Category Archives: General

Listen and Read News in Three levels

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NewsinEnglish.com is an interesting site that can be very useful for the students as part of their autonomous learning and can also be used by teachers in the classroom.
The stories and news are written in three levels: Level 1 for beginners, Level 2 for intermediate students and Level 3 for more advanced students.
How can it be useful to my students?


♥ They can listen and read to improve pronunciation
♥ They can just Listen as many times as they feel necessary until they can understand all the words
♥ They can Listen, make a summary of the story and then check

How can it be useful to me it?


♥ As a Listening Comprehension either providing the questions or asking students to summarise the piece of news
♥To improve writing by giving them the story in level 1 and asking  them to act out as reporters for NewsinEnglish by writing the same story in level 2.

Some tips for using this site are given here

Still raining!!! you know how it goes… “When the going gets rough, the rough get going!! or “Every cloud has a silver lining!!”

Caption Writing Contest

General, Students' Corner, Writing, , ,

Surely you have seen lots of cartoons and pictures with a caption. Wouldn’t you like to  see your words winning this Caption Writing Contest? Well, here’s your chance! I  found this funny picture via Pinterest and I am willing to give away a Free Homework Pass to the winner of this Writing Contest.What on earth could these two dogs be saying to each other? Give me  your craziest, sarcastic, most creative, thoughtful or memorable  caption to go along with this picture and enjoy !! Be original and witty!! Deadline: 15th April (example below)

Some Things to Bear in Mind when Writing your Caption

♥It can be in any form of literary expression- prose, poetry.

♥It can be one word, a sentence, a word play

♥You may enter as many captions as you like

♥Captions have to be written in English

Some Help

When writing a comic, it might be helpful to know some common English interjections. Click here to see some of the most common

How to enter a comment

Click “Comment” and write your name, email address and your caption for the contest in the comment box, in English. Don’t forget to copy the Anti-Spam Word. Click Submit Comment.

Now this is the photograph. Good Luck and Happy Captioning!

Practise Adverbs of Manner and Intonation Having Fun

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I don’t know about you, but most of my thinking time happens when I am driving all alone in my car. This is mainly because that must be about the only time in the day I am alone- Hey, I am not complaining here but it’s difficult to do any decent thinking we when you spend all your day surrounded by teenagers – my own and my students. So, here I was, in my car, driving to work and thinking about the best way to teach Adverbs of Manner to my students when I remembered an exercise I did while taking a course in  IH London.

 

The idea is to combine Adverbs of Manner and Intonation in a very funny way, though to get to the funny part of the exercise there are, first of all, some steps to climb.

Step 1. This is the boring part. On the board, I write the adjectives I am going to use in Step 3 and ask students to form the adverbs of these adjectives(see worksheet ).

Step 2. Now it’s time to start working with intonation. I draw on the board a stave and demonstrate the power of intonation with the word Thank You! It might be necessary to repeat the expression a few times before students associate pitch with meaning
-low pitch= sarcastic, depressed, negative
-middle pitch= neutral
-high pitch = very positive

Students in pairs practise a few times.

Step 3. With the adverbs still on display on the blackboard I give each student a slip of paper with the adverbs of manner: furiously, quickly, cheerfully (Worksheet here). Students now stand up and in pairs tell each other the words I LOVE YOU using the correct pitch to convey the way they feel. The other student should be able to guess the adverb written on the card. Students move around the class talking to as many students as they can. Time limit: 5 minutes.

Step 4. Feedback: students, now, read their I LOVE YOUs aloud for everybody in the class to guess the adverb of manner.

Learn English and Have Fun!!

Speaking: Talking about Jobs

Funny Stuff, Games, General, Speaking, , , , , ,

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

Food for thought: Two quotes by Dr HaimG.Ginott

General

I really need to frame it somewhere to read it first thing in the morning as a reminder and definitely, before teaching certain groups of students.

I’ve come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or de-humanized.”

Haim G. Ginott, Teacher and Child: A Book for Parents and Teachers

“What do we say to a guest who forgets her umbrella? Do we run after her and say “What is the matter with you? Every time you come to visit you forget something. If it’s not one thing it’s another. Why can’t you be like your sister? When she comes to visit, she knows how to behave. You’re forty-four years old! Will you never learn? I’m not a slave to pick up after you! I bet you’d forget your head if it weren’t attached to your shoulders.” That’s not what we say to a guest. We say “Here’s your umbrella, Alice,” without adding “scatterbrain.”
Parents need to learn to respond to their children as they do to guests.”
– Haim G. Ginott, Between Parent and Child: The Bestselling Classic That Revolutionized Parent-Child Communication