EFL Teaching Recipes

This is a very simple idea that works to help students talk about events and narrate a story.  

Write many ideas / vocabulary on the board, all over the board. 

ex.  A girl in pjamas,  a ball,  Thursday,  green, … Read More ....

This is a real recipe!   Students use English for a real purpose, explaining to a partner or fellow group members, how to do something.

I usually start listing numbers on the board and writing a title – How to ……………..… Read More ....

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 … Read More ....

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 … Read More ....

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.

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 … Read More ....

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 … Read More ....

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 … Read More ....

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 … Read More ....

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, … Read More ....