In: Advanced| High School| Intermediate| Middle School| Recipe| University
1 Dec 2009
This is a great way for students to practice using sequential transitions (Firstly / Furthermore / last but not least).Great for just speaking practice but also presentation or debate classess.
Provide the class with a list of topics (City living / Exercise / Learning English / being single). Model whole class. The teacher is the Devil and the students the Angel.
1. The teacher (Devil)…
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8 Oct 2009First, hand out a list of sixteen homophone pairs to your students, such as tale and tail, night and knight, ect. These lists can be readily found online or you can make your own. You might need to take some time to explain or review the meanings of words on the list. Next, give each student a standard 8.5 X 11 inch (A4) sheet of paper. Folded in half four…
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In: All Ages & Levels| Business| High School| Recipe
3 Oct 2009
The Society for Technical Communication's award-winning
Technical Literacy Project adapts many
real-world science instructions and descriptions for use in
high-school science classes. These cases gradually build
student writing skills by revising, correcting, or expanding
scaffolded, sequenced text samples adapted from practical
materials outside the classroom.
Such structured technical-writing practice is especially
helpful for English language learners because:
(but, because, on the other hand) that ELL students often
ignore or underuse
In: Advanced| Business| Elementary| False Beginner| High School| Intermediate| Middle School| Recipe| University
25 Sep 2009
This is an excellent writing exercise, getting students to increase the length of their sentences and beginning to use clauses.
Write a simple sentence on the board. Students copy it.
Ex. The dog ran.
Ask the students questions and the students after each question must rewrite the sentence, answering the question.
Ex. Where? The dog ran .............
What color of dog? The ........ dog ran to his…
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In: All Ages & Levels| Elementary| High School| Middle School| Recipe
21 Sep 2009
This is a very simple way to brainstorm and practice vocabulary. Alphabet organizing!
Simply use this handy organizer and get the students to list all the vocab for a certain topic (at the beach, at the restaurant, animals, jobs etc...).
Afterwards, you can use this for assessment or simply play a game of scattegories. Students read out their answers, one at a…
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In: Advanced| Elementary| High School| Intermediate| Middle School| Recipe| University
14 Sep 2009
This is a wonderfully simple communicative activity.
Get a pile of nice magazine pictures. Next, tear or cut them into twos. Enough halves for the number of students in your classroom.
Then, give each student half a picture. They have to walk around the class describing their picture and finding their torn "match". Once they find their match, they can sit down.
Make sure to make…
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In: Advanced| All Ages & Levels| Elementary| False Beginner| High School| Intermediate| Middle School| Recipe| University
4 Sep 2009There are many ways to teach writing but one way that I really think provides enough structure for beginning and developing writers is guided writing.
Give students a text with words missing (usually nouns). In groups or pairs they can complete the text together, guessing the words to be filled in. Better yet, if the story has some context or theme.
If the students are…
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3 Sep 2009 This is a classic TPR game (Total Physical Response) and gets the students up and participating, as well as learning actively.
The teacher (or a student(s)) instructs other students to do certain actions.
Ex. Simon says, "Touch your nose"! or Simon says, "jump up and down".
If the caller doesn't say "Simon says" and only, "Touch your nose" and if a student does that…
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An Activity with a Cell Phone
This activity was done in a workshop for teachers of English working at the DGEP (Direccion General de Escuelas Preparatorias), high school teachers of English.
The activity was to show a simple but…
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In: All Ages & Levels| Elementary| High School| Middle School| Recipe
3 Sep 2009"I dropped my gumball, and it went . . . . ."
Required items:
1) Index cards, or pieces of paper
2) A large drawing surface (whiteboard, blackboard, a big piece of paper)
This is a fun activity to help students use the prepositions of motion they already know.
First, get a pile of index cards (preferably ones that you cannot see through). Divide the cards into two piles --- one pile will be prepositions…
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