In this page, I would like to show some ideas which I find profitable for teachers. I hope you share your ideas and point of view here as well.
When talking about activities, there are many interesting methodological approaches and principles to bear in mind, but a very inspiring one is the so called "BLOOM'S TAXONOMY"(1956) in which students acquire more competences whenever they make activities that are more related to the top of the pyramid .
Considering all this, when they are creating, analyzing and evaluating, they "learn" more than simply by memorizing items. In this line, some of the activities proposed in this blog try to reach to the top of this taxonomy: role plays, dramas, presentations, discussions or even cloze activities will promote higher levels of cognition.
In the following lines, I will generally discuss on some of them. Feel free to include your comments.
- PROJECT BASED LEARNING/PBL/ ABP
Project based learning is really useful in order to integrate different skills, increase the use of ICT, introduce interdisciplinary work and foster students' collaboration. In order to do it, is is necessary to change the teacher's mind: stduents will have to learn grammar, vocabulary and other skills in order to do something else (a presentation, infography, brochure and so on). In the following links, you can see some examples. Use them and make them yours.
- Our Ecological Dream House
- A BIOGRAPHY. Here, you can also find some tips to learn how to do a presentation in general. Set phrases, typical expressions and clues to make your students efficient.
ICT can be a great aid to make your classes appealing. Ýou can use some pages to create games, presentations, infographies, and so on. At the same time, you can also make your students create lots of materials which will be realy enjoyable.
- READ THE FOLLOWING ARTICLES I PUBLISHED DESCRIBING APPS AND RESOURCES:
- Educaplay. Free online tool to create presentations, word games, matching activities, dictations, videos... These activities can be a great way to revise in a fun way.
- Goconqur. You can create online activities, notes, presentations and card games. It is useful to create vivid mindmaps for explanations in the class and online. All in all, it can also be a good way to revise by means of fun activities like the irregular verb quizz.
- Genially. You can create some interesting free games, escape rooms, presentations and infographies. All of them can be used in your English class and your students can take advantage of it.
- You can see some interesting examples of its use at:
- KAHOOT! This can be used as an app in order to create easy quizzes for your students. They really like them, so, they will practice on their own and they can compete together at the same time.
- You can see some expamples at:
- Canva. This tool can help you to create interesting images, photo creations and posters. The image below is an infography which I created and also talks about how to improve in English. The difference with genially is that you can download your crations and print them.
- Xmind. You can use this tool to create easy and visually attractive mindmaps.
- Youtube. You can record your own material, publish your students' videos and also include videos with questions and glossaries for them to improve their listening skills.
- Powtoon. Here, you can create your own animated videos. They can be used to explain grammar, vocabulary or any other element you find interesting. It is free and rather easy to use.
- ROLE PLAYS and Dramatizations:
You can read some articles I published on this, in the following links:
In my everyday practice, role plays and dramas are essential, both to promote my studets' speaking abilities and to do PBL (project based work).
Role plays are a great assessment tool by means of which students speak in a free way (or preparing a script before hand) and reduce stress because they are not facing a typical test on their own. If you let them create, it can be really profitable.
Another variation can be that of creating a dialogue and recording a video of it. This also reduces stress and can be really good fun. With this, you also introduce the use of ICT by learning to shoot and record video.
- A Job Interview. Here, the teacher may recruit staff or use it to make role play in which students can be the employer and employee.
- Buying at a supermarket. It is a good fun activity. You can practise a lot of vocabulary and use improve speaking.
- At a restaurant. It is a chance to make them create a story: the students can learn to complain and have fun.
- Booking a hotel room. In this project you can learn how to book a room, which is very interesting. Together with this, they can imagine they are at a hotel.
- See more examples of it at my FACEBOOK PAGE: versions of tv series, tv programmes, classical works remade such as Christmas Carol...
- Creatinng a news programme. It is really fun for students. It can be done also by means of a video recording. You can watch some pieces of news before doing the activity. Click here to see more about this project (PBL/ABP)
- BROADCAST YOUR NEWS PROGRAMME. INTEF EXPERIENCE PUBLISHED BY THE SPANISH MINISTRY OF EDUCATION IN SPAIN. CLICK HERE
Programmes/apps to edit and record videos:
- Chromavid (to shoot videos using a chroma key/ bluescreen)
- Kinemaster (with your mobile phone)
- Photostage slide show (with your computer)
- Microsoft Movie Maker (with your computer)
- Filmorago: excellet to edit your videos and with a free option. It can be used both in computer and mobile phone
- TO STAY TUNNED WITH SOME SPEAKING TASKS, CLICK HERE
- After listening activities
- See: Juana Moral's ENglish Site (FACEBOOK)
- What happened before or after?
- This activity can be done with books and also with songs (For example HELLO by Adele) in which students can invent what happened before the song /book started or another ending. It can raise your students' interest and creativity.
- CREATIVE WRITING TIPS
- Writing is essential in order to communicate, try to include different formats and be creative, sometimes, students need some extra ideas to enjoy this task.
- WRITING GENERATOR FOR HALLOWEEN. Halloween Spooky Stories. Click here.
- Writing ideas: comics, random plot generators... Click here.
- Writing tips: linking words, topics of interest. Click here
- GAMES
- Simple and fun game to revise question structures and vocabulary. One student chooses a famous person or an animal (depending on the topic we are studying). He/she comes to the front part of the class. Students will ask him/her yes/no questions to guess who/what it is. IF they ask more than 20 questions, the person in front of the class, wins. If someone guesses, he/she comes to he front part to the class. My students love it!!
- I HOPE YOU HAVE FOUND SOME ORIGINAL IDEAS HERE. FEEL FREE TO CONTRIBUTE AND SHARE!!
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