Game of the day

Sentence building relay

A great game to practice collocations /gerund infinitive /phrasal verbs and any language which students might have difficulty accurately putting into a sentence.

1. Put the class into teams of between 4-6
2. Give 1 student in each team a slip of paper with a word on it (the word should be one you have studied- so it might be 'hope'  or 'prepared' etc)
3. Teacher shouts GOOOO!
4. The first student must then add a word either in front of or behind the first word. Obviously, the grammar has to fit here. 
5. The student passes the slip to the next person who adds a word either to the start or the end
6. Repeat until you have a sentence with a minimum of  8 words.
7. The first team to complete their sentence correctly gets a point.  

This game is great to help students with lexical chunks, as often they will learn the meaning of a word but have trouble putting it into a sentence.  This means it's ideal for ZNO, PTE or Cambridge exam practice. 

Happy teaching!

Game of the day!

Hi Guys,

Here is a quick game you can play in your classes this week.

Language Assassins

1. Give the students slips of paper
2. tell them to write down a word or language point from the board and keep it secret
3. The students mingle around asking each other questions (these can be provided, invented by the students or simply written on the board)
4. If the person they are talking to uses the phrase or word written on the sheet the student is holding, they are 'dead' and must sit down
5. Of course the students don't know what the person has written on their paper so they must use as much of the target language as possible in order to find the right one and 'kill' the other student.
6. The idea is the students walk around trying to use as much of the target language as possible in context in order to kill the other students

Happy teaching!

Izmail School #1

While in Izmail, I was also fortunate enough to visit Specialised School #1, and deliver a seminar about how to expand or 'augment'  your vocabulary using 'Focus' and 'Wider World'

We looked at both learning concepts and practical teaching idea to help students increase their vocabulary.

The teachers from this region are very motivated and enthusiastic, it was a fun seminar with lots of audience participation!

Thank you to everybody who came, hope to see you soon!

Izmail State Humanitarian University

Last week I visited the university in Izmail to talk with the English department about LCCI exams.

Supported by the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, LCCI exams are internationally recognised business and general English exams which provide a much more affordable alternative to other exam suites.  One reason for this is that with our practical English for Business qualification you can choose to take only the reading and writing parts (speaking and listening are optional depending on your needs).

They are very popular with anybody wishing to gain that all important B2 qualification and are accepted and valued by major international employers all around the world.

I'd like to express my thanks to the Director and all the staff for a wonderful welcome and excellent hospitality.  I look forward to working with this university in the future.

Psychos and Sherlock!

 

This week I'm looking at video projects in the classroom. My Sec-Pre-Int class decided to do 2 mini films on the subject of crime as this has been our topic in April. One class produced a murder mystery drama and the other a fantastic episode of BBC's Sherlock.

As well as having lots of fun preparing scripts and acting them out, they practised crime vocab lots of different grammar structures which really helped them to practise intonation! 

Well done guys!

Lights, Grammar, Action! Ideas for Video projects

Hi guys as promised here are some project ideas that involve video.Most students now have smart phones with video devices and the technology to edit and make good videos. 

My top 5

• TV NEWS REPORT -  whole class

            
Choose one or two anchors, and divide the rest of the class into groups of 2 or 3. Each group will create a news story (one sport.one weather etc) and then film them and put them all together! his is great to practice present perfect and past simple, and alot of fun!

• TV ADVERTISEMENT - small groups

Students choose or design a product and then create a 1 minute advertisement to promote it. These can be funny and are a great way to practise modals verbs!

• MUSIC VIDEO - small groups

Students choose a song and then create a music video to go with it, including acting at the start and at the end.

• MINI FILM - small groups

Students create a dialougue of a short story and act it out to create a mini film. This can be great for further work including story boards. Great for students studying for exams which involve telling stories.

• VIRAL VIDEOS

Great for teenagers! The students in small groups have to create a video using English in some way. They then have to try and make it go viral on youtube or social media. the team with the most hits gets a prize!

They are my top 5 video based projects.

Happy teaching!

I changed the font to black this time as people said the blue was difficult to read

How to set up a class project

I love class projects.

Projects are a way of giving students the chance to put all the language they have learnt together and to express themselves.They allow students to gain a sense of satisfaction after having produced something they are proud of. Projects also provide a welcome break from potential classroom monotony and are great fun to do!

Classroom projects can be broken into two basic types:

Paper-based projects
Video-based projects

This week is project week at the London School of English and so l'll be posting ideas for both paper and video based projects that you can try in your classes, as well as some examples from my students' own work.

First some advice on setting up a project.

The worst thing you can do to set up a project is give the students too much choice. If the students are given too much scope about what to do, they might struggle to form ideas or their ideas might lack structure.

A good idea is to give the students a choice of two or three good ideas that you provide and they have a vote on. This way the students get to feel that the project is their own, while at the same time working within the parameters that you have set for them.

The planning stage

Don't just give the students a free rein when planning as this could lead to a lack of productivity. Instead you can follow these steps to help them plan:

1. Give each group 3-5 minutes to brainstorm ideas
2. Tell the students to eliminate all the ideas except two
3. Tell them to discuss the pros and cons of each choice
4. They now have two minutes to make the final choice.
5. Tell the students to plan what they will need and which order they will produce it
6.  The students then assign roles to each person in the group

There you go, the students have now chosen a project which is their own idea (increasing engagement) and they should now be motivated and ready to make some fantastic projects!