Watch the video and find out how a one time lifetime supporter donation gets you access to the group and lots of additional supporter resources!

Here’s a pdf sample of the pages (links not working).

Enjoy and happy teaching and learning to all,

David
creator of Teaching Recipes and EFL Classroom 2.0

Give each group of students some card board strips of paper. Also some tape. 

Students brainstorm the names of all things in the classroom (in English!). 

Then, ask them to go tape the names up around the classroom. First come, first server.

After, take up the names. Student will learn the words over time, as they see them in class and use them. 

Next: why not give each group a chart sized piece of paper and get them to make a month calendar. Put everyone’s birthday’s on it and use it throughout the year! 

This post was submitted by James.

1. Write numbers or letters on the back of a student/classmate by using your finger.

2. The classmate guesses the number/letter.

3. Make it more advanced. Larger numbers / words. 

You can also do a variation of this by doing the same on the palm of the person. 

Really “visceral” and kinesthetic way of teaching basic content. 

This post was submitted by John.

This post was submitted by Ana Maria Menezes.

Ask students to think of a word they’ve learned previously. They have to make sure they know how to write it.

Students come to the front of the class and write the word in the air using his index finger. Then, students write down they word and say it out loud. The student who wrote the word in the air gets 1 point for each player who got the word right and the players who get it right get 1 point too. 

This post was submitted by Ana Maria Menezes.

Give students 2 or 3 minutes to write a sentence with all the verbs from the board in the same sequence without adding any other verb except for auxiliaries. Ex: I was running home to eat when I saw a beautiful bird flying.

Students then can mingle and tell each other the sentence they have created.

This post was submitted by Ana Maria Menezes.

Get more flashcards and ideas for more Flashcard games HERE.

This post was submitted by James.

This activity can be used with any level – just use an appropriate text. It is great for introducing a text that you will study in depth through intensive reading. Or it can also be used to finish off a lesson/unit and review the text again…

Basically, you have to do 4 things.

1. Divide the class into groups of 3-5. One person is a scribe or writer. Give them the handout with only the first part of the article or topic sentence of paragraphs appearing.

2) Discuss the topic sentences, headline/title. Predict. What will the article be about? What words will you encounter? What questions do you have ? A kind of K_W_L (what I know / what I want to know / what I found out).

3. Put up the full text around the classroom, number them for each group. On GO!, the students in turns run to the article/text and read it. They then run back and tell the writer who records it. The next “runner” goes and so on…set a time limit or go until someone has finished the article.

4. Review and check against the real/full article/text. The winner is the group who best recorded the text and NOT the one who wrote the most!

Here’s a full explanation and also a ready to go Running Dictation exercise. It is about the reunification of separated families from the Korean war and is from Andrew Finch’s Activities to help teach the H.S. textbook – get it in our Korea area in the Resources Share.

Enjoy and get fit using Running Dictations!

This post was submitted by David .

Divide class in two teams, A and B. Divide the board in the middle. Mark each side of the board for each team.  

On each side of the board draw:

• a river with stepping stones for students to get across the river. The winner is the team that crosses the river first. For every correct word they write, mark a stepping stone.
• a ladder. The winner is the team that climbs the ladder first. For every correct word they write, mark a step on the ladder.
• a mountain with climbing points for the teams  to climb and put their country’s flag up on the top. The winner is the team that climbs the mountain and puts their country’s flag up first. For every correct word they write, mark a climbing point.
• an apple tree with a ladder which the students have to climb and pick the apples from the tree. This is suggested for longer spelling and vocabulary homework since the students first have to climb up the ladder and then pick the apples. The winner is the team that picks all the apples first. For every correct word they write, mark a step on the ladder and then an apple on the tree.
• a daisy. The winner is the team whose daisy is wiped out first. For every correct word they write, wipe out a petal and after all the petals have been wiped out, then wipe out the leaves and the stem until the whole daisy has gone.
• an ice cream with 4-5 scoops of different flavours. For example, brown for chocolate, green for pistachio, red for strawberry, white for vanilla, etc. The winner is the team that eats their ice cream first, the whole of it, even the cone. For every correct word they write, wipe out a scoop until the whole ice cream has gone!
• a basket with basketballs underneath. The winner is the team that puts all their basketballs in the basket first. For every correct word they write, wipe out a basketball. 

Call a member from each team up on the board and dictate a word from their vocabulary to them. The students write the word they hear on their side of the board making sure at the same time that the student from the opposite team cannot see what the other student is writing. So cheating is eliminated.
This has proven a very nice and exciting way to check spelling, listening comprehension and pronunciation in a fun way. It also adds a lot of variety in my spelling and vocabulary games while my students’ motivation to learn English is enhanced. My students love it and look forward to their spelling game every time.
One final tip: In case of a draw, I treat the whole class to cookies, lollipops, or chocolates! 

This post was submitted by Barbara Koziori.

Disappearing dialogues is a very much used language teaching technique

1. Elicit and write the dialogue. Or use a prepared dialogue.

This post was submitted by James.