
Lesson preparation & young students
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Teaching teenagers is usually fun - at least for me, I really enjoy teaching the group unfairly claimed to be the most difficult (but I'd never ever take up a group of children aged less than 10 years old again!). One of the things I've learnt so far is that with teenagers you have to be prepared for everything.

Homework? Smile in the morning!
Have you heard that even if you fake a smile, you genuinely start feeling happier? At least that's what American scientists say, but is it true?
Me and my B2 group have decided to give it a try, hence the homework, perfect for grey November:

November - the grim month
Don't you find November the worst month in a school year?
To cheer you up I've collected some grammar-motivational pics and I thought that, if you're overwhelmed by November, you may use them in your classroom. Have fun!

'Dyatlov Pass Incident' - experimenting with Station Rotation Model
I also decided to experiment with a model that seems to be the best suited to my work environment (a private language school). I think it went pretty well as the first time and we still feel like experimenting with the Station Rotation model. If you want to try, Here's a short sketch of the 90 minutes lesson.

Being a teacher = being a learner (HQBL: 1)
They say being a teacher is being a learner too, and I quite agree with that! So, when I saw a new course on coursera focused on Blended Learning I've decided to give it a go. Yay!

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.

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.

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!