Are You On Top of the World?

With my English Language Learners, idioms can be so difficult for them to understand!  Think about it, you’re just getting the fact that cool can mean “something cold” or “hey, I like that” and then someone tells you to “Cool Down!” and you have no idea what they are talking about.  For this reason, I always try to do an idiom project where I use some direct instruction on idioms.  Here is a booklet that I use with my students to help them with this concept.  Students illustrate (with words or pictures) what the idioms sounds like it means, then they write what it actually means and write an example of when you would use and/or hear that idiom.  I’ve found that having these examples already in the students’ heads helps them to be able to understand and/or use the idioms at appropriate times in conversation.  It also stops the strange looks when I tell my kids to “take a chill pill”.  Grab a copy of this booklet from Google Docs. 

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