In the Cards

by Elizabeth George

A fun way to reinforce multiplication skills requires only a deck of playing cards. Each card is worth face value. Face cards are worth ten. Shuffle the deck; present two cards to a student; and ask him/her to multiply the numbers. The student has three seconds to get the correct answer. If correct, the student keeps the cards. If incorrect, or if it takes longer than three seconds to answer, you, the teacher, keeps the cards.

The objective is for the student to answer all equations correctly with in three seconds and in the end have all cards in his/her possession. Reshuffle and play again. This activity works well for addition and subtraction skills as well.

Handwriting

by Katy Vanderhoef

ESOL and ABE students are often overwhelmed with the formal structure of a five- paragraph essay. I began to teach the pattern of the essay almost simultaneously with the teaching of writing paragraphs.

Holding up my hand to model both paragraph and essay structure, I show the students that they should always look at their hands to remind themselves of the topic sentence, concluding sentence, and in-between examples. Using the same example for the five-paragraph essay, I remind them that there is an introductory paragraph, concluding paragraph, and three supporting paragraphs in between. It is simple, but it works!