Weather in a Bottle

I discovered that the students in my Teacher Training Class didn't know the word, tornado, so I decided to incorporate it into a lesson.  We were discussing various methods of teaching vocabulary, and I showed them that along with rote activities such as writing down the word, looking it up in the dictionary, etc., it is fun to do projects with them as well.  As a result, the words and concepts stick in the brain.

I showed a video on you tube of news footage of tornadoes in the Midwest to demonstrate what a tornado looks like and the destruction they cause.  Then, I showed this clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUc1ZgXiQGs  I've seen this clip a dozen times, and it always makes me cry, so of course I started weeping with joy at the end.  One of girls was also tearing up, so I brought out tissues.  I pretended that the boys were crying too and dabbed their eyes.  They have a good sense of humor and put up with my silliness.

Then, we made our own tornado in a bottle.  It's easy.  All you need is a water bottle or jar, water, a couple drops of dish soap, and some glitter.  Mix it and spin.  Voila!  You have your own tornado.  Fun fact:  In the southern hemisphere, tornadoes spin in a clockwise direction.  In the northern hemisphere, the spin counter-clockwise.   

We also created a "Word Wall."  I gave each student a novel from the library and told them to choose a word they don't know and like.  Maybe they like the way it looks or sounds, whatever reason.  They looked up the word in the dictionary and created a picture to represent the word.  Then, we hung them up on the wall.  The idea is that they will see them each class and remember the words.

We are down to 7 students (from the original 10) which is good.  The others said they were too busy, which is a polite way of saying the class was way beyond their English skill level.  There is still one boy who can barely read and has terrible pronunciation, but he tries.