I should be marking exams and then again preparing a new batch of them.Oh my Gosh It is that time of the year!!Instead I am playing with Classtools.net.
One of my students asked me to do some more practise on Reported Speech Questions and I thought this could be a nice way to revise this point of grammar.
Click on the numbers to see the questions ! Don’t you just love it??
If you’ve been reading me for some time you know how much I love games . Unfortunately,when I was a student at the high school I don’t seem to remember games being part of the teachers’ lesson plan. Now, from the other side of the fence, 
I wonder why with so many different things you can do in a language class , we never did anything funny; well , occasionally , we did some fill in the blanks exercises with songs, but that’s it! I also wonder how, being our classes so boring, I ended up being a teacher.
If you are at all like me, you will love playing these games!!!
♥AGAINST THE CLOCK
This game requires some preparation. On slips of paper, write down the vocabulary that needs to be revised (verbs, phrasal verbs, adjectives…etc) . Students, sitting in a circle, play in groups of four or five, so there should be one set of cards for each group. Set a random amount of time, which students won’t know (this is important so that they don’t cheat). Give the pack of cards to one of the students .Set the timer. Now, he has to describe the word to the students in his group using only verbal language and, it goes without saying, without saying the word or part of it. When a student guesses the word , then the cards are passed to the next student. The person holding the cards when the alarm in the timer goes off loses. Continue playing until there is a winner.
Click to see a good selection of Classroom Timers
♥A-Z Picture Vocabulary.
This site is plain fun ! Acapela .tv is a new site that has a lot of potential for the language class.
Choose a real character or a cute cartoon and make him speak. Choose from a range of voices that interpret and read content with meaning and emotion. This text to speech tool is great to do dictations or revise vocabulary among other things.
HOW I’M PLANNING TO USE IT
♥I think it might be funny to divide the class into two groups -the class I have in mind, right now , is a small class of nine students; with larger classes I might need to divide it into three or four groups.
My aim with this activity will be to make sure students revise some vocabulary related to money for their next test. So, the class is divided into two groups. They need to listen to their cartoon speaking, write down the words the character asks them to revise and be able to explain them to the other group. Each character will say the same number of words and you know the rest… don’t you?? A competition , as usual, something that I , a very competitive person, just love.
A nice memory of a former student from Denmark , Patrick, who helped me teach English . Hope you like it, Patrick!
♥My next step will be asking selected students from different courses to do the job. The volunteers will need to go home , register and create a character to revise vocabulary . Obviously, they’ll need to copy the link provided and send it to me so that I can display it when playing the game in class.
What do you think? Will they like it?
I wasn’t planning on posting right away but my gym is still flooded so I can’t work out . It is still cold and rainy here in Asturias so I don’t seem to have many options but to stay at home looking after my kids.
Plenty of time in the afternoon to prepare classes and still so hooked on Picture Trail that I have decided to use it again, and this ,only when I have used it for the first time on Monday. Addictive!!
ACTIVITY 1
Funny!!! Students are given a job and they won’t know what it is. They are given a worksheet with questions about their job to ask the other students in the class , see worksheet here. Read the instructions on the worksheet ,go through the questions and possible answers .
Ask students to come to your desk to get the jobs stuck on their backs (post-it). Students walk around the classroom mingling freely, asking each person a couple of questions and writing down the answers. Stop the activity after 10 minutes of questioning or when the first student has correctly guessed their job. Ask the rest of the students to sit down and write down what they think their job is.
Source : InsideOut Resource Pack
ACTIVITY 2.
Students in pairs talk about the questions in Picture Trail
Happy New Year to everybody! Time to go back to school ! Facing the fact that my students have forgotten almost everything they have learned really throws me in a funk but…. that’s life!!!
Classes are starting again and I wanted to take a minute to thank you guys for all the visits (more than 100.000 now) and nice comments to this blog. It really keeps me going!
This hilarious video will help me revise Family with my first year students. Something funny, something they can understand and the perfect introduction to go over some already-acquired vocabulary. The perfect way to start off the term, with a smile on their face and loving English
isn’t she cute?
Whether you are a fan of this kind of programmes or not, nobody can deny this talent
show has been a big success worldwide. In case you don’t know what I’m talking about The Voice is a singing competition that consists of a blind audition where four coaches (famous singers ) select the members of their teams, a battle phase and then the final, where the audience selects The Voice . It started in The Netherlands like two years ago and since then the format has been sold to many countries where it has also been a big success.
The idea for this activity came from the French teacher in my high school, Yolanda (see picture). Just by chance she commented on how much fun their students had just had doing this activity and right away I asked her to borrow her idea for my English class.
The instructions are fairly simple.
♥Students in pairs and with their backs to the whiteboard listen to someone singing but they won’t be able to see them, that’s why it’s called Blind Auditions.
♥Working with a partner , they decide what the person they are listening to looks like (see handout).
♥When the audition finishes and without turning their backs, they need to decide whether they want this person in their team to be THE VOICE. If they want them, they should raise their hand making the V gesture and saying I WANT YOU!
♥Now, they’ll have to compete against the other students who also want the singer. The singer will belong to the team who has the most accurate physical description of the singer.
I have selected these two videos.If you don’t like the game, at least enjoy the music!!
Something fun! and something to have fun with! 
These classroom timers are a nice alternative to the normal sandtimer that I have downloaded to my ipad.
The website is called http://www.online-stopwatch.com/ and it offers a bunch of fun timers for the classroom, including timers you can use when two teams are competing against each other.
Click on the pictures and have fun!
Halloween is coming soon , it’s almost here and this is a great time to let your imagination flow and write a scary story. Writing????? I can almost hear you complaining about having to write something , (well, anything). 
OK, let’s do it in a funny way!
Let’s say the story is related to your school and /or to your teacher . A great opportunity to scare MEEEE or even , if you dare, kill me, have me eat poison or place me in the bonfire for witchcraft. The possibilites are endless.
We are going to do it using a comic template from this funny site http://www.grammarmancomic.com/index.html ,where we’ll choose from different comic options and where we can also see other comics students like you have written. Then ,when you have finished your masterpiece , we’ll vote for the best story. Does it sound like a good plan?
Choose your template
♣ School of Scares! It started like any other English lesson…
♣ Terror Teacher! One day our usual English teacher was absent…
♣The Homework from Hell! We were in English class, waiting for home time..
♣Ghosts and Grammar! Nobody believed the stories about our school day, until one day…
When writing a comic , it might be helpful to know some common English interjections. Click here to see some of the most common
Click here to see some ideas for your comics and have a spooky Halloween!
Yeahhh! Ok ! Sometimes students deserve a treat! It’s the end of the course and most of them have studied pretty hard for their exams and it’s only fair that you reward them with a class in the computer room playing games!
GAMES??? before you start thinking I’ve gone mad allowing teenegers to play games , iiiin the computer room and iiiiiiin the English class , let me tell you that the games are reasonably inside the scope of what even parents would agree with being academic stuff.
The site is called eslgamesworld.com and ,even I ,would be returning from time to time to play the games and have fun.
You can choose Grammar Games, Games for ESL Classroon Teaching ( you can play here The Wheel of Fortune, Who wants to be a Millionaire …etc),Vocabulary Games and Pronunciation Games.take your pick!
Aren’t you dying to try these games?
