If you’ve had time to look at recent posts on this blog, you’ll have noticed a series of “first lesson” ideas and activities…  after all,  it’s September, we’ve all got “back-to-school-itis”! Stepping back from the plethora of great teaching ideas to fill the class time, today our guest blogger, Dave Tucker, looks at some broader learning and ...

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: First Lesson Ideas / Warmers First Lesson: Find Nobody Who… First Lesson: I don’t know what you did last ...

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 ...

This is an alternative approach to the inevitable “what did you do on your holidays” conversation.   Many first lesson activities and ideas are based on the premise that nobody knows anybody else but often the students in your classes have come up through the levels together and the only new person in the group is you… It should also combat those ...

The Vortex Game.  This is a game I’ve created that can be used with any age or level – for pretty much any purpose.  It came out of a conversation with a colleague (thanks Sarah!) who was looking for an idea to help learners with minimal pronunciation pairs, but it can be used with pretty much anything! I can’t claim complete originality here ...

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 ...

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 ...

Following on from the recent blog challenge on raising awareness of disability access issues, I came across the Leonard Cheshire Disability campaign whilst watching Shaun the Sheep dvds with my daughter. The campaign is called “Creature Discomforts” and has very similar aims to the blog challenge – namely to get people to think about the way ...

I blame that Simon Thomas over at efl-resource.  It’s all his fault.  And I’m still not sure whether it’s “zip zap zop” or “zig zag zog” or something else entirely! I’ve inherited a class, which Simon once taught back in the misty dawn of time, of 12-year-old pre-intermediate students.  When I walked in the classroom the other day, they were all ...

State of the World’s Mothers 2011 Statistics and Facts – Save the Children - thanks to Greg Fuller for posting this on facebook….. There’s a lot of information here and obviously the most interesting thing for any class to do would be to pull out all the statistics that relate to their country and decide whether or not they agree with them, why, ...