Skip to main content

Teacher of the Year in Wicomico County, Maryland





This article from a local newspaper in the state of Maryland, the Salisbury Independent, talks about Hemalatha Bhaskaran, an Environmental Science teacher at a local high school that has won the award of "Teacher of the Year" from the Wicomico County Board of Education.  Reading the article can give you insights about current key issues in secondary education in the USA: diversity, equity, excellence, leadership etc.



Here you can take a look at the webpage of James M Bennett High School, where Mrs. Bhaskaran works:  you can watch a short video about school news by two students ("clippers" is the nickname of the students)  and the Principal (or Headteacher) Ms. Savage.  And you can take a look at the different subjects and school activities to see what an American high school is like.



I have created some activities around the text to build a lesson which includes a reading comprehension task with its key, a vocabulary chart to highlight key words and expressions in education that are used in the article and some questions for oral discussion. Here you can find all the materials. The lesson is suitable for B2 students.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Benefits Of Healthy eating Turmeric every day for the body

One teaspoon of turmeric a day to prevent inflammation, accumulation of toxins, pain, and the outbreak of cancer.  Yes, turmeric has been known since 2.5 centuries ago in India, as a plant anti-inflammatory / inflammatory, anti-bacterial, and also have a good detox properties, now proven to prevent Alzheimer's disease and cancer. Turmeric prevents inflammation:  For people who

Women and children overboard

It's the  Catch-22  of clinical trials: to protect pregnant women and children from the risks of untested drugs....we don't test drugs adequately for them. In the last few decades , we've been more concerned about the harms of research than of inadequately tested treatments for everyone, in fact. But for "vulnerable populations,"  like pregnant women and children, the default was to exclude them. And just in case any women might be, or might become, pregnant, it was often easier just to exclude us all from trials. It got so bad, that by the late 1990s, the FDA realized regulations and more for pregnant women - and women generally - had to change. The NIH (National Institutes of Health) took action too. And so few drugs had enough safety and efficacy information for children that, even in official circles, children were being called "therapeutic orphans."  Action began on that, too. There is still a long way to go. But this month there was a sign that

Not a word was spoken (but many were learned)

Video is often used in the EFL classroom for listening comprehension activities, facilitating discussions and, of course, language work. But how can you exploit silent films without any language in them? Since developing learners' linguistic resources should be our primary goal (well, at least the blogger behind the blog thinks so), here are four suggestions on how language (grammar and vocabulary) can be generated from silent clips. Split-viewing Split-viewing is an information gap activity where the class is split into groups with one group facing the screen and the other with their back to the screen. The ones facing the screen than report on what they have seen - this can be done WHILE as well as AFTER they watch. Alternatively, students who are not watching (the ones sitting with their backs to the screen) can be send out of the classroom and come up with a list of the questions to ask the 'watching group'. This works particularly well with action or crime scenes with