Monthly Archives: January 2020

Spice Up your Class and Maximize Learning with Traditional Games

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What’s the first thing that pops into your head when I say traditional games? Bingos, crosswords, board games? This website has them all. Free. Customizable. Yay!

Let me start by saying that tomorrow is Monday. Monday, and January. Not my fave month, to be honest. I know it has always been there, in between December and February but I find January dull, boring, lifeless and one of the darkest months of the year.  If I were talking about food in this blog, I would say a Monday in January requires comfort food. But this blog is not about yummy recipes, it’s about ideas, ramblings, tools, teaching and learning. So, let’s talk not about comfort food but about comfort digital tools. Tools that can make a Monday feel like a Friday.  Is it possible? It is!! Just have a look at this website.  It has all the right ingredients:

  • It’s free and fun
  • Membership is free but you do not have to register unless you want to save content.
  • You can download the content you create.
  • It has lots of different fun templates you can edit to create exercises relevant for your classes.

It is called Half a Crossword, but don’t let the name deceive you. It is much more than a web to create crosswords. You can create a variety of games but what is most valuable for me are the ideas it provides to make the exercises come alive.

What kind of materials can you create?

  • Half a crossword
  • Sentence correction
  • Sentence Unscramble
  • Number Bingo
  • Board Game
  • Word Bingo
  • and some more….

HOW TO CREATE AN ACTIVITY

  • Choose the activity you would like to create
  • There are 3 steps you will need to follow
  • Number 1. Depending on the activity, enter the word, sentence or question in the space provided.
  • Number 2. Have a look at the maximum of words or characters…etc specified for each activity
  • Number 3. Preview it and print it. You can also save it if you have registered
  • Have a look at the label named HOW, where you can read how to use the activity with your students

Let’s kick off this week with, for example, half a crossword to revise the vocabulary taught the previous week. How does it sound to you?

Guess my Age: a Fun Game to Practise Modal Verbs of Possibility and Certainty

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Have you ever seen the contest  “El Concurso del Año” on TV? It is on Channel 4. I had never seen it before and I don’t think I am going to see it again any time soon. I found it incredibly boring and uninteresting. But dull as it was, I realized it had great potential to teach modal verbs. Yep. That sad! I am watching TV and  I can only think of teaching. So guess what, I am about to make this contest your new favourite thing to teach modals of possibility and certainty.

  • Now, what is the goal of the game? to guess the exact age of 6 celebrities. 
  • What’s the target language?  modal verbs of certainty and possibility in both their simple and perfect forms.
  • What skills are we working with? speaking and writing.

Materials: you will need blank slips of  paper  (a good opportunity to recycle the back of some old photocopies)

These are the basic rules of the game, which I have slightly modified to meet my students’ needs but hey, the ingredients in this game are just really appealing: celebrities, music, interaction, fun, new technologies…etc and lots of learning.

  1. The class is divided into teams. The aim of the game is to find out the exact age of some famous people while using the target language. In this case, modal verbs.
  2. Teams will be offered a clue to help them guess the exact age.

There are 3 types of clues:

  • the SONG ( one song released on the year of birth of the famous person)
  • the EVENT (an important event of the year the celebrity was born)
  • the CELEBRITY ( another famous person born in the same year)

To see how to play, and to play this fun game, open the interactive presentation below.

Personal experience: students really enjoyed the game and in their excitement, they tended to say just the age or slip into Spanish. Remind them to use the target modal verbs and English.

Note: To enlarge this beautiful interactive presentation created with Genial.ly, click on 3 dots and then on the arrows.

Agony Aunts: a No-Prep Activity to Practise Giving and Receiving Advice

Speaking, Writing skill, , , , ,

Are you gearing up for the first classes of the new year?  I  am. And I want to give my students a back-to-the-grind activity which would get them into the right mood, namely, engaged, learning and having fun.

Have you ever heard about “agony aunts” or“agony uncles”? I am sure you have! In case you have no clue about what I am talking about, this is the definition the Cambridge dictionary gives.

an agony aunt is a person, usually a woman, who gives  advice to people with personal problems, especially in a regular magazine or newspaper article

I bet you all have a famous Agony Aunt in your country.

Inspired by this well-known figure, I have designed this effective activity with two aims

  • To practice writing skills
  • To give students the opportunity to practise the language used to ask and give advice
  • To provide speaking practice interacting with different students

Materials: a piece of paper with “Thank you”  written on it for every student in the class. You can easily ask them to do it before the activity begins.

Step 1: Writing

1. Reading a model.

  • Ask students to discuss, in pairs, who is better at giving advice, men or women.  Ask for feedback.
  • Using the OHP, display the picture below and read it with your students.I hope nobody takes offence, it is just meant for fun!

2. Writing. Individually, ask students to write about a problem they might have. They can also invent it. Walk around the class helping them with grammar and vocabulary.

Step 2 Revising vocabulary to give and ask for advice

Write two columns on the board; one with the heading Giving Advice and the other one with the heading Asking for Advice and ask students to contribute to both. It could look like this

Giving Advice

  • if I were you, I’d…
  • I think you should…
  • In my opinion, you shouldn’t
  • Why don’t you…?
  • I would advise you to
  • You might try….

Asking for Advice

  • What should I do ( about)…?
  • What do you think I should…?
  • Can/ could you give me some advice about…?
  • Do you have any advice on—?
  • Could you recommend…?
  • What do you suggest I do?
  • What ought I to do?

 

STEP 3. Speaking

Divide the class into two groups: Agony aunts and Advice seekers. Using the speed chatting technique, the two groups sit facing each other; there should be an agony aunt for each advice seeker. If you have an odd number of students, consider participating yourself.

The idea is that each problem seeker will tell the agony aunt their problem and the agony aunt after considering the problem, should offer a piece of advice. After two minutes, a bell rings and the advice seekers should move one position to talk to the next aunt agony.

Once they have talked to all the agony aunts, they will need to choose the best piece of advice given for their problem. They will thank the Agony Aunt by giving him/her a card with the words Thank you. The student who gets more Thank you cards  is named Agony Aunt of the Day year and gets a big applause from the class

Now, they change roles and the Agony Aunts become advice seekers and vice-versa.

Ed Tech Quickie: Videocyborgh

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This is a section of the blog I’ve meaning to write for a while. I have called it Ed Tech Quickies because my intention is to write very short posts sharing with you links, tips or tricks that can help us spice up learning or just make our classes more visual and more engaging. Here we go.

If you cannot rely on your Internet connection, Videocyborg is just what you need to download a video from any website, even from Facebook or Twitter

Just paste the URL of the video you want to download in the box, click Download Video and that’s it. Ready to take it to class. You don’t need to register and it’s free.

 

The Perfect Gift: a Listening and Speaking Lesson Featuring Rihanna

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Hiii! Hello! Happy New Year!  Here I am again! Back to the grind or so they say!

Almost a month has passed since my last post. And this break ends right now. The holiday break has me going mad and sometimes I don’t even know what day of the week it is. So, I have started preparing classes. Sort of miss them. Can you believe it?

Anyway, I feel so full of energy and I have prepared so many activities that I have written three posts on a row. I will refrain from publishing them all at once and save them for a rainy day.

This first one has to do with presents, something that almost everyone gets these holidays. I know that some people don’t get any presents; some other people don’t like giving presents and some others don’t like receiving them. It does not matter. This lesson fits all moods.

Warm-up

Ask the class to discuss in pairs or in threes the question: What do you prefer, giving or receiving presents? Why?  Get class feedback.

Ask students if they know the singer Rihanna and the famous American talk show host, Oprah Winfrey. I think Rihanna is world-famous but I am not so sure they will know who Oprah is. If necessary, show them a picture. Tell them they are going to watch a video where the protagonists are Rihanna, her mother and Oprah Winfrey. Ask them to predict the content of the video.

Listening Comprehension: Back to the boards

Ask students to work in pairs: one of them faces the board and the other one faces away from the board. Play the video without sound and ask the student facing the board to describe to his partner what is happening in the video.

Listening Comprehension: the questions

You can ask students to do it online or you can print the PDF. If you decide to do it online, you will get feedback immediately; just press, see your score.

After the listening, ask students: What is the most expensive present you have ever given to someone?

Speaking

You know when you are on holidays, and have some time to spare and decide to try some crazy stuff? What you see below is the result of me having some time on my hands. Obviously, the idea can be simplified and the gift drawn on the board. But, as I said, I was feeling creative and with nothing to do.

As I have 24 students, I have designed two identical gifts (one in green as in the picture and the other one in red). The idea is to divide the class into two teams and assign each team a different gift.  On one side, they can see nonmaterial gifts; they should choose the one they would like to possess in 2020 and on the other side, a conversation question about gifts and presents.

Ask students to remain standing. The two groups should not mix – easy, as the two gifts have different coloured cards, red and green- and they should talk to everybody in their groups asking and answering questions. Encourage them to elaborate on their answers but let’s keep it flexible.

Click here to get the PDF with the conversation questions on the other side of the card.

Enjoy teaching, enjoy learning!