A piece of paper, a chalkboard and a pair of scissors are a teacher's best friends.  Tr.uly, let me explain with this one activity.

1. Give each student a blank piece of paper.

2. Ask them to fold it "hamburger", once, twice, three times. Unfold!

3. They will see 8 blocks for writing. In the first block ask them to write a sentence prompt... something exciting…

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  This is the perfect icebreaker and getting to know you activity!

First, write 3 very simple sentence prompts on the board. For example something like this....

1. I like .............................

2. I don't like ........................

3. I can ..................... well.

(change these depending on the level of your students).

Next, hand out a piece of paper and ask students to write down the sentences and finish them off…

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Here's a unique way to learn and practice proverbs for a higher level class (and probably high school or univ/adults).

Put a few common proverbs on the board without the ending. You can bring a horse to water but..........

Solicit replies from students to finish them. It can be funny! Then reveal the true ending , if they don't know.

This is an excellent way to get students speaking and to practice "home" related vocabulary and prepositions. 1.  Warm up by quizzing students about prepositions. Take a pen and place it around your body. Ask, "Where's the pen?".  Place it in some funny places! 2. In pairs with a pen, students practice and do the same as modeled by the teacher. 3. Draw a floor plan…

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I am a firm believer in this! The students create the materials in a simple fashion for practicing / producing language. The context is given and so they have an easy time to speak. Also, very simple and less work for the teacher!

These can range from brainstorming activities to projects. Using pieces of paper and having the students write/draw the content is essential. They can make their own word searches…

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  This is a variation of the 20 questions  game but can also be a way to learn/produce/practice all lesson vocabulary.

Give all students post it notes. ( I like using the small ones, the really tiny ones).  Students choose a famous person to write on the note OR a vocabulary item that you've studied/learned (maybe from a list on the board).

They put the…

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   The True Story of the 3 Pigs is a timeless classic.   Read the story with your students, maybe having a few students act it out as you read.

Then, ask the students to write another well known story from the point of view of another character. Cinderella - Step Sister / Jack and the Beanstalk - the Giant / Little Red Riding Hood…

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Arts and crafts are great for young learners. Get cooking and using these "real recipes" to create some clay and play dough for language learning.

Get the students to challenge each other by moulding something while the others guess what it is! Or, create combination things to practice compound words "dog chair"  or a Bat plane"  Enjoy these delicious "real recipes"!

Magic Clay

2 2/3…

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So, all of my students have their own cell phones, most of which have cameras, right?  I decided to use this to my advantage and have the kids to a scavenger hunt.  I made a list of things they had to find around the school and surrounding grounds (things like "three colors of flower," "your favorite place in school," "your homeroom class."  Also, there were a few activities they had…

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Drop Everything And Read celebrates the power of SSR (sustained silent reading). Our students can acquire powerful amounts of vocabulary and lexical/linguistic knowledge by learning language within the context of a story/book. Stephen Krashen is one of ELT's biggest advocates of "The Power of Reading" and he advocates we get our students reading lots of books at a very easy level…

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