Category Archives: In the Computer Room

English Media Lab

Games, Grammar, In the Computer Room, Vocabulary, , , ,

I’m sorry I haven’t posted for some days now but I’m up to my eyes. Preparing and marking exams takes up most of my free time. June is chaos!

I imagine you have plenty of ideas  when half the class is taking an exam and the others ,sort of have already passed all the tests, but here’s another one in case you’re running short of them.

I have taken my students to the computer room and let them roam a bit about this website. English Media Lab offers Grammar, Vocabulary , Pronunciation  , Videos and Games for different levels, though I have only used the  Elementary Level. They have all loved the Memory Games revising Vocabulary and they’ve made me promise to take them to the computer room once again before the course ends.

The website is a bit confusing because it has a lot of things and it might sometime take you outside their own website. I don’t really mind as long as the new website has what I’m looking for. Anyway , have a look at it and tell me what you think!

ELLLO : Practise.Listening.Comprehension

In the Computer Room, Listening, , ,

Are you looking for a site to do some Listening Practice? Then, you have just found it!

ELLLO stands for English Listening Lesson Library Online and it’s an amazing site with tons of listening activities to help you improve your listening skills with audio, video, quizzes and vocabulary.  It is created by Todd Beuckens, an English teacher based in Japan.

The activities contain the tapescript and some  comprehension questions, vocabulary quizzes and  also images to help you understand.

Choose your level (beginner to advanced) and then choose the activity.

♥Interviews: natural conversations with various speakers of English that offer multiple listening options

 ♥ Listening Games: where students listen to audio about a topic and choose the picture that matches the audio.

♥Mixer: a survey that features six different speakers answering the same question. Students can easily follow the topic and compare the various responses. Each speaker’s segment comes with two questions that appear at the end of the audio segment to develop test taking skills.

♥News Center: an animated newscast. Each newscast has six stories. For each story, students can try to answer questions about                                                    each news story.

ELLLO is certainly worth a visit!

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A Glogster Project : My Favourite Sport!

Create your own stuff, In the Computer Room, Students' Corner, Writing, , , ,

Every year I find a reason to use Glogster in the classroom (click here to see my first article about Glogster) I think most of my students, though camera-shy, like to see their work published. I find that Glogster is the ideal tool to use with twelve or thirteen- year- old students because it ‘s very visual and students have a lot of fun deciding which frame to use for their photograph or text , which video they want to embed ( In English, of course) . Yes, they have fun but what they probably don’t realize is that they are using English from Step 1 of the project.
In fact, after finishing our Glogster, I wrote on the board  several of the words they had been using  (frame, text, wall, image, tools, gallery, upload, cartoon…etc) and they were happy when they recognised it.

Have you never tried Glogster? Give it a go! It’s a lot of fun!

Click here to see it better!

5 students using MyBrainShark for their landmarks presentations

Audio, Create your own stuff, In the Computer Room, Slides, Speaking, Students' Corner

Did you think you have seen the last of MyBrainshark in this blog? Far from it!

Now I have engaged my students (level A2) into giving a presentation about a landmark of their choice. The fact that they did it at home and at their own pace , repeating as many times as they wished until they were completely satisfied and choosing their own photographs to illustrate it must have boosted up their confidence in using English because , with the exception of some students, most of them made a great effort and passed with flying colours.

Below are some of my students and their MyBrainsharks. They are: Victor Areces, Sara Días, Paula Fdez, Jesus Fdez and Paula García.

And here are their landmarks.
Grand Arch by Victor Areces

Petra by Sara Días

Ellis Island by Paula Fdez

Petronas Towers by Jesús Fdez

The Arch of Triumph by Paula Garcia

If you’re interested in using MyBrainshark  , click here to see my tutorial in Spanish ,

Teaching teens: Present Simple and continuous

A word on Grammar, In the Computer Room, Listening, ,

The first video is very easy to understand and though grammar is not explained as such  students, at the end of this short video,are perfectly aware of  how to use these two tenses.

The next video is a bit longer and it has different sketches, so if I’m running short of time I might decide not to use all of them.

Questions for the different sketches, click here