Secondary

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Here’s a link to a stream on You Tube which is quite interesting for teaching vocabulary. For an example watch “Clapped Out – Phrasal Adjective – Phrasal Verbs 2 – ESL British English Pronunciation” on YouTube

Collaborative writing activity: ‘Pigeon Impossible’

This activity can be done with any short video, preferably without dialogue.

to begin with, the students are given a series of items of vocabulary taken from the video. For this example, we are using the video ‘Pigeon Impossible’, available from You Tube –

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEjUAnPc2VA

– so the vocabulary would be:

pigeon

Washington Monument

briefcase

doughnut

rocket launcher

The vocabulary is explained, and the students are told that all of the items come from one story, then set to work in groups to write a story which contains all of the vocabulary items given. How much emphasis is given to attempting to predict the original story is up to the teacher. It is interesting to include at least one item of vocabulary which doesn’t seem to fit, as with ‘rocket launcher’, but this depends a little on the level of the students in the class. Insistence on them working only in English in their groups also depends on their level.

Once the stories are finished, each group reads their story to the class. The teacher can comment on elements of the story which fit in with the story told in the video if s/he wants. Then the class watch the video of ‘Pigeon Impossible’.

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5 Tips to Make Your Collaborative Learning Plans Effective – Ferndale, MI, United States, ASCD EDge Blog post – A Professional Networking Community for Educators

5 Tips to Make Your Collaborative Learning Plans Effective – Ferndale, MI, United States, ASCD EDge Blog post – A Professional Networking Community for Educators.

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Tweet by AnnLoseva on Twitter

RT @LearningSpy: Some tips for getting students to value writing http://t.co/P4pgOki1 #ukedchat

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Tweet from Busy Teacher (@busyteacher_org)

Busy Teacher (@busyteacher_org) tweeted at 11:57 PM on Sun, Jan 20, 2013:
8 Top Tips for Giving Your ESL Class a Review Lesson They’ll Love: Review lessons are very important and often a… http://t.co/ERHG89KM
(https://twitter.com/busyteacher_org/status/293130095944679424)

Get the official Twitter app at https://twitter.com/download

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Peer correction exercise

Here’s a link to a video explaining a way of doing peer correction in class from the British Council.

http://youtu.be/pHMnHLr8wHQ

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Movie segments for teaching grammar

I have just come across this blog, which provides worksheets to allow your students to practise grammar while watching segments of movies, and I thought might be useful:

http://moviesegmentstoassessgrammargoals.blogspot.com.es/

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Useful Speaking Activities for Advanced Students

Splendid Speaking gives the reader a wealth of speaking activities designed for the more advanced student.

For an example, click on the following link:

http://www.splendid-speaking.com/products/wotd/index.html

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This week’s speaking activity:Numbers biography

This is a useful activity to get the students practising asking questions.

The teacher writes five numbers on the board and explains that each number is related in some way to something significant in his / her life. The students have to find out what each number relates to by asking yes/ no questions to the teacher. If the question is correctly formed, the teacher answers, if not, the student is encouraged to try to correct the question with the help of the rest of the class.

Once the students have guessed the teacher’s numbers, each student takes a turn with a number related to their own life, which the other students try to guess.

To give an idea of the type of numbers you can use, here are the ones I usually give to my students:

1 – The number of sisters I have

2 – The date of my birthday (2nd December)

22 – The number of years I have been living in Madrid

33 – The number of my house

1989 – The year I graduated

(I include the year so that the students practise reading years)

A variation of this activity is the ‘Padlock combination’. In this game, you give the students three numbers, explaining that these form the combination of a padlock which protects a secret message for them (or some other form of prize). One of the numbers is an important number, as above, one is the number of times you do something in a week and the final one is the number of a certain thing you have. In this way the students not only practise yes / no questions, but also questions with ‘How often …’ and ‘How many…’

My thanks to Nina Lauder for these suggestions.

TEA Annual Conference, November 2012

On Friday I was at the TEA Annual Conference in Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife. Many thanks to Juan, Paz and the rest of the team for the warm welcome we all received and the great organization of the event.

Special thanks also to Shawn Redwood and Maite Molina for their fantastic talks.

In the links section of this blog you will find a copy of the powerpoint of my talk, ‘Peer response in the writing process’.