Tag Archives: writing

A Guessing Game Using Tenses

Games, Grammar and Exercises, , , , , , , ,

Clear a spot in your lesson plan for this engaging activity because you are going to love it. This is a small writing guessing activity using Present Perfect Simple and Present Perfect Continuous- you can also throw in Past Simple if you are feeling adventurous-  with an added touch of technology.

  • Skills and subskills: writing, vocabulary, speaking  and grammar
  • Strategy: whole class, individual work, whole class
  • Level: B1,B2
  • Magic Touch: Wordwall
Step 1: Learning Vocabulary: Jobs

Revise vocabulary related to jobs using the FlipTiles template on Wordwall- see the game below. If you don’t want to create your own, you can always use mine. I’d be honoured.

In the Flip Tiles, you will see vocabulary for professions or jobs they already know like  teacher, architect… and some more challenging ones like priest, street vendor or surgeon. That was the idea, to revise old content and introduce new.

And so, we spent some time guessing the words and flipping the tiles.

Bonus. Fun revising activity:  after revising all the vocabulary on the tiles, I pointed at one job and instructed students to repeat after me but only if the word matches the tile and remain silent if I was making a mistake. Fun! I told you.

More? Yes! You can do the same with pronunciation. Instruct students to repeat after you only when you have pronounced the word correctly. 😊(most of the times  I give myself away when doing this exercise)

Step 2: Writing. Using Grammar.

Individually, students choose a job from the ones displayed.

Ask students to write clues for this job without mentioning the job. Tell them they will then read their sentences aloud one by one and the class will have to guess their job.

They will need to write three sentences:

  1. Using the present perfect continuous
  2. Using the present perfect
  3. Optional: using the past simple

Example.

  • I have been training all morning  ( 3 points)
  • I have scored two goals today (2 points)
  • Yesterday, I played a match (1 point)
Step 3: Here comes the fun

Ready to play? Divide the class into 2 teams. Instruct a student from Team A to read his/her first sentence, ie, his/her first clue to the job. If members of the other team guess the job only by listening to the first sentence, they score 3 points; if the second sentence needs to be read, they score 2 points and well, you know what the score is if the student needs to read sentence number 3 or if they can’t guess the job.

I hope you have enjoyed this little game. If you use it, let me know how it goes.

 

My Go-To Websites when Correcting Students’ Essays

General,

And again, it is the month of the year that I hate the most. I love my job. I love teaching but I hate marking exams, especially essays.

I guess it is easy to just cross out mistakes  but if you want to do a decent job and offer feedback and provide alternatives to what they have written, then it can be a hard job and even become a daunting task , especially if you are hard pressed for time, you are not a native speaker and we are talking about C1 exams.

You might think that after 30 years doing the same, one gets used to it. Well, not me.

For those of you who are, like me,  struggling with this task, the only way to make it more palatable is to take long coffee breaks and  have fun while doing your job. And by fun, I mean revising, and  learning by looking up “things”, and contemplating different  alternatives  to offer valuable feedback.

These are my fave go-to websites when correcting essays. What are yours?

  1.  Cambridge Dictionary: to look up the different spellings of a word.
  2. WordHippo: in the same dictionary, you have lots of features, but I use it mainly for synonyms and antonyms. I have blogged about it here.
  3. WordReference: invaluable dictionary for translation.
  4. Ozdic: the best collocations dictionary ever.
  5. Sentence Dict: to see how words or expressions are used in context.
  6. HiNative: a free app where native speakers answer all your questions. I have blogged about it here.
  7. GrammarBook: lots of tips on grammar and vocabulary. Type your question in the search box.
  8. Linguee: It is like a bilingual dictionary but for sentences. I have blogged about it here.

Awesome Sentence Dictionary: to Study How Words are Used in Context

Dictionaries, ,

Native speakers – no offence meant- are likely to sniff at this kind of dictionaries, but for non-native learners, they can really be an enormous help.

Standard dictionaries can, of course, provide the learner with other very important information about a word/ expression  and they can even exemplify with a couple of sentences. Well, it is not enough. Sometimes, what you need to see is how the word collocates with others and how it  is used in different contexts. That’s why when I found this dictionary, I immediately thougth: “I need to share this”.

Over the years, I have recommended others like sentenceyourdictionary  , but    https://sentencedict.com/   is a game-changer.  In this dictionary, you can write a combination of words like “potable water”,”natural resources” or “take for granted” and it will show you- obviously depending on the chunk of words- lots of examples you can study and use.

Hope it helps you pass your exams with flying colours!

Ckeck also, Six Amazing Websites that Make your Writing Stronger

 

 

 

The Environment: Do we Really Care?

Lesson Plan: Advanced, , , , ,

This month many of us, teachers and students alike,  are celebrating the anniversary of all kinds of things we had no idea would define the year ahead of us.  I distinctly remember the day when only two or three students turned up for class and  myself saying things like: “this soon will pass” and “I will see you in a fortnight! before going into confinement.

With human activity slowing down due to the strict restrictions, March will probably also mark the month when our planet could breathe some fresh air for the first time in decades.  Reversing decades of destruction is, of course, not possible in such a short time, but at least, we could have a glimpse of what the earth would feel like without fossil fuels.

The lesson I am sharing with you today is, as you have probably guessed, explores the theme of the environment and is meant for C1 students.

I have designed the lesson using my favourite tool ever, Spark Adobe Page, but in the presentation, you will find links to other websites that will help my students work on vocabulary relevant to talk about this topic, enhance their listening skills by watching videos and discuss questions to boost their speaking abilities. Also, at the end of the post, you can have a look at a writing collaborative activity using Google Slides.

Before you jump right into the lesson in Spark Adobe, perhaps you would like to explore some vocabulary related to the environment.  I have used the awesome tool Flippity. I cannot embed the activity but click on the image to have a good look at all the possibilities it offers for introducing, revising and reinforcing.  As you can see, I have created an activity with a template, but then I can reuse it in a number of different ways. That’s what I call, a real time-saver!


Ready to explore the lesson? This is what you will find in this visual session

  • Natural Disasters: Vocabulary  and exercises
  • Natural disasters: Conversation questions
  • National Geographic repository of videos explaining natural disasters
  • Man-made disaster Video activity with a pronunciation game
  • Environment: vocabulary and games
  • Speaking: conversation questions to  use vocabulary  in context

The Environment. Do we really care?

To round up the lesson, I gave students a writing activity using Google slides in editing mode.  This beautiful template has been designed by Paula from Slides Mania. Thanks; Paula, I think I can call myself a Slides Maniac.


By the way, if you want students As and Bs to work on their questions at the same time, it might be a good idea to use a Chrome extension to split the screen into two. I use Tab Resizer. But, if you do not want to install an extension on the Chrome bar, you can always do it manually.

  1. Depress the left mouse button and “grab” the window.
  2. Keep the mouse button depressed and drag the window all the way over to the RIGHT of your screen. …
  3. Now you should be able to see the other open window, behind the half window that’s to the right

I hope you have enjoyed the lesson

Digital Gallery Walks with QR Codes for Creative Writing

General, , ,

Before this pandemic started, way back in January 2020, I created lots of activities where students had to stand up and move around the class. These activities were SO engaging, perhaps even more than playing a game with bells or any other prop I am so keen on using in my classes.

The majority of the questions I get asked via email or on the blog are from teachers asking me to share ideas that can somehow substitute this “moving around” the class. It is not easy. So far, I have found nothing that can substitute movement in class; we can only try out different activities and alternatives and hope for the best.

 

One of my favourite activities is  Gallery Walks. Sadly, we will have to do without traditional gallery walks for a while but, if you have read my previous post, you will have read about a nice alternative. Yes. Virtual. So, hi and hello and welcome to a new era: Digital Gallery Walks. And this time, with a task that I have pompously titled Gallery Walks with QR Codes for Creative Writing.

QR Codes? Why not? We’re all pretty familiar with QR Codes nowadays, aren’t we? Even my 80-year-old mum has a QR Reader on her mobile phone. So, nobody is going to be telling you they cannot do the task because they don’t have a QR Reader installed in their mobiles.

So, ready? Let’s dive into the task! What’s the idea and what’s the final product?

The idea is that students, with the same story starter and in a semi-guided activity, write different stories using only 4 posters. How? by doing a virtual gallery walk using QR codes while, at the time, prompting them to use picture-prompted vocabulary, grammar, connectors and linkers. That is, the whole package!

Aims:

  • to write a mystery story (or any other genre)
  • to boost students’ writing skills
  • to stimulate students’ creativity
  • to encourage the use of connectors
  • to “force” them to use a variety of newly-acquired grammar structures

A step-by-step guide to designing the activity

Step 1: Creating the posters

The first step is to design the posters. For my activity, I designed  4 different posters containing, each of them,  a collage with 4 pictures, a couple of connectors or linkers and some grammar. I used Canva to create my posters.

Step 2. Creating the QR Codes

The next step is creating the QR Codes for each of the posters. I have used QR Code Monkey for this activity because it allows you to insert a number inside the QR Code and for this activity, I needed to number the Codes. To create a code, you just need to paste the URL of your posters and get the QR Code. You can see the QRCodes for my posters below. Wanna try if they work? Open your QR Reader and scan them!

Next, photocopy the QR Codes and stick the 4 QR Codes to the deks with sellotape or, alternatively, give students a photocopy with the task.

Step 3: Explaining the activity

Desks in my class are now arranged in rows. There are 4 rows. I called the first row: student A; the second row, student B …etc

I gave all students the same story starter and instructed Student As to scan QR Code 1; Student Bs QR Code 2; Student Cs,  QR Code 3, and Students Ds, QR Code 4. I explained that they needed to continue the story using one or more pictures from the poster; at least a connector or linker and the grammar point.

I gave students about 5 minutes to continue the story and then we “gallery walked” to the next poster. This means that I told As to scan QR code number 2; Bs QR code number 3; Cs QR code number 4 and Ds QR code number 1.

Repeat procedure every 5 minutes until students have used all 4 posters.

Step 4:  Giving feedback

I collected all the stories and corrected the most important mistakes. While students were busy doing another activity, I put their stories on the walls outside the class so that they could read some of the stories on their way out of the building.

Download my activity here