A funny way to get some discipline from your students!

This one is great. I remember I used to have this nice and really creative colleague at the last course I taught. At the time I had one of those very indisciplined groups...do you know those ones we would like to run away from? Those ones. There were many students in class and this fact was making things even harder for me. So one day I was talking to that colleague and she gave me this wonderful idea: why not trying to use a whistle? She gave me one of hers (she had a few in her purse) and I decided to follow her advice. The result was great! Once I used the whistle to catch their attention, everybody stopped talking and...started laughing instead! I laughed, too, and from that moment on they knew that if I had to use my whistle (in extreme situations) they should stop immediately. It worked with me, mybe it works with you as well. The point is it’s necessary to know in advance if the course or school you teach allow this kind of things and be careful not to exaggerate either in the volume or in the situations you make use of your whistle. Where can you get one? At any R$ 1,99 store or even at one of those stores in which we can buy supplies for birthday parties (in this case you can buy a pack paying almost nothing!). Good luck, my dear colleague!

Teach HER/HIS/THEIR using pictures of celebrities!

For a long time I’ve been using pictures of famous people to teach the possessive pronouns HER, HIS, THEIR to my students and the results are great! All you have to do is get some pictures of celebrities from an old magazine! Start your class by saying “MY name is _______”,” YOUR name is ________” (using the name of one of your students), “HER name is ______” (using one of the pictures you got), etc. Then you may introduce the question: “What’s YOUR name?” and continue with the pictures “What’s HER name?”, etc. I usually elicit the complete answer from my students (HER name is...) so that we can practice the structures even more. Finnaly, I teach short answers, so I point to one of the pictures and ask: IS HER name Paola Oliveira? And my student has to answer "Yes, it is" or "No, it isn't". If you work with large groups you can divide them in pairs and provide them pictures so that they can keep practicing asking and answering each other!! Don’t forget to include the picture of someone who you're almost sure they don't know in order to teach them “Sorry, I don't know". Have a bright class!

Bring "Alice in Wonderland" to your class!

People have been talking a lot about this movie which I’d looooove to watch! Once I cannot show my students the film (it would be wonderful) I’m gonna give them some grammar exercises about it. I’ve found two nice options and I’m posting them for you so that you can copy the ideas!!
1. Type the following text and ask your students to find the 10 spelling mistakes!
“Alice is sitting by her sister lazily and becomes a bit tired when she sees a white rabbit in a waistcoat carrying a watch. She follows it dawn a rabbit owl and falls into a very long chamber full of strange things on shelves. After landing safely on the ground, she goes into a long hallway with a glas table and a gold key on it. Alice opens up a curtain and founds a small door, which the key fits into perfecly and behand it there was a beautiful garden. Alice then finds a small botle labeled “DRUNK ME” and drinks it . The drink causes her to shrink. Alice accidentally leafes the key on the table, and with her diminished stature can no longer reach it and becomes very scared. She then sees a cake that says “EAT MY” and proceds to eat it. “ (http://www.tolearnenglish.com)

THE MISTAKES: Dawn = down / owl = hole / glas = glass / perfecly = perfectly / behand = behind / botle = bottle / drunk = drink / leafes = leaves / my = me / proceds = proceeds.

2. The second option is great for us to work on prepositions with our students. In advance, type the following part of the book and have your students identify the prepositions.
“Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister, and of having nothing to do. Once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book”, thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?” So she was considering, in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a white rabbit with pink eyes ran close to her.”(http://www.tolearnenglish.com)

Ahh! I’ve just remembered I bought some months ago a magazine which brings an article about the main actress of the movie! So it would be really cool if I could give my upper intermediate and advanced students an additional reading exercise using the mentioned article!! If you work with kids, a good idea would be to print one of Alice in Wonderland images and have your students find in it the white rabbit, a caterpillar,a cat, a queen, etc. Wonderful!!

Weird presents: another nice way to practice If Clause!

I’ve used another great idea from that book “Inglês é Teen” (I've written about it in one of my old posts)! In order to practice the second "If Clause", I asked one of my students if she’d already gotten a weird present or something that she didn’t like at all. Then I started asking her what she would do IF SHE GOT a broken vase...or a plastic cat...or even a wig! The activity went on really well, and we had a great time because she had to explain what she would do with each of those “useful” presents and at the same time she had the chance to practice the structure a lot! Attention to the other weird presents: a broken computer mouse, a wooden leg and a parachute. Remember we can use our creativity and add some other crazy gifts!!! Activity approved!

Top 10 banana printables!

10 - “How to get from bed to work in 27 easy steps!” This is a great activity to work Present Simple and Past Simple with your elementary student/group. Students have to put the underlined verbs in the proper verb tense. You can find this printable exercise going to english banana, then to free printable worksheets and finally to Free Elementary Worksheets!!

In parentheses

After “Fast Tips”... “Top 10 banana printables”! Every Sunday I’m going to post some very nice printable activities you can get easily from www.englishbanana.com and use in your class as a warm up, a wrap up or even as an extra homework! Enjoy!

Memorial Day: Getting my mural ready for May.

As every month I look for an American holiday to decorate my mini school mural and at the same time inform my students about it, a couple of days ago I was reading something on the Net about Memorial day! You can get some information from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_Day and other interesting facts in http://www.purpletrail.com.
As usual, I also looked for some printable to give my students at the end or at the beginning of a class. I’ve found great ones in http://homeschooling.about.com.
For the decoration, I thought of nothing but American flags all around!! Remember that this holiday is celebrated in the last Monday of May. This year specifically on May 31 ,so we all have enough time to think about a nice way to trasmit it to our students! Take a look at the results! See you tomorrow, colleague!