- Spicing up my lessons!
Category Archives: Resources
Word on the Street
I just love this section in the British Council website. Word on The Street is a co-production of the mighty BBC and 
the British Council. If, on their own, they produce superb material you can only imagine the outcome when they decide to join efforts and work together in the production of short videos (4 or 5 m) to teach everyday life and different aspects of the British culture. The videos are easy to watch, some of them accompanied by captions that help elementary students follow and divided into scenes for a deeper understanding. There are several tasks you can do after watching the video and you can also have a look at the tapescript. Some of the most popular videos are: Oxford, Travel and Transport, Camden, Animals…etc. Aren’t you dying to try some of these? My favourite will most definitely be Camden. I am in love with the market!
Speaking: Describing a Dish
Happy New Year to everybody! I am back!!! Hard to get started once again after this longish holiday. It’s been eight days now since we have let 2014 in and it is time we get down to some serious work, don’t you think?
Talking in class about food related things after some huge binge eating and drinking is not precisely what appeals to me most, but unfortunately I cannot choose.
This is an activity I am going to do with my Elementary students after some serious work practising food vocabulary.
The activity is simple. The students are sitting in pairs, one student facing the board and the other with his back to the board. Using the OHP, a picture of a popular dish is displayed. Now, the person seeing the picture has to describe it in as much detail as possible, talking about its ingredients and the way it is cooked and the other person has to guess the dish. Allow them two or three minutes and then display another picture for the other student to do the same. Below are some slides with the dishes that I am going to use.
Some useful vocab they are likely to use
Nouns: pan, cinnamon, olives, tuna, blood sausage,
Verbs: to beat eggs, to fry, to boil, to add, to stir with a spoon,to slice (apples)
Speaking: Fashion and Trends
I’m really stressed now. Internet has been down for three days and I only had it serviced this morning after countless phone calls to the company.
Preparing exams, marking exams, preparing classes, publishing…. this is all part of who I am and what I do for a living …. but listen!, catching up on my email has been nothing short of a nightmare. Christmas is coming and it seems all the companies have got hold of my email address ’cause there were like 500 emails waiting for me. Most of them junk! Really, if I get one more email informing me that I can get a 40% discount in ( insert shop here) I am going to go postal.
Anyway, I am sure my students have been checking my site to see if I have published their last oral test as promised. Here it is guys! Sorry to keep you waiting !
The topic: Fashion and Trends
First of all, three nice pictures you need to use as an excuse to talk about the given topic
and now some questions to talk about. Time to show off, guys!
Lesson Plan: Talking about Your Hometown .
This is a lesson for Elementary students.
Step 1. Reading and Listening
Mind mapping is a very important learning tool for visual learners. This mind map has been created with Exam Time, which is very easy to use and embeddable, a feature I always appreciate.
There are some steps previous to this mind mapping we wrote on the board, essentially reading and listening about this issue. Form these listenings and readings we gathered and sorted vocabulary that was, then, written on the board.
Step 2. Mind Mapping
What you see below is a nice way of displaying what was written on the board of the classroom with the help of my students.
por cristina.cabal
Step 3. Speaking
For this activity, instead of the typical photocopy with the list of questions to talk about, I have put students in groups of three or four and given each group a set of cards, which they had to place face down on the table. Students in turns pick up a card and talk for as much as they can about the given question. At this point I give my students the usual talk about how important it is now, to “show off.”
This is a snapshot of the cards. Click here if you want to print them.
