Duolingo for Schools created for Educators

Duolingo is the world's largest online language learning platform. Duolingo for Schools is a platform created exclusively for educators, allowing them to access and keep track of each learner’s Duolingo progress.

I've been using this amazing tool for our students in order to brush up and keep up their English language for over three years with encouraging results.

Duolingo turns language learning into a game to make it more fun and ef­ective. Students can learn languages for free while earning points for correct answers, racing against the clock, and leveling up. 

With this aim our student "play and learn" with this app that runs on every device, from smartphones to desktop computers (browsers Chrome, Firefox ...), including Android tablets, Chromebooks and Ipads.

Duolingo for Schools allows teachers to track their students’ language learning in one place and gives them special access to parental controls and Duolingo activities designed specifically for the classroom. Teachers can also activate classroom-exclusive lessons specially tailored for students, based on the average student level of that class.

Always learning !!!!!

Thanksgiving Activities for Young Learners

Thanksgiving is a popular holiday in the USA and Canada. It can be an interesting class for the students to do some ESL Thanksgiving activities to share a little bit of what this holiday means to you.

Symbols of Thanksgiving

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The Turkey

Thanksgiving Day celebration will be incomplete without the legendary turkey. The Pilgrims used to call any wildfowl, turkey. The turkey is usually the main course of the most household during this celebration. It is a customary dinner which serves as a reminder of the four wild turkeys that were served at the first Thanksgiving feast.

The Cornucopia

The Cornucopia s a symbol of nature's productivity. It is the "horn of plenty" and is the most common symbol of a harvest festival. It is a horn-shaped container or basket that is filled with the abundance of harvest. The traditional cornucopia was a curved goat's horn.

The Pumpkin

Another symbol of the modern Thanksgiving dinner is the pumpkin pie. The pumpkin is one of the most important symbols of the harvest festival and is an American favourite.

Cranberries

Cranberries are a kind of berry. Its name originated from crane berry because of its pink blossoms and drooping head which reminded the Pilgrims of the crane. The Pilgrims found out how to sweeten the bitter cranberries with maple sugar. The cranberry sauce was and is still used as a companion of turkey during Thanksgiving dinner.

Beans

Native Americans taught the Pilgrims to grow beans next to cornstalks. The was so that the beans could use the cornstalks as their pole as they grow, hence American beans are also known as Pole beans. Beans are therefore a special symbol of thanksgiving feast.

ESL Thanksgiving Worksheets

Are you looking for some Thanksgiving ESL worksheets that you can use with your students? Here are some of our go-to source that you’ll want to check out:

ISL Collective

BogglesWorld

Busy Teacher

Thanksgiving ESL Lesson Plans

If you’re looking for a complete ESL Thanksgiving Lesson, then these games and activities probably aren’t what you need. Instead, you’ll want to check out these free, downloadable lesson plans for children.

Busy Teacher

ESL Holiday Lessons

Kid Stuff

ESL Thanksgiving Story

Do you want a simple thanksgiving story that’s suitable for ESL students? Here are a couple of our favourite resources:

ISL Collective  (Beginners-Intermediate)

ThoughtCo (Advanced)

Online Thanksgiving Games for Elementary Students

Do you want to try out these fun online Thanksgiving games? They’re perfect for kids. Check out our top picks:

Primary Games

Digi Puzzle

A Kids Heart

The Impact of Technology on Teaching. G Suite for Education and Google Classroom.

Think about the impact of technology on your life. Has technology saved you time and made you more efficient? How it might affect or is actually already affecting your teaching.

The role of rote learning has decreased as students have instant access to the world’s knowledge. Students can take ownership of their learning. Additionally, technology helps cater to individual student needs: resources can be personalized for students and teachers can offer digital feedback. Accordingly, technology is a tool to support teachers in their efforts to increase student learning.

G Suite for Education is a suite of tools that can help you increase opportunities for critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity, all while supporting the learning objectives that you have for your students. These tools are free, ad-free, reliable, and secure. They are already used by millions of students in schools around the world. Of course, free is great, but the best thing is that these tools are relevant to students, easy to use, and open doors to many new ways to learn.

G Suite for Education also includes a number of Google products that promote collaboration among students and with their teachers. Students can work together, in class or at home, to complete assignments and group projects. All of their work is auto-saved, and they can even edit without WiFi.

• Google Docs: documents come to life with smart editing and styling tools to help you easily format text and paragraphs. Choose from thousands of fonts, plus add links, images, drawings, and tables
• Google Sheets: spreadsheets for analyzing, visualizing, and charting data
• Google Forms: quick & easy surveys to gather information
• Google Slides: a presentation tool that makes it easy to tell stories
• Google Drawings: Graphics and flowchart creation with shapes, text, and images

Additionally G Suite for Education includes tools that can be used to save you time and increase student engagement. These include:

• Gmail: Email, contacts, tasks, and communications
• Google Calendar: Scheduling, calendars, and appointments
• Google Hangouts: Live video conferencing and messaging
• Google Sites: Webpage creation and publishing
• Google Groups: Group communication and web forums

Most educators dread using printers and photocopiers, but they’re necessary when you need to make class copies of your documents. All this changes when you use the G Suite for Education. The great advantage is the concept of a live document: there is only one version of it and edits are made in real-time. When you (or someone you are collaborating with) make a change to the document those changes are all saved in the same place for everyone to see.

Communicating information to all members of your classroom community – students, parents and other teachers – is one of the most important yet time-consuming tasks you face as a teacher.

For help, click the icons below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What Skills Will You Need?

You’re likely already sharing your students’ work with the wider community whether through parent / teacher nights or a display of student artwork on the walls. Communicating to this wider audience is not only important to keep them informed of the success you’re having in your classroom, but it also makes the students’ work more authentic and important:

Create a Google Site

You can create a Google Site by clicking NEW in Google Drive and then selecting More then Google Sites. Give your new file a name and it is automatically saved in your Drive. You can also visit the Sites homepage and click the red + in the bottom right corner.

LEARN HOW

Google Classroom is perfect for copying and sharing docs with your class. You can also use it to distribute and collect assignments effortlessly. Google Classroom saves you time, keeps you organized and helps you communicate with your students. Get started today, with resources, tips and tricks from educators like you.