I love to teach students visiting Toronto.

I love to teach students visiting Toronto.

It gives me an opportunity to use lots of Realia in the classroom.

My favourite realia is using Maps to Teach English.

Maps offer ESL teachers with a wonderful format for teaching.

Teachers can teach basic math terms for scale and distance. Teachers can also teach spatial relationships and even ratios. Adding time and speed components allows for lots of applications for students to plan trips and calculate each section.

Maps can indicate three dimensional components. Students can learn terms about height and depth as well as composition. Resources Maps can indicate agriculture, forests and minerals. Land use maps allows for explanations about parks, preserves and the effects of urbanization.

My students love to use the free Ontario Driving maps and use the distance cross references to calculate driving times. I pass out about 100 of the Ontario travel brochures that promote Niagara Falls, Algonquin Park, Elora Gorge, Museums, festivals, boat cruises, canoe trips, camping adventures and the other 90 wonderful things students can do while visiting Toronto. Students can pick two or three locations and use the maps to plan the trip.

The students want to see their favourite attractions or activities or events. When you provide the information and maps the students will learn an amazing amount of English motivated by their interests.

I have fun teaching the students have fun learning. They don't even realize that they even did homework sometimes.

Teachers can go to the Ontario Ministry of Tourism for free maps. The staff are very helpful and can provide almost everything that you need.

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ESL in Canada Blog URL
http://eslincanada.blogspot.com/