Posts

Murders in the classroom (doom doom!)
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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.

5 things I should've been told when I was a rookie teacher
Being a DoS means also recruiting new teachers, and then training them to meet up the standards of our school - and this inspires me to share 5 things someone should've told me when I started teaching years ago.
Someone should have - but I had no DoS, and even though teaching runs in my blood, there are some things I had to discover by myself:

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!

7 reasons for going to teachers' conventions
I spent the last weekend in Warsaw where edunation ladies had organised an event for Directors of Studies and proper teachers. It was the first event of its kind and it reminded me a lot of fantasy fans' conventions I used to coordinate *sniff*. Good times...

Pure nonsense in the classroom
My ultimate goal in teaching is, as I've probably mentioned it already, having fun - you can't seriously expect me to be prim and proper at all times, now, can you? It's rather difficult to keep a straight face when your students make you cry from laughter, and that's something that happens to me only too often (bless my students!). With April Fools' Day writing about humour is inevitable - especially that I don't really like pranks and yet bringing humour to the classroom is surely one of my favourite aspects of teaching.

Can we keep our students focused in the classroom?
It's quite easy for me to understand my students being somewhat slow and sloppy, so here are some tricks I use to keep them focused in the classroom because hey, spring or no spring, the Passive must be reviewed.

Back to basics - dictionaries in the classroom
New year, new me, and being always ready for some technology I've decided to go vintage with the old-fashioned dictionaries. How often do you use ordinary dictionaries in your classroom? Maybe, like yours truly, you are so much into technology you happen to ignore those old-fashioned tomes? Or maybe the memories of "building up your vocabulary" for Use of English exam during uni times are so traumatic you don't even want to introduce this torture to your students?

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.

We're all Doctors Strange here :)
Sometimes you get inspired by the weirdest things and in my case I blame it on the newest film by Marvel Studios - Doctor Strange. The film inspiration is nothing new in my life (remember Kung Fu Panda?), however after watching the film I came across a short article by a paramedic and all I could do was nod - and since it's my blog, I feel like sharing my reflections with you - or rather noting them down so that I won't forget them in the future.
How do we learn (and how can we use Padlet in the classroom)?
I don't even remember how I came across Padlet, but since one of my vices is being overly organised (I've realised I'm overly organised when I noticed how many people laugh at me or stare in disbelief once they see me do admin work), that was love at first sight – and obviously, as a properly infatuated teacher, I've decided to share my ideas on making Padlet an awesome tool in teaching both inside and outside the classroom.
