Confession Time: I’m Useless With Names (So I Invented a Game That Reviews Vocab and Grammar Too)

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Okay, I’ll confess: we’re in the first days of the new course and I, the teacher, cannot for the life of me remember half my students’ names. Does this happen to you too? That moment when you point at someone and go “hey… you, yes, you, the one in the blue hoodie” because the name has completely vanished from your brain. A classic September moment. Well, and in my case, February moment, too.

So I started turning it over in my head (because yes, I have that habit of mine of turning any everyday problem into a classroom activity, it’s a blessing and a curse in equal measure) and I came up with something that kills two birds with one stone: we learn names AND we review grammar and vocabulary. Yay! Because why settle for one thing when you can have both, right?

And guess how I’m going to run it? Exactly how I like it: mixing tech and old-school tradition. Not fully digital, not fully analogue, a bit of both. But hey!!! You don’t like tech. It can all be done in the traditional way.

VOCABULARY ACROSTIC DUEL

Objective: learning students’ names and revising grammar and vocabulary.

Setting it up

  • A WordCloud. Split the class into two teams and create two word clouds, one per team, with the names of their members. You can do this by hand on the board or you can bring in the tech like I do (because for this bit, I admit I’m a little lazy) and use Wooclap to generate the cloud on the spot. Well, two clouds, one per team,
  • A buzzer. Some noise? Yes! Each team needs a buzzer within reach. A real buzzer, one of those that goes “ding!” and gives the whole thing that game-show feel that hooks everyone instantly.
How to play

(click on the image)

  1. Pick a student’s name at random from either word cloud (it doesn’t matter which team they’re on).
  2. Assign a challenge or if you use my wheel above, spin the wheel: for example, each letter has to be a past tense verb, or a descriptive adjective. You’ve got total freedom here to adapt it to whatever grammar point you’re working on.

An example with the name LUCAS and past tense verbs

  • L – Learned
  • U – Understood
  • C – Called
  • A – Asked
  • S – Saw

3.  Within each team, students can work solo, in pairs, or in groups of three, whatever       they prefer.

4. As soon as someone finishes the acrostic, they hit the buzzer.Let’s say it is a student from Team A.  If it’s correct, their team wins the round and  crosses out a name from Team B’s  cloud,  and picks the next name plus the next grammar or lexical category.

NOTE: If the student from Team A makes a mistake, then the other team wins (Team B) wins and crosses out a name from Team A’s cloud

And so, round after round, and without even realizing it, they’re repeating names over and over while working on structure and vocabulary. By the end of the class, I promise even I’ll have picked up a few more names.

Two No-Prep Icebreakers: Personal Stars and Funny Cartoons

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I still had sand between my toes and here I am, already planning the first day of class. How did that happen SO fast? One minute you’re lying on the beach not thinking about anything, and the next, bam! September is staring you.

But let’s look on the bright side: starting means new faces, renewed energy, and that special “fresh start” buzz I love so much.

So today I thought I’d share my plan for day one:

  1. MY PERSONAL STAR: a no-prep icebreaker to get everyone talking
  2. CARTOONS: followed by some cartoons I love using to squeeze out even more conversation once the ice is broken.

Sound good? Let’s get into it!

Icebreaker 1: Personal Star

This one takes no prep, and students always love a bit of gossip about their new teacher!

Here’s how it works: draw a star on the board and write six pieces of information about yourself inside it. Mine looks like this: black, London, December 9th, Homer, English, meat.

Tell your students the star is full of clues about you, and their job is to guess what’s behind each word by asking questions. If they’re a bit lost, give them an example: “My favourite colour is black. What question do you need to ask to find that out?” Let them work it out — “What’s your favourite colour?” — and cross the word off the star. Keep going until the whole star is solved.

Their Turn Now

Put students in pairs and get them to draw their own personal star with six pieces of information about themselves inside. They take turns asking each other questions to uncover what’s hiding in their partner’s star.

When everyone’s done, bring the group back together and have each student introduce their partner, sharing what they found out. Instant mingling, instant speaking practice, and everyone leaves knowing a little more about the person sitting next to them.

Icebreaker 2: Conversations around some of my favourite back-to-school cartoons.

Once the ice is well and truly broken, I like to move on to something a bit more visual and that’s where these back-to-school cartoons come in — they’re perfect for warming up vocabulary and getting students talking a bit more, without it feeling like “work.”

Here are six cartoons with some questions each, mixing some better suited for adults and others that’ll hook teenagers more. Grab whichever fits your group best!

CARTOON 1:We don’t all follow you on Instagram, Kayla

Questions for adults:

  1. What’s funny about this cartoon?
  2. Do you think social media has changed the way young people communicate?
  3. What are the pros and cons of kids using social media?
  4. Do you follow any of younger relatives on social media?
  5. How is “sharing your summer” different today compared to when you were a kid?

Questions for teenagers:

  1. What does the little girl expect the teacher to already know?
  2. Do you post about your summer on social media? Which apps do you use?
  3. Have you ever assumed someone already knew something because you posted it online?
  4. What’s one thing you did this summer that you’d want to tell the class about?
  5. Do you think it’s weird when teachers follow students on social media? Why or why not?
CARTOON 2: He teaches second grade

Questions for adults:

  1. Why do you think a 27-year-old teacher would feel the same way as a little kid on the first day?
  2. What usually causes that back-to-school dread for teachers — is it the students, the workload, or something else?
  3. What’s your own trick for getting motivated when you really don’t feel like going to work?

Questions for teenagers:

  1. Have you ever refused to go to school? What happened?
  2. Do you think teachers get nervous on the first day too, just like students?
  3. What year do you think would be hardest to teach, and why?
CARTOON 3: Everything but homework cutbacks

Questions for adults:

  1. Do you think schools in your area have enough resources? Why or why not?
  2. If you could cut one thing from your child’s school day, what would it be — and why?
  3. What’s something schools spend money on that you think is unnecessary?
  4. How has education changed since you were a student?

Questions for teenagers:

  1. Do you ever feel like you get too much homework? Give an example.
  2. If your school had less money, what would you miss the most — sports, clubs, or something else?
  3. What’s the worst homework you’ve ever had to do?
  4. Would you rather have more homework or a longer school day? Why?

Have a nice back-to-school day!!!

Verb Tenses: The TV Show That Became a Grammar Game

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My brain doesn’t switch off. Ever. I’ll be watching TV and — boom — I’m already thinking, “How can I use this in class?” Is it a blessing or a curse? Honestly? Both. But mostly a blessing, because sometimes it leads to something really cool. Like this.

There’s a programme on Asturian TV called El Picu — and picu means “peak” or “mountaintop” in Asturian. The concept is simple: contestants answer questions, and with each correct answer, they climb a little higher up the mountain. First team to reach the summit wins.

I watched it and thought: my students would go absolutely mad for this. 

I have the idea, Gemini builds the app

 I have zero coding skills. But I do have Gemini, and  that’s all I needed.

I won’t pretend it requires no preparation at all — you do need a bit of know-how about how to prompt it effectively — but the process itself is surprisingly straightforward. I described what I wanted, iterated a little, and before long I had a fully functional classroom game called The Picu: B2 ESL Alpine Expedition.

How to play

Here’s the game

I show the game  on the interactive whiteboard and the moment students see those mountain tracks, something shifts. Smiles appear. Someone always goes “Yuhuuu, we’re playing today!” — and yes, we are. But we’re also learning. That’s the whole point.

Here’s my low-tech twist on it:

  • I divide the class into 4 teams
  • Each group has paper and a pen
  • When the sentence appears, they discuss and write their answer. They have 30 seconds for this.
  • At my signal, everyone holds up their paper at the same time (no copying!)
  • Groups that got it right? Their climber moves up the mountain
  • First team to reach the Picu wins

What I particularly love is that multiple teams can be awarded points in the same round  And if a question is too hard? Just hit Skip and move on. No fuss.

Cool Speaking Cards, Indirect Questions, a Spinning Wheel and Speed Chatting: One Lesson, Endless Engagement

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Remember those awful photocopies? You know the ones. A photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy, with a blurry black-and-white image that was somehow supposed to inspire deep conversation in class? Yeah… same. And honestly? The students’ faces said everything before the activity had even started

Lately, I’ve completely transformed the way I approach speaking activities, and AI has become a huge part of that process. But probably not in the way people imagine. It’s not about clicking a button and magically producing the perfect lesson. I wish! It still takes creativity, tweaking, experimenting, and sometimes a lot of failed prompts along the way. But the process itself? It’s fun.

GENERATING THE QUESTIONS

I could explain but I’d rather you watch the video and see for yourself how easy it is to generate some cool cards. And for “free”.

You will find the prompt I used to generate the cards, in the first comment of the video. And please, leave a comment , I love hearing from you!
AND THE GRAMMAR: INDIRECT QUESTIONS

Once we have our conversation questions, I like to use them to revise indirect questions — it’s the perfect excuse. The questions are already there, they already have context, so why not squeeze a bit of grammar out of them too?

To make the revision more engaging, I built a little website — also with Gemini — where students can practise the structure interactively. First we revisit the rules, then we activate.

Spin the Wheel. Then Speed Chat.

After the grammar input, we present the first question and… spin the wheel — built with AI, loaded with examples of indirect questions.

  1. Show the card with the question they need to answer
  2. Spin the wheel

Example: I was wondering … (do you believe that online shopping will completely  replace…?) if you believe that online shopping…

And to wrap it all up? Speed chatting. Signal sounds, they rotate, new partner, new indirect question, new conversation question. Dynamic, social, and it always gets a smile out of them.

What more can you ask from one single activity? Give it a go and let me know. 👇shopping

Teaching How to Write a Report. Create your own Worksheets and Make it more Palatable for your Students

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It’s Sunday evening, I’m prepping for the week, and I open my B2.1 students’ textbook to the report writing unit. Five seconds in, I want to close the book, pour myself a glass of wine, and pretend it doesn’t exist.

You know the kind of page I mean. Dense. Overwhelming. A chart nobody asked for. Vocabulary that even I have to look up. My students wouldn’t read it — they’d survive it. Barely. And I’d spend the entire lesson firefighting confusion instead of actually teaching anything useful.

So I did what any self-respecting language teacher does: I refused to accept it and went rogue.

Step 1: I Went Textbook Shopping

Before I even thought about creating anything, I did a little research mission. I pulled out a few different textbooks — because no single textbook has all the answers— and I started gathering:

  • The core structure of a report
  • Realistic vocabulary my students can actually use without sounding like a lawyer
  • Task types that make sense for where my students are right now

Step 2: Hello, Gemini and Hello ChatGPT

1. Generating the Text

Once I had my notes, I headed over to Gemini and copy/pasted my notes and asked it to generate clean,  level-appropriate content. Exactly the kind of thing I wished was in the textbook in the first place.

2- Generating the worksheets

So now i have the text; but, in the era of AI, why give them a boring document when you can give them a beautifully structured worksheet? Because — even well-written content, if it looks like a photocopied page from 1998, is going to kill the vibe before we even start.

So I took my Gemini-generated content and went straight to ChatGPT — a if you haven’t tried the new image generation model in ChatGPT yet, close this tab and go do that first. I’ll wait.  It is genuinely the best option out there when your worksheet involves formatted text, tables, or any kind of visual structure.

I want you to create a worksheet with  the content pasted under these lines. Include all the information pasted. Title “Writing a report _ B2 www.cristinacabal.com” . Use images related to the content to make it more visually appealing. Clean design.

And the result? A worksheet my students actually picked up and looked at. With curiosity. Not dread.

To get the worksheets, Right click on the image and Save as…

It has everything they need:

  • A model text at the right level
  • Guided vocabulary in context
  • A clear framework they can replicate
  • A writing task that feels achievable

 

Step 3: And why not an interactive website for those who prefer interactive content?

Because apparently a gorgeous worksheet wasn’t enough for me, I also went ahead and built an interactive website to go with it with a Drag and Drop exercise

Step 4. They Know the Theory. Now They Need to Write.

Knowing the structure is one thing. Producing it under exam conditions is a completely different story. Report writing doesn’t come naturally to B2 students — it needs practice. Lots of it. And they can’t do that without me in the room, monitoring, nudging, redirecting. What works for me is collaborative guided practice: students work together within a clear framework, which lowers the anxiety AND means I can actually see what’s happening before they write a single word. The activity below is exactly that. Does it guarantee a perfect report? No. But it gives them a fighting chanc

Note: Click here for a more user-friendly view of the webpage with the step-by-step  activity