Education for All

Understanding ESL learning styles helps a teacher bring more variety into the classroom, as well as reaching students more effectively. It is always a challenge to make the ESL classroom more interesting. Vocabulary lessons, conversation practice, worksheets; they don’t always hold everyone’s attention. A teacher may agonize over what they are doing wrong, but the reality is that there is simply more than one right way to teach. Often adding a few simple twists to an already cohesive lesson plan can round up those stragglers by reaching out to their own unique ESL learning style.

For years it has been proposed that that the differences among people extend to the way they learn. Models vary, but there is a general agreement that there are four distinct learning styles that can be applied to ESL and EFL; Auditory, Visual, Tactile and Kinesthetic. There will always be overlap, of course, and most of the games suggested here will lend themselves to adaptation to appeal to two or more styles.

AUDITORY ESL LEARNING STYLE are the type who receive and retain information from listening. They will respond well to games that involve repetition, dictation, and music. Simple poems with a strong swing such as limericks are a good way to start, and you may even introduce some Jazz Chants for more conservative adults. Younger students may prefer Karaoke and often become quite enamored of it, so be prepared for a lot of laughs as students loosen up and get comfortable! (more…)

Even if you’re just starting your charter school research, there’s a chance you already have an impression of what charter schools are like. Today, approximately 1/3 of all students from Ohio charter schools receive financial aid. These grants are also in use around U.S. schools, like New york schools or schools in Michigan.The grants can represent a significant portion of tuition depending on your family’s situation, and the school itself. School students from North Carolina schools now increasingly come from public schools and a wider range of family income-levels.

Generally, charter schools do their best to make their programs accessible through different financial aid grants or loan programs. Merit awards or scholarships are in use too. The past ten years have shown, that the urgent emergence of K-12 private school loans has also made the education at charter schools more accessible.

Whether you need (e.g., you are a student or otherwise have deadlines on reading) or simply want to have the ability to read and understand more quickly, learning speed reading is the way to go. Not everyone thinks that reading is a skill that can be improved in this way, but like any other skill, practice is the key. Almost anyone can learn to speed read, it is merely a matter of finding a technique which is effective for them.

Think back to the last book you read. Odds are that some parts were important enough to hold your interest, and others that you felt could have been passed over. Once you learn to identify these parts, you will find yourself skipping past these and absorbing only the relevant material. This means you can gain speed without sacrificing understanding (and doing without the filler).

Second, start skipping small words or phrases. This seems difficult to do at first, but if you’ve been reading for any length of time at all, you already know that words and phrases will follow patterns. For instance, if you read a line that begins ‘She would cut off her nose…’ you know that there is a good chance that it will end with ‘to spite her face.’ This skill is called inference, and you’ll find that it is far easier than you think it is; once you start practicing it, you will start to improve dramatically. (more…)