Vocabulary game - Vocabulary Marathon!

Vocabulary game!

Last year I created a game in order for my students to revise vocabulary and I have to say that they really loved it! So, find below a funny way to revise with your students vocabulary. The game is called "Vocabulary Marathon" and you can adjust it on every level! 

Vocabulary Marathon

Aim: 
To revise vocabulary

Materials: 
None

Preparation: 
1. Choose 10 words that you have already taught the learners.
2. You change the letter sequence of each word and you give your students either an English synonym or an English translation.

For example:
school:                                        lsocho
                                       an institution of learning

How to play: 

- Put the learners into pairs. In that way you also promote collaboration and cooperation. Otherwise, you can allow the learners to work individually.

- Write at the board the word and the English synonym :  e.g.            lsocho
                                                                                            an institution of learning

- Give students 3 minutes to find the solution. For extra help you can give them the first letter after the first minute.

- Each round ends in 3 minutes unless a student finds the solution earlier. In that case the student says "Stop".

- The student who finds the correct answer gets 10 points.


You can start the Vocabulary Marathon at the beginning of the school year and you can end it either before the end of each semester or at the end of the school year. In any case, you could prepare a gift for the student who has collected the most points, for example you can give him/her a "You are the winner" praise card.

Personally, we played with my students 3 Vocabulary Marathons throughout the year, one for each semester's vocabulary. We had a game every two weeks and we calculated each student's points at the end of each semester. Each winner got both a "You are the winner of the 1st/ 2nd/ 3rd Vocabulary Marathon" praise card and a small gift. The rest of the students got a "Congratulations for your Participation in the 1st/ 2nd/ 3rd Vocabulary Marathon" praise card and candies!

"How to write an essay" for advanced learners

"How to write an essay"
for advanced learners

A very important part of teaching English, is to teach our students how to write essays. This is not as simple as it sounds, especially when we are dealing with advanced learners. 

I was taught the following method in college. To be exact, this is not a how-to-write-an-essay method but it's more a how-to-think-correctly method. 

I remember my professors telling me always to prepare an outline. Spending time in preparing it, it's not a waste of time as many students may think. If the student has a detailed outline, he/she has more or less the essay done! 

Making an outline may demand a lot of time. Basically, students prepare their essays. They spend time in thinking what they will write and they put their thoughts in order. An outline "protects" students from not having a coherent essay. 

Here's a sample of how an outline could be: 

Introduction:

• Thesis statement

* Thesis statement is the last sentence in the intoductory paragraph in which the student makes clear    what the essay will be about in one sentence. Of course, we avoid generalizations in here. Thesis        statement is about being accurate.  

Main body:

1st parapraph:

• Topic sentence

          ü Paragraph’s main point 

          ü Paragraph’s main point 

          ü Paragraph’s main point 

Topic sentence is the first sentence of each paragraph of the main body. This sentence introduces to the reader what the paragraph will be about (e.g., advantages of using Internet.). 

Paragraph’s main point: students write here a couple of words as a reminder of the point they want to analyse in their essay (e.g., access to unlimited information) .

Conclusion:

In the conclusion the student paraphrases the main points of his/her essay. 

*The students should remember to use linking words!

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...!!!