
10 lifesaving websites for ESL teachers
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Lisa has asked me for some recommendations regarding useful sites for EFL teachers and I'm happy to make a little compilation of the places I visit most often to find ideas, inspirations, betimes lesson plans if I feel exceptionally lazy, and share them with you.

Halloween with a zombie apocalypse? Sure thing!
With Halloween approaching, a teacher has to come up with some entertaining ideas. I'm not a fan of classes dedicated directly to the occasion, I prefer running a normal lesson with a little twist. This year I've decided to go with something new - namely, the apocalypse.

Fill in the gaps with a bit of fun
Sandra asked me to write something about gap filling exercises and tasks - I really like this kind of activity as there are so many things you can do with gap filing: revise vocabulary, sure, but also add elements of fun and creativity.

Mystery of the Abbey - solving a crime in English
The reason why I love "Mystery of the Abbey" as the beginning of the course is that it helps students to start speaking the language from the first moment and, unlike usual introductory activities, it makes them see that they can actually communicate well enough to achieve something: in this case to solve the mystery.

Blurred grammar with Weird Al
The last time I wrote about music, and somehow I completely forgot to mention one of the masters of English, the funny, intertextual, one and only Weird Al Yankovic!

"First writing" tips
Writing can be one of the most tiresome endeavours of a student - can you recall your own papers, compositions, etc?
I see no reason not to teach some writing techniques to my own students. I've realised that the sooner they get the basics, the better their writing compositions are.

Let's write a poem!
Yesterday, when I was on my way to work, I was thinking about the lesson - a group of pre-int teenagers and grammar + vocabulary revision. Not necessarily exciting thing, admit it.
Maybe I'll give them a funny warm up at least, I thought - and I decided to make them write a poem, which we had never done before.

10 short warm-ups to revise vocabulary
What needs constant revision, is vocabulary, especially on the more advanced levels - the students learn the words but don't use them regularly. One way to make them revise vocabulary is to do short warm-ups in the classroom. I've got my favourite ten activities that I use regularly

The Little Magic Box of Words
I always have to be prepared when the students finish the task quicker than I expect, and suddenly I end up with 10-20 minutes and no idea what to do (there are days when you simply can't be creative on the spot). To avoid this embarrassing situation I always have my little magic box of words.

'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.