Category: vocabulary

Hitting the Right Note:
Extending the Theme of Your Song / Activity #7

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2013_Heyer_Sandra Sandra Heyer

One way to extend the lessons in True Stories Behind the Songs and More True Stories Behind the Songs is to follow up each unit with a supplemental song that connects to the theme of the unit, plus an activity to go with the supplemental song. Each month I’ve shared a song-based activity that has worked well with my beginning and high-beginning students. In the past six newsletters, we’ve explored these activities:

  1. The Targeted Cloze
  2. Summarizing the Song’s Story (and making the summary “disappear”)
  3. Personalizing the Song’s Theme with Draw-Write-Share
  4. Building a Lesson Around a Repeated Phrase
  5. Writing New Song Lyrics
  6. Singing or Speaking the Chorus

This month, let’s take a look at an efficient way of matching a song with an activity. You could begin by choosing an activity, and then look for a song that works with it. For example, if you chose Activity #2, Summarizing, you would look for a song that tells a story. But it’s usually easier to pick a song first, and then match it with an activity. To quickly find a match, convert your list of favorite activities into a checklist, run the song you’ve chosen through the checklist, and–voilà–the activities that are a good fit will naturally emerge. Here is a checklist based on the activities above. Continue reading →

Using Video and Images

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J_LebedevJennifer Lebedev

How have you been using student-generated content in digital form? Here are some ideas for using video (or still shots) from students’ cell phones.

1. Give weather reports. (Beginners) If you have studied weather-related expressions, students can take turns giving the daily weather report. Each student could have an assigned day to stand outside and deliver the weather report, ideally through video, but a still shot coupled with a short text is also possible. Give them a template: Good morning. Today is (Friday, June 6th). It’s (warm and sunny). Right now it is (78) degrees. Decide in advance how students can distribute the  report: mass email, submit to you, post to Facebook page, etc.

2. Give a status update to a partner. (All levels) Assign each student a partner. Have them send 2-3 updates (10-20 seconds) to their partner via video between one class and the next. At the next class, they can meet in small groups and tell what their partners did recently. Focus on the language that needs to be practiced, for example, simple past – beginners, time clauses – intermediate, “be going to” for intended actions – advanced.

3. Explain a process. (All levels) In pairs or individually, students can use video or still shots to explain a sequence of 3-5 steps. With lower level students, the videos can be brief and simple: This is how I make tea. First, I put a tea bag in a mug. Next, I pour in hot water. Then I wait two or three minutes. Finally, I add lemon and drink. Encourage more content from upper level students. If working in pairs, they can develop a 15- or 20-second script and film each other. One might pose questions, and the other explains the process. Again, decide in advance how students will share their content with you and/ or the class.

4. Guess the next step. (Intermediate and Advanced) Have students take a picture of someone or something in the middle of an action. They can share their photos in class. Each time they partner up with a new student, they will describe what they see in the photo and guess what happened next. The photographer can then confirm or explain what really happened. Decide what language you wish to focus on, for example, present or past progressive. Student A: I see a woman in the photo. Maybe she is your neighbor. Here she is carrying a trash bag. Was she going to take the trash outside? Student B: She was, but then the bag broke. I helped her clean it up. Alternative: Video someone doing something and express an alternative outcome, given a counterfactual condition. Student A: The woman was carrying the trash bag and it broke open. If she hadn’t put so much in the bag, it wouldn’t have torn like that.

5. Make your own vocabulary clips. (All levels) I’ve recommended this activity before, but it’s one I’d like to suggest again. If given a basic template, students can begin to compile videos for their own online resource. Here’s a model provided by one language school in Boston. Their Word of the Day videos are based on the collection I posted on my website.

Originally posted May31, 2013 on EnglishwithJennifer

10 Tips for Teaching Short Stories: Part 1

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page43_SybilMarcus Sybil Marcus
Author of A World of Fiction series

Teachers often hesitate to use literature in the classroom. That’s a pity since short stories are perfect for teaching language and critical thinking skills. Good stories engage both teachers and students. Best of all, they can be used to enrich all language skills in imaginative and unexpected ways. The ten tips below are designed to help teachers create and implement an exciting, relevant short-story course.

1.  Enthusiasm is contagious.
When you believe in literature as a meaningful and fun way to build language skills, you can persuade even skeptical students to take it seriously. I’ve had students begin the semester thinking literature might be an inefficient use of their time, but in 40 years of teaching I’ve almost never seen one who felt that way after a few weeks of class. Continue reading →

Who’s Afraid of the AWL?

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Who’s
Afraid of the AWL? 

The Academic Word List has gotten a lot of attention over the last few
years, but what is it really all about? Making sense of the AWL and
implementing it in your teaching is straightforward. But it only works
if you have the right information. …

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