Teaching Tips
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Exploiting your whiteboard record
By the time your lessons draw to a close, you probably have a list of new words on your board which have been put up during the lesson. I usually write mine down the right-hand side of the board. Often these words can be exploited both to revisit them, and more…
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Word Stress
We can focus our students on word stress by simply saying the word, eliciting the stress, then drilling it. However, there are plenty of different ways you can do this, which can easily be incorporated into your teaching repertoire.
-You can ask students to use coins to mark the stress on more… -
Reading to speaking
After a ‘heads down’ activity such as reading, where students have been actively but quietly focused, I try to counter-balance this with a speaking activity. (See ‘meat and rice’ weeks 1 and 2). Some texts lend themselves perfectly to a discussion or personalisation task, but here are some general ideas more…
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Brainstorming: variations on a classic technique
Brainstorming is a commonly used technique in our classrooms at all levels. It focuses students and prepares them for a topic, it can enforce co-operation and thus energise students and it shows students (and you) what they already know. In addition, it can be fun if handled as a competition. more…
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Spelling 2
Last week I gave two very simple suggestions to practise spelling, and using this to either reinforce vocabulary, or to use as warmers to lead in to a topic, for example. Here are three more suggestions, which you’ll find similarly focus students’ minds.
- Spell out words to students but more… -
Spelling 1
Students at all levels need to review spelling, and here are three suggestions, which can be adapted to suit your class. Practising spelling is also a clever way to enforce taught vocabulary, although students are often not aware of this.
These three ideas are great fillers, warmers or enders. As more… -
Creative cooking – a recipe
Most students are familiar with recipes, at least in their first language. Recipes typically contain specific lexis, e.g. verbs like sprinkle, stir; linkers like first of all, then, next, finally and nouns and quantifiers such as a pinch of salt, a teaspoon of sugar, etc.
This idea might link in with more… -
How is the internet changing language today? – David Crystal
In this new video Professor David Crystal describes how the internet is changing language.
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Catering for early finishers: readings
Inevitably students read at different speeds, and some students are left twiddling their thumbs as they wait for their peers to finish. I usually have one or two generic reading tasks up my sleeve to give to those who finish before the majority. Most of these are adaptable for use more…
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Meat and rice (2): the notion of balance in your lessons
Last week I touched on the importance of balance. When planning a lesson, particularly a longer one (over 60 minutes), you might find it useful to experiment with one of the following visual annotations to your plan:
1. Add an interaction column and roughly calculate how much time is ‘you’ time more… -
Meat and rice: the notion of balance in your lessons
Lesson planning can be one of those situations where you stop seeing the wood for the trees. You can either be a slave to the coursebook, potentially neglecting to question what you do, or you get so caught up with what you do in the lesson, that you overlook more…
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Which ‘English’ should we teach – David Crystal
In this latest video Professor David Crystal talks about which ‘English’ we should be teaching our students.
