I've had a whirlwind of fun making my author-illustrator school visits recently.Are you ready for some A-MAZ-ING bulletin boards? ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CHRISTMAS BULLETIN BOARDS: HERE WE COME! First up: A floor-to-ceiling wall-display. Way beyond a Christmas bulletin board.FLOOR TO CEILING -- I tell you!  This was so absolutely ENORMOUS that I ...

This is a good an excuse as any to listen to a good song, and, at the same time, be reminded of the suffering the great nation had to endure earlier this year. Why not use this video as a springboard for a class discussion on natural disasters, for example? You might like to read this post on activities using songs.

This challenge has been suggested by Anne & Brad. Although there are many personal photos in my collection that I can choose, I decided on these two, which weren't taken by me. And that's all I'm going to say about them! What can you say? Add your comments below.

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 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 ...

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 / ...

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've always loved this song (written by Jagger/Richards, and released on the Stones' Let It Bleed album towards the end of 1969), and, as you probably already know, I'm very fond of Playing for Change, too. They are good enough reasons for me to link it here in this blog.But how can we use it in our lessons, you might ask. Well, think about it and ...