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Story Cubes: more than storytelling
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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.

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.

Lesson preparation & young students
Teaching teenagers is usually fun - at least for me, I really enjoy teaching the group unfairly claimed to be the most difficult (but I'd never ever take up a group of children aged less than 10 years old again!). One of the things I've learnt so far is that with teenagers you have to be prepared for everything.

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!

'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.

Being a teacher = being a learner (HQBL: 1)
They say being a teacher is being a learner too, and I quite agree with that! So, when I saw a new course on coursera focused on Blended Learning I've decided to give it a go. Yay!

Digit-all-love
I'm a teacher who does that only during the tests and I rather encourage my students to use their phones in the classroom on a regular basis. And teach them how to use their phones to help them learn.

Scaredy Cat: roleplay and/or creative writing
Scaredy Cat is a project by Heather Franzen and I must say I fell in love with it the moment I saw it - in fact I'm going to buy this tiny book because it's cute, adorable and I simply want to have it on my own :) Now - it's a lovely story and let me share its sweetness with you.

What shall we do with a rebellious student...
The most important thing when it comes to the unavoidable (one's bound to encounter rebels when teaching teenagers, there is no escape from chaos - it marks us all) is to react immediately. Not for us Obama-like approach, no, we have to be swift and smooth and deal with the rebels changing them into the paragons of English students ;) Or at least try - because in order to change our students (or rather their attitude) we must try to understand them... and it's not easy, trying to understand people who don't understand themselves!