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Halloween with a zombie apocalypse? Sure thing!
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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.

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!

Getting to know each other? Let's face the music!
September, the month in my life when I face a bunch of disillusioned teenagers who haven't met me yet but they already don't feel like learning English (or they already did meet me and decided to suffer yet another year with yours truly) - rings a bell? Do you remember being a student and doing one of the most terrifying things in the classroom: sharing stuff about oneself?

Story Cubes: more than storytelling
We've had fun with DixIt, with Once Upon a Time, but at the moment my most favourite storytelling tool is called the Story Cubes. It may look like a simple set of dice with random pictures on them, but it's in fact a real vocabulary booster.

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.

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!

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.

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!