Part of the series From my PLN Before I joined Twitter I never gave presentations or write-ups. I was rarely interviewed for newspapers, TV or radio. Twitter has magically brought change to my life. It all started with Shelly’s tweet about glogster, a fantastic tool for creating posters. I immediately signed up and opened accounts…
When I’m sixty-four is a wonderful song that works in the English Language classroom. I’ve just used the song with my students. Here is what we did: In pairs brainstorm ideas: 1. When is the retirement age? 2. What do people do when they are retired? You can talk about what people do in our…
At Istek-elt and IATEFL 2010 everybody stressed how twitter helps us share, create and collaborate. We all write about the importance of our PLNs on our blogs. I want to share what I learned from twitter last week. In many posts I wrote how I use or used animoto. I love this tool very much…
From time to time, I do this fun activity with my students and we have fun and laughter in the class. On slips of papers write some sentences. (or tell your students to write a suggestion, regret, wish, advise, exclamation, etc) Put the slips of papers in an envelope. Prepare index cards. On each card, write situations and…
Reading Tara Benwell’s blog post was so much fun that I immediately wanted to create my own list. See my kids grow up I want to see them grow up and find the right job and the person for them:-) Learn Italian I have always wanted to learn Italian but I can’t find the time,…
Why do we attend seminars and conferences? After the very successful ISTEK seminar, I’ve been thinking why we should attend seminars and conferences. I’ve been teaching for 21 years. I haven’t attended any IATEFL conferences yet but it is one of my dreams. I hope it will become true one day. However, I try to…
The listening was an interview with 2 people who who took part in an experiment for a television series. The experiment was about if people of the 21st century could live in Iron Age. I wanted them to learn something from this experiment because if they just listen, they do the task and they don’t…
Yesterday I explained how to reduce relative clauses into phrases to my 11 graders and they were all confused. Then I distributed the handouts I prepared for them to exercise and asked them to rewrite the sentences. While doing the exercises they were bored and they couldn’t get the idea.Today I played a game with…
Last two weeks were very fruitful. I had the chance to read great blog posts and thanks to twitter and PLN I learned a lot. I had prepared my power point presentation for the ISTEK conference before I read Janet Bianchini and Shelly Terrell’s blogs. After reading their posts and Jeremy Harmer’s article, I looked…
Words are easy, like the wind; William Shakespeare We start speaking using words. Simple, one word sentences make every parent happy when their toddler starts speaking then comes the others. They are so powerful. Even if you go to a country and you don’t know the language, you can still survive with some simple words…
Why do we use pre activities before a reading text or a speaking topic? 1. to raise learners’ awareness 2. to wake them up 3. to generate ideas 4. to learn the necessary vocabulary that may appear in the text or conversation 5. to stimulate discussion Why do we use post activities after the reading…
Knowledge is power (Sir Francis Bacon) Most of us will agree that twitter and blogging has had a great impact on our teaching or self improvement. When I read my colleagues blog posts I find lots of similarities between me and them. The most important is the enthusiasm we have for teaching. We all…
