All right, I have an OHP and now what? Part 1

freeware, ,

Exactly and now what?

Surprisingly , a publishing company has given  the English Department an overhead projector and given that we have to almost beg for our own  children’s books I can only describe it as an act of utter generosity. I should maybe have to explain that although education  is compulsory in Spain until you’re 16 ,books are not free; not even kept at the school and handed from student to student . So you can only guess at how much publishing companies earn out of textbooks.

Right , so now I have an overhead projector but… I don’t have  an Internet connection. The thing is that I have a funny video that fits like a glove with my next lesson and I want to display it using the OHP.

That’s where this little tool comes very handy. It’s called Savevid and it allows you to download videos from Youtube, Vimeo, Metacafe and some other popular sites  to your computer or USB . The only thing you need to do is paste the url of the video you want to download, choose from 5 formats  the one that suits you best and play it on your computer.

A word on Grammar: on the weekend or at the weekend?

A word on Grammar, , ,

No wonder we sometimes get confused with prepositions. They are crazy to learn and frustrating to teach, iiiif they can be taught !

So, the question of whether you say at the weekend or on the weekend is not a question of being grammatically correct  but of  speaking American English or British English, being at the weekend (BrE) and on the weekend (AmE).

So, both are correct. My only tip is that you stick to either American or British. Nobody says Alo (as in Santo Domingo) when answering the phone in Spain, although we understand it.

Hands in my pockets: Alanis Morissette

General, Music

Still on the subject of teaching, over and over again , personality adjectives to my students I bumped into a post where this song was suggested for the teaching of these adjectives.

This is the handout  from this song I’m going to give my intermediate  students. It contains a bit of everything: working with opposites, phonetics and open questions.

Hope you enjoy the song! handout , HERE

Writing Prompts: a writing blog

Writing,

Writing prompts is a blog full of interesting ideas to write about. Ideas that are accompanied by a picture to boost up your imagination and creativity.
We all know that all writers sometimes get stuck, well, students too; but this lack of inspiration will never be used as an excuse if ideas come together with a picture. Prompts can be easily be displayed on a whiteboard and brainstorming can be done before students set out to do the writing task ahead.