Posts

Bored in the classroom? Let's visit England!
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I was looking for a nice book focused not only on culture itself, but using cultural topics as an element of a proper, language-oriented lesson. I used to prepare such classes by myself (with a little help of the Internet), but when at IATEFL conference I saw a book, titled Let's Visit England by Polonsky, I knew I had to buy it.

Murders in the classroom (doom doom!)
I think everyone, teachers and students alike, feels more or less murderous in September, especially on Mondays. So what can we do? Absolutely: bring proper crime to the classroom, have fun and relieve the negative feelings! I want to share some of the mystery-solving activities I've been working with for a surprisingly long time, and they're still loved by my students.

Can fake identity be useful for teachers?
Today I'm going to show you something you might not have thought of using, and which proves that a teacher role for today is almost a secret agent!

Spring poems - lesson plan
I don't usually share lesson plans, but I want to show how combining two various sources may help create something unusual and bring some wow effect to the classroom. Here I mixed environment and writing poems and it worked just great!

Commercial Christmas or Christmas commercials?
It's not easy to come up with Christmas-themed lessons, especially when you teach the same bunch of students yet another year and they've already had enough of Christmas at school (be it their own or their children's). This year, I accidentally went for a pretty nice Christmas theme inspired by commercials and a fellow teacher's blog post.

Guess what I'm talking about - a nice way to welcome new students
With new students joining our courses it is a very nice idea to make them feel welcomed and engaged in the school life.

The Colors of Evil - shortie but goodie :)
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.

A little bit of linguistics can be a lot of fun
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.

New Year, New Year
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.

And what if you DON'T feel Christmas spirit?
Fed up with the Christmas stuff? There, there, let me pat you on your back. Stop sobbing, hush. As the Evil Mistress in the making I've got something to help you recover - a nice list of not-so-christmassy-Christmas songs. If you feel like it, share them with your students, but I'd rather use them as a nice background music for all the teachery stuff you have to do during Christmas anyway.