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
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