Tag Archives: onlinetools

Game: Team Crossword Challenge

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My favourite way to start a lesson is by involving all my students in an activity that helps them revise previous content.

I usually like to engage my students in a fun activity, most of the time teacher-guided, and that will require their attention and active participation. It can be quite challenging, though, because my classes start at 3 pm, right after lunch, and most of them are feeling pretty full and sluggish. (Side note: I live in Spain.)

For this activity, we will complete a crossword using clues related to work vocabulary, but this game can be easily tailored to any vocabulary or level of difficulty. So, if you are looking for a fun and engaging way to test your students’ vocabulary and teamwork skills, you’ll love this game.

As expected, being a technology enthusiast, I have used a digital tool to design a crossword that is completely adapted to the vocabulary I have taught my students.

  • Crossword game
  • Teacher-paced
  • Topic: Work
  • Level: B2+
How to play

The rules of the game are:

  • Divide the class into two groups, with each group choosing a representative.
  • A coin flip will determine which team starts the game.
  • The active team will select a number, and the corresponding definition will be read out loud.
  • The active team has 10 seconds to provide an answer, which will be given by their representative. If the answer is correct, the team can keep playing. Yes, they keep on playing.
  • If the team cannot provide an answer or makes a mistake within the time limit, the other team will take their turn.
  • The game is won by the team that correctly answers the final question.

Note:Click on the red arrows in the top right corner to enlarge the crossword.

Tool used: Learningapps

Spice Up Your Writing Lessons with the Noun Roulette

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Let’s talk about writing today! If you’re searching for a writing activity that is engaging, effective, promotes collaborative work, and takes only about 20 minutes to complete, then look no further! I have a simple yet effective activity that can help you achieve all these goals.

As an educator, I am always looking for new ways to help my students improve their writing skills. That’s why I’m excited to share an activity that I’ve created which has proven to be both effective and engaging for students. In this case, it’s been used in a C1 level class, but it can easily be used with any level.  In this blog post, I’ll be explaining the details of this activity and providing examples of how it has helped my students write more advanced texts. If you’re looking for a fun and creative way to help your students improve their writing, then keep reading!

This activity consists of two parts, with the first part being designed specifically for C1 students, or possibly strong B2 students. If you teach lower levels, you’ll need to create your own slides for Part 1 of the activity, but you can still use Part 2 and 3 in this post.

Part 1: The theory

I have created this brief presentation to target some specific points to help them write more advanced sentences. We have focused on 5 key points, including reduced relative sentences, order of the adjectives and using a noun as a compound adjective.

In the last slide, you will find the Noun Roulette Randomizer. Yay!

Improving writing de cristina.cabal

Part 2:  The Noun Roulette Randomizer

Time to recycle spare photocopies!  Cut them into strips of paper large enough to write a long sentence on.

  • Ask students to pair up and give each pair 3 or 4 strips of paper.
  • Display the noun roulette and explain that it will randomly select a noun. For example: collection.
  • Click here to see the roulette in action. To create your own, click here and type your own words. Easy-peasy!!

  • In their pairs, they will have about 2 minutes to come up with their best sentence by incorporating some of the points worked with in the first part of this activity. They must include the noun “collection”.
  • In the meantime, I’ve written the word ‘collection’ on a post-it note and posted it on a visible part of our classroom wall.
  • Once they have finished writing their “advanced” sentence, we will put them up on the wall, surrounding the noun. You can use Sellotape or Blue-tack for this.
  • Select a new noun with the roulette and do it all over again. I have done this 3 or 4 times.
What is your role as a teacher?  Yes, you need to be working, too. Once they have placed their sentences on the walls, correct their mistakes.
Part 3:  Voting
Once the sentences have been written and mistakes have been corrected, instruct students to stand up in pairs and read all the sentences surrounding the nouns. They will now need to vote for the sentence they think is the best in terms of showing a more advanced level, regardless of the mistakes they might have made. To mark the sentence they like best, they will just have to put a tick on the strip of paper containing the sentence, as you can see in the picture.
This has two aims:
1. To help students identify their own and their peers’ mistakes, which is a valuable learning experience.
2. By voting on the best sentence, students come to understand their own ability to distinguish between writing that meets the C1 level and writing that falls short.

Flowers by Miley Cyrus in my Class

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I can’t. I couldn’t resist the temptation of using this song in class. I know you have heard it everywhere, as it has become a global hit in just a few days. And as it turns out, it is also in my English class.

How can I incorporate the song into my lesson plan in a way that goes beyond just a fill-in-the-blank exercise?  Easy. We are going to do an activity that combines some of my favourite ingredients:

  • A touch of technology
  • A game-like speaking activity
  • Singing? if not singing, lip-syncing.

STEP 1. Before the game: working on form
  • Show students the lyrics with the gaps and ask them to predict the lexical category or part of speech that could fit each of the 10 gaps in the song: is it a noun, an adjective, a preposition or maybe an article? Allow a couple of minutes for this task. You might want to show an example.

For example, I wrote a letter___ my mother (students will most likely agree, they’ll need   a preposition to fill in this gap)

STEP 2:  Defining and Guessing

  • Hide the gapped text. To begin the activity, the text will be hidden from the students’ view.
  • Students will work in pairs. Student A will face the board. Student B will face away and write on his/her notebook numbers 1 -10 (there are 10 gaps/words to be guessed)
  • Tell students you’ll write the missing words on the board in random order, but each of the words will be identified with a number.
  • Write the first of the missing words in the cloze on the board, and ask student A to define the word, or give a synonym or antonym for student B to guess and write down. For example, if the word on the board is “1. wrote”, Student A might say, “number 1 is a verb in the past, and you use a pen or a pencil to do it”. If Student B guesses the word, he will write in his notebook, next to number 1 wrote. If he cannot guess the word in the allotted time, he will write 1-___.
  • Tell students you’ll write a new word every 30 seconds.
  • Continue in the same way until you have written all the missing words on the board. Remember that the words should be written in random order.

STEP 3:  Fill-in the Gaps Race.

  • Once they have all the words, Students A and B will work together to complete the gapped test.
  • Place a bell on your table. The first pair to complete the task ( i.e. putting the words in the right order to complete the lyrics of the song) rushes to the teacher’s desk. The teacher checks that the exercise is correct and if it is, they ring the bell on your table (well, if you have a bell to ring). From that moment, the rest of the class will have one minute to finish the exercise.

STEP 3:  Singing or lip-syncing

Yes. If some students need a pit of persuading, tell them it is a very good exercise to improve pronunciation.

STEP 4: Conversation questions. We talk a bit now.

  • Can you describe a time when you experienced a heartbreak?
  • How did you cope with the feelings of heartbreak?
  • Have you ever helped a friend through a heartbreak? How did you support them?

Chat GPT: Mind-Blowing Artificial Intelligence to Make your Day

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Artificial intelligence (AI) has taken giant steps in the past month. The tool I bring you today is mind-blowing, even terrifying, and I am not exaggerating even a bit! I’ve been trying the website for a few days now, and I have already told all my friends about it, and now I am telling you. I cannot keep a secret this big! This is way more than a time-saver!

The website is

  • Free
  • Requires registration and some verification. Do it. It is worth it.
  • I have tried it in Spanish English, French, and German.
  •  Its URL is https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/. Click on TRY to SIGN UP:
What can this tool do? The question is, what can’t it do?

Some things I have tried:

1. Write a formal letter to a client complaining about a product.(Personal note: my sis is constantly

2. Write an essay about unusual customs. Then I asked it to write the same thing in a more informal style, and then again using only 50 words. We can also ask it to write in a way that a 6-year-old would understand (for lower levels).

3. (personal) How to fix a wooden table bitten by a dog.

4. A list of the advantages and disadvantages of using a mobile phone in the classroom.

5. Vocabulary for C1 education (it was very basic).

6. Write 5 multiple-choice questions about education vocabulary with four options.

7. Correct this sentence: He took me  granted because doesn’t love me.

8. Explain the difference between curriculum and syllabus so that a child would understand it.

In short, the list of things it can do for you is endless.

Limitations: ChatGPT sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers.” So while the material might come out sounding original and authentic, there is a good chance it may also be wrong. Also, it does not have access to current events or up-to-date information about specific countries. Its knowledge is based on a snapshot of the internet from 2021, and it is not able to browse the web or access new information.