Tag Archives: homework

Lesson Plan: Retelling an article using Word Clouds

Create your own stuff, In the Computer Room, Lesson Plan: Intermediate, Speaking, , , ,

This is a lesson I did with my upper-intermediate students in the computer room and I thought it might be useful to some teachers. The main idea is to retell a text you have previously worked with in class. This is important as  otherwise the task of retelling might be a bit  difficult for weaker students. This is how I did it.

♣ First, for homework, I asked students to reread the text several times .

♣ Then, in the computer room, I asked students to form groups of 3 or 4  and divided the text according to the number of students in each group .

♣ Now, individually and  using the website Word it Out, which is a word cloud generator, I asked them to select the key words in their texts, type them in Word It Out and generate the word cloud. If two words need to be together, it is easy with this generator. Imagine “suffer from”, you only need to insert _ between the two words and they’ll be kept together in the cloud.

♣ Students in groups again, retell the story with the help of the generated  word clouds.

I especially liked this exercise as students get a lot of fun out of it and they collaborate every step of the way. Here are the word clouds generated by a group. I hope you find it useful!

Swayable: a picture survey

Create your own stuff, Writing skill, , ,

In my neverending quest to integrate technology in my classes I have stumbled upon this little tool , Swayable, which is mainly intended to create surveys with the added feature of allowing you to upload an image from your computer or use one from the web  which is, in my humble opinion, its best feature as it heightens its potential in the classroom.

I have been thinking it could be very useful when explaining comparatives or when asking students to write about the advantages or disadvantages of a certain issue.

Once published you can embed it in your blog and  the students can write in the form of comments (you have to click just below the picture where it says “Click to Sway) to your Swayable.

The first example is for students to practise the comparative and the second for them to practise writing about the advantages and disadvantages of, in this case, working and studying.
And then it follows a little tutorial to help you ceate your own Swayable






 

Illustrating your stories: Storybird

Create your own stuff, Resources, Writing skill, , , ,

Has your teacher asked you to write a story ? or Have you asked your students to tell you a story? No matter whether you are a student or a teacher reading this, storybird is a very creative innovative tool which will turn writing tasks into a funny game.

How does it work?

♥Click on “Sign up” in the top right corner to register for an account and  you’ll be sent an email to confirm your registration.

♥Pick up artwork  and start writing your story.

♥The story can be printed out, shared  or read directly from the computer. It can of course be projected on a screen, which is  a  very nice to share what you’ve done.

And this is my storybird! I’m afraid I didn’t have much time to do it either  better or longer !

 

 

Write a comic with www.writecomics.com

Create your own stuff, Funny Stuff, In the Computer Room, Resources, Writing, , ,


It’s never been easier to write a comic. This fantastic site http://www.writecomics.com/ allows you to create your own comics in just a few minutes and you don’t even need to register.
It’s great to do with your own students in the computer room or, alternatively, set this task as homework. I can almost see my students’ faces lighting up when I tell them.

How to do it:

♥Choose a background by clicking on your choice

♥Choose the people or the animals. You can also add props and/or aliens

♥Then, the speech bubbles, as many as you need

♥Type the text

♥If you change your mind about something, double-click to delete it

♥Add as many scenes as you need

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The only thing I don’t like about this site is that you cannot save or embed your comic strip, but. you can copy the url or use a screen capture program to take a picture of it and then embed it into your blog.

Some ideas:
To practise tenses
To write role-plays
To make an interview

Improving your writing skills

Lesson Plan: Advanced, Resources, Writing, , , , ,

You know that I have been for some time now trying to improve your written work making you aware of the fact that you always tend to use the same simplistic words when you write, even though we both know that you have a wider range of vocabulary. So why not use it? Look at this text and try to replace the verbs “say” and “look” with some others.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click here when you finish to see my suggestions.

“Watch out” ! I said at the top of my voice; but it was already too late. Jim and I both stood there looking at the cyclist flying off his bike and hitting the enormous hole in the road. “Is he hurt?” Jim said quietly, trembling with fear. “I don’t know” I said softly. At that moment the young man slowly lifted his head and looked at us in confusion. “What happened?” he said, in pain. “Where am I?”

Here’s another one. This time replace the words underlined to make it more interesting to the reader. Click here when you finish to see my suggestions.

It was a nice sunny morning when we set off on our journey. The sky looked very blue with only a few small clouds on the distant horizon. The ship we travelled on was big and had good cabins. We must have been halfway there when I was roused from my nap by a bad scream. It took me a while to come to my senses, but then I saw a small woman in front of me, looking very scared.

And now an entertaining task online that shows you how you can develop a simple sentence like ‘I made tea.’ into a detailed text. Go to the website: http://www.telescopictext.com/. You will see the sentence with shaded words, click ing on a shaded you’ll see that part of the sentence expand. Read the new sentence and then choose another part to click on

Homework: Create your own detailed sentences from one of these:
– I went to the beach.
– I saw a film
Once you have finished your sentence you can post it in the comments below and I’ll publish it.