Tag Archives: writing
Lesson Plan: Films
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
Improving writing skills
This is an activity I’m going to do tomorrow with my intermediate students and I thought someone might find it useful. It can be done to revise vocabulary and make students write, a skill we often neglect in class. By including visual aid I have made the role of the teacher seem less important and therefore encouraged autonomous learning.
In this activity we will be revising vocabulary, mainly phrasal verbs with “turn” and verbs followed by infinitive or/and -ing.
How to do it:
Ask students to work in pairs and give each pair a blank sheet of paper. Tell students they are going to use their imagination to write a dialogue .Give students a situation they can start with (for ex two flatmates talking about their plans for the weekend; their names Christina and George). The aim of the exercise is to build up a dialogue using the prompt you display in the photopeach slideshow. Once they have written their sentence containing the prompt they have to pass their paper to the students on the left who must continue the story using the next prompt. Sometimes an additional sentence will be necessary to transition form one idea to the next.
Collect their dialogues and stick them on the walls of the class for everybody to read
Revising – Using Prompts to Revise Vocabulary on PhotoPeach
Click here to see a sample of the dialogue. I wasn’t very inspired!
Giving a speech with a nice presentation and using a Wiki
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!
Voicethread and my students
I’ve been meaning to use this tool for quite a long time but the right time never seemed to come.
I think this little dialogue performed by my most elementary students
is a nice way of showing you what Voicethread is. VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate slides and leave comments in 5 ways – using voice (with a mic or telephone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam).
I want to thank María Sánchez and Rocío Ibias in the first dialogue and Eva Bedia and Ainhoa Nuevo in the second (from IES Cesar Rodríguez – Grado) for their enthusiam. Thanks girls, I would never have done it without you!
To use Voicethread you need to register but it only takes a minute and it can help you a lot improve your speaking and writing abilities. How ?
- You can record yourself describing pictures
- You can add comments to photographs
- You can tell a story using different pictures
It also has a lot of potential for teachers.
- I intend to use it for debates on issues: by asking students either to record themselves or type their own ideas
- I have already used it to record students doing role-plays
I’m sure you have plenty of ideas to use VoiceThread. Why don’t you share them with us ? Please, send a post if you want to contribute with your own ideas.
