Before you start speaking or writing, you must consider your audience. We adults understand this and automatically do it without giving it a second thought. Students, on the other hand, sometimes don't realize that there is a formal register and an informal register in English. Therefore, teachers must explicitly teach students how and when to use the two registers. In this post, I'll be giving you some tips and sharing some freebies you can use when you introduce this topic to your students. Introduction to Formal/Informal Language I would begin this lesson by using my document camera to display the posters below. After students have read the two speech bubbles, I'd direct them to compare and contrast the two characters' speech with a partner. CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THESE POSTERS FOR FREE! Following this partner discussion, I would state that there are two types of English: formal and informal. After defining formal and informal, I would ask stude......

When I first started teaching, Speaking and Listening meant student speeches and presentations. Unfortunately, assigning students to give presentations took a great deal of class time, and I often only assigned presentations once per quarter. Even then, I still found them extremely difficult to fit in, with all the other subjects that needed to be covered. I wanted a way to assess students' abilities to meet speaking and listening standards more than once a quarter. In recent years, I started using Conversation Cards to engage students in conversations and the practice of speaking and listening to their peers. They really helped me to address some of the Common Core standards for Speaking and Listening. According to the standards, students should engage in collaborative discussions with their peers, based on grade-level topics and texts.  One of the best ways to do this is to provide students with opportunities to discuss the texts they are already reading in class. Why not ......