BC Bilbao Centre Blog

More dogme doings

2012-02-02T19:20:00.002+01:00

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

2012-01-30T17:03:00.007+01:00

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

2012-01-18T17:20:00.001+01:00

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

Get more out of Google

2012-01-16T17:11:00.001+01:00

Click on the image to see it full size

Created by: HackCollege

Ideas for Christmas classes

2011-12-09T13:09:00.000+01:00

Oleg Nesterenko has lots of ideas and materials you can use for pre-intermediate/intermediate students - (some more religious than others).

David Mainwood's excellent lesson plan Merry Christmas Mr Bean - also suitable for pre-intermediate/intermediate students

In this blog post, Sharon Hartle suggests ideas and activities best on an advent calendar (you can also download one she¡'s already done). Good for young learners.

Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want is the title of his leasson plan based on the controversial John Lewis YouTube Christmas advert. Advanced students. Comes with teacher's notes and worksheet.

LearnEnglish Kids has lost of activities from making a snowman to online quizzes

Ideas for activities from TeachingEnglish for all ages and levels

Have fun!

Sources for class activities, lesson plans and teaching tips

2011-12-09T12:31:00.002+01:00

I think ELT blogs are get better and better and for me are a great source for class materials and teaching tips. Here are some of my favourites:

Kieran Donaghy's Film English - comprehensive lesson plans for different ages and levels based around short films
David Mainwood's EFL Smart Blog - imaginative lesson plans and activities with good visual stimuli, searchable by level, skill, topic and grammar point
Dale Coulter's Languge Moments - practical ideas for classes using a dogme approach. Easily adaptable to different ages and levels. The blog also has some interesting reflections on DIY professional development
Ian James' TEFL teacher - I highly recommend his Dear victim, dear burglar lesson plan (Advanced)
David Petrie's TEFL Geek - his current Twelve days of Geekmas series have some really excellent teaching and learning tips
Sandy Millin - has some sound class activities particularly at FCE level
The Consultants-E blog - some very good, practical ideas for using mobiles as an educational tool
David Dodgson's Relflections of a teacher and a learner - as a very experienced teacher David offers some great insights into class dynamics and comes up with ideas for activities that can bring out the best from students
Steve Muir's allatc - a new blog with ideas for advanced students that includes the excellent lesson plan My blackberry's not working
Gary Jones' Listen now - good, quality podcasts with worksheets and teacher's notes

If you decide to take my advice and follow these blogs, you can make your life simpler by using Google Reader- that way you can see all your favourite blogs in one place and easily keep up to date with new posts.

Using internet publishing tools and platforms

2011-11-24T16:57:00.000+01:00

Would like to know how to set up a class blog or wiki? Or would you like your students to create an interactive poster using Glogster or a VoiceThread presentation with a collaborative set of recordings or simply combine some images with text with an intuitive tool called Tabblo?

Here's a page that Gavin and me have created for our TDU group -ICT for language learning that shows examples and includes tutorials of how to use these very tools & platforms.

Edublog awards for 2011

2011-11-22T10:36:00.000+01:00

Nominations for the 2011 Edublog awards are now open. The purpose of the Edublog awards is to promote and demonstrate the educational values of educational blogs/resources. So I'd like to nominate these links as the ones I find most useful:

Best teacher blog Film English
Best educational use of audio / video / visual / podcast: Tefltecher
Best free web tool English Central
Best twitter hashtag #ELTchat
Lifetime achievement - Jamie Keddie LessonStream

Interesting stuff on the TeachingEnglish website

2011-11-08T20:02:00.001+01:00

If the TeachingEnglish website isn't a place you regularly visit you might have missed out on these new goodies:

video tip on the variety of ways you can use Flashcards with young learners
a flashcard maker (you have to register on the site - which is free - to access this)
webinars - the last one was on The learner-centred classroom and the next one is on Creative learning and teaching
seminars - the last one on Digital literacy by Gavin Dudeney

An easy way to keep up to date with the latest on the TeachingEnglish site and the ELT world in general - and you're not allergic to facebook - is to visit the TeachingEnglish facebook page (or like it, so that our daily posts appear on your Newsfeed).

an easy to use video quiz thingy

2011-11-08T19:44:00.007+01:00

fancy making an online quiz for your students?
join up for free: eslvideo, to make, and if you wish embed, a video quiz, for example
China says 'Ole' to Spain.

Changes to Cambridge Proficiency exam

2011-11-03T18:28:00.001+01:00

According to David Petrie of TEFLGeek "In 2013 the CPE exam is not only celebrating 100 years of tormenting language learners and confusing their teachers, but will also be metamorphasising into its latest incarnation". He then goes on to make a really thorough analysis of what those changes will be. So if you teach the CPE, check his post out!

Mobile and social media for language learning and teaching - INSETT

2011-10-27T17:59:00.000+02:00

Last Friday (October 23) we had an INSETT on this. There weren't that many people there but that didn't matter because the discussion was good. We talked about:

how we learn and how gaining insights from this can help us understand better what works with our students
how far we can expect students to take the lead in their own learning
practical ideas for motivating students and encouraging them to be more autonomous

If you missed the INSETT you can see the prezi presentation we used to guide the discussion and a google doc that has loads of links that go with the topics we tried (not always successfully) to cover. Hope you find them useful!

Are you ready to Dogme?

2011-10-27T17:00:00.002+02:00

Dogme certainly seems to be one of the current buzz words in English language teaching – we've even had a dogme session here at our centre (thanks Peter!) So what is it? As I understand, it's all about making as much out of students' input into your class as you can. But don't take my word for it. There are a lot of experts out there ready to give their definitions and specific takes about its implications for what we do in our classes.

Check out:
Scott Thornbury's blog An A-Z of ELT – and particularly the comments on his posts – for an unwinding debate about what dogme is all about. Scott wrote the classic on the subject - Teaching Unplugged (do we have a copy at our centre? We should!)

He co-wrote the book with Luke Meddings, who is currently the guest writer on the TeachingEnglish website. Lukes's already written there an article, 2 activities: Family snapshot and My wikipedia plus a blog post. And if these inspire you, why not take the opportunity to ask Luke a question while he's around on the site? All you need to do is to add one to his blog post.

Another dogme blogger to look out for is David Coulter. David's blog – which is endearingly called Language Moments – is based around him providing lesson skeletons – not lesson plans – because if you've got a plan you've probably not got the right dogme mind set to go with the flow of how students are responding to your class. (So forget most of what you learnt on your CELTA/DELTA course!) I personally like his skeletons a lot – they're full of practical ideas for activities to do in class and are obviously the product of a teacher who reflects a lot about what works (and doesn't) in his class.

There are many more dogme ELT bloggers than the 3 I've mentioned here. Perhaps you can add them yourselves in a comment or write another blog post? Or if you've found this useful, let me know and I'll add a follow up.

Spellbinding resources for Young Learners

2011-10-27T16:21:00.004+02:00

Draw a stick man is an online resource where - you've guessed it! – you draw a stick man. But then the remarkable thing is that your stick man comes "alive" and starts asking you questions and giving you instructions! I've used it with my Silver 2 class (Primary 9 & 10 year olds) and they were spellbound. We then followed this up up with me giving them a drawing-a-story dictation – which practised the vocabulary we'd learnt, following instructions, prepositions of place (next to, behind etc), some basic adjectives etc. I left the ending of the story up to them – what the monster did when the 2 stick men that they'd drawn escaped (hanging onto a balloon and a kite). So, we ended up by having a round the class interchange about what each monster was doing. Great stuff!

I reckon that Juniors would also buy into drawing a stick man. I've even used it with a Young Adult class for a quick mood change activity – and it seemed to go down well.

Another drawing resource that fits the seasonal theme – Halloween – is Grabba Beast I haven't used it yet but for a fun class activity to revise body parts, colours, adjectives and the obligatory draw a Halloween monster, I'm sure it'd work well.

Fun drawing!

storify: creating stories using social media

2011-07-26T13:07:00.038+02:00

Storify, a tool that has been used by news agencies, PR companies, bloggers and others inc the White House, has now been released to the public. Check out As it happened on the BBC and this example to get an idea. As well as the news it can be used to make narratives from vids, tweets, images as well as websites.
Read more or just watch the intro video:

Similarly you could have a look at Storyful

pictory

2011-07-16T11:53:00.019+02:00

Pictory is a(nother) online photo journal providing some thoughtful photos with accompanying texts to encourage students to produce some meaningful work, check it out: pictory blog here pictory site here

You could perhaps introduce the theme of personal experience and/or the task of students interviewing their family or friends with Susan Dirgham's 3 minute photo story.

(if you're feeling ambitious don't forget we have moviemaker)

Good & reliable suggestions for lesson plans and class activities using visual stimuli

2011-07-08T13:56:00.000+02:00

If you're looking for innovative and well-prepared lesson plans that use visual/video stimuli, try:

Kieran Donaghy's Film English website
Jamie Keddie's LessonStream - which you can search by subject & level

David Mainwood's EFL Smartblog also uses lots of short videos and has lesson plans/activities that focus on grammar concepts. For example, I just used 2 of these for practising the present continuous in a Junior class and the students loved them - particularly the clip about Mr Bean making a sandwich.

Also, don't forget the LearnEnglish website - particularly video-based listenings such as the Word on the street series, I wanna talk about. They come with online activities that work really well on the IWB. Just used this one on Learning languages as an assessed task for an Advanced A class. They wrote the answers to the task first in their notebooks and then we checked them by completing them on the IWB.

Also you can find quirky videos like this one on YouTube about David after the dentist (specially if you've got quirky friends who constantly post links to them on facebook) and, for example, get students to write their comment about the video, randomly distribute them in the class and ask the students to try and identify who wrote the comment.

Another one for vocabulary building: Memrise

2011-07-07T14:29:00.000+02:00

This could be an alternative to your class vocabulary bag with the advantage that students can access it from home.

Once you've registered with Memrise you can create your own vocabulary list which you do by adding descriptions/definitions and images. Once you've built up a list, you can play games (and invite your friends to join in with you) that are designed to help you fix the new vocabulary in your brain.

Interesting ideas for homework

2011-07-07T14:17:00.001+02:00

Homework to do lists
Help students to identify what they have most problems doing and the language skills they have most problems with. Then get them to create they're own to do lists based on what they think they need to practise.

They can do this online with an easy-to-use resource called doitdoitdone.

Nik Peachey describes the process really well in this blog post and also gives suggestions for activities that students will find useful and interesting. (There are more suggestions for good homework activities on the same blog.)

Get your students to email you the URL of their homework to do list. You can then get them to set themselves their own homework and cross it out on their list once they've done it. To check they've really done what they say, ask them to describe in the next class/ or get them to note down what they did specifically and to comment on how useful it proved to be.

English Attack!
This is a new website. According to their blurb: "English Attack! creates real innovation in English language learning by promoting discovery and learner autonomy instead of the traditional linear lesson based method; and focusing on "learning by doing."

I've just checked it out and it does seem to be better than most with songs where students can listen to/watch the video and fill in gaps, plus a whole range of vocabulary games. Another idea for more interesting homework

alternatives to wordle?

2011-07-01T13:32:00.014+02:00

wordle clouds are all over the place for two very good reasons: wordle looks good and is very user friendly, but there´s a few things you can´t do with it such as shape the clouds, get the words to fill a shape, put words within words, nor for on your blog is there any interactivity (click, move around on each below to compare that aspect) so here are a few free alternatives for comparison:

"edgalaxy"Click on the link above to see this word cloud at WordItOut. You may also view it on this website if you enable JavaScript (see your web browser settings).

WordItOut

Tagxedo (if you cannot see this that is because you need microsoft silverlight installed*)

Tagul

worditout is very easy to use and you can fill all of that rectangle instead of editing away that white space in wordle (if you're fussy). but it looks very dull, not such a problem for worksheet photocopies however. on the web it has a built in google search link for each word.

*tagxedo looks funky on the web and has gained in popularity due to the growing library of shapes available. Despite that and the fact it has plenty of features two things need bearing in mind; one is that it's moving towards paying subscribers with reduced features available for free users, and the other is that silverlight is required. The 'Powered' by tagxedo tag is unforgivably naff too.

of the three, tagul is my personal preference and a prospective challenger to wordle: you can shape, edit embed as a flash object, download as an image etc etc, in short it looks as good as wordle with far more features. the only very minor snag is the need to be signed in.

To conclude, if you want to embed on the web then all three are worth consideration as alternatives to wordle having the advantage of interactivity as well as filling the shape. If you want more than rectangles for the web or photocopies then check out tagxedo and tagul.

presentin me powerpoint

2011-06-02T16:06:00.017+02:00

Tefltecher has a post on an online app called present.me with which you/your students can record themselves giving a powerpoint presentation by webcam (something students have at home, cough). You need to sign up but it's free.

Tutorial and a lesson plan on public speaking using present.me at Ian´s pucker Tefltecher blog, inc. a how not to use powerpoint vid here

More on public speaking:
Kieran's The King's Speech lesson at his splendid film english site.
Some adaptable stuff at eHow

A powerpoint on powerpoint:
(or how present.me can help)

Is T for Technology?

2011-05-05T19:00:00.001+02:00

Scott Thornbury's ideas David Deubel: Myths and madness and on using Technology the “Right” way
Gavin Dudeney's take on the debate
David Deubel: Myths and madness and on using Technology the “Right” way
Teaching With Technology - A Basic Checklist from Sue Lyon-Jones
Choosing the technology that works for you by Darren Elliott
Nicky Hockly on The principled approach
Graham Stanely suggests the 5 'W's

Useful resources and downloads:

2011-05-05T18:49:00.000+02:00

Free technology for teachers - a series of guides on using technology in the classroom
New ELT photocopiables April 2011 from Alex Case
11 good digital storytelling resources
Flashcard maker
Class .ppt presentation on the 5 senses:

Getting Students To Produce IWB Flipcharts

2011-04-12T14:09:00.004+02:00

Like a lot of teachers, I've been worried about hogging the IWB a bit too much. The recent insett on getting students to create flipcharts was really helpful and interesting. It gave me the idea of getting students to produce 5-minute tasks based on module 5 of English File Upp-int. One of my worries was that it would take up too much time so that's why I called them 5-minute tasks. I thought up the tasks and divided them into 'revision' tasks i.e. on areas we'd already covered and 'teaching' tasks i.e. on areas which were due to come up over the next few weeks. We then spent an hour in the CALL room and I monitored closely and made suggestions as to activity type - a lot of the final products were mix and match activities e.g. one pair wrote up rules for using 'used to' with examples for each rule. The other students then had to match the example to the rule. Over the next few weeks the students presented their 5-minute activities. They proved great as fillers and both the presenters and their audience seemed really engaged. And the objective of making the classes more learner-centred was certainly achieved. My biggest worry had been that the hour in the CALL room would be laborious, and would challenge their computer rather than their language skills. However, I stressed that the project would only be successful if they did the preparation part in English and they reponded well to this. This was something of an experiment for me, as I suspect that my classes generally rate low on the 'learner-autonomy' scale, but it worked out really well.

Is TEFL really a profession?

2011-03-24T18:09:00.001+01:00

Ideas on the topic from Professor Baker, Scott Thornbury and The TEFL Times

Life for weary students?

2011-03-24T18:03:00.000+01:00

Want to inject a bit of life into a weary bunch of students? Here's a post on using Discovery's puzzlemaker.

Also a list of the best learning games for English language learners from reknowned blogger, Larry Ferlazzo

Imaginative ways to recycle vocabulary

2011-03-24T17:35:00.000+01:00

One of our perrenial tasks is to help our students build up their vocabulary - which means that we have to be inventive in finding ways to recycle and extend the words they know.

Here's some great ideas from Cecilia Lemos which work for all age groups and also a list of further activities from the TeachingEnglish website for you to try out .

MyWordBook - great self-study resource for your students

2011-03-22T19:54:00.000+01:00

MyWordBook helps students build up their vocabulary on the go. The program is free and works on on iPhones, iPod touch and iPad. It comes with a set of flashcards but more interestingly, you can create your own and add images, sound and notes. You can even draw your own pictures to help you remember the meaning of a word.

55 ways to use an IWB in the classroom

2011-03-22T10:33:00.078+01:00

Following the recent post on 55 ways to support writing in the classroom, here´s a presentation on 55 ways to use an IWB in the classroom

wanna twiddla?

2011-03-21T19:10:00.036+01:00

Twiddla is a free online collaborative IWB-type resource: students/you can read, respond in real time to whatever you/they write, draw, etc on the same page. Good for use in the CALL room. No registration or signing in required to use for it free. A Pro a/c with more bells and whistles is available free for teachers, see site for details. Give it a go! twiddla

Other etherpad sites here

Using the speech accent archive for working on students' pronunciation

2011-03-16T16:47:00.000+01:00

"The speech accent archive is established to uniformly exhibit a large set of speech accents from a variety of language backgrounds".

Unfortunately, the text that's used across the archive is not very inspiring but the fact that all the recordings use it means that it's easy to compare accents and variations in pronunciation.

I've just used 2 recordings with my Post FCE group: a native speaker and a Spanish speaker.

I printed out the text and asked students to mark where they thought there would be sentence stress and where intonation would rise and fall.(We'd been working on this before, so they knew what I was talking about.)

They then listened to the native speaker and compared their notations with what they heard.

They then listened to the Spanish speaker and marked where he put sentence stress and how he used intonation - and drew their conclusions.

Finally, they practised themselves saying the text.

The activity turned out to be quite productive. The the fact that I could use an anonymous speaker as a model of what to avoid was a boon and got over the embarrassment that often occurs when you try to focus on the typical pronunciation problems that students have.

Larry links

2011-03-16T15:32:00.014+01:00

A recent post by Larry Ferlazzo a prolific EFL blogger is on The best and easiest ways to use youtube, featuring ESL video, and some interactive sites such as World Adventure Kids, Drop the Weapon, Spelling Bee and Ken Burns National Parks Photo challenge (fotobabble might go with this?). It also back references to Larry's own collections inc. Best places to read, write and choose adventure stories.
Larry tweets here and his blog, at least one of them, is here. Definitely worth a butcher's.

Global Projects for Young Learners

2011-03-15T19:53:00.001+01:00

A webinar by internationally renowned ELT blogger, Shelly Terrell.

And here's a link to her wiki: technology4kids

Lesson plan on everyday gadgets (including use of Glogster)

2011-03-15T19:45:00.002+01:00

Here's a really comprehensive lesson plan that practises speaking, listening and reading skills plus helps students to build their vocabulary. What more could you want! Should work well with Juniors above /intermediate levels and above.

How do you approach teaching exam classes?

2011-03-10T20:32:00.001+01:00

This was the topic of one of last week's #ELTChats and here's the summary of what teachers from all over the world came up with. Well-worth the read and a great help in putting exam classes into perspective.

How do we acquire language?

2011-03-10T19:53:00.003+01:00

This was the burning question for Deb Roy, MIT cognitive scientist. But instead of merely writing a paper or a book on it, he has recorded on video the first 5 years of his son's life; focussing it on his progress in learning how to speak. This online article describes Deb's real-time action research and includes a video showing how the boy learnt to say the word "ball" over a period of months. And here is the video of his recent TED talk.

Six word stories

2011-03-09T20:32:00.000+01:00

Looking for an imaginative but simple idea for your class - try this great idea for Six Word Stories from Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto. You can use it with students of all ages.

Finding graded reading material on the internet.

2011-03-09T20:25:00.000+01:00

Find it difficult to find authentic online reading material at the right level for your students? Here's Twurdy to your rescue - a search machine that grades the results of your search according to reading difficulty.

BeeOasis is also good source of graded reading material - it's a site that offers stories, news, and comments about the arts and sciences -some of which come with video and sound. At the moment BeeOasis offers 30 days free access to material.

What does it mean to know a word?

2011-03-03T20:57:00.001+01:00

A presentation from Karenne Sylvester to help you and your students with vocabulary building.

Teaching English: It isn't rocket science

2011-03-03T20:42:00.000+01:00

Bet you knew that already :) In this blog post of the same title, Jason Renshaw comes up with 7 tips that will help to maintain your sanity.

How to improve your students' reading skills

2011-03-03T20:28:00.001+01:00

This blog post by Marisa Constantinides is timely reading for all of us who are thinking of taking up Beatrice's excellent Reading Challenge. Marisa digs down to reveal what the reading experience consists of and then provides practical steps we can take to help our students improve their skills. Recommended!

55 ways to support writing in the classroom

2011-03-03T20:12:00.002+01:00

This Google presentation is really a must read for all teachers - a goldmine of tips and great resources that will help get your students writing. It compiles the ideas of many teachers and while it covers all ages and levels of students, it is particularly good on reading and writing resources for very young learners.

Another site providing lesson plans based on film clips

2011-03-03T19:59:00.001+01:00

Looking for short film clips to liven up your class? Then Film English might be your answer. It provides regular topical lesson plans using a good choice of short film clips. Check it out!

just a note on reducing very large images using Paint

2011-03-03T19:53:00.003+01:00

If you use Paint to edit images here, then you´ll have noticed that the zoom of the version we have is restricted to 100% plus which isn´t helpful for managing vast images. To get around that: select the rectangle on the left, right click on the image, chose Stretch and Skew, and reduce the image by percentage (note you'll lose some resolution).

Making youtubes interactive

2011-02-16T18:59:00.009+01:00

Using youtube's annotations app you can add text and links to video. You need a) a youtube account and b) to upload the video into your account (ie use your own videos or upload ones you've downloaded). And then: in your account open ´My videos´ and the dropdown menu besides whichever audiovisual delight you wish to teflise:

More info on how to do it:
here and here
A couple of examples of how it could be exploited in class
Magic trick
Choose your own adventure

#ELTchat - great for professional development

2011-02-15T20:40:00.001+01:00

A bit sniffy of the value of twitter? That was my opinion until I came across #ELTchat. Every Wednesday ELT tweeters meet up on twitter to discuss a particular topic related to language teaching and learning such as, how do you teach writing, ways to develop learner autonomy, convincing colleagues that online professional development is as effective as face-to-face (recent chats). And the beauty of it all is that someone volunteers to produce a summary of all the tips (as in the previous links) and advice that ELT chatters came up with that week, so that even if you couldn't make the Wednesday chat you can still benefit from the wisdom and experience of ELT teachers from all over the world. You can also follow what everyone actually said by doing a search on twitter for #ELTchat. Up-lifting stuff!

Learning beyond walls

2011-02-15T20:22:00.002+01:00

This is the title of Shelly Terrell's blog post on the TeachingEnglish website. It's full of good tips on how to use different online tools and new technology and puts forward a really strong argument about how exploiting them engages students and enriches the learning experience. Worth the read.

Qwiki for quick, informational features in class

2011-02-08T19:51:00.001+01:00

Qwiki is a good resource for quick interest features in class - and for some topics an alternative to Wikipedia. Whereas on Wikepdia you're faced with a mass of text and very few images meaning it can take time to find the information you want , Qwiki is the opposite.

Use is to search for public figures, places, natural wonders etc and it comes up with a shortish, simple spoken text and lots of images of great images, pretty much like a presentation.

Also, have you come across SimpleWikipedia which consciously uses much simpler language than Wikipedia and therefore is often a better choice for language learners?

Glogster for interactive posters

2011-02-03T18:23:00.000+01:00

Glogster is a great resource for all ages of students (the link is to eduglogster which enables you to have the same login for your whole class). Give your students a quick how to video to watch on youtube and they'll be well away making interactive posters that can serve for presentations and all types of project work. Well worth a whirl!

English Central revamped!

2011-02-03T18:14:00.000+01:00

EnglishCentral is a website which provides videos you can speak along with, record your voice and see how well you match the original speaker - a great resource for practising pronunciation.

It's now been revamped and is really teacher-friendly. If you register as a teacher you can access tools to monitor how well your students are doing with the tasks you set them.

The videos also now come with an online dictionary so that students can check any words they're not sure about.

Jamie Keddie's new site

2011-02-03T18:05:00.000+01:00

LessonStream is Jamie Keddie's new site and an improvement on his highly popular TEFLclips. It's much easier to find things - lesson plans are listed by age, level and topic.

A great site with good ideas and a useful source for interesting, short video material to use in class.

Want to make fun worksheets?

2011-02-01T19:46:00.000+01:00

Teacher's Pet is free software you can download to make fun worksheets: crossword puzzles, word searches, gap-fills etc. At the moment it's only available for Windows but the creators say it will soon be ready for Mac.

A tool for helping students to create more complex sentences

2011-01-25T18:22:00.001+01:00

This is another blog post from Nik Peachy, well worth the read and with clear ideas about how to use it in class.

What kind of teacher are you?

2011-01-25T18:13:00.000+01:00

A fun quiz that tells you which animal(s) you are and the type of activities you'll enjoy using in class! The quiz was inspired by Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences which suggests that different people learn and do things in very different ways.

You can do this quiz either on facebook or on the TeachingEnglish website (where you don't need to log in to facebook),

Life not sweet enough? The answer: a lesson plan on chocolate mousse

2011-01-25T18:08:00.000+01:00

Here's the lesson plan for upper-immediate upwards and featuring a video by Nigella Lawson..

Thanks to Jon Brown for this one. Enjoy!

words and pictures

2011-01-21T15:11:00.005+01:00

Storybird is for kids (of all ages), there are some magnificent efforts, individual and collaborative. And then there´s this rather rubbish example.

It looks great, is fun, free and easy to do.

Plus! there´s a January Challenge to enter. Win a prize. ave a butcher´s.

it´s sticky!

2011-01-20T19:04:00.005+01:00

register free		sticky4U click on image or here	and here's a restricted example no sticky4U

Pronunciation Insett: web resources

2010-12-09T13:39:00.008+01:00

Here are some of the web resources for teaching & learning pronciation referred to in the Pronunciaiton insett on December 10th. Please add in the comments section and I'll incorporate them into the post. Thanks.

Howjsay Simple. Write the word in the box and listen to it being said.

Ship or sheep

Iowa university phonetics detailed diagrams and videos of mouth.

Stress Monsters the most popular of English File's pronunciation pages

English Central good fun for learners. Students listen video clips and mimic what they hear. The programme allows for students to record themselves, for which they get a score! You have to sign up but it's very straightforward.

Accent Archive compare English-speakers from different places.

Getting students to use Spanish when they're working on online tasks

2010-11-30T20:00:00.002+01:00

This is one I've been knocking my head against ever since I got interested in using ICT in my classes. The students get so engaged in what they're doing that they automatically switch back to their first language - and you as the teacher end up sounding like a record stuck in the same groove; reminding them to talk in English.

Here's an idea that I've tried out recently and which seems to have had positive results: get them to talk in Spanish.

Set a time limit of, say, 15 minutes and tell them to get on with the task and talk in Spanish, but to note down the phrases they use while they're working.

At the end of the 15 minutes get them to take turns writing their phrases on the IWB and getting other students to help them translate them into English. In this way they build up a really great bank of useful English which they can draw from.

I follow this up with a flipchart meter which I constantly update while students are working on the computers so that they're aware that I'm listening to and taking account of what they're saying.

If you want to do more work on computer vocabulary here's a site which provides basic vocabulary with images and quizzes.

Have fun!

Making online comics

2010-11-30T19:29:00.000+01:00

Here's a very teacher and student friendly site for making online comics with suggestions of how you can exploit them in class.

The inimitable Ken Robinson on changing education paradigms

2010-11-30T19:24:00.002+01:00

Food for thought!

Writing is fun (specially when help is provided)

2010-11-23T20:34:00.000+01:00

Writingfun is the name of a website that provides a range of interactive templates of common written forms e.g. reports, reviews, articles. Each writing genre comes with examples that students can use as models and show a range from low to quite high levels.

Here's a tutorial from Russel Stannard that runs through the site's features.

For more really helpful tutorials by the same guy here's his site TeacherTrainingVideos.

Top tips for creating flipcharts

2010-11-12T19:43:00.001+01:00

Some simple easy ideas - plus a video showing how to implement them - for creating attractive flipcharts from José Picardo's Box of Tricks. Enjoy!

The top 10 learning tools

2010-11-12T19:27:00.001+01:00

Here's a great list of web tools for you and your students to use. Worth a look!

tumblr

2010-10-22T20:06:00.004+02:00

Yo! The word on the virtual street is that tumblr.com is the new Blogger, Twitter Wiki and Facebook all in one. Just opened a personal account to check it out and it seems very user-friendly. It's like a blog but with multiple pages like a wiki but you follow and are followed like Twitter and see your friends' updates like FB and can retweet them like the aforementioned. Not sure if it would be used collaboratively like a wiki/blog or get students to open one each...

ActivInspire - using a personal profile to save your settings on IWBs

2010-10-20T16:33:00.049+02:00

Did you know that you create a personal profile with your favourite settings? This means that when you open up ActivInspire it will always show the same set of tools, the background colour of pages etc that you have decided on.

With ActivInspire open (in the staffroom or classroom, it doesn't matter which), select Edit from the top menu and select Profiles...

Now you can set your flipchart page colour

Choose what tools appear on the toolbar

And decide how many colours appear in your palette

You can also make sure that ActivInspires shared resources - images, sounds, backgrounds etc - load and are available for you to use (on some computers in the staffroom they haven't been loading)

To do this, click on settings and uncheck Use default 'Shared Resources' path
Click on .... next to Shared resources file

And this window will open. On My Computer find the T:drive > Materials > ActivInspire Resources

Now click on the little disk with the pencil (top right-hand corner) to save your profile

Save it wherever you want to on your computer (perhaps the T.drive is best then it will be accessable from both staffroom and classroom)

Now when you click on Shared Resources in the Resource Browser (if you can't see this on the right of your flipchart, select View > Browsers), all the resources should be available for you to use.

If you need to load your profile in a classroom. Again, select Edit from the top menu and select Profiles and click on the folder symbol (top right-hand corner) and find it on your computer where you saved it.

Ideas for creating simple flipcharts

2010-08-02T09:11:00.000+02:00

Good tips and ideas, with little prearation time, for ceating effecting flip charts.

The present and future of Personal Learning Environments

2010-08-01T17:57:00.001+02:00

That was the title of a talk the Josh Underwood and me gave for as our recent Talks for teachers.

PLEs relate very closely to the idea of Learner Autonomy. As you can see from this video.

Graham Attwell (one of the people responsible for this video) has described a PLE in the following terms:
" the environment in which we learn. And that includes work, the home, our social environment and the institutional learning programmes in which we participate. It includes books and above all perhaps it includes people… It recognises the primacy of the learner on driving and developing their learning. And – in terms of tools – it provides them the means to organise their own learning… Personal Learning Networks, Personal Learning Environments – I don’t really mind what we call them. What is critical is that a PLE / PLN helps us in organising our learning and helps us make the connections with those with whom we want to collaborate and share, whoever, wherever they are."(See his blog for the full post.)

If you start to think about your current PLE you're well on the way to seeing how you can develop it. A good way to start is to draw up a mind map. Here's mine for example.

Then you can consider the resources that you find most useful and productive. For example, I like:

the TeachingEnglish facebook page for it's lively discussions and teaching tips
twitter where you can do searches e.g. #elt, #tesol,#iatefl and find other teachers' handy tips, links etc.
Symbaloo which is useful for keeping links to all your own – or your classes - most useful web resources in one place

Josh suggested a series of language utilities:

wordnik which gives the meaning of words with examples of their use in context plus links to them
wordia which includes videos that people upload to illustrate a word
and in general tools that support learning activities for example this blog that he developed with students for their science experiments which used a combination of blogger and google docs

You can see the details of our talk plus a fuller lists of resources to help you and your students develop your PLEs on this google doc.

Getting students to stick to English during the lesson

2010-05-13T16:30:00.001+02:00

We talked about this problem in the INSETT on integrating ICT into project work, so I thought you like to see what Herbert Puchta has to say on the issue. Anybody got any more tips that you can offer us?

Web tools for vocabulary building and help with pronunciation

2010-05-13T16:24:00.000+02:00

There's now a whole series of online resources to help students to build up their vocabulary and improve their pronunciation. There's no end of the ways you can use them. I'll suggest a few but I'm sure you can come up with more. Why not add them as comments or in a new post?

So here goes:
lingro - thanks to Andrew M for finding this one. If you paste the URL (address) of a website into it, it will load the page and make all the words clickable. When you click on a word, it offers you the definition of it or a translation into the language you select. Many words also come with a sound file so that you can hear the way they are pronounced.

If you register (which is immediate) you can save your own word lists and play games with them to help you remember them. I've got my students, who are currently working on projects, to learn 10 new words related to their project topic per week using lingro as part of their homework.

Seeing is believing - so check it out!

wordnik - type in a word and it not only gives you a series of definitions but shows you how it has been used in context - offering you links to the sources plus examples of how it is currently being used on twitter! You can also click on"Pronunciations" to see how the word breaks down phonetically and to hear it being said.

forvo - type in a word to hear it pronounced by different people from all over the world. If you register with the site you can also request for people to upload the pronunciation of the word you want.

wordia - this is a site where people upload videos to illustrate a word (have a look at "filch" for a good example).

wordreference - a good place to quickly translate a word into a range of languages.

INSETT: Integrating ICT into project work

2010-05-05T11:01:00.013+02:00

Some useful web tools:
Voki – great fun for creating animated characters that speak: a blog post tutorial and an example of it used in a student's blog post.

VoiceThread – for creating online presentations: a blog post tutorial and an example of it used in a student's blog post.

Animoto – for creating slick videos from photos, videos and text: a blog post tutorial and an example of it used in a student's blog post in combination with Podomatic.

Podomatic – for creating podcasts: video tutorial

Glogster – for creating animated, online posters: 90 second video tutorial

A Primary 3 student's Glogster poster

EnglishCentral a great resource to help students to improve their speaking skills and confidence in them. The site contains a huge range of videos you can choose from and uses voice recognition. Students record themselves imitating what they hear (in small chunks) and are given a score. You can set up an account as a teacher and even set your students homework and check how they've done.

Who to talk to for project tips:
Guy has used EnglishCentral in conjunction with a very interesting ongoing radio project he has with one of his classes - so for more ideas talk to him!

Rebbecca has some really good ideas for using PowerPoint with students - so if you're thinking of using this as the end product for your students' projects talk to her!

Sonia worked last year on a successful magazine project with students and also has come up with a really cool idea for keeping students talking in English during class. She allocates each of her students a "persona" who lives in a different English-speaking countries and then gets them to flesh them out. Her students have even ended up creating relations between themselves and all she needs to do when they revert to Spanish is to say "Remember who you are!"

Andy worked on a Reality Show project with her Senior 4 class - see the girls' contribution on her class wiki. Sounds like a great project idea for either now or for Summer intensive course so get the details from her!

Linking with students from other countries
If you want to link up with other teachers and students across the world try elanguages. You can either join in on an existing project or start your own and get other schools to join in with yours. You have to register first.

More resources to download
Ideas and resources for web projects .pdf
Web tools for teachers .pdf

Great way for students to improve their vocabulary

2009-05-25T16:52:00.001+02:00

Get them to find an article, song or any piece of text that they're interested and go to WordSift.

Paste the text in the box provided and they will get incredible results - all they need to extend and make their use of vocabulary more accurate. Great fun too!

(Thanks to Jon Brown for the link)

My Cardiff IATEFL

2009-04-28T17:44:00.011+02:00

There were nearly 2,000 delegates at the conference, a lot of people milling around with nowhere to sit. So here from the comfort of your swivel chair you can enjoy some of the interesting bits.

Barry Tomalin talking on the importance of cultural awareness in language teaching.

There's also a very good video interview with him on the teachingEnglish site plus his article on the same theme.

David Crystal on whether texting will affect the English language and why he maintains a blog (amongst other things).

Penny Urr on how to make bog standard vocabulary and grammar exercises more interesting.

Richard Gallen on his experience studying Spanish and how he wished his teacher would have corrected him more.

The Pecha Kucha evening (Pecha Kucha has been described as the antidote to death from PowerPoint) - a relaxed occasion when teachers showed that they can sometimes be both amusing and imaginative.

IATEFL conference Cardiff

2009-04-16T23:28:00.007+02:00

The 3-day IATEFL conference in Cardiff was a real treat although the quality of the sessions varied greatly. My tip to conference-goers: Think very carefully before you go to a session which includes the words 'research findings' in the blurp.

The photo is from Ann Foreman's session - you can just make her out at the front. It's in the assembly room in Cardiff city hall, about 90 people came and the session went down really well, it made me want to try out Vokies in one of my class - just wonder whether it would work well with adult students.

There will be an Insett in May when participant at the recent Cardiff, Serville and Milan conferences will share new ideas and activities. Until then, here are a few interesting websites which came up in different presentations

1. Wordle Copy and paste texts or simply give a web address and it produces a word cloud based on the frequency of each word? Good fun but would be interested to hear ideas about how to make use of it with students?

2. One of the most inspiring talks was by Marc Prensky, who talks a lot about the problem of YL students being 'digital natives' whilst their teachers are mostly 'digital migrants'. He had ideas for making use of their mobile phones instead of always insisting that they 'power down'. One idea was to do SMS text polls e.g. for student - teacher feedback: ask the question, they text their response and you watch the results appear on the screen.

3. Found Magazine - a great authentic source of things, notes and letters which have been found by someone somewhere - plenty of opportunity for speculation as well as exposing students to really colloquial and informal English.

4. Lindsay Clanfield gave a talk at the Bilbao conference on last September. In Cardiff he gave a session on using lists. Click here for 6 ideas.

Thinking About The Diploma?

2009-03-25T14:27:00.005+01:00

There are essentially 3 diplomas to choose from:
i) DELTA (Cambridge)
ii) Distance DELTA (British Council & IH)
iii) Diploma in TESOL (Trinity)

The Cambridge DELTA can’t be done part-time in Bilbao. But it would be a possibility for full-time study in the summer – I think it’s a 6-week course. (Martin, amongst others, did this course and you can ask him more about it).
The Distance DELTA is actually a British Council product (co-owned with IH). I don’t think there is anyone on the staff who did it but I believe Anne has worked as tutor / mentor for a teacher who did it in Bilbao a few years ago. Here’s a link to the Intranet: http://bcnet.britishcouncil.org:8000/ee/training/grants/delta_financial.htm
The most popular option in Bilbao in recent years has been the Trinity Diploma in TESOL. This link below is to a school called SGI in London, which is the school where the majority of our 'dip' teachers are studying. It gives a lot of flexibility in terms of start dates and when you do the practical element.
http://www.tesoltraining.co.uk/diploma.html

If you have any experience with any of the above diplomas, then please leave a comment.

Learning styles

2009-03-19T21:15:00.005+01:00

If you are interested in focussing on your learning style and getting your students to think about their own, here are a few useful links:

Two lessons plans

learning styles (including a listening, personal dictionaries and grammar revision activities)

multiple intelligences (including how to introduce the topic and matching and problem solving activities)

Two online quizzes

from the BBC

Birmingham City Council quiz

The more we vary activities, the more lessons will appeal to individual students. Helping them reflect on how they learn better also makes them responsible for their own learning and enables them to be more efficient students, which is also motivating and productive. Multiple Intelligences are not an answer to everything, but they are a useful tool for teachers to react to different personalities and make sure their lessons are as student centred as possible.

Mini Saga winner, Iker Muñoz & BC Director Simon Creasey

2009-03-03T10:31:00.000+01:00

Ideas and resources for Young Adult and Teenage classes

2009-02-19T12:55:00.003+01:00

If you missed the February INSETT on this one, here are the links and ideas I mentioned:

don't forget the Teaching Materials Bank on the Staffroom on the BC's intranet. You need to become a member (quick + easy) then you can access material by age, CEF level, skill and topic. Good for flipcharts.
ready made class plans from James Keddie (mostly elementary and intermediate)
ideas for class work from The English Blog
new ideas daily from ex BC TeachEnglish site Nik Peachy
more tips, resources and teaching materials from the same guy
lesson plans based around current news
great for work on instructions/ jigsaw readings/listenings videojug.com. For example, get half your class to watch http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-be-the-perfect-girlfriend and the other half to watch http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-be-the-perfect-boyfriend then get them to report back on what they learnt and discuss the 2 videos.
fun way to practise pronunciation with karaokes (register yourself first before the class for a greater choice of songs)
and don’t forget the BC's LearnEnglish site :
Recommended: Agents Underground, Scary spelling game, Vocabulary/spelling game
For practising listening skills LearnEnglish podcasts
More listening and comprehension practice Big City Small Word sitcom

Uploading Documents To Blog, Wikis etc

2009-02-04T20:30:00.003+01:00

Hi Everyone

I promised in a recent workshop to put up instructions for uploading Word documents onto blogs and wikis so here goes:

When I set up a class blog last year I found it very frustrating that I couldn't upload Word documents. After a bit of research I discovered that there are sites out there which just act as banks for your files and documents. The one I recommend is www.box.net

'Box' is free and I've used it to upload MP3 files and Word documents. For example, here's an ex-colleague of ours telling a travel anecdote.

You then link from your blog or wiki to the 'box' site as I've done with the travel anecdote above.

It's really easy to use but give me a shout if you want any help.

Funky Flipcharts for the new year

2009-01-06T18:48:00.002+01:00

Found this blog article with some really simple and good ideas for using flipcharts with your classes.

Take a fresh look at the BC's LearnEnglish sites

2008-12-06T10:53:00.004+01:00

Although you might have used 1 or 2 of the BC's ELT websites, do you really know all that's on offer?

Podcasts
These are a relatively new addition to the site - and a response to users' requests:

Elementary podcasts have proved especially popular. They offer learners who want to reach the CEF Level A2 (Council of Europe Framework of Reference) an engaging way to improve their listening skills. Up to now, most listening material designed for this level has tended to be bland, boring and patronising. These podcasts, however, sound fresh and natural – their magazine format ensuring a good variety of pace and content – even though the lexis and grammar employed in them are deliberately restricted. Each podcast comes with notes on how to best exploit it and learners can download a comprehensive Support Pack containing activities, explanations plus a transcript of the podcast.

Also worth checking out are the Professional podcasts which cover a wide range of current issues of particular interest to professional people and also give advice about how to prepare for English language exams. Each podcast is twinned with an article on the same topic and accompanied by complementary activities.

One click access to the suite of websites
The LearnEnglish portal is at http://www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglish.htm and offers a one-click access to the complete suite of websites:

LearnEnglish Central provides English language practice for everyone, but especially teenagers and adult learners. Why not try out Wordshake – a great way to practise your vocabulary – or Agents Underground where you play the role of a secret agent travelling around London on the underground solving puzzles as you go?

LearnEnglish Professionals caters for people who move especially in business and professional worlds. For something that’s really entertaining and fun, I recommend J@m, a cartoon series set in a web design company.

LearnEnglish Kids is aimed at children of infant and primary age and is one of my all-time favourites. First choose a topic and then you will be presented with a splendid list of songs, stories, activities and worksheets related to it. Many of the interactive activities adapt really well for use with IWBs (interactive whiteboards) or data projectors in a whole class setting. It’s also an invaluable resource for parents/carers who want to help children with their English at home.

Parents and carers can now find specific advice and information on how to share the experience of learning English with children on the LearnEnglish Parents – a site that is specially dedicated to them. For example, there is a very helpful piece on using rhymes with young children with a link to a scary and gripping animated rhyme In the dark, dark, wood .

While English Online has been designed for Chinese speakers, it’s well-worth a visit. The site has a community format enabling users to become members, maintain their own blog and to add comments or join in on forum discussions. I can particularly recommend Big City Small World for teenage learners. It’s a highly entertaining audio soap that follows the lives of a group of young people from around the world who meet up in a London café.

Finally, there is Go4english.com, the British Council LearnEnglish offer for the Arab World. The site provides entertaining and user friendly games and activities as well as culturally specific content, such as celebrity interviews and downloadable resources, for teachers in the Arab World.

Comprehensive list of ELT web links

2008-12-06T10:47:00.002+01:00

You'll find this at http://www.britishcouncil.org.ua/tclinks/

login: tcstudent

password: student

Simple online voice recorder

2008-11-17T19:15:00.002+01:00

No registration, logging on or faffing; just press record, speak and then upload to email or get the embed code... now that´s handy.

http://www.daftdoggy.com/recorder/record.php

A good excuse to set students speaking homework!

Bring students texts to life

2008-11-17T18:57:00.002+01:00

Another winner

http://www.pimpampum.net/bookr/index.php

This site allows you to make online books which you can then add photos to liven up. No need to register, just begin by typing in the title of your book and your name, add the next page and then you can begin with your text and continue for as many pages as you need. For each page you can search for related words to create images (uses flickr, the online photo site) to put around the text. The final product looks pretty impressive and I´m sure the students would love it!

When you´ve finished just click "publish", to save the book on the site. You also can "blog this" which will give you the usual embed code to paste on your site. Shame you can´t print.

Adding voice to youtube videos

2008-11-17T18:51:00.003+01:00

This is a nice site

http://www.outshouts.com/

just search for a youtube video, load it up then record yourself introducing it. Plenty of ideas for students
eg being the Dj introducing their favourite song
narrating the story of the video but with a few errors that the others have to find
Making some listening questions for other students

I´m sure there´s infinite uses as whatever you can find on youtube you can load on this, so films clips, interviews, even students own work.

Has the usual embed or email facilities so will sit nicely on your blog or wiki.

Two excellent links to Prometheanplanet website - Lots of IWB activities

2008-11-11T13:26:00.003+01:00

1st for FCErs - a nice activity to practice Use of English

FCE

2nd the website´s ESL activities - something for everyone

ESL

RSS feeds - save time in finding changes on your favourite blog or news sites

2008-11-03T13:51:00.003+01:00

It's all explained in the video.

Is this the future?

2008-11-01T17:57:00.003+01:00

This is more related to Web 2.0 in general but throws up some nice ideas and gets you thinking

The other two are education and digital learners

What is a Wiki? Plain English

2008-11-01T12:17:00.002+01:00

A great series of idiots guides to technology and web stuff...

1st two, what is a wiki?

Specific to wetpaint...

What is a Blog?

What is RSS?

What is social bookmarking?

IWB friendly games

2008-10-30T18:37:00.005+01:00

A three great games to practice pronunciation and spelling

Spelling

http://www.bbc.co.uk/hardspell/

All you need to do is choose which word is correct or incorrect against the clock. Pretty hard words, as developed for native speakers so best for Advanced and above.

This seems good. Click subjects at top and from here you can choose from your typical school subjects. I suppose English (grammar and spelling) and geography would be the most useful.

http://www.freerice.com/index.php

If you click on spelling it just takes you to any random word which you have to choose the appropriate synonym, however if you just quickly do the first the second page then gives you a chance to choose an appropriate level for your class. The fist level would probably suit Intermediate. Hardest is for those who find Countdown easy!!

The bonus is that for every correct answer the site donates 20 grains of rice to the UN World Food Program.

Punctuation

http://eatsshootsandleaves.com/ESLquiz.html

Based on Lynne Truss's excellent book, "Eat, shoots and Leaves". Simple sentences that you have to punctuate or not! A few tricky ones but Int and above should be ok.

Videojug - Alternative to youtube

2008-10-30T18:32:00.003+01:00

Lesson plan robbed from here

http://www.ihes.com/bcn/tt/eltblog/blog/2008/10/videojug-cool-alternative-to-youtube.html

Videojug is not quite your standard Youtube clone, instead it host thousands of "How to do" videos nicely organised into handy categories, for example with Halloween just round the corner we have in the Halloween section "How to do trick or treat" & interestingly "How to survive a zombie apocalypse"

Interesting idea would be to choose a video that your student would have some idea how to do and obviously matches their level/interests, etc, then get them to brainstorm how they would do it. After watch the video and check if correct.

A nice follow up would be to get students to do their own with equally silly titles eg "How to cheat in your exams", etc or how to do something that they are interested in, eg pelota or playing an instrument, which could then be filmed and put online!

Punctuation Problem?

2008-10-30T18:13:00.001+01:00

A great game linked to Lynn Truss´s Best Seller "Eat Shoots & Leaves"

http://eatsshootsandleaves.com/ESLquiz.html

Just play and add the apostrophe

Great Halloween Game

2008-10-28T15:06:00.001+01:00

Great activity to engage students
Go to page
http://www.123bee.com/play/halloween-pumpkin-room

Elicit/explain vocabulary
Simple idea of game is to escape from the Halloween Pumpkin room. Normally this is done by clicking things and working out various puzzles.
The idea here is you give them the instructions and they themselves go through and do the activity – a nice fun reading with some great Halloween vocab, imperative and prepositions of place!
Instructions
Knife is in the eye of the fire place
H: move logs in the fireplace
A: Left hand wall, top shelf, spin middle pumpkin
L: front wall, single pumpkin on top, click stem
L: right hand wall, single pumpkin in middle top, click stem
O: left hand wall, single pumpkin above poster, nose
W: left hand wall, very bottom pumpkin, use knife to cut mouth
E: front wall, second shelf, slide second and third pumpkin
E: right hand wall, bottom shelf with 4 pumpkins, click stem of pumpkin on right
N: 3rd pumpkin down on right hand of steps
D: left box on floor
A: Puzzle above door, place round pumpkins first, then rectangles, then pear shaped. Collect pumpkin, Open middle box on floor, collect uncarved pumpkin. Place carved pumpkin on bottom shelf above fire place, click on stem.
Y: bottom right hand scroll of flashing poster

Candle: right hand wall, single pumpkin on top right

Put all letters on top of the empty shelf next to door. Click uncarved pumpkin, then use the knife to carve nose, mouth and stem. Place candle in pumpkin, then click stem to close it. Place the pumpkin on bottom empty shelf next to door. You are out!

Opps

2008-10-28T15:04:00.001+01:00

Excellent Site For ICT Self Study

2008-10-27T14:12:00.002+01:00

A collection of excellent teacher training videos on all the usual suspects in web 2.0 and ICT.

http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/

Clear simple instructions, something for all.

Giving Directions?

2008-10-27T00:42:00.001+01:00

Nice interactive game - follow the instructions and get the various characters to the respective destinations.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/words/grammar/texttypes/instructions/flash0.shtml

IWB friendly

Interactive Vocabulary

2008-10-27T00:06:00.002+01:00

Roll the cursor over the picture and hear the word...

http://www.languageguide.org/english/esp/

Lots of themes. What more could you ask for?

Perfect for IWB

Furniture Vocab Game

2008-10-26T22:56:00.002+01:00

Help Roger decorate his room!

Nice game with plenty of furniture and descriptive language.

http://www.ur.se/sprk/engelska/inredning/

You can practice first to review the language, designing your own room which can be printed off then you can do a compare and contrast (FCE) with another student or a picture dictation.

The game is to choose the things Roger asks for to decorate his room as quickly as you can, so plenty of compettion element.

Perfect for IWB as teams race against the clock.