App: notetaking app which comes with any cell phone.
Interaction: student - student
Time frame: 15 mins.
Connection: offline
Instructions
1. Teacher asks students to individually write 3 sentences using a target structure, vocabulary or topic on their cell phones. While students create their sentences, teacher can move around the class checking if students need help.
2. In pairs, students have to dictate, letter by letter (without pauses) one of their sentences to their partner. They use their cell phones to write the sentences dictated to them. Students keep on alternating until they have dictated all their sentences.
3. Students show the sentences they have written down to their partner and check if they understood them right. Teacher can also help.
4. For debriefing, teacher can elicit some of the sentences created by students by writing them on the board.
Looking for a simple idea to help your students revise VOCABULARY?
This week, we had to revise for the final tests.
I was trying to think about a simple activity for my Upper Intermediate students and I remembered something I'd tried with my Intermediate students in the past.
What would I need?
- For 8 students = 4 slips of paper (or as many slips of paper you feel are necessary).
- Five words students need to revise written down on each slip of paper.
In class, I organized the desks in a circle and had 4 pairs of students: 1a + 1b , 2a + 2b, 3a + 3b, 4a + 4b.
1. I gave a slip of paper to each STUDENT A who had to describe the words on the slip of paper for STUDENT B to guess the word. I kept monitoring in case students needed help remembering what words meant. (Ex: 1a describes for 1b to guess)
2. When I noticed most students had guessed the 5 words, I asked STUDENT A to pass the slip of paper to STUDENT B who now would have to describe the same words to the next student to their left. (Ex: 1b now describes for 2a to guess)
3. The slips of paper kept on passing to each student, the student with the slip describing and the other student listening and trying to guess the words.
Why do I like this activity?
- it's incredibly easy to organize.
- you can revise any kind of vocabulary.
- students are involved all the time.
- students keep alternating partners as they talk to the people to their right and then to their left.
So, what do we need to know in order to be able to describe people in our family?
After brainstorming different adjectives of personality students knew, we focusssed on the vocabulary suggested by the book which is adopted by the language institute I work at. I used this image below, to introduce the words for the first time. Students would come to the board and click on a word they would like to know and read the definition for the rest of the class. The same image was shared in our Edmodo group for students to go back to it if they wanted to.
We also used some QUIZLET FLASHCARDS to help students learn the meaning of the new vocabulary as well as play the games for recap.
An important moment in class was a discussion students had in pairs after listening to an interview where a psychologist talked about how your position in the family can affect your personality.
The CHALLENGE for the lesson then was to DESCRIBE SOMEONE IN YOUR FAMILY.
The instructions were:
I gave students the option of using a tool for recording or a tool for using text and image. The tool my students liked best for the task was BUBBLESNAPS as can be seen below.
A new semester has begun and here I am trying to rethink my role as a teacher and how I can help my students learn English in a different way.
Well, I've been reading and reflecting a lot about collaborative / cooperative learning and self-directed learning in search of ideas for my classes.
But, changing your ways IS NOT EASY. I have to think of my own reality, with certain limitations as the methodology adopted by the school and my own beliefs, of course.
This semester, I have a beautiful and very enthusiastic group of teenagers with whom I'll be experimenting new ways of being in a classroom. Taking one tiny step at a time, we're going to follow a kind of a "project-oriented approach", in which I propose a challenge for students at the beginning of a lesson, we discuss what kind of knowledge we need to accomplish that goal and after 3 or 4 classes working with the content, students have to present a final product using one of the suggested tools. http://culturainglesaudi.wikispaces.com/Inter+A+Challenges
These past weeks, students brought to class VOCABULARY related to kinds of food they like and we complemented it with vocabulary from the coursebook which we're supposed to cover. If we were to talk about our habits, we had to know how express them in sentences, which led us to the GRAMMAR TOPIC (Present Simple and Present Continuous).
Yesterday, students started sharing their final presentations in Edmodo, which I then assembled in the school wiki page so that we can share it with parents as well. I was extremely happy with the results. From their presentation, I was not only able to learn more about my students but I could also observe how well they could express themselves.
I prepared an activity with the most common mistakes I noticed from their presentations, we discussed them and then my students asked me to show some presentations in class to the whole group.
Like I said at the beginning of the post, these are just baby steps aiming for more meaningful learning.
First, you add the words you wish to memorize. Then, the site generates sentences with those words so that you can learn it. You can then, click the TEST button to hear the words and test your spelling or choose one of the GAMES available.
An example:
1. I created a list of words related to MONEY
2.Once you click spelling test, you can hear the isolated word and then the word in a sentence for to type the correct spelling. LISTENING AND WRITING practice.
3. Games you can use to practise VOCABULARY, WRITING and SPELLING
HOW TO USE THE SITE IN CLASS
With an IWB
In the last 15-20 minutes of class, elicit the new words learned that day from studentswhile you insert the word in Spellincity. Sts can dictate the spelling as teacher types in the words. Then, all we have to do is click spelling test and start using the practice exercises the site generates.
You can also, assign a specific student to keep a record of the new words throughout the class and then use the list close to the end of the class to generate exercises.
Another alternative is to use the practice exercises at the beginning of the following class for revision.
Another fantastic site to suggest to our students. ENGLISH ATTACK, has a selection of movie snippets which students can learn from. First, they pre-teach some vocabulary (words + definitions) necessary for the understanding of the scene, then you watch the scene and move on to the interactive exercises (very cool!).
If you have an Interactive White Board in class, you can use it as a whole class activity. You can also take students to the school lab to work with a selected scene or a scene of their choice.
A friend of mine, Geórgia, this week showed me a tool I had forgotten about, ZOOMWORDS. She had made a list of words for our students to revise and used the ZOOMWORDS application from BLIXY.COM.
I told my students I would show them a list words they would have to copy for 2 minutes.
I used the clock counter in our IWB to set the time limit and showed the ZOOMWORD above which I had embedded in a blog.
Students had 2 minutes to write down in their notebooks as many words as they could.
When time was over, we checked how many words they had been able to copy and then asked them to check if they knew all the words in their list. Students asked me to explain the words they didn't remember but I always repeated the questions for the other students to try to explain.
IN PAIRS, students gave definitions of words from their list for the other student to guess what word it was.
Why I liked the activity? Students were really involved, it was a fun way to revise, it called students' attention to the fact that they need to study vocabulary a bit more, good way to help them recap vocabulary we had studied the previous month.
Yesterday, a colleague of mine, Geórgia, showed me a site she´s been following "Think in English" . It´s written by Aurora Jove, a teacher in Spain, and brings really interesting sites we can explore and use with our students.
The first site I´m going to talk about is STYLETOOL.COM
The site allows you to dress up an avatar you create with various options of t-shirts, dresses, shoes, bags, and sunglasses. It´s an interesting way of teaching CLOTHES VOCABULARY as each item of clothing is identified with a word and image. After dressing up your avatar you can post it in facebook, grab the embed code for publishing,
HOW CAN WE USE THIS SITE WITH STUDENTS?
Use the site to build an avatar in class with students and exploit the images of clothes to teach / revise the vocabulary.
Ask students to create an avatar, dress it up , write a description for it and then share the avatar + description in a class blog.
The teacher can create several avatar dressed differently, take screenshots and then use the images to present CLOTHES VOCABULARY.
Write descriptions of the way avatars are dressed and ask students to build the avatar according to the description.
Have students create their avatars and present them to the whole class by describing both appearance (dark/ fair skin , hair, eyes) and clothes.
A colleague of mine asked me about Quizletand StudyStack and I have to say I like both. However, there are features in QUIZLET that I love.
Afte watching several tutorials in youtube about the site, I decided to make one myself showing the different ways you can use it with the Interactive White Board (IWB).
THanks to Russell Stannard and Larry Ferlazzo, I´ve reencountered this amazing site which offers wonderful activities for EFL learners. It looks wonderful in e-boards and many activities include sound, images, words and actions.
I found the AUDIO SLIDESHOW GALLERY a wonderful site to practise listening. It´s a different way of listening with the help of images. The slideshows summarize key news events. Thinking of Brazilian EFL Learners I would advise this activity to high-intermediate + advanced learners.
Next trial was an online KaraokeSINGSNAP.COM. I had so much fun. So, bear with my voice. I decided to sing "The Scientist" by Coldplay.
First, you run the setup wizard which is very straightforward, then, you select the song you´d like to sing and finally just gather up your courage and let your voice out. It takes some time while the site sends your recording.
Making sts sing and record their voices isn´t easy but if you teach a song to a group, find one or two who are more keen on singing and have them hold the microphone in class while the whole class sings with them, this way, I think it could be done. Yes, it´s great pronunciation practice and much fun.
The next site is great for reading + listening practice. These are simplified news stories with listenings or video plus a recording with the pronunciation of new words, a memory game with new words + definitions, and more exercises. REALLY GOOD!
The everyday life project is FANTASTIC. It´s great for listening and reading practice. By solving everyday problems, interacting with the lesson, and making your choices, you end up learning a lot. There are good lessons for people teaching topics such as FOOD, MONEY, COMPUTERS and WORK.
Brainyflix is a great site where you can enrich your vocabulary knowledge.
Go to the WORDS link/tab and choose a word or a letter of the alphabet. YOu can see videos explaining the meaning of words or pictures w/ phrases using the word (brainypics)
YOu can also create your own vocabulary video or brainypics. Don´t forget to read about the contest taking place right now.
I create sets/ stacks with vocabulary we cover during the semester and share it with students so that they can study at home. I also use some of the activities created by the sites in class using the e-board. The more different activities you use with the same vocabulary the more you remember them, right?
With a simple list of questions + answer / or definitions + answer, the site generates several activities with the same vocab: hangman, unscramble words, crossword, wordsearch and others.
It´s a visual dictionary where you enter the unknown word and then get definitions with examples plus images from flickr which represent the word you´re looking for. http://blachan.com/shahi/
You can also click on unknown words (sublinks) from the definitions and find their meanings too.The page keeps record of all your searches so that you can go back and re-check. I imagine it would look wonderful on the e-board. Fantastic tool!!!!!
Learning vocabulary is always a challenge to language learners. I´d like to share two sites which can be extremely helpful to students when studying. Both sites let you create word flashcards for free.
The 1st one is Cramberry. It´s very simple. You sign up for free and then can create sets of word cards (front + back).
The second one, is my favourite. I´ve been using it with my EFL intermediate students. I´ve created sets with the vocab they are supposed to know for their English exams and make it available to them. I also use the different exercises in the set in class on the interactive whiteboard as a warmer.
This is how it works: you create a set with words + definitions or questions + answers. Then the website generates 5 memorization exercises for the vocabulary set. If your students sign up, you can even see who has done the exercises and their score. This is a set I created about vocabulary to describe people.
.png)
.png)
