Hiya, fellow teachers & students of English, just a short note today - there's a new course on Writing for University Study by University of Reading, it's free and it's online!

I found this poem by Chanie Gorkin, and once I saw it, I thought I could use it on my very first classes, to make my students remember.... well, here's the poem I make my students write down as a dictation, line by line (of course, I'll have to adjust vocabulary to my students' proficiency level, but what's so difficult in replacing convince with tell etc.?):

When I was a student, my professors emphasised the importance of making lesson plans, but then they referred to people who were about to start teaching. Well, I have been teaching for more than a decade (oh, gosh!) and I still write a short lesson plan for every lesson I have. I'll try to share my ideas here, but be careful before you follow me and turn into a creepily well-organised pedantic nightmare.