Author: Teaching Recipes Staff
Building Basic Technical Writing Skills
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 … Read More ....
Sentence Stretching
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 … Read More ....
Faces – Who is it?
This is a nice game to play to practice describing people (an important language skill). Simply put up this photo. or this one. Print it out if you want students to work in pairs / groups.
Students take … Read More ....
Use Play Money!
Money makes the world go round and it also makes a teacher’s job easy and students very interested!
When you play a game, instead of keeping score with boring marks on the chalkboard, use play money! Download some HERE. … Read More ....
Torn Pictures…
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 … Read More ....
Bragging rights!
Everyone loves to brag, so this lesson recipe works every time with a variety of levels and ages. It also allows students to use their own “lexicon” and thus practice producing language rather than just “acquiring”. It really helps … Read More ....
What’s the weather like in …….?
The weather is a standard topic and beyond reviewing the vocabulary (which you can do with these resources) , you can really do it communicatively by getting students to do / practice weather reports!
After going through the vocabulary … Read More ....
Guided Writing
There 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 … Read More ....
Simon Says!
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”! … Read More ....
An Activity with a Cell Phone
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 … Read More ....
