Practice a "heavy" (difficult) vocabulary with a "light" activity!

One of these days I had a difficult vocabulary to work with my student. Vocabulary can be boring (even for us sometimes!) so I thought about typing the words and placing them on the desk. The book I was using had all the meanings for those words, so I turned the exercise into a “game”. I was reading one of the definitions and my student was supposed to choose among all those words in front of him the corresponding one. Remember that we, teachers, are 50% responsible for the success of a different activity, so of course I had to transmit enthusiasm and challenge that student to find as many correct words as he could! Activity approved!

What a shame!

Hi, colleagues! You can’t imagine how embarrassed I feel to post this message today, but I couldn’t do any differently because I don’t want another person to spend money (even if it’s about R$ 38,00) on a dictionary thinking it would be something wonderful to work with and get to the conclusion that it’s just completely different from what you thought! I got reeeeeally disappointed. LOTS of bad words (for you to have an idea my stepson who is 12 loved it and this is his new “nightstand” book), dirty language, arghhhhh, I definitely didn’t like it! Summing up: Terrible Slang dictionary. I’m sorry, Michaelis, but that’s true.

Tongue Twisters!

I’ve never done this activity in my classes but this week I’m gonna try to make use of it as a warm up with some of my teen students. I guess it might be pretty fun! Yesterday I found some “tongue twisters” (www.esl4kids.net) on the Net and I chose some special ones for you and your students! Take a look!

Lucy and Lacy love lemon lollipops.
Funny Frank fell fifty feet.
Dazzling dinosaurs dance, dance, dance.
A cheap sheep is cheaper than a cheap ship.
The big fat cat sat on the rat.
The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.
Baby boy blows blue bubbles.

Have fun!

Fast Tip 7: Prepare your classes!

OK. This may seem a little obvious but... tell me the teacher who never found himself/herself with no time at all to prepare a certain lesson?? I admit that I’ve already taught without having planned my class and let me tell you...I didn’t like it. When a teacher really prepares a class, he/she feels much more confident about the content and also about some unusual words that may appear (I hate not being sure about a difficult word). We also have the chance to use an extra material because we DO know what the unit is about. Not mentioning that a student knows when a lesson has been planned...or not. So next time you sit to prepare your class, I suggest doing that as if you were getting ready for your first class (remember how you got prepared for your very FIRST English class??), paying attention to every detail, taking good care of little things, and thinking about ways to make it the best class ever! Enjoy your Sunday, my dear colleague!

My mural this month and...a lovely site with everything we need!!

Yesterday I wrote about the next holiday I’m gonna work with my students (Earth Day), so today I’m posting the picture of my mural this month and also some veeeeery nice activities I got from www.abcteach.com/directory/seasonalholidays/earth_day/. I was amazed by the activities they have on this site. Check it out: a cute award, some lovely bookmarks, coloring pages for children, a maze (put the apple core in the trash can), a simple reading comprehension activity (I’m definitely going to use this one!), a word search, a writing paper and even an “Earth Day Rap” with a nice exercise about it! Notice that they’re all printables, so it’s not necessary to download anything!I guess we can already start planning our class!! See you tomorrow, my dear colleague!

Earth Day Everyday!

Once Easter would be in the very beginning of April, I thought about finding another American holiday to decorate my mural for this month. I found out that on April 22 people celebrate “Earth Day”! That’s a good chance to practice new vocabulary and also inform our students about this day which is the third date more celebrated in some Elementary schools in the USA (I didn’t know, either!). You can find some interesting facts about it here: www.yumsugar.com!

She might be irritated because...

On Sunday I simply love getting “O Globo” newspaper mostly because of that magazine which comes with it . I like not only the articles but especially the pictures it brings. To tell you the truth, nowadays, when I look at a magazine I’m always thinking about new material to use in my lessons, and today I’m posting something very nice I’ve found there. As soon as I saw those people’s faces I thought about keeping them in order to use when I have to teach my students certain words such as “happy” “irritated”, “embarrassed”, “nervous”, “scared” and so on. Isn’t it a great way to illustrate the content? So next time you have a magazine in your hands try to look at it with teacher’s eyes and you’ll find great stuff to work with!