A really special homework!

I know this word "homework" can sound kinda "boring" for most of our students but there are many ways of making it lighter for them to have something to do at home. Today I thought about one of Adele's song which is being played a lot on the radio and is the new hit of one of our soap operas. The song is "Someone like you" and I'm pretty sure you know it. Most of our students, too and I think they would be really happy to know what that song is about. As one of my adult students is already back to classes I thought about giving him this homework: we're going to listen to the mentioned song and then I'm going to ask him some questions about it (the topic of the song, the feelings of the woman, etc). As homework, he'll have to write in a form of a composition and end for that sad story and bring it to me the following class. Nice way of assigning a homework and getting a smile back. See you soon, colleague!

Topics, topics, topics!

An easy and nice way of getting your students speaking again after this long summer vacation is simply choosing some different topics before class, such as: money, music, family, jobs, etc. Before re-starting your lessons just say one of the topics and get your student(s) talking about it for some time. Great as a warm up!

January, February, ..., April, May...

A good activity to use with your students when teaching "months" is the following: Write down all the months in slips of paper and ask students to, individually or in small groups, put them in order on the wall or on the door. Set a time limit so that it can become a great competition! After that ask students to leave the room for a minute and say that one of the months is going to "disappear" and their goal is to find out which one "has gone". Take one of the months out and call students back to the room. The winner is the first student/group that finds out which month is missing! Wish you a great Sunday, colleague!

Are you hungry?

This activity couldn't be any easier and it's great if you have to teach your students feelings such as hungry, thirsty, sad, angry, etc. All you need is a pen and paper. Write on stripes of paper what you need your students to learn and then ask them to choose one of those stripes of paper without looking at them. The other student(s) should choose another one in the same way. So your student(s) have to guess what the other one(s) is(are) "feeling" by simply asking questions, such as: "Are you sad?", or "Are you thirsty?" until they guess what is written. Notice that the structure of short answers is also practiced here with the students answering "Yes,I am" or "No, I'm not". The student who guesses with the fewer number of questions wins the game! So easy! Simply great!

Yesterday I went to the market and I bought...

A sudden idea! After presenting food and fruit vocabulary a good alternative is to play that old game I'm sure we all have played at least once with our friends. In this game someone had to start by saying "Yesterday I went to the market and I bought an apple". The following had to continue: "Yesterday I went to the market and I bought an apple and two oranges...", then the next person would have to repeat those two things and add one of his/her own. Let's give our students the chance to memorize the presented vocabulary with great fun! Have a wonderful week, colleague!

A student taught me this one!

We also learn from our students! A couple of weeks ago, one of them, who studied in England a few months ago, taught me a game that a teacher used to play in class. I didn't know it and I got really interested in using this activity with my students, as well. He told me that the instructor used to ask for a volunteer who should come to the front of the room and should NOT look at the board. Instead, he should be facing the group, with his/her back to the board. After that, the teacher would write any word on the board and the volunteer had to guess what was written there only by asking the class some questions. I really think that might work! See you soon, colleague!

She's 13!

Do you know you can prepare your own "flashcards"? Yes, we can! I prepared these ones last week because I had to teach my teen students how to ask someone's age and also how to answer the question. In order to practice and reinforce the content, I printed some Google images of other teens and also their ages so that my students could ask each other "How old is he/she?" and answer the question, as well. When working with teens or children it's always a good idea to use pictures of people in the same age they are so that they can get to identify themselves with those who are shown in the pictures. This way, be sure they're gonna get really interested and your class will flow easily! Have a great weekend,colleague!!