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The Twelve Days of Geekmas: Nine pretty pictures (#eltpics)

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 11:13:20 GMT

On the ninth day of Geekmas, some blogger gave to me: nine pretty pictures

Welcome to the teflgeek Christmas celebration! Themed around the classic Christmas carol – but going backwards, mostly because it’s more like a countdown that way:

12 blogs worth clutching

11 tips for writing

10 tricks for reading

And nine pretty pictures – or rather some ideas to use with images and some images to use with them!

All of the pictures used below in this post have come from the excellent #eltpics Flickr photostream and are reproduced here under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0) licence.

potential by @hartle

(1) Make me a story – using either a single image or with a series of images (which can give a greater degree of support), learners come up with a story based on the image(s). By using superlame to add speech bubbles and captions, and by being creative with the windows snipping tool, it is possible to create comic book sequences. But pen and paper can also work!

Decorated bicycles at Children's Perahara, Tangalle, Sri Lanka, July 2010 by @CliveSir

(2) Caption Competition - take in a series of images, ideally one per learner in the class, but fewer if you have a large class, and stick them up around the room. Chop some scrap A4 into sentence sized strips so that each learner has one strip per picture. So, if you have 12 learners and 12 pictures up, you’ll need 144 strips of paper… Or you could just give each learner 4 strips of paper, which would be quicker and more manageable. Learners move around the room independently and when they feel inspired by a picture, they write a caption for it on one of their strips of paper. Captions don’t need to be humorous (though they can be!). After a set amount of time, collect all the strips back in and redistribute them, making sure learners don’t have any of their original strips. Learners then try to stick the captions up next to the picture they think it refers to. This can then be followed up with learners checking to see whether their captions got put in the right place or not and explaining why they wrote what they wrote. Plus any language feedback.

Knitting and crocheting-Huayhuash, Peru by @VictoriaB52

(3) Role play Prompts I saw this done in a session a couple of years ago – I sadly can’t remember who gave the session or what it was on… - but I remember the activity. Using a picture of Van Eyck’s “The Arnolfini Marriage”, we put ourselves in the positions of the people in the painting and then came up with questions to ask each other, which then lead into a sort of role play as we acted out being the people in the pictures. It was great fun and a really nice way of helping learners to access imagery, particularly for learners about to do exam speaking tasks involving pictures.

Street market, Copacabana, Bolivia by @sandymillin

(4) Labeltastic Something that occurred to me as an incredibly simple and effective way of using pictures, which I confess I’ve not used yet – the create-your-own picture dictionary. Most vocabulary lessons are based around a topic, so why not simply find a picture of that topic and give copies to the learners to stick into their notebooks so that they can add lots of little arrows and labels, thus creating their own lexically organised picture dictionaries?

(5) Mind Mapping In a similar vein, the idea of using mind mapping techniques with images can extend the labelling idea. With the mind map, you could not only access the key vocabulary items, but also access learners’ emotional reactions to the images and learners’ speculation on the content and individuals in those pictures. Thanks to @acliltoclimb for the inspiration from his post “Every Picture tells a Story“.

Easter in Seville. The park to themselves. by @europeaantje

(6) Dictadraw A very simple premise, but a nice way to revise vocabulary and practice / develop picture description skills. Essentially, you give different pictures to different learners in a pair. They take turns to describe their pictures to each other and as one partner describes, the other one draws. At the end of the activity, they compare their ideas. Obviously the object isn’t to create a perfect replica – particularly if you do use a photograph! I use this activity more with appearance vocabulary (he has red hair and a big nose) than with anything else, but it can also work with photos – as long as they aren’t too complex!

ET, come home! by @AClilToClimb

(7) Speculation Using bizarre, odd or unclear imagery can be fun ways of introducing and practicing modals of speculation and deduction. If you can’t find any pictures that you think are sufficiently bizarre (or likely to lead to enough speculation) then a simple remedy is to take a picture of a mundane everyday item and zoom in really really close on one particular aspect of it, and ask the learners to guess what it is. For example, the milled edge of a coin or the underneath of a pepper grinder could prove fruitful!

Browsing by @sueannan

(8) Expert Witness another old favourite – a memory game where learners look at an image for one minute, the image is then removed (removing the image also removes the temptation to peek!), and learners then have to recall the scene. With low levels / ages, this can be a Q&A session based on “Is there a ___? / Are there any ___? ” to revise a particular vocab set. For higher levels, it could be situated in a police interview scenario, the learner witnessed an incident (for example in the photo on the right “Browsing”, they could have witnessed a theft) and has to describe the scene. Or it could be run as a straight listing activity – learners look at the image for a minute and then have a further minute to list all the items they remember seeing in the picture.

(9) Selection In This is another fairly obvious one – it might require raiding the school flashcard / image files as it works best with a large amount of pictures. For a more structured task though, it might be best to generate a handout with a limited selection of images. In simple terms learners select the “best” image or images for a particular purpose, e.g. to include in a tourist brochure of the area / to put on the front page of an nature magazine (etc). This is a fairly simple task and one that mimics exam speaking tasks at FCE, CAE & CPE (sort of) – so would be good practice for prospective candidates. A twist on this is to ask the learners to select three or four similar pictures and to generate their own selection task for another group of learners to perform – they could then give feedback on performance.

Hot Air Balloon by @mrsdkrebs

street painting by Jane Arnold

Halloween Teaching Resources

Anonymous — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 09:30:36 GMT

I’m not a great fan of “festivals” teaching in general, but this year my timetable has more young learner classes than usual and halloween is almost upon us, so here’s what I managed to find to help you cook up some devilish lessons for your learners…

ESL-Galaxy has it’s usual great selection of flashcards, crosswords, wordsearches here: http://www.esl-galaxy.com/holiday.html.

Weird and wacky fun (usually involving carved pumpkins) pictures can be found here: http://www.funnyhalloweenpictures.com/ - though it should be stressed not all the pictures are classroom safe – teachers will need to select carefully beforehand!

Bogglesworld has absolutely masses of halloween related stuff here http://bogglesworldesl.com/halloween_worksheets.htm - almost too much to go through! But I think the one I’ll be using from here is the “Are you a werewolf, witch or vampire?“

LearnEnglishKids from the British Council has some great resources, including fun computer games, quizzes, short stories and a story maker http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/category/topics/halloween.

Katie, posting on teflogue.com has a scary urban legends reading race that might be suitable for higher / older levels.

People who are already registered with TES will know they have a huge range of halloween related resources - people who aren’t might want to register! Remember though, that not everything is designed with EFL in mind.

Spotted yesterday on efl-resource – a link to some fantastic online young learner halloween resources: monster creation, spooky stories and halloween e-cards: say “Boo” to Ozge Karaoglu’s blog!

Finally, Sean Banville has a Breaking News English lesson plan on the news that the world population is set to hit seven billion on halloween: http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/1110/111025-world_population.html - which also links back to my post of the other day: Global Population – 7 billion people and you.

Have fun!

Global Population – 7 billion people and you

Anonymous — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 10:15:59 GMT

There’s a really nice app on the BBC website that lets you figure out where you come in the global population statistics – for example, when I was born I was the four billionth, 50 millionth, seven hundred and sixty four thousandth, one hundred and sixty first person alive on the planet. It goes on to let you look at country population statistics and average life expectancy. Check it out here: BBC News – 7 billion people and you: Whats your number?.

The app is based (primarily) on data from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) , who have their own app at http://www.7billionandme.org/. This asks you for more detailed information, not only your date of birth, but birth location, current location and such like, but it does then break down the data into a much wider spread of infographics that compare the situation back then, with the way things are now. Anyone who’s helping learners work with describing trends and/or numbers (big numbers!) would find this a useful place to go to get some personalised data for the learners to work with.

Also on the web via UNFPA, is http://www.7billionactions.org which is hoping to inspire people to take positive actions in their communities and around the world. One of the more powerful ways they hope to achieve this is by people sharing their stories: 7 billion stories. There is a registration form to complete (the usual) and you need a picture to upload. Participants also need to be 13 years old or over. Then you write a 600 character “story” about yourself and how you hope to influence change, give it a title and go!

It seems like there’s a fairly obvious lesson plan there! The kicker though, is that it is only 600 CHARACTERS – not words! So learners will need to be concise! It may also help learners to look at the existing stories to get a better idea of the type of content that’s expected of them.

Worth a look anyway! At the time of writing, the world’s population stands at 6, 999, 175, 608. So be quick if you want to get there in time for 7 billion!

First Lesson or First Week Ideas

Anonymous — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 09:30:14 GMT

Back in July I posted a selections of 20 ideas and activities that might be worth trying out as you get to know your new classes this school year – and since then there’ve been a couple of additional ideas to throw into the mix:

Recently, the 24th Edition of EFL/ESL/ELL Blog Carnival : A Journey in TEFL got posted on Eva Buyuksimkesyan’s “A Journey in TEFL” blog. I strongly recommend taking a look here if you’re in need of inspiration – Eva’s collated over 40 (I lost count) posts from different contributors.

The Lesson Plans Page also has a wide range of back to school resources and materials, though these are aimed more at native speaker young learner classes than a language learner class – and I’ve not tried any of them, so can’t vouch for them personally!

First Lesson: I don’t know what you did last summer!

Anonymous — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 09:30:07 GMT

A very quick alternative to the standard composition task “What I did on my Summer holidays”.

Essentially, you ask the learners to write the composition (100 words? I guess length will be age & level dependent) about somebody else in the class.

I think I’ve blogged a similar activity at some point before, but not sure when. Anyway, the key to the activity, is that if John is writing about Amy’s holidays, John can’t talk directly to Amy. John has to ask the other learners in the class, Frank, Marta and so forth to ask Amy the questions that John wants to know the answers to.

Thus through a constant process of questions and answers John eventually gets enough information to write Amy’s composition for her. Of course, Amy will be writing Marta’s, Marta Frank’s and Frank John’s, so it all evens out eventually.

This is intended as an alternative for classes where learners do know each other – but it also works really well as the final part of a lesson with a class where nobody knows each other, as John will constantly be explaining to his classmates WHO Amy is, thus meaning everyone should have a much better idea of who everybody else in the class is by the end of it!

Having gathered together all the information during the lesson – the actual writing up of the composition can either be done in class or as a homework task. What can then be interesting is for the writer and the subject to check how close to the truth the composition is. The subject can then feedback and edit both the content and language of the composition for later revision – though this would be an optional stage depending on the abilities of the class.

Working with Project Classes

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:02:14 GMT

This is an entry for everyone currently working at an ELT summer school somewhere in the world! It’s not always easy and there’s a lot of hard work – hopefully this post will help out a bit! I’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy my summer school experiences immensely over the years and one of the things I’ve enjoyed doing most has been the project classes. This post takes a look at what’s important to remember before the project class kicks off and gives some ideas for different projects and how to stage them.

There are a number of advantages to doing project work with learners – projects can be (if done right):

Collaborative – they encourage learners to work together to generate something personal and meaningful
Communicative – by their very nature they put learners in a situation where communication is necessary in order to achieve the goal.
Cross-Curricular – they don’t have to be based solely in the language classroom but can draw on learner knowledge from other areas
Cross-cultural – they can be used to develop learners intercultural awareness and intercultural communication skills, both towards the target language culture, but also across the classroom cultural spectrum.
Task-based – there will inevitably be a set of linguistic items that learners need to perform the task successfully. Projects can provide a “real” need for language in order to successfully accomplish the goal.

For me, any project needs to follow five main stages: OUTLINE – PLANNING – GATHERING – CREATION – OUTCOME.

OUTLINE: obviously in a summer school context where the projects might involve more than one class, the decision as to what type of project or what topic area to be investigated might be taken out of the learners’ hands. The OUTLINE therefore needs to be discussed amongst colleagues or decided by the teacher in advance of the class. If you’re only doing a project with one class, then you can involve the learners in this discussion stage, thus making it a bit more relevant to their lives, a bit more consensual and less imposed. At this stage te.achers will also need to think about what the OUTCOME of the project might be, to make sure that they have the relevant materials or technologies available. Sample OUTLINES for six different project ideas are given below.

PLANNING: Once the project outline has been decided, it can (if not already) be handed over to the learners for further development. With younger learners, or in the summer school context, the main role of the teacher is one of restraint! You need to make sure that what your learners are planning is achievable in the time frame or with the resources available! In essence, you need to make sure someone thinks about the practicalities. Keep asking those questions like: ”That’s a brilliant idea! So where are you going to find the elephants for the parachute display?”

GATHERING: Most projects will involve a degree of information gathering – but not all. So depending on the project, this can be an optional stage. But you could also see this stage as a deeper exploration of the ideas generated in the planning stage.

CREATION: Where it all comes together. Break out the scissors, glue and cardboard. Book out the computer room, make friends with the art department. Throw the relevant supplies at the class (making sure there’s not too much glitter) and stand back. If you have identified learners in your class with tendencies towards perfectionism – make sure they’re working together so that you only have one unfinished group at the end of the class and so that everyone else is more likely to contribute!

OUTCOME: It’s worth remembering that not every project needs to involve glitter and glue – in fact the more memorable projects might not involve any. Arts and Craft is great, but at a summer school the kids get arts and crafts lessons separately – they probably don’t need more of the same. In other words – the primary outcome of the project should be linguistic. One of my proudest TEFL memories is watching 150 students do a whole school survey mingle (details below). A colleague recalls watching a student shine during a poetry recital (the student in question is now part of the administrative staff). The most important thing about the OUTCOME is that somebody else should see it. Not just the class that made it – but everyone else in the school! Or the teachers’ room, or parents. But somebody and that these people should have the chance to provide feedback in some way. After all – what’s the point in spending three days making a poster on global warming if it just stays up in the classroom? The students know what it looks like – they made it!

So the outcome should be primarily linguistic and highly visible. If possible, some sort of competition or vote by and amongst the learners on the work performed by their peers?

So finally – here are some of the ideas that I’ve worked with over the years:

PROJECT:	LESSON 1:	LESSON 2:	LESSON 3:	OUTCOME:
Interclass Surveys	SS decide what they will survey and generate a questionnaire	Whole school mingle (somewhere!) and SS ask and answer each other’s questions	SS collate the data from their surveys and prepare their displays	SS poster displays are put up in the corridors etc. Other SS view the displays.
PhotoStory	SS plot their stories and decide which scenes need pictures taking	SS take their pictures out and about. (NB – need sufficient digital cameras?) Teachers print pictures	SS organise their images and write text captions / plot synopses.	SS poster displays are put up in the corridors etc Other SS view the displays.
Performance Poetry Festival	SS research some poems they like and choose one	SS dramatise the poem into a mini play?	SS gather to watch and perform	Performance based
Board GameBattle	SS plan and design a board game (on any topic / idea) and request materials	SS use the materials to create their board games. T feeds in “game” language etc	The SS and the games gather somewhere and play each others games and vote for the best one?	Demonstrations and playing of different games
Class Newspapers / Magazines	SS research news stories, either from their own country or elsewhere	SS incorporate / edit their stories into a single “newpaper” / magazine.	SS gather somewhere, swap their efforts and read each others – vote for the best?	Written / typed newspaper (copies to take home?)
Shopaholics	SS spend half the time finding out how much they can buy for 50 pounds and half their time planning and designing their own shops	SS actually create their own shops (online pictures of items / shop catalogues?) T teach polite requests & Shopkeeper argot.	SS then go shopping. The idea is to buy the highest number of things for 50quid without buying more than one of the same item	Whole school roleplay / “controlled” language practice

If there’s any clarification needed of any of these ideas – let me know!

First Lesson Ideas / Warmers

Anonymous — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:32:28 GMT

For many teachers, though the school year might have just ended – the joy of summer school classes is about to start. Or may have already, but I think lessons at my habitual summer haunt are due to begin on Monday morning – I’m not there this year, so not sure.

In any event this post contains a collection of getting to know you type activities / ice-breakers or first lesson warmers for you to choose from. If you started teaching summer school last week – sorry about the delay – but you can probably use these or adapt these as warmer or lead in type activities – so it might still be useful!

A little guidance: the activities listed towards the top are intended more for younger learners and the ones closer to the base are more for older learners.

Acknowledgement: This is a collection of stuff drawn together from the last nine years so my thanks to all those colleagues who shared ideas in that time. Two in particular need a special mention – James Lambie gave an input seminar on “first lessons” in Katowice in 2004 at which I took copious notes – Sarah Robbins worked with me on running a seminar on the same topic in Coimbra about two years ago and provided many of the younger learner based ideas contained within.

So – here it all is!

Baseball Cards: Learners draw a picture of themselves and write their name and age on one side of the card. They turn the card over. The teacher asks them some questions and they either write or draw the answers on the back. Stick the cards up around the room face side down (and numbered?) Learners read all the cards and guess which answers are which learners’ (and write answers on a worksheet?). Higher levels can interview a partner and make cards about them.

Shields: An old favourite. Learners have a “shield” outline divided into quarters. Teacher dictates a question e.g favourite colour/dream job depending on level etc. Learners fill in shield with their ‘answers’ to the questions. Either put up round the room for people to guess who is who and/or get another learners to write a profile of someone else based on their shield. You could make flags instead just to vary it a bit…

Hands: The same idea but learners trace round their hand on coloured paper. As in the other ideas they write the answers to questions on their fingers. Use to make a “class tree” to display them.

Name Poems: Learners write their name vertically and write a word beginning with each letter of their name. Alternatively they can draw a pictorial representation which the other learners can then “decode”.

Rabbits/Wizards: Learners write their names on a picture and colour, decorate etc. These then all get put in an envelope and each lesson one is picked out to decide who chooses the magic word for the class. Remove from any chosen names from the envelope so that everyone gets a turn. Can also pick more than one name to decide who gives out papers, presses play on the tape recorder etc. A very simple idea but cuts down on bickering and the kids really get into it. Especially useful with primary age children / larger young learner classes.

Interests Faces – Learners create “faces” by drawing /collaging things they like /hobbies etc. Other learners can guess what the pictures represent etc.

Ordering –Again not very new but works as a quick warmer/ice breaker. Learners in two teams race to order themselves according to age, shoe size, number of letters in their names, alphabetically by best friend’s first name etc. Can be competitive or not.

TPR – You’ll probably be using lots of TPR to practice classroom language and objects but this is another variation for higher level classes. You ask q’s and s’s respond by doing the action. However, they need to watch the other people in the class to see what they do. At the end the you put learners in teams and quiz them based on their observations e.g name one person who can play the piano…Suggested actions: If you have a brother, clap.” If you have a a dog put your right hand on your head.” “If your favourite sport is football, stand on one foot.”

Snowball Fight - Learners write five things about themselves on a piece of paper. Then they crumple the paper up into a ‘snowball’ and have a one-minute snowball fight. At the end of the minute, everyone grabs the closest snowball and has to try to find the person who wrote it. They could then introduce that person to the rest of the group, sharing the facts/ask more q’s and write about the person etc…..

Memory Quiz – Learners stand facing a partner and remember everything about their appearance for 30 seconds then one person turns around while their partner answers questions about them e.g What colour are his eyes…

Guess Who – Write 10/12 facts about someone famous on different pieces of paper as if they were answering e.g I have two children. I used to live in America but now I live in London. (Obviously difficulty depends on level). Learners in teams. You hold up an answer and they race to write the correct question on a piece of scrap paper and hold it up…. 3 points for the first team 1 point for every team with a correct question. At the end of the task put all the answers on the floor the first team to correctly identify who the answers are for wins a bonus 5 points Go through any errors with question formation ….this leads nicely into any interviewing/profile writing activity as they can use the questions to interview each other or….

Interview the teacher – Good for classes who’ve been together for ages but don’t know you. Put s’s in teams of 3. Learners think of a question, one learner races to the front and asks you the question, runs back to their team and tells them the answer. They write down the answer and tell the runner the next question which they were thinking of in the meantime. To speed things up I usually say that the first team to get 12 facts about me wins. The proviso is that I will only answer each question once so every team should have different facts. After they have their 12 facts they then write a profile of you including 15 facts. 3 of which are lies. (At this point you might have to go around letting the slower teams who didn’t get 12 facts, ask you a couple more questions). Number the profiles, put them on the wall and the s’s walk around reading them and writing down the 3 lies. S’s reveal their guesses and the authors tell them if they are correct the people who spot the most lies “win”. (With Guess Who this is a whole lesson).

Find someone who Bingo - As for “find someone who” but you write the categories on a grid. 1^st person to get a line of 6 (or, if you’re feeling evil, complete the whole grid) wins. NB make it clear you have to have 6 different people!

Guess the Question - Stick an icebreaker question on everyone’s back. As learners mingle everyone else answers the question on their back without telling them what it is. They have to figure out what the question is.

What do you know about…? Again good for learners who know each other or in the second lesson as a follow up to the getting to know you activity you did in the 1^st class. One learner at the front. Everyone in teams.You ask everyone a question about that person. The learner at the front secretly writes their answer and everyone else writes what they think is their answer. The teams reveal their answers then the learner at the front reveals the “correct” answer. One point for every “correct” answer.

Crossword Names – Either student created in the first lesson or, if you’re feeling keen, teacher created later in the week / course. Basically learners ask questions and then write clues to create a crossword for and about the class. Or the teacher uses what they know about the learners to do the same. e.g 1 down – a student with 6 brothers who hates cats. Obviously watch out for things like: 5 down “a fat student who smells”

Knowledge Races – Cut up a load of questions from a workbook at a level below the level of the class or just create questions they should know. Divide learners into teams, they take one question, answer it, show you the answer, get the next… Just like a reading race. Quite useful way to find out gaps in their knowledge early on and can be very confidence building….

Clouds & Questions: Learners draw six cloud shapes on a bit of paper. Get learners to tell you topic areas you might talk to someone about when you meet them for the first time (e.g.hometown, job, hobbies etc). They write down the areas in the cloud shapes and put their names at the top. Learners then swap papers. They then have to find out about the person whose paper they have, BUT are not allowed to talk to that person directly and can only use one intermediary per question. For example: Sarah must find out about Dave, and needs to get Alexis, Neil, Jamie, Regina, Lidia, Jane and Anna to ask Dave her questions and report back to her.

Self-Directed Interviews: write up five (fun / funny) questions on the whiteboard that you’re happy to answer. Nominate random learners to ask you the qus. Give out some scrap paper and get learners to write down five questions they would be happy to be asked. EITHER pair them off and let them ask each other OR carousel the class (inner & outer wheels)

Mix & Match Identities: Like a consequences / round the room story writing task. You ask learners a series of questions and they write short answers, passing on the answer paper after each question. Ask the same number of questions as you have learners and they should get their own paper back with some interesting biographical information! They can then find out who wrote what on their bit of paper.

OK – I think that’s all for now. Any questions of clarifications needed – let me know!

Postie Postie / Agony Aunt

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 00:10:04 GMT

This is a great activity that you can use as a warmer or as a fun practice task in a number of situations.

I should acknowledge that I originally saw my Dip tutor Peter Moran do this during a lesson in Wroclaw in 2006 – in various forms it’s been one of my staple activities ever since!

I can’t remember why Peter did this – though as I recall he was stepping in to cover an absent colleague – and I can’t even remember what the lesson was about… In fact now that I think about it, it might have been an input seminar and not a lesson. But there we go – the important things matter….

In it’s basic form, “Postie Postie” needs only a lot of scrap A4 paper chopped into quarters (or not – depending on how you want to adapt it). As I recall Peter running the activity you give every learner or pair or small group a large amount of chopped up bits of paper. The bits of paper then play the role of the message medium – in other words, the learners write short notes to each other. When they finish writing the note, they shout “Postie Postie” and the teacher delivery system swings into operation. Or you collect and deliver the messages. From that point of view, it’s probably a good idea to ask the class to address and acknowledge their messages in a “to” and “from” format.

Adaptations:

As a warmer – if you brainstorm topic areas / conversations issues to the board (i.e. what everyone did at the weekend – or for summer schools -what the trip was like yesterday / how hot are the teachers / what’s different between my country and yours). Then learners simply write brief notes to each other in question or reply.

As a “freer” practice task – I have a suspicion that originally I saw this done in the context of “emailing” each other. It could of course also work in the context of a text messageathon – if text english is a lesson focus.

I used it that other day as an “agony aunt” style task. The learners were paired and had a bunch of scrap A4 paper. They were encouraged to think Jerry Springer style (e.g. My husband is in love with a tree / My daughter wants to marry our goldfish) but it was basically all their own work. They addressed their “problem” to another pair/group in the room and wrote their letter. As a grammatically correct postman – I refused to deliver letters with mistakes in them – but that was my choice, you could be more lenient!

At the end of the task we decided which problems and which solutions were worthy of awards…..

The general idea is a nice variation on a mingle style task. The learners can stay where they are and can work collaboratively in a way they can’t so easily in a mingle. Plus, as teacher, you get to vet the messages (essential with any class under the age of 16…) for content appropriacy and grammatical accuracy. As a really pedantic postman….. this task can run and run….!

A film or DVD based lesson (any film)!

Anonymous — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 12:55:22 GMT

It’s the end of the school year at the moment and most of my classes have been badgering for “Movie, teacher! Movie!” for some time. Resistance would seem to be futile….

Basically, what they want to do is sit down and watch a film for the entirety of the lesson, “practising” their listening skills, but otherwise doing nothing. The pedagogical conscience within me rails against this – no! they must do something useful! But let’s face it, at the end of the day, sitting around watching subtitled movies but otherwise doing nothing is how most of them will use their English as time goes by…. so you could justify doing just that?

Or not, because of course our role as teachers is to help learners access the content of movies in English, and just sitting their watching them isn’t necessarily going to help them do that any better!

This lesson won’t necessarily help learners do that any better either, though it does contain a prediction task and a comprehension check at the end, so it stands a better chance of doing that than doing nothing….

And it’s incredibly simple and can be adapted to use with absolutely any movie at all! So go for it!

What you do:

Before the class do a google image search for “name of movie + screenshots” and make a handout of jumbled images taken from stretched out moments of your film. Put them on your first handout in a random order.

This handout then forms the predictive task – can the learners identify the film? Any of them seen it before? What happens / what do they think is going to happen? If the class is strong enough, learners can work together in pairs to write a 50-70 word plot prediction summary.

While they watch: they check against the handout to number the images they see in the order that they appear during the film.

After they watch they can compare and check the sequence of images with each other / get full feedback. They can also compare their plot predictions with what really happened.

Also after they’ve watched the film, you can give them a comprehension task based around the plot synopsis. Before the class, look up your target film on either wikipedia or the IMDB or your personal favourite film review site…. Copy the plot synopsis from the site (being careful to credit the originating source) onto another handout. Then gap the handout – remove key plot elements / events / characterisations. In essence this should leave you and the learners with a “skeleton framework” plot summary. Working together, the learners can then complete the summary from memory.

Note of Caution:

Check the copyright laws in your country to be sure your use of proprietary images / texts / display of the film is legal or seek the advice of your director.

Also, on a personal note, I hate it when I don’t get to watch the last fifteen or twenty minutes of a film because the class has ended and we ran out of time. Using the tasks as given above will probably add 30-45 minutes to your run time, so make sure your film will fit into the lesson time! You might be better off with a 30-45 minute episode of a TV show if you have something suitable available (that your learners won’t have seen / be bored by!).

Online Teaching Resource: SuperLame!

Anonymous — Mon, 23 May 2011 10:48:28 GMT

Spotted on Carla Arena’s Collablogatorium - Superlame! is a tool that lets you upload photos (currently only from your PC – no URL grabs) and add speech bubbles, thought bubbles and suchlike. With some creative use of the speech bubble boxes, you can also create captions.

SuperLame! Comic Word Balloons, Speech Bubbles, and Thought Balloons, etc..

As an example, I’ve taken a simple teflgeek cartoon and turned it into a masterpiece of wit and humour – (see below).

Superlame doesn’t keep the pics you create on their servers for longer than 24 hours or so, so you will need to take advantage of their “save” or “email” facilities – but it is easy enough to save the pics.

The obvious use that suggests itself is that of the photostory. Previously I’ve done photostory work with learners where they’ve scripted something, acted it our with a camera, printed the pictures, stuck them on a large bit of paper, written out the speech bubbles and captions by hand, cut them out, stuck them on bit of paper and then presented the end result.

The change with superlame is not a big one, but would allow for more textual work, smoother editing (and correction by the teacher) and a more highly polished “final product” – the superlame versions of the pics could either be printed out, cut and glued onto a larger presentation poster, or could be worked into an A4 size “comic book” for easy printing and distribution amongst class members.

As the end of the academic year approaches and we all start looking for something project based to fill those last few weeks (or for those of us heading onto to summer schools around the world) – this is a really handy and timely idea!

Search results matching tags 'writing' and 'all levels'

The Twelve Days of Geekmas: Nine pretty pictures (#eltpics)

On the ninth day of Geekmas, some blogger gave to me: nine pretty pictures

Halloween Teaching Resources

Global Population – 7 billion people and you

First Lesson or First Week Ideas

First Lesson: I don’t know what you did last summer!

Working with Project Classes

PROJECT:

LESSON 1:

LESSON 2:

LESSON 3:

OUTCOME:

Interclass Surveys

SS decide what they will survey and generate a questionnaire

Whole school mingle (somewhere!) and SS ask and answer each other’s questions

SS collate the data from their surveys and prepare their displays

SS poster displays are put up in the corridors etc. Other SS view the displays.

PhotoStory

SS plot their stories and decide which scenes need pictures taking

SS take their pictures out and about. (NB – need sufficient digital cameras?) Teachers print pictures

SS organise their images and write text captions / plot synopses.

SS poster displays are put up in the corridors etc Other SS view the displays.

Performance Poetry Festival

SS research some poems they like and choose one

SS dramatise the poem into a mini play?

SS gather to watch and perform

Performance based

Board GameBattle

SS plan and design a board game (on any topic / idea) and request materials

SS use the materials to create their board games. T feeds in “game” language etc

The SS and the games gather somewhere and play each others games and vote for the best one?

Demonstrations and playing of different games

Class Newspapers / Magazines

SS research news stories, either from their own country or elsewhere

SS incorporate / edit their stories into a single “newpaper” / magazine.

SS gather somewhere, swap their efforts and read each others – vote for the best?

Written / typed newspaper

(copies to take home?)

Shopaholics

SS spend half the time finding out how much they can buy for 50 pounds and half their time planning and designing their own shops

SS actually create their own shops (online pictures of items / shop catalogues?)

T teach polite requests & Shopkeeper argot.

SS then go shopping. The idea is to buy the highest number of things for 50quid without buying more than one of the same item

Whole school roleplay / “controlled” language practice

First Lesson Ideas / Warmers

Postie Postie / Agony Aunt

A film or DVD based lesson (any film)!

Online Teaching Resource: SuperLame!