Category Archives: Resources

A Website with 346 Writing Prompts to Ignite your Creativity

Writing skill, , , , ,

I found this website quite by chance. It’s one of these sites that you definitely want to bookmark as it comes in very handy when you want to do some writing practice, need to come up with a good story starter or some prompts for a five-minute writing activity and your inspiration has run dry. Don’t worry! It happens in the best families!

The site is called Creative Writing Prompts. Right now, they have 346 prompts and as you can read on their  page  you just have to choose a number, point your cursor to this number, read the prompt and then write your story.

Some suggestions to use this website:

  • A quick writing activity in class. Students decide on a number and write for about 15 minutes. You can do this activity often as it only takes 15 minutes and gives them a lot of practice if done regularly. They also get direct help from the teacher as it’ s a class activity.
  • You can also divide the class into pairs or groups of three, depending on how large your class is and ask each group to assign a writing task to another group in the class by choosing a random prompt. Students write their stories. Set a time limit of 30 or 35 minutes. Put their stories up on the walls of the class  for all the students to read.
  • Brainstorm vocabulary recently studied. Make sure there is a variety of nouns, adjectives, phrasal verbs, idioms…etc to choose from. Write them on the board. Ask  students to choose two numbers and write the two prompts on the board too. Students choose one of these options and write their story including some of the  target vocabulary.

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Stonehenge: one of the world’s most ancient landmarks.

freeware, Listening, , ,

and one of the most mysterious , too! In fact, over the course of years, scientists and philosophers have tried to attribute their origin to Merlin the wizard, to druids and even there are some crackpots who think aliens were involved but the truth is that even nowadays, after countless studies, nobody can say for certain why it was built. Was it an observatory,  a temple for sun worship, a healing centre, a place to bury the dead or  a giant calendar? How did they manage to carry the huge stones  and then, without any metal tools or machinery  build this impressive, unique structure?

I’ve selected this video about StoneHenge  for my elementary students. I have chopped the original from YouTube using TubeChop because it was too long and probably too difficult, too. Hope it is useful!

I have decided on the True/Flase exercise because I think it is  easier  than the Open Questions option.

AFTER WATCHING THE VIDEO, DECIDE WHETHER THE FOLLOWING STATEMENTS ARE TRUE OR FALSE AND CORRECT THE FALSE ONES.
1. StoneHenge is in Northern England
2. According to the Medieval legend Merlin, the wizard, built it.
3. According to recent scientific studies,it was built 500 years ago.
4. Each of the stones weighs between fifty and eighty thousand pounds
5. The stones were carved using metal tools.

Halloween: Write a Comic with a Scary Story

American Cultural aspects, Create your own stuff, Funny Stuff, Writing

Halloween is coming soon , it’s almost here and this is a great time to let your imagination flow and write a scary story. Writing????? I can almost hear you complaining about having to write something , (well, anything).

OK, let’s do it in a funny way!

Let’s say the story is related to your school and /or  to your teacher . A great opportunity to scare MEEEE or even , if you dare, kill me, have  me eat poison or  place me in  the bonfire for witchcraft. The possibilites are endless.

We are going to do it using a comic template from this funny site http://www.grammarmancomic.com/index.html ,where we’ll choose from different comic options and where we can also see other comics students like you  have written. Then ,when you have finished your masterpiece , we’ll vote for the best story. Does it sound like a good plan?

Choose your template

♣ School of Scares! It started like any other English lesson…

♣ Terror Teacher! One day our usual English teacher was absent…

♣The Homework from Hell! We were in English class, waiting for home time..

♣Ghosts and Grammar!  Nobody believed the stories about our school day, until one day…

When writing a comic , it might be helpful to know some common English interjections. Click here to see some of the most common

Click here to see some ideas for your comics and have a spooky Halloween!

Fashion Victims?

Create your own stuff, Lesson Plan: Pre-Intermediate, Slides, , , , ,

So, once again, here we are, working with items of clothing and talking about fashion!

Though I cannot consider myself a shopaholic, I wouldn’t be completely honest with you if I didn’t tell you that, once a week, I leave husband and kids at home and I……. burn plastic!!!!  Well, I reckon I deserve a treat or two from time to time, don’t you think so?

Now, this is the activity I’m going to do with my fourth-year students (Pre-intermediate). I hope you find it useful!

The main activity will be displaying a video of a catwalk where students will have to be the commentators, describing what the models on the catwalk are wearing. A video such as this one … or maybe the one below it… to add more variety.

 

They have previously worked with patterns and materials (striped, checked, plain, silk, leather…etc) but I used some pictures from my iPad, so this vocabulary has already been covered.

Though I hate to say it, most of my students will know “trousers and shoes” but they will probably need some help with some other less common items of clothing. That’s why I’ve prepared these slides about clothes, divided into Elementary and Intermediate.