Tag Archives: onlinetools

Tag Galaxy: Flikr Images to create a 3D photo-sphere

Create your own stuff, Pictures, Speaking,

Do you know anyone, especially students, who would not rather have a lesson spiced up with pictures?   Now, this  is  an amazing tool to work  with and  just plain fun! Tag Galaxy appeals to all visual students and it helps spice up a boring lesson. Have I  just said” boring lessons”??? Sorry! a slip of the tongue!!

How does it work? Easy peasy! You enter a tag  – I wrote Hobbies-  and as soon as you click GO , you will see a 3D galaxy with lots of planets of different sizes. The biggest one is for my Tag ( in this case Hobbies) and the smaller  planets will be words related to the keyword orbiting around my keyword

At this point you might click on another planet to combine words ( Hobbies+ books) and form a new galaxy.

Click on the big planet and see your picture collection , straight from Flikr  assembling.

Spin the globe  with the mouse. Click to select a picture and get a close -up. Cool!

Tag Galaxy in the classroom: I’m sure my students will be delighted to watch the whole process but leaving aside the cool part, I think using this wonderful tool can be highly motivating for my students.

♥ At the moment I’m teaching  Simple Past tense to my Elementary students and  I’m planning to use it  to do some speaking with the structure:

When did you last….? (play football)

I last( played football )( three weeks ago) +  the follow up questions.

♥It could also work  for Picture Description

♥Writing Skills: Students are given the beginning of a story such as: it was a stormy night … Students write “storm” as the keyword and the picures will help them spark their creativity.

Retelling a text using Wordle

Create your own stuff, Speaking, , , ,

This is not the first time I have used this strategy to invite my students to do some speaking but it is the first time I have used it with absolute beginners. It has taken me sometime to bring myself to do this kind of activity with my 12-year-old  absolute beginners. I am always afraid the task may seem to them like a high mountain to climb, but they have been studying with me for four months now and I feel they are up to the challenge.

I really feel that I can insist, until the cows come home, English  is not only about learning grammar, but if students are not actively taking a role in their education, there is little I can do.

So I have used a text, they had previously worked  with, to ask them to retell the story. The text was about Education and it told the story of two children Eduardo from Angola and Nabyrye from Uganda. Easy text and all about present simple, which is what they have been studying. Two texts, so great to do pair work!

I have used a tool I have used other times, Wordle, to create Word Clouds to help students remember the story and retell it.

Two useful tricks when using Wordle

♥ If you want a word to be bigger than the rest, just type it twice.

♥ Insert (~ ) between the words you want to keep together.

I have posted about Wordle to revise vocabulary here and to do  a Writing Activity here

Have a nice week!!

Speaking: Talking about Jobs

Funny Stuff, Games, General, Speaking, , , , , ,

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

PictureTrail: Customizable Slide Show Maker

Create your own stuff, Pictures, Slides, Speaking, Vocabulary, , , ,

I have discovered this amazing site to work with slides that I cannot wait to share with you. It is just amazing the variety it offers to create slides, choosing from a variety of skins, borders, glitters, backgrounds…etc. The only thing you need to do is upload your pictures and have fun. It is also possible, as you have probably noticed 😉 to embed your slides.

How am I going to use it in my classes? Nothing to write home about really; my students are working with TV programmes so I thought to find images from different Spanish programmes and do some speaking. The instructions are in the form of a slide too, so that they can do this exercise at home again and do some more practice before exams.

By the way, the site is called PictureTrail.

films

Reported Speech: Famous Quotes

A word on Grammar, Slides, , , ,

Happy Thursday to everybody!  Yes, Ok, in Asturias  we have rain, clouds, and cold but I’m trying to keep my spirits up!

Next week I’ll be focusing on Reported Speech and I thought this could be a good way of getting their attention. I have chosen  a  few quotes from  some  famous people  and created a Power Point Presentation  Hope it’s useful!!

 

Visit my Intermediate Section for more exercises on reported Speech and also read another article (Reported Speech: questions and Orders)  I published some time ago with more ideas here