Back to School - an overview of activities

It's proably too late for that, but I rpomised myself to write every week and this week I don't have many ideas, so I'm just going to write about activities I used on my first lessons with returning groups.

On the first lesson after summer I feel like it's too early to jump in to normal classes but still you want to set out the right mood, revise some English and get to know your Ss better. So here's something you can do.

1. A classic Find Someone Who. Works well with oldies and newbies and you can vary the level of difficulty. I usually ask students to ask follow up questions and then report back on the most interesting pieces of information they found.

2. A classic Guess what your partner did this summer. Works well with rowdy groups where a mingle is not the best option. I usually give a list of sentences and ask students to guess which of those activities their partner did. They check in pair and again report on the most interesting stuff.

3. A classic Sit Down Who....Works well if you want to get it over with really quick :) You can use the prompts from idea 1.

4. Holiday activities lesson as generously shared by onestopenglish webiste I used this year.

5. Mobile learning idea. Students choose and show a holiday photo on their mobile device in pairs, guess the activities and discuss their summers. Again a quick and no prep activity.

6. Start off with a project (like I did this year). Introduce your students to Tour Builder and discuss the project you can make with them. I'm still in the process of carrying out the project but I'm already so excited about it. Updates will follow soon.

7. Remember the rules. Every year I set some time from the first class to remind Ss the rules of our school and introduce new ones. There are couple of ways you can make it more entertaining. This year for stronger Ss I made a word cloud and asked them to retrieve 12 rules from it. Ss worked in pairs, compared their results with other pairs and finally looked at my variant of the rules. It was funny to see how they interpreted many rules differently and come up with their own.

For weaker groups, I made a list of "New Class Rules" with items like "Be late" and "Keep our classroom dirty" etc. I asked them if they liked the new rules and gave them a task to re-write them to their liking. To my surprise, all of them had more or less the same idea of classroom behaviour :)

Ideas for using Tour Builder

This summer I got lots of free time and I finally caught up with my "teaching english" blogroll. Having found, no doubt, plenty of useful tips, I moved on to my "technology" roll. And here I discovered a brand new world :) The most relevant blog was Richard Byrne's Free Technology for Teachers that reviews and publishes updates on many useful class apps, gadgets and programmes. Now that I have time before school, I'm spending hours exploring websites, creating projects and generally playing around with different web-tools.
Here is one that caught my attention: Google Maps Tour Builder. First of all, Richard has written two very useful posts here and here with educational how-to video, and I recommend everyone to read it and watch it. On my part, I've been thinking how I can use it in an esl classroom and came up with couple of ideas.

Why can it work:

• it's relatively easy to create
• it incorporates pictures, text and maps
• it can take a form of a lenghty project or light homework

Uses for the classroom:

Here are couple of ideas I sketched out.

1) How I spent my summer.
Instead of asking questions on the first lesson after summer break, ask your ss to prepare a presentation of their summer that can include pictures and comments from them.
Here is the example I have created about my summer.
2) How I spent my year.
A variation of the previous idea. Ss need to create a map of all the places they visited during the year. Good as end-of-the-year activity.
3) Story of my life. The logical continuation of  the previous two. Ss need to show all of the places they have visited starting from the place they were born in. Good for teenagers as they don't usually travel as much during the year.
4) Tour of your street. If you have a lesson on home, streets or local sights, you can incorporate this project in the lesson.  Ss need to tell the story of their streets, the building, places they like going to etc. The good thing about this idea is that it allows ss to work in groups.
5) Tour of your city. An obvious idea but variations can make it  more exciting. For example, ss can choose their favourite places in the city or hidden, non-touristic sights.  It also can take a form of a group project.
6) Book travels. Ss will need to create a map of the travels of the main character. Good if you're using graded readers and books in the classroom.
7) My future travels. Ss need to imagine where they want to go, research the information about these places and put it on their maps.

Some stuff to think about:

• with technology you have to make sure that everyone understands how to use it. So before assigning the project,  I would first give them a how-to video and my example to study as a homework. 
• how to present finished project. Will they show it only to the teacher (boring) or share with classmates? Now it seems ideal to make a presentation in class for everyone, but my class is not equipped well enough for that.
• how to grade it. It seems reasonable to introduce rubrics to make it easier to assess project like this.

I'm currently thinking about the first project and how to implement it smoothly in my class. So I'll keep you updated on my work. Have you used this tool before or have you got any ideas on how else to use it? :)

"Martha" by Tom Waits. SONG ACTIVITY

For this St. Valentines day I prepared a song activity for my two teenage groups. It is based on a beutiful song by Tom Waits and includes predicting exercise, correcting the lyrics and discussion.
I used this song after watching the short animated film Paperman and using lesson ideas from Kieran Donaghy website. I also asked my class to write two narratives describing the story from the point of view of the man and the woman. After listening to their stories I asked them whether they think these people are still together, which led us to a discussion of not so happy love stories.
Before listening to the song, I put 5 lines from it on the board and asked students to predict what kind of love story it is (happy, sad), what happened and whether the couple is still together. Here are the lines I chose: 
a) I love you , can't you see?
b) We were so young and foolish
c) Meet me out for coffee
d) You know that I got maried, too?
e) It's been so many years.
Students suggest their ideas and then listen to the song without lyrics and put the lines in the order they hear it. The correct order is: e, c, d, b, a

While listening. I distributed the lyrics of the song with one word in every line in italics. Students have to listen again and decide whether highlighted word is correct or not. In the latter case students have to correct it.
Worksheet
Answers: days-years
thirty-forty
speak - talk
better-older
boyfriend-husband
sensible-impulsive
think - guess
feel-see

After listening. I find this song perfect for discussion. First of all, the language is relatively easy, and then it has a clear setting, story and characters. There are many opportunities for discussion. I went over each verse with my class and asked following questions

Verse 1

Who is the main character? What's his name? (Tom Frost)

What is he doing? How does he feel? (He is calling on the phone, nervous, sad)

Who is he calling? (Martha) 

What is he afraid of? Why? (that she won't remember him, it's been 40 years)

What does he suggest? (meet for coffee)

Verse 2

Where are they? (probably, at a cofee place)

What do we find out about the characters? (they are both married, Martha has kids)

How does he feel about her? (happy for her)

Verse 3
What do we find out about the character's past? (He was impulsive, they split up)

How does Tom Feel about Martha now? (He still loves her)

Chorus
When is it set? (In the past as opposed to all the verses)

What do we know about their life in the past? (They were very happy, they had romantic relationships)

Can you guess what happened between the characters? Why did they split up? (Here students can speculate based on what they found out in the verses. For example, it might have to do something with his impulsive character, the fact that he needed to assert himself as a man. Also the fact that they lived "like there is no tomorrow" can contribute to the fact that their romance was short-lived.)

Students will need to speculate using the lyrics of the song.

In the end, we listened to song one more time.  I allowed them to sing and many of them happily agreed!

Homework options: 1) Write a dialogue that could have happend between Matha and Tom in the cafe. 

2) Choose an English song about love, find lyrics to the song and compose an exercise (similar to one we did in a class or just a cloze text). On the next lesson, distribute the exercises among students and ask them to listen to the song at home and complete the lyrics.

I hope you enjoy this song and activity too!