Category Archives: General

Present Continuous Games

If you’ve been reading me for some time you’ll probably have guessed that I favour kinesthetic learning.The activities where students take an active part and enjoy while learning are my favourite.I like them getting up and moving around the classroom and I even welcome the noise because they are using English.

And you cannot even begin to imagine how proud I feel when I see that they have been able to overcome their natural shyness at making mistakes and just concentrate on using the language and having fun.

These are two of my favourite activities to orally practise present continuous. Hilarious, trust me!

♥MIMING

I divided the class into two groups Group A and Group B; one student from Group A comes up to the front of the class and is given a card with a sentence containing the Present Continuous, like for example, I am watching TV. The student has to mime this activity and the members of his group have to guess, exactly, the same words written on the card. The student is given one minute to mimic as many sentences as possible.

Suggestions

  • I’m cleaning the house
  • He’s cooking an egg
  • She is dancing in the disco
  • I am playing the guitar
  • He is drinking a coke
  • He is reading a novel
  • I am thinking about my teacher
  • My mother is working now
  • He is walking to school
  • He is painting the house
  • I am studying History
  • I am not sleeping
  • I am playing tennis now
  • She is reading a newspaper
  • She is eating chocolate
  • I am riding a blue bicycle

♥DESCRIPTION OF A PHOTO

For this activity, the students are sitting in pairs, one student facing the board and the other with his back to the board. Using the OHP, a picture of people performing something is displayed. Now, the person seeing the picture has to describe it in as much detail as possible and the other person has to draw the picture. Allow them four or five minutes and then choose the best picture. Below are two of the pictures that I used:

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A Music Poll.

I cannot think of a better way to start a course than with music and MacMillan and I must be of the same mind here ’cause your first unit is all about music. Let’s start the course in high spirits and do a song. All these singers are mentioned in the  unit. Vote for the one you’d like to sing along with. Just once, please, we don’t want to be cheating here , do we?
Tool used: www.blogpoll.com

Homework : link is on the right bar. It says Present Simple. Do everything but the pronunciation of the “s”.You don’t need to print anything, just do it online at your pace. enjoy!

Back to School! :)Part 1

Here I am again!!!! Summer has slipped  by and I can hardly believe that I am about to start a new school year. This year I’ll be teaching in a different high school and yeeesss,  there are some butterflies in my stomach!! I don’t know the teachers , I don’t know the students… and they don’t know me. It’s hard to start all over again. This year I’ll be teaching lots of different levels (OMG!) mainly due to cutbacks so , sadly, I don’t think I’ll have much time to research new tools or create new materials .

Anyway, these are some of the pictures I’ll be using on the first day to try to make my new students relax and  have a healthy laugh and, then, there also follows some other pictures to get them into more serious thinking. My aim: to make students talk. Is there ever any other?

I’m going on holiday!

Summer´s here and totally in motion. These last two weeks have been hectic and I haven’t been able to post, so sorry if you have kept coming back to the blog only to find I hadn’t added a single thing.

If you have followed the blog for a while you may remember that in June me and my blog take a long  holiday.

In four days I’ll be leaving for Jerusalem (Israel) to take  a course  and do some research on the Jewish Holocaust and the politics of Nazi extermination during the Second World War. I know! Nothing to do with teaching English but … this is an issue that has interested me for a lot of years! 🙂

So, please drop by at the end of the summer and be happy!