Tag Archives: A2

Student’s Corner: My hometown

Students' Corner, , , ,

It’s always a pleasure to share with you the work of my hard-working students.

The task was either talking or writing about their hometown and I have to say that I was gladly surprised when most of my students, who had never ever given a speech in English, decided to give a beautiful speech about their hometown. I had some beautiful contributions in written form (like Rodrigo’s and Carmen’s )  but  most of them were given orally and sometimes even accompanied by slides like the one just below, given by Manuel.
These were the guidelines they had to follow and necessarily include in their presentation.

  • Name of their hometown
  • Population
  • Why it is famous
  • Good places to visit
  • Places to eat and relax
  • The best/worst about their hometwon.

To publish Rodrigo and Carmen’s work I have used Issuu

And Manuel’s beautiful presentation of Avilés shared in Slideshare.

Thank you guys! Well done!

Speaking: Describing a Dish

Cooking, Lesson Plan: Elementary, Speaking, , , , ,

Happy New Year to everybody! I am back!!! Hard to get started once again after this longish holiday. It’s been eight days now since we have let 2014 in and it is time we get down to some serious work, don’t you think?

Talking in class about food related things after some huge binge eating and drinking is not precisely what appeals to me most, but unfortunately I cannot choose.
This is an activity I am going to do with my Elementary students after some serious work practising food vocabulary.

The activity is simple. The students are sitting in pairs, one student facing the board and the other with his back to the board. Using the OHP, a picture of a popular dish is displayed. Now, the person seeing the picture has to describe it in as much detail as possible, talking about its ingredients and the way it is cooked and the other person has to guess the dish. Allow them two or three minutes and then display another picture for the other student to do the same. Below are some slides with the  dishes that I am going to use.

Some useful vocab they are likely to use

Nouns: pan, cinnamon, olives, tuna, blood sausage,

Verbs: to beat eggs, to fry, to boil, to add,  to stir with a spoon,to slice (apples)

Some Useful Websites for Elementary Students to Practise Listening

Listening, ,

Have I ever told you that I’m not a morning person? Fortunately, at the EOI, I work the afternoon shift otherwise I don’t think I would be able to get a coherent thought out of my mind in Spanish, let alone in English, and I’m sure this is something my demanding students would not be too happy about.
Have I ever told you that I’m not a Monday person either? I very much prefer Fridays… ha,ha,ha … just joking!

Let’s start Monday with a smile on my face and three cups of coffee in my body and this selection of websites to help my Elementary students improve their Listening Skill. Hope it is helpful,guys!

Create your own Playlist on MentorMob!

Listening : Going Shopping

Listening, , , ,

I am going to teach Elementary Level a lesson about shopping and I have found this very easy short video to get started. There are so many things to learn/revise when you are teaching about going shopping! Teaching Going Shopping gives me the opportunity to revise numbers and prices, the shops in a city, items of clothing and a variety of questions including offers and requests. There will be several steps ending up with the students, hopefully, being able to use interactional language in a role-play situation. An example here

Watch the video (if you don’t want to see the introduction, start 40seconds into the video) and answer the questions. Then, activate the subtitles to check your answers.

Question

♥What does the woman want to buy?

♥What kind of …… is she looking for?

♥How much does the woman think the …….. costs?

♥How much does it really cost?

♥Does she buy it?

Lesson Plan: Talking about Your Hometown .

American Cultural aspects, freeware, Lesson Plan: Elementary, Speaking, Vocabulary, , , , , ,

This is a lesson for Elementary students.

Step 1. Reading and Listening

Mind mapping is a very important  learning tool for visual learners. This mind map has been created with Exam Time, which is very easy to use and  embeddable, a feature I always appreciate.

There are some steps previous to this mind mapping  we wrote on the board, essentially reading and listening about this issue. Form these listenings and readings we gathered and sorted vocabulary that was, then, written on the board.

Step 2. Mind Mapping

What you see below is a nice way of displaying what was written on the board of the classroom  with the help of my students.

por cristina.cabal
Step 3. Speaking

For this activity, instead of the typical photocopy with the list of questions to talk about, I have put students in groups of three or four and given each group a set of cards, which they had to place face down on the table. Students in turns pick up a card and talk for as much as they can about the given question. At this point I give my students the usual talk about how important it is now, to “show off.”

This is a snapshot of the cards. Click here if you want to print them.