English for the Alien Invasion is written by the same team who committed English for the Zombie Apocalypse. This time the threat is from the outer space, cunning and intelligent. Beware, it’s not for the light-hearted!
It was in a small bookshop in Manchester where I noticed a book which immediately caught my eye: I Didn’t Do My Homework Because by Davide Cali and illustrated by Benjamin Chaud.
The book is basically a list of perfectly illustrated, funny, weird, amazingly impossible excuses a student could use… but they usually don’t.
Unless I, as a teacher, make them to 🙂
Today I want to share a tiny little project I’m planning to use once my students feel bored and will need a spark of creativity – Storybird.
New year, new me, and being always ready for some technology I’ve decided to go vintage with the old-fashioned dictionaries. How often do you use ordinary dictionaries in your classroom? Maybe, like yours truly, you are so much into technology you happen to ignore those old-fashioned tomes? Or maybe the memories of “building up your vocabulary” for Use of English exam during uni times are so traumatic you don’t even want to introduce this torture to your students?
It’s not easy to come up with Christmas-themed lessons, especially when you teach the same bunch of students yet another year and they’ve already had enough of Christmas at school (be it their own or their children’s). This year, I accidentally went for a pretty nice Christmas theme inspired by commercials and a fellow teacher’s blog post.
Being creative is the key to opening, unblocking someone else’s creativity – but I’m not really sure that being a “creative teacher” is enough, I’d say that being a creative human being is more important here. I believe we, teachers, should not only bring creative classroom activities, we should focus on unblocking this aspect in our students’ mindsets.
Sometimes you get inspired by the weirdest things and in my case I blame it on the newest film by Marvel Studios –Â Doctor Strange. The film inspiration is nothing new in my life (remember Kung Fu Panda?), however after watching the film I came across a short article by a paramedic and all I could do was nod – and since it’s my blog, I feel like sharing my reflections with you – or rather noting them down so that I won’t forget them in the future.
I don’t even remember how I came across Padlet, but since one of my vices is being overly organised (I’ve realised I’m overly organised when I noticed how many people laugh at me or stare in disbelief once they see me do admin work), that was love at first sight – and obviously, as a properly infatuated teacher, I’ve decided to share my ideas on making Padlet an awesome tool in teaching both inside and outside the classroom.
Language Learning with Digital Video” by Ben Goldstein and Paul Driver, surprisingly, doesn’t focus on funny youtube videos with cats and ideas how a teacher can use them in the classroom, but it includes two parts – video exploitation (still, no cats) and video creation.
With new courses approaching it may be nice to launch a long-term project with a pinch of technology, two cups of English and three tablespoons of fun.