Breif reviews are great!

I always start a class correcting homework and then I apply my students a brief review about the content they studied during the previous lesson. Correcting homework exercises is already a kind of a review because most of the time they refer to what has been studied. I really think it’s important to “refresh” our students’ memories and also give them a second chance to check up on what they've studied so that they can say whether they understood or not the lesson . This brief review can be done in several ways, such as:
a) A fast written exercise – teacher chooses the most important topics of the previous lesson and prepare a few written questions about them;
b) A dictation – especially great to review vocabulary. The instructor can even show pictures and students are supposed to write what they see (Picture Dictation);
c) Oral questions – Teacher asks questions related to the content, like: “What’s your favorite season?” or “What’s the weather like today”, etc.;
d) Using the board – the instructor simply uses the board to review the previous class. Notice that the grammar points or structures which have been taught can even be elicited from the students. That can make the brief review even more dynamic why not ask them to tell you what they learned during their last class?;
e) A game – there are a variety of games which can be used for everything we need! Hot potato, hangman, tic-tac-toe, are only some examples of them!

Those fast reviews are a nice way to have students ready to start a new lesson, and they work really well as a warm up! Remember that new information can easily be forgotten by our students (everything is new for them!) and feeling confident about what they’re learning is directly linked to their motivation. I wish you a beautiful Saturday, colleague!

Nice subjects for conversation classes!

You can check on some nice topics to use in conversation classes at http://www.esljunction.com/conversation_questions/. They bring some interesting themes like: Love and relationship, work and employment, television and radio, politics (this one could be really interesting once we have elections in Brazil this year) and money. The coolest thing is that the site also brings printable questions about the subjects that may be used in class! Really nice! Have a great weekend, colleague!

Set the scene with a simple and fast game!

These days I wanted to set the scene of a listening exercise (it was something about confessions of a “shopaholic”) with a student and I didn’t know what to do. So I created three simple questions about the theme of the listening activity, printed them and also cut those sentences in pieces. My student was supposed to put the questions in order and answer them afterwards. Fast and nice activity! Notice that we can use this fun exercise for any subject we want! See you tomorrow, colleague!

Watch "Friends" and talk about fashion!

Next time you find a lesson in which the theme "fashion" comes up, think about implementing your class with a video. I'm a big fan of the sitcom "Friends", as you already know, and they have a wonderful episode about the subject. You can select three scenes from the episode about "Joey's purse" and have a great time with your students before discussing fashion with them. Last week I had to talk about fashion styles and clothes with one of my students and the activity went on really well. After watching the selected scenes my student asnwered some simples questions which I had written on the board,something like: Would you wear a purse?, What do you think about the way Joey's friends reacted when they saw him?, and so on. The coolest thing is that this is a different way of introducing the topic of a unit! Have fun!

The day's gone! (Practicing "days of the week")

Every time I have to present the days of the week, I make use of this very simple activity. The first thing you have to do is to write all the days of the week on the board and then start practicing with your students. So you can point to each of the days, in order, and they read them out loud. After doing that several times, the instructor chooses a day and erases it. Then, the students are supposed to keep reading all the days of the week, including that one which has been erased. Next time, teacher erases another one and so on. This is a very challenging exercise for the students because they struggle not to forget the days that are gone. Really cool! No preparation needed! Great!

Warm up ideas for the first class after winter vacations!

Getting started is always a different moment. Either students are really excited to start everything again or they are really bored because their vacation is over. So here there are three suggestions I got from www.ehow.com (“Warm up activities for English class” by Erin Schreiner) for the first day. Check them out:

a) Journal: Give each student a piece of paper and they should write what’s occurring in their life at that time.
b) Mysterious Object descriptions: Bring a different object to class like, as suggested by the author, plumbing fixtures or an antique machine and have students try to guess what it is and its purpose. I myself would like to try this activity but I thought about another unusual object which could be easier for us to find. Maybe something different used for cooking, for example.
c) Picture Description: Teacher should find a very interesting picture and students have to describe the events shown in the image. I really liked the idea she gave of selecting award-winning journalistic photos for this activity. I've never searched on those kinds of pictures but I'm pretty sure they can be interesting for us in many ways. I'll definitely take a look at them!

See you tomorrow, my dear colleague!

Top 10 Banana Printables!

2 - THE PERFECT JOB (Intermediate): As we were talking about occupations I thought it would be a great idea to post about this veeeery nive activity that you can find at www.englishbanana.com. The exercise brings several proper names which are kind of weird because all of them have something related to a job. For example: Laura Whiteboard. The students are supposed to find out among many options what Laura does. This one is pretty easy, isn't it? She's a teacher, of course! I loved this printable!