story. Moreover, it can attack student interest. However, provide suitable comics for the students might be difficult. You might think to make your own comics, but you cannot make it anyway. Nowadays, technology grows rapidly. You can use some online tools to help you make your comics. Pixton , for example, allows you to create your own comic strips with lots of characters, backgrounds, and layout choices. After creating the comic, you can download it so it will be saved on your computer. Or, you might also share the link to the students.  There are a ton of resources too for the teachers. You are able to make your own assignments or adapting from the existing resources. You can get a variety of layouts, time...

The Effective Indonesian Curriculum Applied in 21st Century

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freepik.com What does the curriculum mean? Curriculum is a standards-based sequence of planned experiences where students practice and achieve proficiency in content and applied learning skills. Curriculum is the central guide for all educators as to what is essential for teaching and learning so that every student has access to rigorous academic experiences. Curriculum must include the necessary goals, methods, materials, and assessment to support instruction and learning effectively. ( ride.ri.gov ) What about the curriculum in Indonesia? Curriculum in Indonesia has undergone several changes since Indonesia's independence. There are Lesson Plans 1947, Lesson Plan Unraveling 1952, Curriculum Plan for Education 1964, Curriculum 19698, Curriculum 1975, Curriculum 1984, Curriculum 1994, Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) 2004 or KBK, Education Unit Level Curriculum (SBC) 2006 or KTSP, and Curriculum 2013 that emphasize more on scientific approaches with the problem-based learning, dis...

Hot Potatoes: What Is It?

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Hot Potatoes is a quiz creator software that allows you to make six different types of exercises. You can create interactive multiple-choice, short answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering, and gap-fill exercises that can be given to students. Hot Potatoes consists of six individual programs: JCloze, JQuiz, JCross, JMatch, JMix, and The Masher. 1. JCloze JCloze is the Hot Potatoes program in which you can create gap-fil exercises. This program is suitable for vocabulary and text comprehension training. But you can modify it to other exercises, like for listening training.  2. JQuiz JQuiz is the most common program used. It used to create question-based quizzes. You can create multiple-choice questions, short-answer questions, hybrid questions, and multi questions. Moreover, you can add reading texts or pictures to it. 3. JCross JCross allows you to make crossword puzzles. Students will be given a keyword or link to complete the puzzle correctly. To create the crosswo...

ENGLISH TOOLS

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istockphoto.com There are so many tools that can be used by the teacher to teach English. I found several tools from the internet that use technology-based tools. Moreover, these tools can be used by the students too. So, let's try! VOCABULARY TOOLS 1. Thinglink Thinglink is an education technology platform that makes it easy to augment images, video, and virtual tours with additional information and link. Through this platform, you can add images, video, audio, and also text inside the picture. You can add 360 ° images and videos to give students access to virtual walk-through and tour. M oreover, Thinglink offers an easy way to create audio-visual learning materials that are accessible in an integrated reading tool. Teachers can use it to teach vocabulary, listening, and reading. You can take a look at the example here . 2. Flocabulary In this platform, you can access hip-hop video explanations and creativity tools that can engage students with the lesson. You can access the vide...