Teacher, let’s watch a film…
I’ve come up with a couple of nice classroom activities regarding mostly short videos, but also some ideas about watching films.
Entries by Monika Bigaj-Kisala
Digit-all-love
I’m a teacher who does that only during the tests and I rather encourage my students to use their phones in the classroom on a regular basis. And teach them how to use their phones to help them learn.
Scaredy Cat: roleplay and/or creative writing
Scaredy Cat is a project by Heather Franzen and I must say I fell in love with it the moment I saw it – in fact I’m going to buy this tiny book because it’s cute, adorable and I simply want to have it on my own 🙂 Now – it’s a lovely story and let me share its sweetness with you.
What shall we do with a rebellious student…
The most important thing when it comes to the unavoidable (one’s bound to encounter rebels when teaching teenagers, there is no escape from chaos – it marks us all) is to react immediately. Not for us Obama-like approach, no, we have to be swift and smooth and deal with the rebels changing them into the paragons of English students 😉 Or at least try – because in order to change our students (or rather their attitude) we must try to understand them… and it’s not easy, trying to understand people who don’t understand themselves!
Don’t panic and use warm-ups :)
What can we do with teenagers? Those sleepy, yawning, not really interested in learning teenagers? What can you do to wake them up, or make them switch off their mobile phones? Give them a nice warm-up, sure!
Holidays! are gone…
What can a teacher do during holidays? Theoretically – have some rest. But since being a teacher is not the best paid job in the world (sniff…), one may also decide to work in a summer school. And that’s what I did, hence the dead silence on the blog; but from now on I will try to update it quite often. New schoolyear, new resolutions, hah!
Come to the Dark Side, we have cookies!
Teaching young adults I came to realize that most of them study English not because they want to, but because their parents make them. I will never forget one of my students, who bitterly commented my idea of brightening the classes with a grammar game. ‘Grammar games are like playing with the devil’ – said Ania and little did she know how inspiring her words were.
Deadly Islands (end of a course activity for pre-int+)
This is my absolutely favourite project ever. I love it, it has always worked for me and my students and I had a lot of fun with it!
Dixit – a nice game for the end of a course
I want to share a really nice board game called Dixit. I used to play it with friends, but I decided to try it with my intermediate+ students who apparently fell in love with the game. It’s very easy to play and is perfect as an activity at the end of the course when the students know each other and are used to their specific ways of thinking.
Proper anatomy :)
That could be quite a nice homework for students – we all learn those boring parts of the body; but this might be a nice change