Tag Archives: speaking

Lesson Plan : Money

Lesson Plan: Intermediate, Speaking, , , , , , , ,

Level: Intermediate

Step 1.  Warm up

A: Students watch the video. Unless they beg for more, I would just play the first  15 seconds, enough for students to focus on the pronunciation of the word “money” which they tend to mispronounce, and on the chorus Money makes the World Go Round, which students will later need to discuss.

B: This second warm-up is a great one. I got it straight from George Chilton‘s blog Designer Lessons – I copy/paste from him–, which I highly recommend.

Ask your students how they would spend a day in their city/town/village without spending any money. What activities could they do? They’re not allowed to stay at home, they have to be out of the house for the whole day.

Put them in small groups and get them to come up with a plan of the day – from 10 am until 8 pm. Conditions – They are allowed to drink water from city water fountains and any food that they find. They should present their plans at the end of this activity.

Step 2. A Bit of Fun with Translation.

Previous to this exercise students have studied Vocabulary related to money, so now it’s their time to show what they have learned.

Students work in pairs or in threes. To make things easier for me, I’ll provide them with slips of paper so that when the time’s up they can raise it up and I can have a quick check. Sentences with mistakes will be automatically discarded and the correct translations will get one point. Time limit: 90 seconds.


Step 3. Speaking. Speed Dating Technique.

♥Photo and explanation of the technique here . 

♥Money Questions here

 

Listening: What is a vegetarian ?

Audio, Create your own stuff, freeware, Lesson Plan: Intermediate, Listening, , , , , , , ,

I want to start this week with a positive thought. It is something I’ve read recently and that has been going around for some days inside my head.

Happiness is not getting what you want . It’s wanting what you have.

I should say that I am normally a glass-full type of person but sometimes, only sometimes,  I need to remind myself.

Well, today I want to share with you this amazing site which has a lot of potential. Educaplay is a platform to create embeddable multimedia teaching activities . You can create interactive engaging activities  like crosswords, matching exercises, dialogues, presentations, tests, dictations , interactive maps, word search puzzles and many more… but what I really like about this website is the possibility of creating  a video quiz  as the one I have posted below .

The structure of the activity, is defined by sequences that are composed of a video, or part of it, and a question that will be the end of the sequence.

To define the sequences, we go through three phases:

  • Video election: We can use the search engine, or if we know, insert its URL directly.
  • Sequence election to be held on the question.
  • Definition of the question: Each question can be configured to ask for the answer in any of the following methods;

              ♥In a written form, by selecting one answer from various options or by  selecting         several answers from various options.

Another important feature is that it is entirely web based so you don’t need to download anything  and … it is free, you only need to register.

And now, have a look at this videoquiz answering the question WHAT IS A VEGETARIAN?

 

What is a Vegetarian?

Four Icebreakers to Get to Know your Students

Funny Stuff, Games, Speaking, ,

that require no preparation 😉

♣The one I like best is Personal Star ,for many reasons but mainly because it requires no preparation  and students always  enjoy a bit of gossip  about their new teacher.

I draw a star on the board and inside it  6  answers to questions about me. (My answers are black , London, December 9, tennis, Terry, English , and meat.)

Tell students that the star contains information about you. Ask them to try to guess the information behind the words by asking questions.If they don’t get the idea give an example. Tell them “My favourite colour is black. What question do you need to ask to find out this information?” Elicit from them, “What’s your favourite colour?” and cross out the word ‘black’ from the star.

Then , put the students in pairs. Ask them to draw their own personal star and put 6 pieces of information about themselves inside. In pairs they can ask each other questions to find out about their partner. When they have all finished, ask them as a group to tell the others what they have found out about their partner.

 

♥Interviewing your partner: Tell students they are going to interview four or five people they don’t know in the class. Ask them to write three or four questions to ask these people. Once it is done, students get up and walk around the classroom

♥Find someone who. .. (bingo)

This is a good icebreaker to practise questions and to get students moving.

Ask students to draw a grid (4 squares across and 4 down) . Now, ask them to fill in the squares with prompts such as : speaks French, likes mice, plays golf…etc.

Make sure students know how to play bingo- this is quite  important , as you can guess. Students get up and walk around asking questions to everybody in the class but they have to have a different name for each grid. So if a student asks a question to a student and this student says “yes” , he should write the name of that student in the grid and move on; if the student says “no” , he can then ask this same student a new question. The first person to get a line down or across shouts “LINE” and the first person to fill in all the boxes with a name shouts  BINGO.

I would , most definitely, encourage follow-up questions  when checking,  with  the students providing the questions- of course.

♥Five Questions. Divide the class in five groups and ask each group to write a question they would like to ask you. In turns , one member of each group comes up to the board and writes the question. The students decide if the question is correct in terms of tenses, spelling …etc. Finally , the student asks the question. Before you tell them  , give the students the chance to guess your answer.

Hope you find them useful and have tons of fun with your students!

 

Picture Description: Holidays in the City or on the Beach

Lesson Plan: Elementary, Picture Description, Speaking, Students' Corner, , , , ,

I wouldn’t like to finish the course without publising another example of picture description. This  time for the Elementary Speaking exam and kindly sent by Noelia Fernández.

Holidays in the city or on the beach


In both photos we can see two very different holiday destinations: a big city and a solitary paradise beach.
The picture on the right was taken at the famous street of New York Times Square. This street is always crowded with tourists, and in this photo I think there are too many. They are carrying photo cameras, video cameras or taking photos with their mobile phones. They are wearing summer clothes because it might be July.
In the other photo, there is a beach with clean sand and clear calm water without waves. In the foreground we see five sunbeds and palms.
In my opinion, the perfect vacation is a mixture of both destinations, a few days in the city to visit museums and emblematic buildings, to see a musical or a theater, to do some sightseeing and to make all the activities that you can, and then, other days at a resort to relax and enjoy the sun, the beach, sleep and enjoy the food.
If you’re looking forward to going to New York ,you need to save money because it is the most expensive city in which I have been, but it seems as if you are in a movie with all the famous places and you think ” I know this and that”.