My life has changed...

Since August 2010, when I got pregnant, my life has changed a lot... I have change too much. Almost 2 years have passed since I wrote the last post, you may have noticed.

Currently I`m not working as a teacher anymore. I`m an advertising editor and I like it a lot so far. I have a MAC computer just for me, I have hot coffee everyday, I have funny workmates and when I go home I don`t have to plan what I have to do the next day! And it pays ok too. So, now I`m going to create a new blog and a Pinterest page, just as a hobby.

That`s it... but I still love English! :) And I WILL BE an English Phonetics professor someday, and sign DR. before my name. Good luck for all! Be happy!

Video

Teens love technology! So, why not use it as a toll?

This time I asked the students to prepair a role-play and make a short video of it, as an extra class evluation. In pairs the students had to chose 1 from 4 topics I've prepaired and create a conversation using 4 keywords related to the content I want them to review.

Next they need to practice and record it. I'm curious to see it done!

Scrambled letters

Searching form a challenging activity I found in an ESL blog somewhere on the web a game that I've played before (see pic above). It's to practice vocabulary. First make a worksheet with many letters (use all the alphabet and repeat some letters) and then each student have to form words from those letters without using them more than once. Each word score points: 3 letter word 3 points, 4 letter word 4 points... and so on. Set a time limit and who gets more points win. Did you get it? I love this game!

Study English on line

Hello teachers! You an use this idea if you have an only student class and one computer (my case) or a computer lab with internet acess.

I found a realy nice site for games on line a few years ago( english-online.org.uk ) and yesterday I decided to work with it. There are many games about grammar, vocab and also downloadable games. I selected some on line games related to the topic I wanted. You can let your student play while you make coments about vocab and gramar rules, furthermore you have fun all the time. If you check the homepage of the same site, there are on ine tests for proeficiency test and more. Take a look!

Instant decisions / will

Hey there!

Here an activity to practice will for instant decisions:

Get some pictures of things you would be given as a gift. Look for all kinds of things like an airplane or a shoe. The students can't see it before the activity start. Put the pics in an envelope. Tell the students that those things are all gifts. When they get them they have to decide what they will do with their present. Have fun!

Reported speech: Lady Gaga interview

Hey colleagues! The best idea I had this morning was about reported speech: Watch a video!
A whole movie would be too much and a scene would be very difficult to select just one... then I thought: teens love Lady Gaga, why not watch a video of an interview with one of the hottest singers at the moment! I've found it on Youtube. It's a very short interview (there were a lot there). The students were supposed to watch once and make coments. Furthermore, they should watch again and write down some information or just words they got. And finally I gave them the "script" in order to discuss new vocabulary and stuff. As homework they have to report all the interview and hand it out to me next class. They loved it because there is some very nice info about the singer's life and career on that video. Have a nice class!

Lack of ideas...

Sorry... but I've been busy lately and I have had lots of things going on in my personal life... In my lessons just the ordinary things from the book or the internet.

Ah, by the way, I've found very interesting riddles on the internet, it's very nice to tell them to the students as starters for conversation classes... did you see? I've just came up with an idea!

One word story

Yesterday at the end of my class the students were very tired and I decided to apply a very amusing activity to make them relax and laugh a little bit. It was a writing exercise called "one word story". Each student had a piece of paper and they were supposed to write one word each time and pass the sheet to the colleague on their right (or left) successively in order to create the story.

E.g. Student A: John

Student B: went

Student C: to

Student A: Africa...

They had to keep in mind the structures of sentences and also use verbs in past simple because I wanted them to review the previous content. Very funny stories came up!