With my intermediate and upper-intermediate students,we read readers in the classroom. They are abridged but with some activities, we try to analyze the texts as much as possible. This is how I assigned them after we read The Grapes of Wrath 1. Choose a character and write a description 2. Write a book review. 3. Write…
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…
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…
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…
http://www.glogster.com/flash/flash_loader.swf?ver=1269615592 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…
I had my first workshop at ISTEK-elt. It was a great experience and I loved it very much. The presentation consisted of 2 parts 1) power point presentation 2) how I used the web 2.o tools with my students The links are on the glog. P R E A N D P O S T A…
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…
http://cdn-img1.imagechef.com/ic/flowers/images/flower17.swf ImageChef.com Flower Text 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…
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…
