Tag Archives: online

Video Lessons: TedEd-Lessons Worth Sharing

Audio, Lesson Plan: Intermediate, Listening, , ,

I’ve known about TED (Ideas Worth Spreading) for quite a long time but although I found their videos very interesting I thought they were too long or too difficult for my classes. Now TED has launched a  new  site, called TedEd,  with  a collection of educational video lessons you can choose by subject and view in class or assign as homework. Every video is accompanied by a lesson with Quick Multiple Choice questions that check your general comprehension. If you have one wrong, you can always check with the video hint and you can also have Think questions that further explore the topic.

For teachers , one of the most powerful features is the FLIP THE LESSON where you can customize the lesson by editing the title, giving your own instructions, select  or deselect any multiple choice questions…etc.

This is a lesson I have flipped for my students. I used the video Questions No One Knows the Answer To to give my students some practice using Reported Speech Questions. You can see my lessonhere

 

A Cool Dictionary: Vocabulary.com

Dictionaries, ,

I just love this dictionary! Really ! I love it!  ♥ It’s one of those sites that is worth bookmarking. Have I mentioned it’s called Vocabulary.com?


You might be asking yourselves why all this enthusiasm over a simple dictionary but it’s just that when you see something that is really helpful not only to me, as a teacher, but also to students, you get all cheered up.

Why do I like it?
♥First it has The Challenge Section where you are posed questions about vocabulary and you are given points every time you answer correctly. Better to try it than to explain it! You can also compete against other people if you sign up.


♥Secondly, it has The Dictionary itself. If you sign up whenever you look up a word, you can add it to your learning queue. Each vocabulary word includes a short blurb that is easy to understand and fun to read. The dictionary also provides usage examples from real life, so you can see how words are used in context .

♥Third, The Vocabulary List . You can create your own list of words you need to revise and then do different activities to help you remember them. One of them includes audio.

Now, aren’t you dying to give it a go? Yes? Off you go!

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Ready-To-Go Lessons:Breaking News English

Audio, Listening, Reading, Speaking, Writing skill, , , , ,

I cannot believe I have never posted about Breaking News English. I have been a subscriber for a long, long time. But, you know, sometimes   the things you are more familiar with are the things you more tend to forget to highlight but the site is incredibly helpful.

♥Breaking News English mainly helps you improve listening and reading but also if you read along it’ll help you with your pronunciation.
♥It has more than 1,500 lesson plans based on current events and news.

♥These lesson plans are very useful for the teacher as this site provides warmers, pre, while and after reading/listening activities, discussion ideas, writing suggestions and even homework activities, all related to the news story. There is an MP3 listening you can download or listen online.

Writing Prompts: a writing blog

Writing,

Writing prompts is a blog full of interesting ideas to write about. Ideas that are accompanied by a picture to boost up your imagination and creativity.
We all know that all writers sometimes get stuck, well, students too; but this lack of inspiration will never be used as an excuse if ideas come together with a picture. Prompts can be easily be displayed on a whiteboard and brainstorming can be done before students set out to do the writing task ahead.

Lesson Plan : Personality adjectives

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

Step 1. Look at the mosaic below with the faces of some well-known celebrities and, bearing in mind what you know about them, write a description based on their personalities. Make sure you use personality adjectives. Do not mention the name of the celebrity you are describing as your classmates aim will be to find out who you are describing. Please, don’t be too flattering or too hard on people. Remember that “not all that glitters is  gold”.

Important: the description should be written in the way of a comment to this post. How to do it? at the end of the post, click No Comments (or 9 Comments  if hopefully I have already published nine comments), leave the comments in the right field, repeat the required anti-spam word and click Submit Comment.

Step 2. Let’s have some fun. How would you fancy converting text to music? This funny programme allows you to type any words and it sings them back to you. Try typing some personality adjectives and listen to them sung by different people. The site is called Text to sing.

Step 3. Exercises. Do the following online exercises .

Exercise 1 Exercise 2

Step 4: Writing. How do you see yourself and how others see you? This task, as you can imagine, requires mature students as it involves writing and reading about you. First, students  find a classmate they know pretty well. Secondly, students write about their own personality and then, about their friend’s personality. Encourage students to explain and exemplify why they have chosen a certain adjective to describe them and also to describe a negative trait in their personalities as well as in their friend’s. Students pair themselves and compare what they have written.

Step 5. Singing Hand in my pocket by Alanis Morisette