I juggle between posts that address big issues such as curriculum and leadership with posts that provide educators with resources that could be used in the classroom. Today. With the right student or students.
Today’s post is of the resource variety. You won’t believe what you’ll find at Free Language Stuff . The author, Paul Morris, is a speech-language pathologist who generously provides hundreds (thousands?) of activities for language learning. And while lots of sites provide worksheets, these activities are carefully constructed and address very specific areas. They’re great! With one caveat. As my friend at LD Blog wrote, these materials “are not full-blown instructional programs. Teachers will need to provide the lessons surrounding the materials. They’ll have to sequence the lessons. They’ll have to structure the repetitions.”
That said, though, Free Language Stuff will get you started with some really good instructional materials. For example:
The Remember It! Activities provide students with the opportunity to read a short list of words and generate a category for the list. For example: Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Antarctic. Plane, helicopter, train, submarine. Bottle, jar, box, envelope.
Sentence combining is an important writing skill. The activities on Paul’s site provide prompts to the student for combining sentences from two columns.
Even the word searches are good (I’m usually not a fan). The ones on Free Language Stuff combine a riddle-like scenario with a search for the riddle’s answer. For example: Noise made by a phone. A type of jewelry for fingers. The student searches for the word ‘ring.’
Those are just three examples from the many, many activities on the site. I hope you find something you can use!
Paul Morris also wrote 101 Language Activities , which is designed for older students.