I recently watched John Pollack's YouTube video of his "pun safari" where he combed the streets of New York City trying to spot images of puns (such as the restaurant sign "Ciao for Now" and the waitress's "Bored of Education" T-shirt). Even though I find this kind of humor a bit painful, the video did support Pollack's call for awareness that "puns are everywhere." The video also made me think about how useful it could be to challenge students to take their own "word safaris" to document the prevalence of the words they are learning.  Continue reading...

Teachers, Halloween is upon us, and your students may be brewing up some spooky stories. Don't let them fall into the trap of clinging to overused intensifiers and boring adjectives!  Continue reading...

When you look up a word with loads of meanings on the Visual Thesaurus, you are greeted with lots of colorful meaning bubbles, lots of meaning branches, and lots of synonyms. This week's worksheet asks students to check out some of our more action-packed word maps to identify synonyms and definitions from different parts of speech.  Continue reading...

Here in Portugal, teachers of English have been scratching our heads a bit recently over what words should sound like. We found it to be quite a conundrum.  Continue reading...

Unless students are nautically inclined, they might not be able to distinguish different geographical terms relating to bodies of water like strait or gulf. Here's a worksheet teachers can use to help them navigate the tricky sea of words.  Continue reading...

We recently spoke to Alex Rappaport and Blake Harrison, founders of the innovative educational company Flocabulary, about how they were inspired to infuse challenging vocabulary and educational content into rap music. In this interview you'll learn more about why they feel rap music is the perfect medium for their mission... and you'll get to sample one of their flocabulous videos.  Continue reading...