Monthly Archives: May 2014
A low-prep, low-tech, effective game for revision
In this activity, pairs or small groups of students compete against other groups to answer written questions. It could be called a low tech version of a Socrative quiz. It’s most easily done with a whiteboard and projector but it could certainly be done with a blackboard instead. You just need a list of 8-12 […]
Fortune teller revision activity
This lesson idea can be used with kids* to revise 3 sets of vocabulary, spelling and grammatical structures. It’s a fun task, they get to make something and then play with it afterwards. Stealth learning! First,get the students to think about the vocabulary you want them to use. A board race is a good idea because then you […]
Useful CPE sites (2013 exam)
There’s not as much useful stuff out there for Proficiency, is there? A lot of what’s there relates to the old CPE exam, too. In this post, I’m listing websites which are useful both for teachers and students of CPE (2013). I’ll try to keep adding to this list, so if you have any recommendations of sites or […]
Classroom Management – a review of Class Dojo
Five- and six-year-olds are brilliant. They are superbly imaginative, surprisingly funny, super motivated, sweetly praise-orientated, kind and loving towards their teacher, frequently demanding, incredibly noisy, irritatingly whiny, annoyingly uncooperative, a total pain. That’s kind of how it went at first, before I got my point system involved, anyway. MY PRE-CLASS DOJO POINTS SYSTEM I give and take away points […]
Have Something Done – a Lesson plan
I recently applied for the DELTA course, and one of the tasks was to write a B2 level lesson plan for the language point have something done. I’ve always found this one a difficult one to teach, especially with teenagers, because most of the activities I’ve come across in books are about doing up your house which isn’t as […]
A free resource to help teach ‘going to’
This is the first post I’ve written in a little while – it’s been Easter holiday time! Before the Easter break, a colleague and I were due to teach our 10-11 year olds ‘going to’. We wanted a fun way to introduce it, and happened on this little beauty from online stopwatch [go to Classroom Timers and scroll all the way […]
A Hive of Activities 