EFL Teaching Recipes

Lessons in a Can Upgrade

David Deubelbeiss — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 18:47:27 +0000

Lessons in a Can, 120+ fully described and leveled multi media lessons with downloads, printables, links is now available to all lifetime supporters of EFL Classroom 2.0

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

Classroom labeling

James — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 18:56:06 +0000

This is a great idea for the start of the year.

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.

Body writing

John — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 13:16:36 +0000

This idea works well in pairs. Model in front of the class first.

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.

Lessons in a Can

Wed, 04 May 2011 23:32:57 +0000

I’ve collected 100+ multi media lessons full of links and resources to download. Lessons in a Can.

Take a look – many levels and a recipe for each one

This post was submitted by David Deubelbeiss.

Write the dialogue

Sat, 30 Apr 2011 05:00:59 +0000

It would be great to get students working in teams to write up a dialogue for this cool google doodle video a la Charlie Chaplin. Then play the video as students read out/perform their dialogue.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NGSU2PM9dA&feature=youtu.be&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1&showinfo=0">www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NGSU2PM9dA&feature=youtu.be&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1&showinfo=0">

This post was submitted by David .

Hot hands

Sat, 26 Mar 2011 14:50:09 +0000

Two players face each other. One palms up and the other palms down over the other hand. The player with the palms up try to slap the hand with palms down. When successful, the student can ask the other student a question (improvised or from a list). Swap places.

This post was submitted by Ana Maria Menezes.

Language Area!

Sarah Martins — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 14:17:40 +0000

Sometimes it is really difficult to avoid students talk in their mother tongue, so usually I choose a corner of the whiteboard and draw a small circle and write Portuguese Area. So if a students want to say anything that he/she can’t say in English he/she has to stand up and go to the Portuguese Area. This is interesting because students don’t want to stand up all the time in front of all his/her classmates just to say a few words. So this makes students try to produce more in the target language. But if you have a class with outgoing students and they are not shy at all you can limit the times he/she can go to the Language Area. By the way, I call Portuguese Area because I’m Brazilian so do my students! I hope I can help.

This post was submitted by Sarah Martins.

Message in the air

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 14:00:35 +0000

Great activity to revise VOCABULARY from previous classes.

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.

The Phrase

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 13:51:24 +0000

The teacher elicits some verbs from students (4 or 5 verbs) and writes them on the board. Ex: run-eat-see-fly.

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.

The Yes/No Game

Fri, 11 Feb 2011 10:52:23 +0000

Overview:

A simple but fun quick-fire game to liven up a class or as a reward in the final segment of a language lesson. A student comes to the front of the class, the students choose a topic (for example, ‘Your last holiday’, ‘Your favourite food’ etc), then the class fire questions to the student. The student has to answer the questions but cannot say the words either ‘YES’ or ‘NO’. As soon as they do, THEY ARE OUT! Then the next student takes a turn.

Ingredients:

A group of students – 1 at the front at a time, the rest play the roles of questioners
That’s all

Instructions:

1) Explain the rules

2) Call for a volunteer

3) Start the game

You can vary the speed and difficulty of the topic depending on the material you have been covering and the ability of the class. This game is guaranteed to engage and enliven and group of students!

This post was submitted by David Saddington.