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Love for a place

October 4, 2013 by matthewpizza

In my first post of the new school year I’d like to introduce myself. My name’s Matthew Pizza. I’ve been with TLG since October, 2011. Starting this month I’ll be managing this blog, which entails editing posts, directing content, communicating with contributors, and writing lots of posts. I look forward to providing a range of content, […]

The Names of Georgia, Part 2

April 29, 2013 by georgiasomethingyouknowwhatever

When I started taking Spanish in the seventh grade, the first thing the teacher did was assign all the students Spanish names etymologically equivalent to their real ones. Since my name is Nick, I was given the name Nico. It was a painless way for all of us to feel a little Spanish, and so […]

Keyboard Transcription and English Reading

April 19, 2013 by panoptical

I have lately encountered an unexpected source of interference when teaching my students English: their keyboards! Let me explain. Computers sold in Georgia most commonly have a regular English keyboard – QWERTY, with Latin characters. Russian keyboards might be a far second, and keyboards with actual Georgian characters printed on the keys are highly scarce. […]

A Little Lamb

April 15, 2013 by panoptical

Lesson Plan: Mary Had a Little Lamb Local English Teacher: TLG Volunteer: Neal Z. Grade: 2-6 English World Textbook Level: 2+ Lesson Objectives/Target Language: Objective: To teach the song “Mary Had a Little Lamb” with proper pronunciation Target Language: – “short a” as in Mary, Had, Lamb, As, That, Laugh*, Baaa – vocabulary words in […]

The Pizza Aquarium

March 20, 2013 by panoptical

In The Long And Short Of ‘It’ I talked about some issues surrounding the “short i” and mentioned that I hadn’t come up with a way to get students to produce a short i, or /ɪ/. After some trial and error, I have managed to come upon a strategy that seems to have worked, at […]

Expectation Vs. Reality

March 14, 2013 by Kacie Riann

My orientation to Georgia took place 5 months ago at the Bazaleti Hotel in Tbilisi. The 108 other new volunteers and I stepped off of a 36 hour travel day at the tender hour of 4 a.m. and after patchy sleep schedules, blood tests, and our first purchases with lari and visuals of the Georgian […]

Of Matriarchs and Men: an interview with a school Director.

March 11, 2013 by Dekanatre

An interview with Zanati Public School’s school director and literature teacher, Manana Tediashvili. Georgia is a land of local flavouring, from its villages dotting the sweeping hillsides and rugged mountains right on up to its administrative and governing styles. As an English teacher attached to a tiny village school, I’ve been repeatedly impressed […]

Song and Dance

March 1, 2013 by panoptical

This is a post about why I open every lesson with a song.* I usually start off my new students with something easy and fun – “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” is my favorite for this. Everyone stands, everyone says the names of the body parts, and then we sing the song together. We sing […]

Teaching English World In English

February 18, 2013 by panoptical

I have to apologize if this seems obvious to you, the reader, because for me it took me a while to catch on. See, the Macmillan English World series is meant to be taught in English. I figured this out from using Rosetta Stone. When I came to Georgia, English World had not yet been […]

The Inner Circle

February 6, 2013 by panoptical

Georgian friendship and family ties are strong, and Georgia is a fairly small country, which means that it often seems like everybody knows everybody. As I become more and more integrated into the country, and into family and community life here, that feeling continues to grow. Part of this strong, tightly connected network of classmates […]

Introducing Guy Fawkes: Advice for Putting on a Performance

February 4, 2013 by kjmaher

British TLG Volunteer Oliver Rogers spent last semester in Village Zumi, where he wrote and directed a school play that caught the attention of his village and local media. Oliver, or Olly as he prefers to be called, created a play dedicated to the English holiday, ‘Guy Fawkes’ or ‘Bonfire’ night, which is celebrated on […]

An Extracurricular Extravaganza!

December 19, 2012 by littlemisslennon

We at Teach and Learn with Georgia have many talented volunteers who are doing great things with their schools and in their communities. Recently, we asked them to send in descriptions of their projects, and were flooded with responses. (Awesome!) Here are some volunteers’ projects, in their own words: Vicky Banas, Chognari, Imereti: I organized […]

Reasons I left home

December 11, 2012 by Away From Home

I have heard this question countless times since I first arrived: What brought you here? What’s here that’s not in America? Why Sid, why??? Of course, I left home with a general idea of what I was doing and what I planned on achieving once I arrived, but I never formulated my reasons into concrete […]

“Take a little break from Dictation”

December 10, 2012 by klshea

In this lesson, shaving cream is lightly spread on the children’s desk and used as an interactive white board where a child can easily erase mistakes and rewrite words if necessary. The activity provided a nice break from the typical dictation exercises all of my students do on a regular basis. This particular lesson was […]