Category Archives: General

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

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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

Wanna Sing a Christmas Song?

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Are in the mood for singing a Christmas Carol? Wouldn’t you like to be Christmas shopping and hear Jingle Bells or White Christmas and be able to sing along?

Christmas Shopping???? Don’t panic or yes… start panicking !!!!If you’re just like me , as soon as I hear the first Rudolph the Red – Nosed Reindeer in  the shopping center , I know  the countdown begins. Only two weeks until Christmas and I haven’t even started thinking about what to get for my family , let alone gone gift shopping . I slowly begin to panic while my sister keeps pestering me , claiming  that she has already bought everything in September and that everything my children will want might already be out of stock by the time I make up my mind to go shopping. And then , every single year I promise myself (and my sister) that next year I’ll go gift shopping in summer even though the only thing I might be able to buy is a summer hat!

Well, I’ll stop rambling now and tell you that I learned about this site Esolcourses.com through one of my colleagues Rosa Valdés. I am planning to dedicate one session to singing Christmas Carols with my  students. The added bonus for my students  is that the Christmas Carols are sung by  famous singers such as lady Gaga, John lennon or Christina Aguliera , and the added bonus for me is that carols are already sorted into levels with their corresponding activities.

This is one of the videos we can find on this site. Thanks for sharing Rosa!

Anyway, the website has also got a very good listening section , which I highly recommend.

Christmas Decoration for my Classroom and for my Home

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Well, folks! With only a fortnight to go before Christmas Eve I can safely say that the holidays are upon us and it’s time to start decorating. Below I have posted two presentations . The first one is for inexpensively decorating our  classroom .Big fun! (I have used the tool  Slide.ly , which I highly recommend because it’s free and easy to use).  In the second presentation I have included ideas to decorate the house and to dress our Christmas tables.Hope you like them! And …a big thank you to my students ,who have enthusiastically helped me decorate.

 

 

Classroom Decoration by Slidely Slideshow