Christmas Lesson....!!! for young learners

Christmas Lesson....!!!

for young learners

Students are in Christmas mood! Let's be honest! Teachers are also in Christmas mood!

I remember when I was a student how impatiently I was waiting for the last class before Christmas. I was so sure that my beloved teacher would have a little surprise for us... a Christmas lesson! Most of the times we were spending the last lesson making Christmas cards, or singing, or drawing. 

I think, I have found an excellent and well organized site for Christmas activities for young learners, and, I do want to share it with you!

British council has a whole section with Christmas activities. 

Here's the link: 

http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/category/topics/christmas

The best part is that they have arranged the activities based on age and level. How useful is that? This is the best Christmas source for me for young learners. 

I really hope you will enjoy with your students the last class before Christmas as much as I do with my beloved students!!!

Feel free to post your photos and your experience from your Christmas lesson. 

Happy Halloween!!!!

Happy Halloween!!!!

Today, it is Halloween and I decided to do something to please my students!!! I bought some pumpkins and I spent some time to make my fist jack-o-lantern pumpkins!! In Greece we don't celebrate Halloween but kids really love it. So, it is a good chance to combine games with learning. I am pretty sure that your students will love today's lesson. Here you will find some of my favourite websites with a lot of free material to use in class. Enjoy!!!

An amazing site with great videos for Halloween, mainly for young learners: http://www.videos4children.com 

An other site that I would like to share with you is: http://freebies.about.com/od/halloweenfreebie1/tp/halloween-printables.htm. Here you will find a lot of free Halloween printable material to use in your class, colouring pages, masks, cards, games, etc. 

These will be my Halloween gifts to my students!

The importance of Lesson Plans

The importance of Lesson Plans

Classes are about to start and I know that all of us will agree with what I am about to say: Preparation, the key to success. 

You may think that as soon as you enter the class you will know what to do and from where to begin. Perhaps, you believe that you will remember every comment or question after class. You may even think that you will have time to do in your class everything that is in your mind. 

But... Are you sure? 

It doesn't matter if you are experienced or not, if you teach many years or you have just graduated. Most of the teachers agree that before entering the class you should spend the appropriate time preparing your lesson. 

How? By having ready your lesson plan. Lesson plans are not as easy as they sound. It's not something that can be done in 10 minutes.

A lesson plan includes more or less the entire lesson. You start from the materials and coursebooks which will be needed for your class and you end with the homework that you will assign to your students.


In my lesson plans I include the following:

Materials needed, Course book, Class

When you are in a hurry to begin your lesson, or even your next lesson, information like the above mentioned turns to be very helpful in order for you to organize what you need for the class. 

Aim, Secondary Aim

What's the aim of the lesson? What do you want to teach to your students today? Grammar? Vocabulary? Is this lesson both about grammar and writing? And, if yes, where are you going to give more emphasis (aim) and where are you going to spend less time because, for instance, this is something that has been already taught but you need to revise it (secondary aim)? If we, the teachers, are not clear about the purpose of our lesson, its objective, trust me when I'm saying that our students at the end of the day will be as confused as we are. 

 Teacher's (T) activity, Students' (Ss) activity, Aim, Material, Organization, Time

Let me give you an example about this.

Let's imagine that T activity is to teach a new tense. The lesson plan in that step could be something like the example below:

T activity	Ss activity	Aim	Material	Org	Time
Simple Presnt's use Formation  Key words Examples	Ss acquire new grammatical skills	Teach Simple Present (affirmative-interrogative-negative)	SB + WB or GB	Ind./ Class/ T-S/ S-S/ Croups	min 20-25

So my advice is: Preparation, the key for a successful lesson!

It's all about English today... and tomorrow... and the day after... and the day after........

This is my very first article in my very new blog!!!! I feel really excited!!!! 

Many have already asked me what's the point of this blog? Well, I want to share my experience, my point of view concerning teaching English as a foreign language!!! The aim of this blog is to help, through my experience, as many teachers as possible. 

The whole idea came to my mind when I got a job in an English language school, a frondistirio as we call them in Greece. There I realized that even though I was qualified to teach, I had both the experience and the knowledge , yet there were some issues that I was unaware of.  

The point is the newly arrived-in-the-profession teachers to find useful tools and tips! However, I would also like the experienced ones to find in my blog something, anything, that they will characterize it as a very-fresh-let's-try-it idea!! 

So let's all enjoy our summer holidays, but, stay tuned...!!!