Thursday 13 December 2012

HANDOUTS ONLINE

Here's a lovely page full of ready-to-use handouts for busy teachers. Unfortunately, there you have to be a registered user to profit fully from all the handouts (to date, $20 a year). There are loads to choose from and the handouts are nicely organised so it is easy to find what you are looking for. Here's the direct link to HANDOUTS ONLINE . Below you can see some pictures taken from the page:



Friday 1 June 2012



Go to quizlet.com for a very nice site if you want your students to make vocabulary cards and/or to practise vocabulary. They can either practise on the cards they have made themselves, or on cards that others have made - ex. to a particular course book that you are using, too. Once the cards are there, there are lots of different exercises your students can do in order to practise, spelling exercises, various games and tests!

Friday 11 May 2012

PODCASTS IN REAL ENGLISH


Here's a wonderful page a friend of mine in Argentina just told me about. Maybe you are interested? There are loads of spoken texts to listen to. For FCE students, level 3, should be about right, but depending on your students, the other levels might be useful, too! You need to sign up for a little fee if you would also like to be able to access the transcripts to the texts and worksheets and exercises.

Saturday 5 May 2012

VOCABULARY CARDS ON YOUR IPHONE

Let your students write vocabulary cards that they can keep on their iPhone. The advantages are obvious, - the cards are always to hand :-), they don't get full of dirt and fluff from their pockets and they can all be kept in one place!



Look for KARTEIKARTEN in your apps store. The app costs Sfr. 1.-- which I think is well worth it.

Wednesday 25 April 2012

POWER POINT PRESENTATION VOICEOVER

This is a brilliant tool I came across when trying to make a power point presentation to put on our class Moodle platform. 
Having made your PP presentation - on any which topic - you can add voice to it. All you need to do is to go to  http://my.brainshark.com and watch one of the demonstration videos there. After that you are ready to start experimenting. It's dead easy to use - even for non-IT-freaks like myself! 
Here's my first try. It's in need of improvement, I know, but it worked, and for a first it's not all that bad. Just have a go and see for yourselves how easy it is!


So start creating and have fun! 

Sunday 25 March 2012

LEARN ENGLISH ONLINE

This is a page full of exercises for the student. The topics range from culture and games over vocabulary and grammar to tests and quizzes. Have fun browsing!
http://www.learnenglish.de/

VIDEO QUIZZES ONLINE

A wonderful page for video quizzes. Just have a look for yourself:
www.eslvideo.com

Here's an example for you of what the quizzes look like:

Monday 19 March 2012

BRITISH COUNCIL



Lesson plans galore on:
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/lesson-plans
Have fun exploring - for kids or for adults!

BBC 1 MINUTE WORLD NEWS


Let your students listen to the ONE MINUTE WORLD NEWS on BBC - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/video_and_audio/ You may not want to let them see the film first, but to concentrate on listening. How much can they understand? The headings? Play the newsreel again and see if they can understand some more (obviously this depends on the students' level of English). Finally, when you think they have understood enough, you can show them the whole film. 

SCREENBEANS





I just LOVE these little black creatures, don't you? Did you know that they were called screenbeans? If you google screenbeans pictures you'll find loads! Thank you, Stefanie, for letting me know :-)

EGO4YOU

INVALUABLE - just have a look for yourself! Culture-Reading-Grammar-Vocabulary-Literature-Quizzes etc. etc..


Just click http://www.ego4u.de/ 

LESSON PLANS / READYMADE WORKSHEETS

Here are some wonderful links to lesson plans and worksheets about grammar, vocabulary, skills, CLIL (content and language integrated learning), business, games and quizzes etc. etc.
There are loads of ideas, but you need to browse around yourself to see what YOU can use.

  • My favorite at the moment is http://www.teachitworld.com/ Some worksheets are free, some you have to pay for. Lots of ideas and really great worksheets. Some lessons also include interactive smartboard activities or audio material etc. I've used it a lot, and always with positive feedback from the students!
  • http://www.onestopenglish.com Lots of material on all kinds of topic, grammar, vocabulary, skills work, CLIL, business etc. etc. You will have to register for some of the activities.
  • http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/ One new exercise every week based on a news article with lots of additional exercises, e.g. blank filling, vocabulary training, speaking, matching, T/F, multiple choice, writing etc.. What's so special about this page is the very special topics. Eg. how a haircut can save money; if your own breath can generate electric power; whether Sweden is going to become the very first country with a cashless economy; and finally how Kate Middleton has been elected hat lady of 2011.


Tuesday 13 March 2012

AUTHENTIC ENGLISH ONLINE

Here are some pages with 'real English' speaking material. Thank you, Uli, for providing these links!

  • http://www.real-english.com/reo/index.html  Various lessons with film sequences and language training exercises where students can also record themselves speaking. In particular for beginners' level of English.
  • http://www.winkball.com/ Lots of different people giving their opinion on various topics. Totally authentic. Teacher would need to create their own exercises to use with the film clips, though.
  • http://lessonstream.org/browse-lessons/ 72 Lesson plans (so far) with various focus points ranging from speaking and reading exercises to watching films and looking at grammar, vocabulary and English usage. Brilliant!! Very nice and clear survey of the topics on first page (see picture below).




Sunday 11 March 2012

STUDENTS' OWN CARTOON


Let your students create their own movie at GoAnimate.com.

Lovely idea. Unfortunately, though, you can only use some of the tools and characters etc unless you pay. Here's another great page also: http://www.xtranormal.com/ Use it for free once, but then you have to pay.

USING TOO MUCH MOTHER TONGUE


   In some classes students tend to revert to German when I turn my back. Alas, I still have not found THE perfect solution to this problem yet.. However, in some of my lessons I have introduced the ‘paper on the table’ method. Which simply means that if somebody in class is caught speaking German, the teacher will put a ball of crumpled paper on their desk. This ‘ball’ then moves on to other ‘culprits’’ desks during the lesson. The last one to have the ball at the end of the lesson will get an extra assignment to do at home. Believe me, it works wonders :-)

PRODUKTIVE UNTERRICHTSEINSTIEGE


A wonderful book if you are interested in special lesson lead-ins. Unfortunately, the book is only available in German. 

Below you can see an example page, - one of my favourites. It describes how you can use a ball of yarn in a speaking exercise to produce a web. When somebody in the group speaks, they hold on to the yarn and then give the coil on to the next speaker and so on. In the end a thick web will (hopefully) have been produced. Students can thus see how much they spoke - maybe even in comparison with other groups? Did anybody not say anything? Well, then they will not be holding on to any piece of the yarn..

Here's a direct link to the book information at Amazon.



Saturday 10 March 2012

LYRICS TRAINING

If you like to use songs in your lessons, you simply MUST try out this fantastic webpage. You can let your students listen to songs and then try and fill in the missing words of the lyrics. Great for class work, great for individual work! You can even gauge the language level to the level of your students.

 
Choose either  BEGINNER, INTERMEDIATE or EXPERT. In the search bar you can also search for the songs YOUR STUDENTS are most interested in.  It is very good, hopefully also fun, and definitely a brilliant way for your students to improve their listening skills and their English!!

Here's the link:  http://www.lyricstraining.com

Have fun!

FAIRY TALES

A wonderful page full of magic :-) Some of the most famous of the Grimm Brothers' fairy tales are found on this webpage. There are both English and German versions of the fairy tales. 

Maybe you could read one or two with your class and then ask them to write a fairy tale themselves and then have the class vote for the best? That's what I did and there were grand diplomas and nice sweet prizes for the winners :-)



EINSTEIN

Make Einstein say whatever you want by using the link below. - Nice idea as a starter or lead-in maybe?


On the same page you will also find other images that you can put text to...

Friday 9 March 2012

PUZZLEMAKER



Try this free puzzle maker tool with your students. Students love crossword puzzles and these are soooo easy to make, your students could even make some themselves for their peers to do. Use your imagination and start puzzling :-)


Here's the link:
http://www.discoveryeducation.com/free-puzzlemaker

WORDLE





A wonderful page that makes a WORDLE (see picture) out of any text - typed or copy/pasted. You can use it as a lead in to any lesson. One idea is to use the first couple of paragraphs of a short story you are going to read and make a wordle out of it. Then let the students try and guess what the story is about...


Here's the link: www.wordle.net


Have fun :-)