Category Archives: Resources

Want to decorate a wall? Use Glogster

Create your own stuff, Resources, Students' Corner, ,

I’ve been meaning to use  Glogster for quite a while but I was waiting to for the right activity to make the most of it. As you already know, if you’re a regular reader, I normally teach adults so I didn’t quite know what sort of activity was best for this tool to show off.

But, what is Glogster? It is a tool that allows users to create free interactive posters (also called “glogs”). How can you build your poster?


♥Uploading video or photographs
♥Decorating your poster in different styles (retro, pop…)
♥Adding  text, choosing from different backgrounds
♥Putting a link to another page, video…etc
♥Choosing your own background image for the wall of the Glog
♥You can make your wok public or private
♥You can embed it in your blog or website

It goes without saying that you’ll need to register, but it’s free. I’ve created a poster with my youngest students who still ahh and ohh about bright colours, moving graphics and funny stuff. You can see the poster below, nothing to write home about but I’m sure you can do better than me.

Once I got started, I saw the potential it had, even for my adult students.
♥Photograh description
♥Book /film reviews
♥Post stories or poems
Time to be creative and have fun!

Lesson Plan: Films

Audio, freeware, Lesson Plan: Intermediate, , , , , , , , ,

Mixing traditional and modern teaching? What’s the right balance? That’s a hot issue and one I haven’t yet found the answer to but I feel that there’s nothing like the interaction between teachers and students or students among themselves.
In this lesson plan Focus on Films I’ve combined both traditional teaching and new technologies. I’ve even published one exercise Film Genres that I’d rather do with my students in class with them taking an active role in their learning process. You choose but what comes below  is how I  definitely plan to do it with my students.

I ‘ve prepared one set of blue strips of paper with the names of famous films and another set of green coloured strips with film genres. All in all I’ve written 10 strips of paper and then placed them on my table. Students will then come up to my table and do the matching exercise using blue-tack to stick the strips on the blackboard. I’m planning to revise  by showing them only the films and then only the genres.

On the other hand, there is another exercise in this lesson plan where, if I were a student, I’d definitely choose to do using a computer and I’m referring to the brainstorming exercise we normally do on the blackboard. Well,  I’ve had a lot of fun ( and also wasted a lot of time ) doing this brainstorming  about films with this little application called Simple Diagrams, which I highly recommend (mainly because it’s free)


It must have been sheer luck that I bumped into this cool site only last week, just when I was gathering material to use  in the FILMS lesson.


This site has been nominated as one of the 50 best sites in 2010 and it contains about 12.000 film snippets that can be searched by genre, director, props, setting…etc. Isn’t it just unbelievable that you can even choose Action  and under this category choose whether you want a clip with a cough or a bump or a cry? Isn’t it just as amazing that you can choose the clip by Mood; do you want something inspiring,creepy or maybe funny?

The whole lesson, designed for intermediate students, comes with Vocabulary, Reading, Listening and Writing exercises. Click HERE to do it

Giving a speech with a nice presentation and using a Wiki

Create your own stuff, Resources, Students' Corner, Writing, Writing skill, , , ,

I thought I would kill two birds with one stone by asking my intermediate students to give a speech  about the advantages and disadvantages of a certain issue (I’ve already published a guide on how to do it here) as before working on pronunciation and intonation  they had to write it  , which ,in this course ,is essential if they want to pass their English exam with flying colours.

I have used a Wiki , from Wikispaces, so that they could choose  from  25 issues the one they fancied most   and the date that suited them best . By doing it with a wiki I  gave them plenty of time to think , rethink and then change their minds about  what they had previously decided.You can see one of the wikis I created here with the instructions on how to use it. I also gave them the option of illustrating their speeches and this is just an example of some of the nice presentations we have enjoyed.

This one has been done by Andrea Martínez Pérez. Thanks Andrea! It looks great!

Road to Grammar

Grammar, Vocabulary, , , ,

Road to Grammar is a great site to practise grammar and vocabulary. One of the best things about this site, in my opinion, is that if you choose the wrong answer in the quiz  and you click on NOTES, it provides  a note explaining why your answer is correct or incorrect.
Apart from these quizzes there’s a section that I love called Games. My favourite one is called FLUENT and it allows two students to play. Be careful if you choose to play, it’s kind of addictive!
I also recommend trying the Extra Practice section and the Downloads, which has some great PDFs for students and teachers. And last but not least, there’s a section called Road to Grammar JR dedicated to young learners