Fast Tip 2: Call your students by their names

Once I took a course which was called "Dale Carnegie". It was nothing about English specifically but about how to develop our abilities to speak in public, make friends, etc. They taught us maaaaaany things and the course was really interesting. But there was something in particular that the teacher said which I always remember when I'm with my students....it was something like this: "Our names are the most precious thing we have". And I could "live" that in my classes. I know that depending on the case we've got so many students that it's impossible to remember everybody's name, and I myself had moments when I looked at a student and I wanted to remember his/her name but I just couldn't! So I'd say: "You..." I felt terrible! Things happen completely different when we call students by their names 'cause this was they can feel they are important to us as we know they are. See ya!

My dear diary

I remember when I was in the States in 1999 and I had a great Reading/Writing teacher. So all the students who were taking her classes got a small copybook in the first day of class and we were supposed to write every day in it as if it were a diary. Lynn (that was her name) used to read our diaries and write us very nice and friendly things about them. What a great writing exercise!! Years later I tried to use her idea with some of my groups but it didn't work very well 'cause not every student can realize the importance of writing, and the exercise ended up being done by only some of them. Now I'm thinking about giving my private student this suggestion! Another good idea is to write comments when correcting compositions. I don't mean only commenting on the mistakes but especially on the story that student wanted to tell. It's very nice to feel that your teacher really read what you wrote, and not only read but also wrote something back about it! That's pure motivation! Have a great weekend!

Piece of cake!

It's very common to find an intermediate or even an advanced student who doesn't remember how to read numbers in English. I've got two students who feel a little insecure when they find in the middle of a text numbers which they're supposed to read. I needed to prepare an exercise (a VERY simple one, by the way) that wouldn't take too much time of my class and also worked well as a review so that my students could feel more confident when facing numbers.So I typed and printed lots of numbers like 156,2010, 357,289, 1915, 1500, for them to read out loud in the last 5 minutes of our class. As it is an extremely simple task, I could never imagine my students would even enjoy doing it, but they did! It was even kind of funny because by the end of the activity they were struggling not to make mistakes and having fun with that! If you teach big groups it would be even interesting to promote a "reading numbers competition". You and your class could set a date for that event with special prizes and so on. I'm sure that would be great and your students could have a great opportunity to review the content and have fun at the same time! One thousand hugs! See you tomorrow!

Working all abilities at once!

For this activity you need to teach groups or at least two private students at the same time. Before class, prepare two diferent paragraphs which involves the content they've been studying and take as many copies you need. So you're going to give Student A a paragraph and Student B a different one. Place their desks or chairs like the picture above and be sure they cannot see each other's paragraph. Explain that Student A has to dictate Student B his/her paragraph and vice versa. If you teach big groups it can be a very nice competition!The ones who finish first and write everything correctly are the winners! With this exercise they're gonna be practicing all abilities: reading, listening, speaking and writing!! Have a wonderful class, colleague!

Consolidating Wish Clauses with a Picture-Match up!

After presenting Wish Clauses a nice way to check if your students really understood the content is to give them a "Picture-Match up!". You can prepare everything easily with only an old magazine, scissors, paper, glue (or a tape) and a colored pen.You just need to look for some pictures of people and then create some sayings for all of them, like: "I cant' quit smoking", for example. Then in strips of paper write the corresponding Wish Clause for each statement, which would be in this case "I wish I could stop smoking".Notice that you don't even need a computer for that! So after explaining the grammar, students are supposed to, individually or in pairs, match the pictures with the appropriate Wish Clause. Two good ideas in one! Simple as that!

A surprising warm up!

This activity is simply great and you can do it with kids,teens and even adults! In advance, the teacher has to prepare some paper strips with questions related to the topic that has been taught. Brief reviews are very important and they can be wonderful warm ups! Before your students come in, use a tape to put a question under each desk or only under some if you prefer, and make sure they cannot see the "surprise". So as soon as your students sit down tell them to look under their desks 'cause there is something for them - a question which they're supposed to read out loud and then answer to the whole group. Wow!

Next lesson: "What's this?"

Real life. Bringing real objects to class. Students tend to learn easier this way because the class becomes much more interesting for them. So I've got this new student, who is a beginner, and next class I have to teach her the names of certain objects and of course the corresponding question "What's this?".I was preparing my lesson when I looked at the book and saw a picture of a bag with some objects that supposedly were in it, so I thought about bringing that bag to real life. I started looking for some old stuff at home...a bag, an old mobile phone, a lipstick, a pair of sunglasses...ready! I had what I needed in real life to show my student instead of that "obvious" bag from the book. Now I just need to type and print the names of those objects and after presenting the content I'll ask my student to label each of them. Yes!!