Tag Archives: A2

Read Along: Reading and Pronunciation Buddy for Beginners

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It’s been a long time since I haven’t written a post for primary teachers and A1 learners, but hey!  This one’s for you!

If you’re just starting your reading journey—or helping little ones do the same—Google’s Read Along is the perfect tool to make learning fun! While designed primarily for children, these stories can still be valuable for adult learners focusing on reading skills and pronunciation practice. The child-friendly content doesn’t diminish its effectiveness as a learning tool for readers of any age. For me and my adult students, it just makes the whole activity more visually appealing while still focusing on the same goal—helping you improve your reading and pronunciation.

What is Read Along?

It is a FREE tool (yep, no cost at all!) that helps students learn to read  and pronounce correctly while having fun. It works both as an app and online, making it super accessible for everyone.

How does it work?

Meet Diya, the friendly reading buddy!

  • She listens to students and helps them then they struggle with reading
  • Students can choose from hundreds of levelled stories
  • Students can earn badges and rewards as they read

Ready to pronounce? t is important to activate the microphone.

  • Diya, the reading buddy, will prompt you to pronounce;  or alternatively, you can click on the words to hear them being pronounced.
Why do I like it?
  • There are four levels of stories, each with a different level of difficulty. The higher the level, the more challenging the reading—so you can progress at your own pace.
  • You can listen to individual words in a story, and there are also fun activities where you get to record yourself reading aloud! Perfect for practicing pronunciation and building confidence!
  • Uses AI to offer real-time feedback
  • Completely inclusive and accessible for all learners
  • Helps students gain confidence and fluency in reading

So, whether you’re a teacher looking to support your students or a beginner reader wanting to improve pronunciation, Read Along might be the tool for you.

Creative Collaborative Writing with a Touch of Fun to Fix Fossilized Errors

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It might not be your case, but most teachers, including myself, do not dedicate enough time to practise writing in class. And this needs to be fixed because students may simply get better if given the right guidance and enough practice. However, I think it’s crucial that we ask them to reflect on their errors and then, ask them to make the necessary corrections, rather than just correcting them ourselves.

This exercise you are about to read is fun, creative, and collaborative; it gets students out of their seats but most importantly, gives them an opportunity to learn from their mistakes and fix fossilized errors.

On Fossilized Errors

Fossilized errors are persistent mistakes that students make despite repeated correction. You know what I am talking about, don’t you?  While teachers play an important role in identifying and correcting these errors, it is imperative for students to take ownership and  conscientiously analyse and rectify their errors; that’s, in my experience, the most effective way to eliminate them.  If you ask me and generally speaking, when students are given a composition with corrected errors, they just have a quick look at them, but they don’t truly reflect on their mistake and then, inevitably, they are bound to make the same mistake over and over again.

IMPORTANT:For this activity, I have used a classroom that has several small whiteboards on the walls. I am not going to deny that using these whiteboards is more appealing, but what if you don’t have these cute whiteboards? No problem, it will work just the same with A3 or A4 paper (the bigger, the better)

Step by Step

STEP 1: FORMING PAIRS AND GETTING A STORY STARTER

  1. Pair up students.
  2. Display the visual below and explain that the boxes contain different story starters. Ask pairs to choose a box. The sentence inside the box will be the beginning of their story. All pairs must choose a different box, meaning they will all have different beginnings.
  3.  I have asked each pair of students to stand next to a board  (alternatively, as explained, a A3 or A4 sheet of paper ) and write the beginning of their story.
  4. Give students about 5/6 minutes to continue the story in any way they fancy.

STEP 2: ADDING A RANDOM PROMPT AND A CONNECTOR OF CONTRAST

After approx 5 minutes, draw students’ attention and ask a volunteer for the whole class to

  • choose a box from the exercise below. Pairs will have to continue the story, incorporating the prompt in the box. Right after opening the box with the prompt,
  • click on the wheel  (fed with connectors of contrast and purpose and some verbs) and ask them to continue the story using the connector/verb randomly picked in the wheel.

Give students 5 or 6 minutes to continue the story.


How many times have I repeated Step 2? 

I have repeated this procedure three times (i.e. three prompts+ three connectors). Make sure you tell them when they need to finish their stories.

Step 3. Giving students Feedback on their Writing 

Give students something to do while you quickly underline the mistakes in their writings. Keywords here: underline their mistakes. I don’t correct them, I underline them. This is vital if you want students to get rid of errors.

Step 4. Students correct their mistakes

Ask students to stand up in their pairs and comment, reflect and try to fix the underlined mistakes.

Important: I ask them not to delete the original text so that I can have it as a reference.

Step 5.  Quickly give feedback on their corrections
Step 6. Students vote for the best story

Student stand up again, read their classmates’ stories, and individually vote for the best. They do it by drawing a heart next to the story they like best.

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Learn with News: a Real Time-Saver for Teachers and Students

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Do you regularly read or watch the news? I don’t

Look, I know I’m supposed to act all adult-like and be like, “yeah! Every day… can’t live without knowing what’s happening in my country? Honestly? I don’t need the news- I want to be happy. Don’t you feel that nothing good ever happens in this world when you are watching the news?

But my role as an English teacher is to encourage exposure to examples of language in different contexts, from different sources and from different speakers. And this is precisely the reason why I am posting about this helpful site.

Learn with News is an English news website and you are gonna love it ’cause it’s free. In 3 levels. With exercises. Bonus points: with answers.

If you are a student

  • you get to choose the level of the news. There are three levels: level 1 for beginners, level 2 for intermediate students and level 3 for advanced students.
  • They provide materials for reading, vocabulary, speaking and listening
  • They provide the answers.

If you are a teacher

  • What is there not to love? They have prepared your class for free. Yay!

 

The 5 Seconds Game to Revise Vocabulary

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I have realized something about myself today.  Vocabulary revision games are my thing.

All my good lessons begin with revision. I make a point of beginning my classes revising what we learned the previous lesson. It takes five minutes, but I honestly believe it makes a big difference. The little game below takes exactly that, 5 minutes. Just saying.

 

If you’ve been following this blog for some time, you probably know by now that one of my most nagging worries- shall I call it an obsession?-  is teaching vocabulary about a certain topic and then hearing my students speak about the topic without a trace of the vocabulary we have been learning.

I never get angry. Believe me. I am a very nice teacher. But this,… I can hardly restrain myself.

So, again,  I have designed a fun little activity to revise vocabulary, collocations…etc about any topic and I have called it “The 5 seconds game”.

Before the class:

Prepare a set of 7-10 small questions for each pair. They need to be quick questions. Have a look at my questions below. They are all about Unit 1 dealing with “Education”

In class:
  • Ask students to choose a partner. After pairing up, each pair become a team and play against another team. So, we will have Team A and Team B ( 4 students)
  • Tell teams you will ask each team  X questions. After each question, they will have 5 seconds to think and when the bell rings, they will have to give the answer to the question at the same time. If the answer is the same and it is correct and they have answered at exactly the same time, they will score 1 point
  • Say Team A starts. Ask them to sit facing each other and in clear view of Team B who will be listening to their answers very attentively and keeping score of the points they get.
  • Ask the first question, mentally count 5 seconds, ring a bell or use any other device that makes noise and ask the two members of Team A to give the answer at exactly the same time. Team B will be in charge of making sure the rules are followed to the letter.
  • Continue in the same way until the X questions have been answered.
  • To reinforce, ask the questions again, but this time to the whole class.
  • Repeat procedure for Team B with X new questions

VARIATION:  In another group, I asked students to work in pairs, competing against each other and not against another pair. It also worked very well, probably better.

Thanks to Andrea and Paula for giving me permission to record them

Team A questions

  1. What do you call the school where you study and sleep?
  2. What preposition does “committed” collocate with?
  3. How do you pronounce “native”?
  4. Can you give me a synonym for “ obligatory?
  5. What’s the opposite of a “state school”?
  6. Which is correct “do your homework” or “make your homework”?
  7. Another way of saying “ to relax”
  8. “to assign” is a verb, what’s the noun?

Team B questions

  1. What do you call the school which trains students for employment?
  2. Which is correct “do an exam” or “make an exam”?
  3. When you pass an exam with high marks, you can say that you pass it with flying….?
  4. What do you call the money that you pay to attend a school?
  5. How do you pronounce the word “machine”?
  6. What preposition do you use with the verb ”keep” to mean “to go as fast as”?
  7. “To rehearse” is a verb, what’s the noun?
  8. What preposition does “ hopeless” collocate with?

Fixing Fossilized Grammar and Spelling Errors in an Engaging Effective Way

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End of the school year for me! And for you?

This is a post especially dedicated to all non-tech lovers! I am capping off this wonderful school year with an engaging yet effective activity for error correction. It may not be much when you read how to do it but trust me on this one, your students are going to love it!

If you follow me at all on my blog or on social media (facebook, twitter ), you will know that I am a huge fan of using technology in my classes. When I mean “huge”, I don’t mean that technology dominates my teaching practice. I use technology only when I think it’s going to contribute to effective learning. Otherwise, it’s time wasted.

Slips of paper are hands-down my favourite teaching tool. Essentially, they are scraps of paper that I use and reuse constantly in various ways. In fact, my record is having used the same set of slips of paper six times for a single class. I am sure some of my students will remember this day. They certainly learned everything on them.

The activity I am sharing with you today is a  brand new one. I have to say I am happy with the result. It worked really well, it was effective, meaningful and engaging.

This time slips of paper have been used to fix fossilized grammar and spelling errors, but I firmly believe that the use of slips of paper as a teaching tool is a great addition to any lesson plan.

Note 1: “fossilization” refers the way in which some errors become a permanent feature of a language learner’s language

Note 2: at the end of the post, there is a video I’ve put together with some pics and clips I took from the activity. In case you want to see it. Just saying! 🙂

Materials:

  • slips of paper
  • sticky notes
  • sellotape or blue-tack
Before  the class

Yes. I am afraid there is some prep to do but it’s worth it.

  1. Correct their compositions and write down common or relevant errors: for this activity, I have used common spelling or grammar errors.
  2. Write them down on slips of paper.
  3. Write the correction on sticky notes or scraps of paper.
  4. Hang the slips of papers around the room. Identify each slip of paper with a number and write it down on the bottom right-hand corner.
  5. For each slip of paper, and displayed next to it, is a sticky note containing the correction. The sticky note is folded in half so that the right answer cannot be seen unless unfolded.

How to go about it

Round 1

  • Ask students to take out a regular A4 piece of paper, write Round 1 at the top and number it- whatever X slips of paper you are using. Ask them to do the same on another piece of paper and but this time they should write Round 2.
  • Note: It is spring so if it is sunny, why not take them outside the building and hang the slips of paper on the walls of the building? In fact, this is what I did. If you also play some upbeat music while they are doing the exercise, they are going to love you.
  • Ask them to form pairs.
  • Ask them to walk around the class in their pairs, read the sentence, spot the error, discuss the way to correct it and then write their answers on the response sheet. If the number on the slip of paper is 3, they should write it next to number three on their response sheet.  Tell them it doesn’t matter where they start as they will end up doing all the cards.
  • Emphasize that they will need to speak English all the time and that they will both need to discuss how to correct the error- you want both of them to learn, not just one student-  then write down the answer and then, only then, unfold the sticky note with the corrected version.
  • I like to meander around the room and check to see if they are having difficulties with a specific error and try to help them figure out where the mistake is.
  • Once the activity is finished, I ask them to count up the number of mistakes they have been able to correct and write that number at the top of their paper.

Round 2.

We are working here with fossilized errors, ie, errors we have already corrected a thousand times but we haven’t been able to fix.  Reinforcement and consolidation are essential. So, let’s go for Round 2.

Group students: I asked students to form a line based on their birthdays (day/month). Once they formed the line, I ask them to work with the person on their right. (have a look at the video).

  • Explain that they are going to be competing against each other.  At the end of the activity, the winner is the student who has managed to correct the most mistakes.
  • Everything is the same as above, but this time they don’t discuss the error. Together and silently they read the error on the slip of paper, write the correction on their sheets of paper, compare their answers, unfold the sticky note and put a tick or a cross depending on whether they have been able to spot and correct the error. Hopefully, most students will have been able to fix all the errors.

Round 3

Yes. Again. Remember they are fossilized errors.

Follow-up: Ask students to sit down and ask them to write from memory all the mistakes they have been able to fix. Once they have finished, ask them to share them in pairs. Let’s hope that by writing them down from memory and talking about them in pairs …again, we will have helped them eliminate these fossilized errors from their oral and written production.

I love how slips of papers can turn into a simple and fun formative assessment tool that gets students out of their seats and learning, don’t you?

Have a look at the video now to have a clearer picture of the whole activity.