And so, we’re here at the end of the school year, our courses are ending, we’re moving on, time to say goodbye and so on and so forth. We’re handing out the certificates and then we have to do something to kill the time.
The book I’ve just finished is “Teacher Training Essentials” by Craig Thaine – a sensible position for all teachers, from pre-service to experienced ones. The book consists of three main parts, and each workshop includes trainer’s notes and worksheets (which automatically gives the book +20 to the general impression).
Have you ever felt tired with your students checking their mobiles and Facebook updates in the classroom? Maybe you’re annoyed with their “I was just checking the word in the dictionary” when you perfectly well know they’re simply messaging their Facebook friends? Well, what can I say: if you can’t fight’em, join’em!
A friend shared this magnificent short animation on facebook and I immediately knew I had to, simply had to use it in the classroom – what’s better than pink, fluffy and cuddly evil?
Well, yeah, TWO pink fluffy cuddly evils, but I don’t have a budget for this. Yet.
Ever thought of introducing linguistics to your students? I used to be extremely bored with it when I was doing my BA, but because of reasons linguistics turned out to be my major during MA studies. I’m really glad I took up this option, because I’ve learnt linguistics is only boring when you are studying the basics, but later on it magically transforms into a beautiful butterfly of logic, pragmatism and, generally, turns out to be the only aspect of studying a language that makes some sense.
This time, when I watched one of my favourite films, King Fu Panda, I focused on one of the supporting characters, Master Shifu, Po’s unwilling teacher. He’s a real, proper teacher, having his good and bad moments, moments of hype and days (years) of feeling hopeless.
Surprisingly, I’ve happened to use my projects in the classroom — it’s quite attractive for the students to see some actual real-life materials along with the “been there, done that” stories as an addition to the book material and better than checking things on their own on the Internet. So from students’ perspective this sole reason is enough for you, as a teacher, to collect some souvenirs from the countries you’ve been to.
Do you believe in magic of New Year’s resolutions?
Even if I don’t really believe any of my students makes an honest resolution to get better in English, well, discussing resolutions is one of the nicer ways to review some grammar constructions we definitely need to remind after – in case of my students – two weeks off.
Everybody knows how to google, right?..
I wish you a very merry Christmas, a perfect New Year and, simply, all the best!