My door is on the roof. I climb with a rope. I have stairs from moon. (Maral, age 11)
One of the most favourite activities we do in class is creative writing. It is great for revising grammar and vocabulary. It is also great for unleashing their hidden talents. Although they sometimes complain about drawing, they end up with wonders.
Here is one we’ve recently done:
Creative Writing Task:
Imagine it is 2040. Draw the door of your house an describe your life there.
Aim: Talking about daily routines.
Describing people and and places
Using present simple tense
In the end I was happy with a bunch of creative minds who managed to think outside the box.
We all know that teaching vocabulary is one of the most difficult part of our job. I don’t know why but the students tend to ignore that they have to learn words and instead they focus more on grammar. However, without words grammar serves as math formulas. Here is a very quick activity that can be used with students to deal with new words or revise the ones they’ve already learned.
Tell them to list five-ten words that they love (depending on their level) and then write why they have chosen these words. You can use it with every level but the beginners will need more guidance. You can give them a handout (not necessarily, they can easily jot down in their notebooks) and ask them to fill or complete it. As a follow up they can create word posters using Wordle or any other tool or you can ask them to write a mini saga using these five words.
I’ve just come across this fancy new portal created by the Oxford University, Oxplore. It is a gem. I will just write how it works and how I’ve started using it with my students.The portal aims teenagers. Thus, it is colourful, vivid and eye-catching. It attracts the attention of the visitor. It is easy to navigate and fun to spend time there.
As it aims 11-18 year-olds it asks big questions (YES-NO) that they will find interesting. These questions are easily debatable but before we debate, the portal let us know a lot of things about the issues.. Promoting critical thinking, It gives the students a chance to see every coin has two sides. It also gives possibilities for differentiation as the portal offers different sources, quizzes, articles and a video. Moreover, the site is prepared by the University of Oxford so the information you get is reliable.
If you like the site and want to contribute by asking your ‘big questions’ you can send your questions, or encourage your students to ask their questions which will be sent to the team to be another big Oxplore question.
I prepared an Oxplore activity handout so that we can also discuss the questions in the class. You can have a look at it screenshot of my handout and I’d like to hear how you will use the website.
Lyrics Training was a favourite site for me but for some time I have stopped using it in class. I was thinking to do a fun exercise with a class and my 16 year old daughter said ‘Why don’t you use Lyrics Training’ fot the lesson. I listened to her and visited the site to have a look at the changes and I found out that they are testing the teacher account. I signed up as a teacher , chose a song and created my custom exercise and then sent it to my students.
I noticed the need our feedback so here is mine.
This feature will allow me to do more songs in class and I just loved it.
What I will need as a teacher.
I’d like to add class accounts as in TED-Ed
I’d like to see my students’ scores (how long did they spend on the exercise, did they finish or skip it?)
I sent it as a link but I’d like to add it to Google Classroom too.
What can we teachers do after sending our customized lyrics training exercises.
We can lead a class discussion.
We can give them a comprehension exercise
We can analyze the song
We can ask them to write a song review.
Create a Padlet wall and ask them to post what they thought about the song.
Analyze the song like a poem.
Ask them to draw sequences from the song and then create a short movie.
Something really annoying happened. I discovered a blog a few days ago. It’s an ELT blog but there was something strange. The site looked exactly the same as A Journey In TEFL. Even in the About page, the writer is me. I immediately asked help from Edublogs because it looks the blog has been written on Edublogs too. They informed me that it actually is just mirrored and is being hosted by an other platform. Although we asked their help, they rejected my request. The blog is called Language Ladies . Just have a look. You can even check if your blog has a duplicate too. I came across with it on Google Search.
