Category: lesson ideas

Posted in creative tasks, efl, elt, esl, fun, lesson ideas, photography, projects

Using Photos in Language Classes, Part 1

Posted on by Eva Buyuksimkesyan

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“Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.” Dorothea Lange

Visuals are useful and powerful tools to enhance the use of language, combining the images and the concepts they refer in the minds of the learners. Photos, as all visual images, also encourage the learners to predict and guess the story of the photo they are looking at. It is easy to bring the real world into the classroom and talk and discuss about it.

Today’s children love taking photos. They love taking “selfies” but they also take photos of everyday objects, food, the place they live, the place they visit and they don’t need a camera for taking photos anymore. They don’t even need to go somewhere to develop them to bring into the classroom. There is even no need for a printer, a computer as long as they have a smart phone, Internet connection and Google Tools to share it with you and their class mates. Moreover, as they are addicted to use the phone and can’t live a minute apart from them, why shouldn’t we take advantage of this and challenge them?

I think we can ask them to take their own photos or we can bring the ones that we have taken or chosen from other people’s sets. I’d suggest #ELTpics for projects with photos if you don’t want to use your own photos or the student photos.

In the early years the photos can be used to

Teach, revise vocabulary

Drill the target language

Describe the photo

Role play

Gamify

However in the advanced levels photos encourage students to write and tell stories, to discuss certain issues, and do a lot more things.

So I’m planning to write a few posts on using photos in the language classrooms. I will list some activities that can be used with any level.

Caption Writing Project

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  • Tell students to take photos on their way home or at the weekend, etc.
  • You can guide them to take photos of food, supermarkets, street markets, people commuting in the morning, etc.
  • Start a Google Slide and share with your class.
  • Tell students to upload their photos to the slide.
  • Depending on the size of the class, divide students in teams and give each team a set of photos (depending on the number of photos uploaded)
  • Tell each team to write captions for the photos they have for their teams.
  • Choose the best photo, best caption, the most creative caption, etc. (optional)

Follow up:

  • You can print them out and create a class display.
  • You can download the Slide as pdf and upload the file to “youblisher” and create an ebook that can be shared or embedded to your class blog or school website. This very easy activity can be turned into a class project as well.
  • If you decide to continue the project all year long, you may then decide to print the sets and turn them into a printed “class catalogue”.

 To be continued …

 

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Posted in efl, fun, ideas, lesson ideas, song lessons, songs

A Bollywood Style Song Lesson

Posted on by Eva Buyuksimkesyan

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Nowadays there is a TV commercial of a fizzy drink that we talk a lot about. The dances used in the commercial is Bollywood style and we have just come across the original song on YouTube and it was not a surprise to find out that the song was from a Bollywood movie. The lyrics are in English but when I first listened I thought they were in Indian. Only when I focused, I caught the words. Then the idea emerged in my mind. Alas, it’s the end of year. I will not be able to use it this year but for the coming academic year, the song is on my list. 

You can use the Soup Song to

1. teach pronunciation, comparing the British or the American pronunciation with the one in the song.

2. talk about English as a Lingua Franca, even conduct a discussion on different pronunciations of English.

3. talk about different accents.

You can try Lyric Race with your class. It will be fun.

If you think moving in the class will be difficult because you have a big class, then maybe you can try the following activity with them

1. Prepare a gap fill activity with the lyrics. On slips of papers, preferably on a colored paper, write the omitted words.

2. Divide your class into teams.

3. Give them the handouts and the omitted words. Tell students to lay all the words open on the desk before you start the song.

4. Play the song and ask them to fill in the gaps with the omitted words. 

5. The winner is the one who finishes first.

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I’d like to hear about your thoughts about the lesson and if you use it before I can use, I’ll be happy to hear how your lesson went.

Posted in 4 skills, creative tasks, creative writing, creativity, efl, fun, fun activities, ideas, inspiration, lesson ideas, poems, poetry, reading, The Road Not Taken

Choices We Make, a Poetry Lesson

Posted on by Eva Buyuksimkesyan

“Let us go singing as far as we go: the road will be less tedious.”

Virgil

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Choices are important in our lives. Sometimes there are times we regret, there are times we pray for what we’ve chosen.

I have a group of mixed-ability students in grade 11 studying mostly languages. Some of them are not happy because that was not what they actually wanted but that was the only option to take.

I had a very disappointing lesson the other day and when I arrived home I thought what I could do for them to realize or do something for themselves until the next fork appears on the road they had chosen. And I decided to go to the class with a poem. Yes, I chose The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost as I thought with a little help, they would be able to understand the poem and we’d be able to talk about our decisions. To sum up, it was a great lesson. We all enjoyed it and I think they also revised their decisions or their attitudes towards their choices.

Now I’d like to tell you how I planned the lesson. First of all I found some very valuable lesson ideas on the poem and took some inspiration from them and I prepared one suitable for my students.

First I asked what the word ‘road’ meant. Then I asked what it could be used as a metaphor. We looked at the picture I chose as a warm up. ( If you search Google/Yahoo images as “Two Roads”, you’ll get some pictures of the woods that come to a fork)

The students described the picture and then I asked them what they would do if they were in this picture, how they would feel, how they would decide. The best part of the lesson was actually here and I hadn’t predicted that while preparing it. They talked about how they would be both nervous and excited. We talked about what they could encounter on the road, where these roads might take them.

Then we brainstormed words/ideas related with roads. I chose a recording of the poem on YouTube and told students to listen and jot down any words or phrases they heard/caught/liked.

After listening to the poem twice, I gave them the handouts and told them to read the poem and find if the words they had heard were really in the poem. Then we discussed the poem. We talked about if the poet was happy with his choice, if the poem was sad or happy or hopeful. Now I’m waiting for their bookmarks on the poem. They’ll use the ideas from here.

wordle created with AnswerGarden
wordle created with AnswerGarden

Tagxedo link of AnswerGarden words/phrases

Posted in activities, creative tasks, creative writing, creativity, descriptions, fun activities, grammar, grammar games, guided visualisation, lesson ideas, narratives, past continuous, past simple, past tenses, story writing, web 2.0 tools, writing, writing a paragraph, writing games

Getting Ready to Write A Story

Posted on by Eva Buyuksimkesyan

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Level: All

Age: All

Target Language : Narrative Tenses, Adjectives to describe emotions, feelings, etc.                               

Give each student a handout with the chart below.

Play the sound effects you chose

Ask the students to fill in the following chart

What do you see?  
What do you hear?  
What do you feel?  
What do you taste?  
What do you smell?  

When your students finish completing their charts, ask them to share with their friends.

Remind them how we can start to write a first paragraph of a story. ( how we set the scene, etc)

Optional: you can ask your students to draw the scene based on their chart.

Then tell students to write an introduction paragraph for a short story or a novel.

You can download free sound effects

http://www.freesoundeffects.com/free-sounds/weather-sounds-10038/

http://www.soundsnap.com/browse

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Posted in activities, dialogue, efl, fun, fun activities, ice-breakers, lesson ideas, vocabulary, writing games

5 Fun Activities For the Monday Morning

Posted on by Eva Buyuksimkesyan

 

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1. Categories

Divide the class into two.

Explain the rules. You will give the students a category.

Call 2 students from each team to the board.

Set 2 minutes and tell them to write the words that come to their mind.

Some categories:

Things in a fridge

Things you can buy from a supermarket

Expensive items

Things you can find in a living room.

Adjectives that describe personality.

2. Right Word, Wrong Place

Prepare a handout with newly learned structures or some quotes on the topic you’d like to discuss in the class.

Make grammatically incorrect sentences changing the place of two words in the sentence and ask students to correct them.

3. Catch the words

Draw a circle and write some letters with which students form words. Prepare a handout jumbling the words you’ve recently studied in the class.

4. Dialogues

On slips of papers, write sentences or ask students to write sentences.

Put the students in pairs.

Give each pair 4 slips of papers, preferably the same 4 sentences and tell them to write a dialogue and insert the sentences they have on the slips of papers into their dialogues.

5. Comprehension Questions

Write the topic of the reading passage/listening activity on the board.

Tell students to copy it on a piece of paper and then write a question about it.

Then pass the paper to their friend and ask them to write another question. Then tell them to pass it to the next student. When each student receive their own papers, ask them to read the text and try to find if any of the questions are answered.