This a nice tool I’ve been using for a while and that I want to share with you.
I normally try not to waste too much paper or ink but very often I find very nice things online I need to print. PrintWhatYouLike.com lets you print just what you need without wasting tons of paper. Some of the options this site gives you are: hiding background , images , margins,choosing the font , …etc.
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?
It’s not easy to find writing activities that motivate students 
but Writing about Music is one of the most popular among teenagers. From my point of view, at this stage of their learning, writing should be partially guided and this is what this activity suggests.
This is the writing task my A1 students had to undertake. I thought I might share it here as I always find it hard to find activities such as this one. Hope you find it useful, too!
Step 1. Students think of a group they know and like and then they provide the following information about their group.
Name:
When popular:
Members of the group:
From:
Instruments:
Songs
Step 2. Students write about this group , using their notes above.As I suggested , at this stage students need a lot of help and encouragement , so it’s really a good idea to give them a model they can refer to.
This is the model I gave them
The Fray are a popular group in the United States and all over the world today. In the group there are four musicians: Joe King, Isaac Slade, Dave Welsh, Ben Wysocki . They are all from the USA. They sing, write songs and play the guitar, the drums and the piano. Two of the group’s most popular songs are How to save a Life and All at Once.
Step 3:I decided to give my students an extra point if they gave a presentation about their group in class. Most of them did and they even brought along some flash drives with the group’s most popular songs.
Presentations given by Karen and Alice . Thank you girls!
Who said English is boring?
Of all the skills a student has to become fluent at when learning 
a language writing is, for me, the most boring one. I don’t think it’s the hardest by any means, this prize is awarded to Speaking but the truth is that students find it boring and we, teachers, almost always put off marking essays for as long as we can.
On the other hand, I find that it’s much easier for students to write a worthy piece of writing if you provide a model, some guidelines to follow and also give them a topic they are mildly interested in .
Last week’s topic for composition was Writing about a Game. I asked students to think of a game or a sport and answer the following questions
♥What’s the name of the activity? ♥How many players are there? ♥ How does a player start the game?♥What do the players do then?
I also asked some students to record their work and this is what they did (I used a tool called Fotobabble. I wrote about Fotobabble here). Thank you folks, good job!
Lucia Gonzalez Hide n Seek
Alba Feito “Marbles”
<iframe style=’border:0;’ height=450 width=400 scrolling=no src=’http://www.fotobabble.com/api/fotobabble?apiKey=test&format=HTML&displayFormat=Player&id=cFo4UFNsVitSWjg9&height=450&width=400′></iframe>
Carolina Macas The Handkerchief
David Díaz The Liar Dice
Every year I find a reason to use Glogster in the classroom (click here to see my first article about Glogster) I think most of my students, though camera-shy, like to see their work published. I find that Glogster is the ideal tool to use with twelve or thirteen- year- old students because it ‘s very visual and students have a lot of fun deciding which frame to use for their photograph or text , which video they want to embed ( In English, of course) . Yes, they have fun but what they probably don’t realize is that they are using English from Step 1 of the project.
In fact, after finishing our Glogster, I wrote on the board several of the words they had been using (frame, text, wall, image, tools, gallery, upload, cartoon…etc) and they were happy when they recognised it.
Have you never tried Glogster? Give it a go! It’s a lot of fun!
Click here to see it better!