I’m going on holiday!

General

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!

The World of Games : ESL Games

Funny Stuff, Games, Grammar, In the Computer Room, Phonetics, Vocabulary, ,

Yeahhh! Ok ! Sometimes students deserve a treat! It’s the end of the course and most of them have studied pretty hard for their exams and it’s only fair that you reward them with a class in the computer room playing games!

GAMES??? before you start thinking I’ve gone mad  allowing  teenegers to play games, iiiin the computer room and iiiiiiin the English class, let me tell you that the games are reasonably inside the scope of what even parents would agree with being academic stuff.

The site is called eslgamesworld.com and, even I, would be returning from time to time to play the games and have fun.

You can choose Grammar Games, Games for ESL Classroon Teaching ( you can play here The Wheel of Fortune, Who wants to be a  Millionaire …etc), Vocabulary Games and Pronunciation Games. Take your pick!

Aren’t you dying to try these games?

English Media Lab

Games, Grammar, In the Computer Room, Vocabulary, , , ,

I’m sorry I haven’t posted for some days now but I’m up to my eyes. Preparing and marking exams takes up most of my free time. June is chaos!

I imagine you have plenty of ideas  when half the class is taking an exam and the others ,sort of have already passed all the tests, but here’s another one in case you’re running short of them.

I have taken my students to the computer room and let them roam a bit about this website. English Media Lab offers Grammar, Vocabulary , Pronunciation  , Videos and Games for different levels, though I have only used the  Elementary Level. They have all loved the Memory Games revising Vocabulary and they’ve made me promise to take them to the computer room once again before the course ends.

The website is a bit confusing because it has a lot of things and it might sometime take you outside their own website. I don’t really mind as long as the new website has what I’m looking for. Anyway , have a look at it and tell me what you think!

Predicting the Future : another game

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To play this game you don’t need any preparation, which, to be honest, sometimes it’s just what  we -busy teachers- ask for. But if you are like me, you’ll find yourself doing just the same as your students, ie, having lots of fun.

For this game you need to make an origami fortune teller, also called “cootie catcher”( see picture). Instruction on how to make one and how to play here.

Ask students to write 8 fortunes inside the flaps. Encourage them to use their imagination and make sure they use the future simple: will.

Once this task is completed, ask students to stand up and mingle. Time to be a fortune teller!

Ask a student to choose one of the four colors. Spell that color out, while moving the fortune teller in and out. Then ask this student to choose one of the numbers that is showing. Move the fortune teller in and out the right number of times.

When you finish, have the person choose one of the four visible numbers. Open up the flap they choose, and read their fortune.

Have fun! Who said English was boring???? ;-))

ELLLO : Practise.Listening.Comprehension

In the Computer Room, Listening, , ,

Are you looking for a site to do some Listening Practice? Then, you have just found it!

ELLLO stands for English Listening Lesson Library Online and it’s an amazing site with tons of listening activities to help you improve your listening skills with audio, video, quizzes and vocabulary.  It is created by Todd Beuckens, an English teacher based in Japan.

The activities contain the tapescript and some  comprehension questions, vocabulary quizzes and  also images to help you understand.

Choose your level (beginner to advanced) and then choose the activity.

♥Interviews: natural conversations with various speakers of English that offer multiple listening options

 ♥ Listening Games: where students listen to audio about a topic and choose the picture that matches the audio.

♥Mixer: a survey that features six different speakers answering the same question. Students can easily follow the topic and compare the various responses. Each speaker’s segment comes with two questions that appear at the end of the audio segment to develop test taking skills.

♥News Center: an animated newscast. Each newscast has six stories. For each story, students can try to answer questions about                                                    each news story.

ELLLO is certainly worth a visit!

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