Lesson Plan: Stereotypes

Lesson Plan: Intermediate, , , , , ,

This is a lesson for intermediate students, which I thought would be interesting to share, mainly because of the video support, which I selected only after some wasted time listening to some very poor quality videos or  perhaps  good quality videos but which, unfortunately, were not appropriate for this level.

Step 1. What is a stereotype?

A stereotype is a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person related to their race, nationality and sexual orientation…etc

Step 2. Brainstorming Ideas.

Ask the class. What do you think of when you hear the word British? Give them one or two minutes to write down their answers, and then call on a few students to give you their answers. Play the video National Stereotypes, but don’t show the images, just the audio. How many have they guessed?

Step 3. Brainstorming
In pairs, students try to answer the same question but, this time, about Spain and the Spaniards. Embedded below are some of my students’ answers. Do you agree?

Mapa Mental creado con ExamTime por cristina.cabal

Step 4. Speaking: National Stereotypes
Ask students whether they agree or disagree with the following National Stereotypes
1. The British are violent mad football freaks
2. The Italians are good lovers but bad workers
3. The Chinese eat everything that moves
4. The Germans are very punctual
5. The Swiss love clocks

Have you ever wondered how we sound to speakers of other languages when we speak our native language? Some languages are easy to imitate, as for example the Italian language or the German one but I would never have guessed how a Spanish speaking native sounds to the rest of the world.
In this video the British Sketch comedian, Katherine Tate, volunteers to translate into seven different languages. Hilarious! And I hope nobody takes offence!

Step 6.Speaking. Students in pairs answer the following questions about stereotypes

♥What do people think of when they think of Spain and the Spaniards? Do you think these stereotypes are true or false?

♥Do you know of any stereotypes about British people?
♥What are some stereotypes you know of about women?
♥What are some stereotypes about men?

♥ What stereotypes exist about people who are blonde?
♥Do you think some stereotypes are true?
♥What stereotypes exist about religion?

Lesson Plan: Talking about Your Hometown .

American Cultural aspects, freeware, Lesson Plan: Elementary, Speaking, Vocabulary, , , , , ,

This is a lesson for Elementary students.

Step 1. Reading and Listening

Mind mapping is a very important  learning tool for visual learners. This mind map has been created with Exam Time, which is very easy to use and  embeddable, a feature I always appreciate.

There are some steps previous to this mind mapping  we wrote on the board, essentially reading and listening about this issue. Form these listenings and readings we gathered and sorted vocabulary that was, then, written on the board.

Step 2. Mind Mapping

What you see below is a nice way of displaying what was written on the board of the classroom  with the help of my students.

por cristina.cabal
Step 3. Speaking

For this activity, instead of the typical photocopy with the list of questions to talk about, I have put students in groups of three or four and given each group a set of cards, which they had to place face down on the table. Students in turns pick up a card and talk for as much as they can about the given question. At this point I give my students the usual talk about how important it is now, to “show off.”

This is a snapshot of the cards. Click here if you want to print them.

Copyright Free Images to Use

Create your own stuff, freeware, Pictures, Slides, ,

Are you looking for free images to use? Then, you’ve come to the right place. I’ve put together, using  Symbaloo, lots of sites that offer links to free stock images and copyright free images. In some of these sites there are some guidelines you need to follow. In most cases, photographers have retained the rights to these photos but they have allowed their use. Needless to say , you need to give  credit to its creator if you use them.

Convert Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Images, Web Pages and other files to PDF and the other way round

freeware,

Although I normally use just one computer to prepare my classes -the one at home,if you want to know –  I find that, sometimes and for different reasons, I need to use the computers at my school so I end up unwillingly working with four different PCs; and  I’m sure you know the feeling of frustration when  you suspiciously  start the computer  only to find out that the program you need to work with, is just not there. Bugger! 🙂

One of the programs I very often need is a PDF Converter but unfortunately, what one seems to think as essential is not so important to others…. and there you find yourself staring at the computer …trying hard not to scream in frustration.

Anyway, this is the online PDF service I use where there is no desktop tool available.

Steps:

♣Type  http://www.freepdfconvert.com/

♣Select the file you want to convert

♣ Choose output format

♣ Click on Convert

♣ Once it is converted,  download it

Hope it is useful!

Reading Comprehension: Pre-Teaching Vocabulary

General, Reading, Vocabulary, Vocabulary Games, , ,

All my lessons last 90 minutes and even though I like to think that students don’t normally get tired or bored, changing gears several times during the 90 minutes is quite important to maintain their level of attention. In this sense, fortunately, teaching a language is not the same as teaching some other subjects where the range of activities you can do is a bit more restricted.
When it comes to Reading Comprehension there are some activities I have tried over the years that seem to have worked pretty well. This week I am planning to use a different activity with my intermediate groups to pre -teach the vocabulary in the Reading Activity, which I would like to share with you. It will require that they leave their seats and walk around the class, talking to their classmates. I’m sure they will appreciate the opportunity to move their legs.
Steps.
Step 1. Decide the vocabulary you want to teach (that goes without saying, doesn’t it?)
Step 2. Prepare two sets of cards. One card contains the word and part of speech you want to teach and the other card contains the definition.
Step 3. Students stand up and find their partner ( I have large groups so it’s going to take a while).
Step 4. Students sit down with their partner and write a sentence containing their word.
Step 5. Students read their sentences and explain the meaning of the word /expression being studied.
Note: I have very large groups, like  thirty students  per class but I never know how many  will be attending on a particular day. For this kind of activities I need to make sure I have cards for all the students. So, if I run out of words to pre-teach, I’ll prepare some cards containing the phonetics for the targeted words.

Thanks for reading!

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