jigsaw thingy

grab and move the pieces
to restart: go to the cog select scatter and off you go
use chrome in classrooms.

join jigsawplanet.com

upload an image
choose number of pieces
easy or difficult
remember link
exploit in class
and bob's not your dad



and here´s one for richard ...

Halloween for teenage and adult learners:

– A Hallowe'en listening activity: finding out about the traditional festival of Hallowe'en.
http://bit.ly/PgTH9s
– Getting your teenage students into the Halloween mood: have them read and discuss this article on apps: “BE WARNED: Insanely addictive!”
http://bit.ly/WD034J And to try out and report back to class on the Doodle Jump app described in the article
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/doodle-jump/id307727765?mt=8
– Scary Halloween stories for teens: – Day of the Dead
http://bit.ly/RnwnTM – The text http://bit.ly/VtKqNE


– From our pacey, entertaining World on the Street video series:
Ashlie and Stephen decide which Halloween costumes to choose
http://bit.ly/S9EEN6
And Rob, our language expert, looks at the different ways we use the verb “think”.
http://bit.ly/R9zdxQ With supporting online activities
Ashlie and Stephen's house is full of witches, wizards, and ghosts... and everyone's having a frighteningly good time!
http://bit.ly/R9zCjA
And Rob looks at how we use personal pronouns
http://bit.ly/PHS5Fw With supporting online activities

Halloween for young learners

Preparing for Halloween:
– How to organise a Halloween party
http://bit.ly/TalQOB
– Make a skeleton
http://bit.ly/RnvLgU
– Free, downloadable Halloween flashcards
http://bit.ly/Pj9LHC
– With this Pron Pal download your students can listen to the Halloween words and phrases and record their own voice
http://bit.ly/RQrQsi


Class activities:
– The history of Halloween quiz worksheet
http://bit.ly/Rf4xth
– Students watch a video and learn how to make a spider mobile for their bedroom - or for their friend.
http://bit.ly/XJ2KzP
– Students read about and draw a haunted house.
http://bit.ly/Vj53Gz
– Match the Halloween words to the picture
http://bit.ly/Tam9sF
– Label the skeleton's body
http://bit.ly/RnvzOP
– The scary skeleton song
http://bit.ly/TrI68p
– Which Halloween costume do your students think is the scariest?
http://bit.ly/TC3H8g
– A witch is making a magic spell. She's putting some strange things in her pot! Can your students colour the five scary animals in this picture?
http://bit.ly/VfpJ2m
– Your turn: a chance for your young learners to share their ideas on Halloween with other students from all over the world
http://bit.ly/ORvViN

Olympic activities

Martin Sketchley has put together a great series of activities (Pre-Intermediate+)
to coincide with the Olympic games. They include:

• a reading dictation
• a reading really
• a who wants to be a Millionaire type Olympics game

There's also a special Olympics set of words to go with the vocabulary game Pic-your-wits that you can play with your students in class or get them to do for homework

Using the vocabulary game Pic-your-wits in class

Use Pic-your-wits to introduce a topic you are working on in class or as support material for it. It will also work well as a standalone activity that energises your class and changes its dynamics. In addition, it can be used by students as a self-study resource or for homework.


Access the game on Facebook or the LearnEnglish Teens site


For lots of ideas how to use it in and out of class go to the TeachingEnglish website

Online activities from Jon Flyn – Charles Dickens’ London – lesson plan based on the game

Level: Upper Intermediate/ Advanced

Location: Computer Classroom

Skills Focus: Reading

Language Activity: Note-taking

Language focus: Used to/ would/ could have

Game: Charles Dickens’ London

To celebrate the bi-centennial anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens, Digital Play has found a game for you packed full of lovely written text for your learners to practice reading and learn a little bit about what living around the year 1812 would have been like. I’ve got learners to play this game as a straight reader. That is, they read it for their own pleasure but they may use an online dictionary if they really want to. However, this game also works well with note-taking while playing and then later generating sentences that focus on used to and would. Of course, a presentation and a little practice on this language is best before the game particularly if you ask learners to predict what life was like 200 years ago (when Dickens lived). You also have to be sure you’ve covered the main differences between used to and would. Could have sentences come mainly from the game which tells you what you could have done by a certain stage but didn’t.

Preparation

Print of a copy of the Charles Dickens’ London worksheet. Present and practice the target language.

Pre-play

Hangman Charles Dickens on the board and elicit and information about him. (Do your students know who he is?).

Tell them he lived in London 200 years ago and elicit a few used to and would sentences from students about him. Hand out the worksheet and in pairs learners make a few predictions.

Play

Learners take the worksheet to the computer room and sit in pairs (player and note-taker)

Learners find the game. (Google – Charles Dickens London game).

Stress they need to play the game and take notes. The first person to finish note taking can play and do no writing. If you see a pair playing and not note-taking click on the refresh button at the top – they restart the game. One learner plays the game while the other takes notes. Change every 5 minutes or so. Monitor and elicit sentences verbally from learners who use their notes.

Post Play

Learners compare notes and expand on their own if necessary.

Learners make sentences using their notes and target language.

Learners write a composition about Life in Charles Dickens London.

If you like this lesson plan, check out the Digital Play blog for lots more!

Online activities from Jon Flynn – The Grammar of Doom – an adventure game.

The Grammar of Doom

Okay, here's the story. You are an adventurer trying to find the secret to the mystical Temple of Doomed Grammar. There are ten rooms in the temple, and each one is full of tricks and traps. You need to use your English grammar and vocabulary to get through the rooms. Each room that you complete gives you one word of the password sentence that you need to finish the game. (Remember the password because you will need it for the next room!) You are told exactly what to do before you enter each room. (Okay, I admit this is a reading comprehension - but don't blame me if you keep dying because you have not read it.)

Online resources to support student tasks, projects and self-study

There are lots of online resources you can use to support task or project-based work and to encourage student self-study – and you can find out about many of them by thumbing through this blog. So in this post I'm just going to talk about some websites you can use for digital storytelling.

My favourite are:
ZimmerTwins
StoryJumper 
StoryBird

ZimmerTwins

This is a website where you can make attractive, short animated films. It's easy to use and intuitive, students pick it up in minutes and works well for age groups from about 7 – 12.
As with all these types of resources, you need to create an account first (which is free with no strings attached). You can either get your students to login with your account details or create a class login.

Ways to use ZimmerTwins in class
It's great for focussing on vocabulary related to actions, settings and emotions.
I usually make a demo movie to show to my class. In it I introduce the 3 characters that appear in every movie: a boy called Edgar, a girl called Eva and a cat called 13.
I show:

• the different things they can do: fly, hide, laugh, sing, dance etc 
• the different places they can visit: a desert, a jungle, outer space, a Chinese restaurant etc
• the different emotions they experience: angry, sad, scared, surprised etc

Sometimes, I've got students to write out their story beforehand in class or for homework and talk about it in a whole class situation before going to the computer room. You can also set the movie making part for homework. After students have made their movies, have a film premier session where they see what their classmates have done and vote for the movie they like best.

As with all these resources, I ask one of the students to help demonstrate how to use them on the IWB for the rest of the class. This enables you to check for any difficulties they may have in using them (that haven't occurred to you) and also is a good way of introducing important lexis: click there, scroll down a bit, not that one, this one etc. Moreover, you'll probably find that students pay much more attention to a classmate than to you!

Another tip: tell your students that they can work at the computers for the first 10 minutes or so in their first language. However, one of them has to note down the phrases that they say most. Then, stop work and ask them to write their phrases – or a translation of them in English – on the board. This gives them a language bank to work with when their back at the computers and is also a practical way to call their attention to the fact that you want them to work in English. You can back this up by having a barometer diagram displayed on the IWB with students' names at the side. As you go round the class monitoring your students, you can increase or decrease the barometer according to whether they are working in English or not and make it clear to them that this will form part of their speaking evaluation.

StoryJumper

You can use this for creating online picture book stories – here's an example from my Silver 3 class. The site is very teacher friendly and you can create a simple fun login for your whole class. I advise you to play with StoryJumper a bit before launching it on a class but it's quite simple to use and comes with a good tutorial. It will appeal to is the same age-group as for ZimmerTwins, about 7 – 12.

Ways to use StoryJumper in class

I've used this for practising writing descriptions but you can really adapt it for any topic or language focus you want. Again you can start in class and let students finish their stories for homework.

StoryBird

This is similar to StoryJumper but suitable for older students – basically of any age. It has a very helpful tour which will give you and your students an overview of what to do and how the site works. Like StoryBird, you can easily login a whole class and it offers a dashboard where you can check students' progress and give them stickers or even marks on their work. It also encourages collaborative work and students can invite each other to work on a story, so it's ideally suited for work outside the classroom.

Speaking homework

Procedure:

Speaking homework:

· Set up the task in class, eg. Topic from what they have been doing in class, set of new vocab (minimum 5 words), Speak for between 1 and two mins, depends on level) Maybe preteach some pron from the vocab or other predictable words. Only these words can be used, they have to build around them improvising, no sentence writing. They can practise in class peer work, teacher supervising.

· Go home, go into vocaroo.com with a set of headphones, if necessary, depends on PC, and do it and send to teacher

· Teacher listens, while writing feedback, as below and send back to student.


Comments:
This creates more personal and individualized assessment a one-to-one with the teacher.


It gives a more accurate assessment than in class time and it may take up less of the learner’s time than doing an essay, reading or grammar, but may offer more of a feeling of accomplishment in productivity and a change from the usual homework.


The correcting may be less than having to correct written work, but the teacher need to be a computer with headphones.


Example oral below

Oral presentation


Teacher feedback:

Loic,

That was fine.


You used the new vocabulary successfully, in the right context; setting up my own business", "financial backing" etc.

Vocabulary

You said something that sounded like a Spanish expression:

"getting your idea into reality", which would really be "making your dream come true".

Pronunciation

Be careful with pronunciation;

"custom" the "u" is the same sound as in the words; "country", "love", "up"  and culture"

"business" is "bizniz"

Financial backing is the the same as the "a" in cat

Discourse

You made good used of discourse; "once I've finished ..."

You used "so" and "and" and there were hardly any pauses, just the necessary ones for the "chunks" of information.

Good work! B
_____________
from Any Barker – thanks, Andy!

Great tool to help you manage your classes

Want to avoid, classroom management problems? Fancy a tool that you display on the screen with the names of all your students with a fun avatar?

That you can use to reward your students when they participate, are creative and do hard work - 

as well as to point out the times when they’re being disruptive?

If so, check out Classdojo

Passive learning on the IWB

Does the maximisation of the IWB have a positive influence on teaching?  Walker-Tileston (2004) argues that children learn best through their dominant senses, seeing, hearing and touching.  Interactive classrooms can appeal to all three senses simultaneously through a variety of visual representations, sounds and the capacity to touch and interact with the board.  Therefore, I carried out a short experiment to see whether my Jnr3 students retained and remembered vocabulary and grammar structures better through memory games on the IWB.  The experiment was carried out for a period of 6 weeks on units 11-13 of English in Mind on 12 students.  Memory games were used on the IWB for the vocabulary in units 11 and 13 and for the grammar in unit 12.  The resources used were: Pelmanism on the IWB, Quizzlet.com and the English in Mind DVD.  At the end of each unit, students had to complete a unit check on the target language covered.  The results obtained demonstrated that in both vocabulary and grammar exercises, students’ average marks were higher when only the coursebook had been used.  However, marks were generally higher for vocabulary exercises (average 75%) than grammar (average 68%).  To complete the experiment students were asked to fill in a questionnaire at the end to reflect on the sample lessons.  The results were quite contradictory.  Their responses revealed that students unanimously preferred doing exercises on the IWB and preferred vocabulary exercises in general.  However, 73% felt they had learnt more doing exercises in the coursebook and 64% felt that they had learnt more from grammar exercises.  91% found exercises more interesting on the IWB and found exercises more difficult in the coursebook.  Ironically, when asked to choose which exercises they had learnt the most from this year, they all chose exercises from the coursebook (50% chose Check your progress and 50% chose Read and listen).  With regards to general feedback, 55% would like more exercises on the IWB or in the computer room, especially relating to grammar, 36% would like less homework and 9% would like more exercises relating to vocabulary. 

It is clear from the results that students enjoy working with the IWB, but they also seem to have a preference for what is easier, which did equate to better acquisition when learning vocabulary in general.  Even though the lessons included an element of interactivity, the fact that I was teaching old things in new ways resulted in passive learning, thus students only remember a meagre amount of the target language taught.  I believe that the uniqueness of IWB technology lies in the possibility for an intersection between technical and pedagogic interactivity.  Transforming teaching and learning with technology is a function of pairing thoughtful product design with current research in order to support instructional assessment practices that work.  Unfortunately, I speak the language of technology with a pronounced accent.  To eliminate passive learning and engage the digital era students when using the IWB it is essential that new content be taught in new ways.


(posted on behalf of Flor)

Innovations in class

Here's a quick and simple class idea. The New York Times  invited readers to share an innovation that they have made in their daily lives. Get your students to check them out, vote on them and then create their own.

And on the theme of creativity and innovation here's a complete lesson plan from the TeachingEnglish site's Great lesson plans section

Level: B1+

Age group: Older teens/adults

Timing: 60 - 90 minutes

Aims: 

• To discuss what constitutes creativity and identify examples of innovation in Britain and internationally
• To identify the meaning of vocabulary in the context of creativity and innovation
• To practise the sub-skill of reading for gist 
• To identify the form of the present perfect tense and explore its use to link the past with the present with the word since
• To distinguish between when to use the past simple tense (to refer to completed actions in the past) and when to use the present perfect tense (to connect the present with a past time)

Working on students' listening skills

It can be hard to know where to start  helping students to improve their listening skills and also to pinpoint the issues that are causing them problems. Here's some recent articles that I've found useful and have helped me clarify my ideas:

• on the difference between top down and bottom up listening situations by Catherine Morley http://tinyurl.com/d8fqnwh and Sue Swift http://eltnotebook.blogspot.com.es/2007/02/teaching-listening-top-down-or-bottom.html
• Developing Bottom-Up Decoding Skills for Listening by Sue Swift

Resources you can use with your students both in class and for their self-study: have you tried?

• Elementary Podcasts which you can download or access as an app for mobile devices 
• Word on the Street series which focuses on everyday language
• Big City, Small World an audio soap which is also available as a mobile app
• ELLLO short videos and questions

And if you're looking for more "authentic" resources there's:

• Voice Of America | Learning English
• VideoJug useful because many of the videos come with a transcript
• the great short films and lesson plans on Film English – Kieran Donaghy 

Jamie Keddie on the new international currency

Jamie Keddie – English language teacher, trainer and writer tells a tale that highlights how clicks and likes on social media have become the new international currency http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSSOWWaHU_A
You can find innovative lesson plans for all levels and ages of students on Jamie’s LessonStream website http://lessonstream.org/browse-lessons/

Our new LearnEnglishTeens site is now live!

LearnEnglishTeens http://tinyurl.com/cm8lw6y has a whole host of materials to keep your students engaged:
• Grammar snacks – videos and interactive exercise showing grammar being used in a natural way http://tinyurl.com/bs768fr
• Video zone – where students can find out what’s happening in the world while doing exercises to brush up their language skills  http://tinyurl.com/bltogje
• Magazine – helping students to keep up to date with the latest fashions, music and trends http://tinyurl.com/d3nswdm
And much more! Do you like it?

Dogme class ideas ;-)

For those of you who take Dogme very seriously, here's an antidote http://dogmeinaction.tumblr.com/page/2

Designing social media & mobile tasks for action-based language learning

That was the the ambitious title of the workshop that Josh Underwood and I ran at the Bilbao, TESOL Spain conference. In fact it was a practical, hands on session where teachers tried out some class ideas that exploit mobile and social learning and then talked afterwards about what they thought about them. Their response was generally pretty positive, so here are the worksheets for you to look at and perhaps try out yourself:

• Using photos – making a task personally meaningful
• Pancakes – QR codes & listening, doing, sharing
• Pic-your-wits – games & vocabulary
• The next big app – project work

Here's the workshop slide presentation.

xtranormal mothers day

very simple, have a butcher's here
(tested with a false sender email)

Who´s your hero?

Ever wished to be on the Swedish news? Perhaps not but regardless you or whoever you choose can be the star of the viral video that is Tackfilm´s Hero; easy, quick to do and fun.
There´s an example here starring Ann F, also there are quite a few examples on youtube of the different versions.
Kieran´s post on how to use Hero is here from 2010 and from 2012 here (see optional follow up)
A How to Do guide (ppt and handout doc) specifically for version 2 has turned up in the T-drive folder: Tackfilm hero 2 student guide.

Other stuff: Swedes and their tv licences
and something similar to Hero (in French but as exploitable) here
Why some videos go viral TED talk here

TESOL -SPAIN 2012

March 9th-11th was the TESOL-SPAIN conference here in Deusto, in the beautiful setting of the University. Friday evening the conference was opened by Claudia Ferradas, followed by workshops, one of which was given by our very own Steve Bilsbourgh. Saturday dawned bright and sunny and more Bilbao B.C staff were in the arena!! Ann F and Kath were first up and then I followed mid morning with a practical talk entitled, what shall we do in phonics today, I had asked for a small room because I only wanted 20 people but somehow over 30 squashed into the room!! it was very cosy and warm!. The shaving foam and cold cooked spaghetti flowed freely and everybody got stuck into blending and segmenting with said things, we then moved on to using mini interactive whiteboards( laminated card) and different activities they could be used for and the final segment was some games to re enforce tricky words and some TPR games, which was very interesting due to lack of space. Karen followed later on Saturday afternoon/evening giving her talk also on phonics and the message on the street was ,it was very good. All in all a great Conference for BC Bilbao.

3 sites that have caught my eye @tesolspain

1. Lyrics training

This was from a session by Tom Spain on homework. The site has ready-made gap-fill activities for songs. Why run the risk of having your musical taste scrutinized and found wanting by your students? Show them once in class how it works and then let them choose what they do at home.

2. Class Dojo

Kind of an online sticker chart for primary and perhaps junior groups. Pluses: 1) cute avatars 2) class summary possible 3) can turn off negative 'black mark' option 4) can introduce your own criteria e.g 'speaking English'. Saw this in a talk by Graham Stanley. Always slightly uneasy about 'motivating' learners this way but reckon it probably has its place if it's not overplayed.

3. Film English

Lots of lesson plans based around short films. Kieran Donaghy, who gave his talk at the Council on Friday as well as the TESOL conference yesterday, said his ideal film length for a class is 2 minutes!

An Introduction to Dogme

Last week, I led an insett at the British Council, Bilbao on Dogme.  We discussed dogme principles (see Scott Thornbury’s article ‘A Dogma for EFL' for more information) by contrasting them with a coursebook orientated approach and deciding which we agreed with more (thanks to Lee MacKenzie for this strategy).

We looked at some ideas from ‘Teaching Unplugged’ by Meddings & Thornbury (Delta Publishing, 2009) and a few I picked up from different sites on the net, of which I particularly recommend:

 - the Dogme Cookbook    

 - Dale Coulter’s Language Moments

 - Mike Harrison’s site

 Luke Meddings delivering a live lesson is also very useful to get a better idea of what a dogme lesson consists of.

At the end of the session we carried out a little survey. While only one of the teachers present felt they would like to adopt a completely dogme approach, everyone felt they would like to incorporate some of the approach into their teaching. But, as a colleague pointed out, they probably wouldn’t have come to the session if they hadn’t.

Motivating the unmotivated

This is the title of a video seminar by Ken Wilson that I think is really well-worth watching. Ken is the former director of the English Teaching Theatre and is a highly experienced teacher, teacher-trainer and author of more than thirty ELT titles.
He first outlines the six key motivational factors that have the most significant bearing on a student’s motivation in the classroom:
1. Teacher enthusiasm
2. Feeling of encouragement from the teacher
3. A sense that the teacher really believes in the student’s progress and success
4. Genuine involvement of the teacher, maintaining good class and group
relationships
5. Supportive, safe and secure atmosphere
6. Valuing student ideas and participation, encouraging autonomy, giving students the chance to make the classroom space their own

Ken then goes on to suggest ten ways to motivate students giving practical suggestions for all of them:

• Make them curious
• Challenge them
• Avoid the obvious
• Devolve responsibility
• Teach unplugged (occasionally)
• Let students use their tech and their tech skills
•  …AND their imagination
• Find out what they know and what they’re good at
• Take a break
• Turn your classroom into a spider’s web

Putting Your Vocab Bag Online: Memrise and Quizlet

Intro

This post is essentially a comparision of two websites, Memrise and Quizlet. Both sites allow you to upload groups of words, both sites have activities to help students learn the words. My main interest has been from the perspective of making our class vocab bag virtual but they are a vocab-building resource you might encourage your learners to use regardless.

Background

For a couple of years I've created a 'Vocab Bag' page for students on our class wiki. The purpose of this was to encourage more self-study. Although this proved a good reference and record for the students, it basically ended up being just a list of words. Once when I was feeling particularly keen, I found time to link some of the words to online dictionary definitions and others to howjsay.com, where they could at least hear the words pronounced. This example is as good as it got but I found it far too time-consuming in the end and really not that good. Memrise and Quizlet offer much more.

What Memrise and Quizlet have in common

• Easy sign up

• Option to sign in with Facebook

• Ability to create your own word groups

• Option to pinch other people's word groups

• Words can be either paired with their translation or English definition

• Games and activities to help learn the words

• Quick and easy to upload new words

What's special about Memrise

The sound thinking behind Memrise is that words must be revisited and recycled before being commited to the long-term memory. In Memrise words are seeds which first grow in your greenhouse and then are moved to your garden. If you don't water your words, you'll get an email informing you that 'some of your words are wilting'. Here's are virtual vocab bag from term 1 this year.

Why I like Quizlet best

Whilst Memrise is certainly more attractive-looking, Quizlet has a number of features which make it my current choice:

1. Students can listen to the words!

2. You can monitor your students by creating an online group

3. There's a greater variety of games and activities

   
   

And what the students think

From a class of 10 adult intermediate students, 6 have signed with 3 students very active on this term's virtual vocab bag. I see this as a success. What I need to do next is to find out why some of the class are seemingly not interested. It maybe that web-based learning doesn't appeal to them – this has to be accepted by the tech-loving teacher! On the other hand, it may be they're having problems getting started – a class trip to the computer room might be the answer.

I recommend giving it a try whether or not you're a tech-loving teacher - it's certain some of your students will benefit. Give me a shout if you want help setting it up with your class.

More dogme doings

If you're interested to know more about how dogme can actually work in a class situation, here's a video of Luke Meddings (co-author with Scott Thornbury of Teaching Unplugged) teaching a live session. Also included are his own reflections of how he thought the session went.

Oli Beddall offers a Dogme cookbook which is a series of useful suggestions for activities you can do in class followed up by ideas for focussing on the language that students produce. And if you're not convinced that the dogme approach is for you, check out the comments at the end of the post and you'll find that you're in good company.

In this post, Chia Suan Chong gives us an anatomy of a class in which the impetus was provided by photos her students had taken and how she (and her class) dealt with the language that emerged. And if you like her style, here's another post from her  - Only in a Dogme class… 

And to keep the balance, finally here's a post from Stephen Greene who feels that there's been an overload recently of dogme doings.

Peer teaching of grammar

Results of a questionnaire to see how my YA Advanced B felt about having to actually do some thinking and teach each other.

I had one half of the class read up on a grammar point, while the others looked at another one. They then prepared a flipchart as a visual aid to help them explain what they'd learned to students from the other group.

Finally, we did some book exercises to test their understanding of the two.

• From the survey results it's clear that they feel more comfortable with the grammar that they spent time preparing the flipchart for. This despite the fact that I felt that one of the grammar points was considerably less complex than the other.
• The group was divided on Peer Teaching vs traditional Teacher/Student dynamic, with the latter slightly more popular, and several commenting that both were valid, even if only for the sake of variety.
• Encouragingly, all but one wanted to do it again.

Conclusion: Need to find a way for the peer teaching itself to be more effective, or at least to give students more confidence in their peers as teachers.

Comments welcome on any experiences /advice how to manage this better.

Recommended class activities and lesson plans from current ELT blog posts

• Using haiku for summary tasks - David Petrie 
• Listen now – authentic listening tasks – Gary Jones 
• All about me: lesson plan on personal interests, likes and dislikes age: teenage/adult level: A2/B1 – Sally Trowbridge 
• Lesson plan on the theme of heroes with good visuals, including short videos age: teenage/adult  level: intermediate/advanced  - Kieran Donaghy Film English
• Looking to the future – practising future continuous and perfect – imaginative situations and good visuals - David Mainwood EFL Smart Blog and a list of links to online games, quizzes and tests 

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