Memorize a song...

Learning and enjoying songs can be a great way to improve your listening, vocabulary and pronunciation. In this activity we are going to use two websites to help you find, listen to and memorize the words of a song.
First you'll use YouLyrics to find the words and a video of the song, then you will use MemorizeNow to help you learn and remember the words.

Task:

• First go to the YouLyrics site at: http://2hats.net/yl/ You will see featured and the most recently listed songs and videos.

• You can either select one of these or search for a song you like, by typing in the name of the song and artist at the top of the page.

• Once you have found the song you want to learn, watch the video and read the lyrics. If you click on the link to one of the videos it will open and play beside the lyrics.
• Once you have watched the video, copy the lyrics and go to: http://www.memorizenow.com/
• Paste the lyrics into the text field, add a title then click on the 'add' button. The title will appear in the 'items to memorize' list.

• You can then click on the title and start to memorize the words. If you click on the arrows above the text, words will start to disappear from the text.
  
• Try to remember the missing words as you read through the text. If you can't remember them you can click the back arrow and the missing words will appear again.

• You can gradually remove more and more of the words until they all disappear. If you have problems remembering the words listen to the video clip again and this will help you. You can also try to remember the words with just the first letter as a prompt. Just click on 'Letters'.

• You can also start to remove the letters by clicking on the arrows. If you want to see the complete text again you can either click on the 'memorize' button again of 'display all' and this will show you the complete text.

You can also save the activity to your computer desktop so that you can revise and review the words at a later time. Just click on 'save' and follow the instructions. Listening to songs and trying to learn and memorize the lyrics is an enjoyable way to improve your listening and vocabulary skills and if you sing along it can also improve your pronunciation. I hope you enjoy this activity.

TEFL Online Tutorial: Teaching English With Games

Here are three examples of how to incorporate games into your ESL and EFL classes.

Tutorial on how to make your own South Park animation

Tutorial on how to make your own South Park animation

So, you'd like to make your own South Park animation and get millions of hits on YouTube? Well here's how you do it:

First you go to South Park Studio. It's a Flash application created by Janina Koeppel that allows you to create your very own South Park character in minutes. Once there, go ahead and make your character. When you're done, take a screenshot of your screen by pressing the "Print Screen" key on your keyboard. This only works in Windows (if you have a Mac, google how to take a screenshot). You'll notice that nothing happens when you press that key, but when you do your PC actually saves a picture of your screen in the clipboard.

Now to the fun part. Open Adobe Photoshop or your favorite image editing software and create a new page (usually CTRL+N). Then press CTRL+V and that will paste your screen into the canvas.

Make sure you create layers of all the parts of your South Park character that you would like to animate. Mouth, eyes, eyebrows, face, ...

Next, you need to open Macromedia Flash. If you don't have it, you can purchase it online on the Macromedia website. Once in Flash, import all the layers from Photoshop. Make your little animation (don't ask me how, there are plenty of Flash tutorials online, just google it), then export the finished file to SWF.

Almost done! Now you need to get a SWF to AVI converter program (again, don't ask me, google it). Use it to convert your SWF file to an AVI movie so you can upload it to YouTube or wherever you want it.

Once the conversion is complete, upload it to your favorite video hosting site and wait for the hits to roll in!

Olimpiada de lingua portuguesa 2010

Olimpíada de Língua Portuguesa Escrevendo o Futuro

A Olimpíada de Língua Portuguesa Escrevendo o Futuro, realizada pelo Ministério da Educação e pela Fundação Itaú Social, com coordenação técnica do Cenpec – Centro de Estudo e Pesquisa em Educação, Cultura e Ação Comunitária, desenvolve ações de formação de professores, com o objetivo de contribuir para ampliação do conhecimento e aprimoramento do ensino da escrita. Uma das estratégias é a realização de um concurso de produção de textos que premia poemas, memórias literárias, crônicas e artigos de opinião elaborados por alunos de escolas públicas de todo o país.

Em 2010, poderão participar do concurso professores e alunos do 5º ano (4ª série) do Ensino Fundamental ao 3º ano do Ensino Médio.

Participe e ajude seus alunos a descobrir a força que a escrita tem.
Saiba mais!

Contato com a equipe: 0800 771 9310
Horário: de 2ª a 6ª feira, das 8 às 20H. Aos sábados, das 10 às 16H.
Ou acesse os sites: MEC, Fundação Itaú Social, CENPEC.