Perfectionist Traits - Ten Telltale Traits of a Perfectionist

Perfectionist Traits - Ten Telltale Traits of a Perfectionist:

"If you’re wondering whether or not you’re a perfectionist, there’s a good chance you are one, at least to a degree. (Take The Perfectionism Quiz if you want to know for sure.) Perfectionists are a lot like high achievers, but with some key differences. These differences are important, as perfectionists tend to experience more stress! The following are ten telltale traits of perfectionists. Do any of these sound familiar?
All-Or-Nothing Thinking:
Perfectionists, like high achievers, tend to set high goals and work hard toward them. However, a high achiever can be satisfied with doing a great job and achieving excellence (or something close), even if their very high goals aren’t completely met. Perfectionists will accept nothing less than, well, perfection. ‘Almost perfect’ is seen as failure."

Top 10 Ways to Assess Your Students

Top 10 Ways to Assess Your Students:

"Part of teaching is assessment. Colleges offer entire courses on ways to assess students of English. It is easy, however, for teachers to get stuck in a rut of assessment.

If you are looking for a new way to assess your students or just want a reminder of some oldies but goodies, read on for a look at ten of the most popular ways to assess ESL students."

Too Loud To Be Heard: Handling Noise Levels in Your ESL Classroom

Too Loud To Be Heard: Handling Noise Levels in Your ESL Classroom:

"While ESL classes should encourage students to speak English, you also need to maintain an environment in which everyone can be heard. Depending on the activities you choose to do in class and the nature of your students, keeping noise levels reasonable can be challenging especially with younger students.

Ideally your classroom will be an area in which everyone can participate and students listen respectfully to one another. Let’s talk about some ways to achieve this."

When Things Go Wrong: How to Turn a Disaster ESL Lesson into a Triumph

When Things Go Wrong: How to Turn a Disaster ESL Lesson into a Triumph:

"It happens to even the best teachers: a well thought out, carefully planned lesson goes horribly wrong and you are stuck in the middle of class with confused, frustrated, and disengaged learners.

Students can react to material in different ways than you anticipated and new activities may take less time, be more challenging, or not work out quite the way you expected. Never continue following a lesson plan that is failing. This will only waste everyone’s time and students will not get the most out of their lesson with you. It is hard to think of new ideas and come up with an alternate plan during a lesson but this is the best course of action."

What You Can Do With a Song: 5 Creative ESL Listening Activities

What You Can Do With a Song: 5 Creative ESL Listening Activities:

"Practicing listening skills in class can be a real drag to a student, marking the correct answer in their workbook, while listening to repetitive dialogues voiced by the same people, over and over again. This is where the student’s mind begins to shut down and take a five-minute breather, and whatever happening outside captures their wandering attention.

Listening involves a great deal of concentration, and so when the brain has switched off and gone for lunch, the listening skills follow suit.

How can teachers avoid this from happening, you ask?

Well, the answer is simple. Why not try something a little different. Think outside of the box and provide the students with something that you may not have tried before.

Songs provide a great alternative to listening tasks, as they are effectively the same dull listening exercises, but dressed in disguise as something that’s entertaining and fun.

Another reason why songs are great in the classroom is that they can be used as part of an entertaining and amusing, yet thoroughly educational warmer that will set right tone for the remainder of the lesson.

You don’t have to do a song and dance about it? Just a song on its own would be fine, thank you.

Adding the occasional song along with an accompanied activity to your class every once in a while, you’re giving the students more variety in the class. This keeps their attention towards you, their brain’s switched on and a stronger ability to listen for detail in the long run.

Here’s some creative activities that are aimed to not only entertain students, but to inspire and educate as well."

Head in the Clouds? Ten Free Web 2.0 Tools to Support Faculty Research - Faculty Focus | Faculty Focus

Head in the Clouds? Ten Free Web 2.0 Tools to Support Faculty Research - Faculty Focus | Faculty Focus:

"Increasingly more researchers are integrating Web 2.0 technologies with research methods (data driven instruction) as they examine barriers and potential solutions for systemic issues in their individual educational practice. However, while there are a multitude of tools, which tools are appropriate?

Web 2.0 refers to a second generation of web development and design that facilitates communication, secure information sharing, interoperability, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. A central characteristic of Web 2.0 or “Cloud Computing” is the ability of the users to own and exercise control over the data on the web (Page & Ali, 2009). Web 2.0 tools are enabling people from the distant corners of the globe to effectively communicate and construct knowledge, troubleshoot common enigmas, and collaborate in ways that give their previously unheard voice more than a mere echo or some false illusion of truth on the horizon."

50 Awesome Classroom Management Tips You Can Use Tomorrow

50 Awesome Classroom Management Tips You Can Use Tomorrow:

"Personal tips for effective classroom management

Find out who you are as a person; find your strengths, weaknesses, and how your chemistry works with others
Pay attention at all times
Keep your word
Be excited about teaching what you teach
Study leadership and be a leader
Accept responsibility for everything that happens in your classroom, whether good or bad
Assume the role of a captain of your classroom and be in control at all times"

How to embed a video into a PowerPoint presentation and package it within a SINGLE PowerPoint file | freewaregenius.com

How to embed a video into a PowerPoint presentation and package it within a SINGLE PowerPoint file | freewaregenius.com:

"The Method: in a nutshell, convert your video to a flash (SWF) file, then embed the file within your PowerPoint presentation. Embedded flash objects will be saved within the PowerPoint file itself, and will play as video. The original video does not need to be placed in the same directory as the PowerPoint file. Problem solved!"