Generation Z and Social Networking Apps: Back to School and Instagram

Some time ago I started my DipTesol independent research about the use of social networking apps to engage learners in communicative tasks inside and outside the EFL classroom. Last spring I also set up a closed Facebook group to share activities which include the use of social networks to learn English as a foreign language. 

Social scientists who study young people have found that their digital use can be inventive and even beneficial. This is true not just in terms of their social lives, but their education too. In fact, thanks to the online world, young people can now publish ideas not just to their friends, but to the world. And by writing for strangers, their sense of “authentic audience” makes them work harder, push themselves further, and create powerful new communicative forms.

One of the apps which is most used by young people in Italy and in Europe is Instagram, which is a social networking service built around sharing photos and videos. (If you want to know more about it, check this article.

It is almost time to start your lessons again and I know you are more than excited to meet your new and old students! I am also sure that you are looking for an activity which is not the usual 'What did you do last summer?', though. This the reason why I am going to share with you the following Bingo game.

RULES OF THE GAME

1. Distribute the cards and pens or pencils to each student.

2. Tell the players that they must interview each other. Have each player go around the group and ask other students questions.

3. When they find someone who replies positively to their question, they have to write down their name and then move on to another student for another question.

4. The student who first completes the grid with 9 different names, raises his/her hand and shouts, “Bingo!”

E.g. A: Did you use #summer and #beach?
B: Yes, I did.
A: Can you show me, please?
B: (Showing his/her Instagram account) Here you are.
A: (Writing down B's name) Thank you.

Download the template here. You will also find a blank template you can use to write down your own questions.

Have a wonderful back-to-school time!

Bye for now,
Larissa

Ps: If you use this activity, let me know your feedback please!
If you are interested in learning how to use social networking apps in your English classes, email me spiceupyourenglishclass@gmail.com.

Valentine's Day: LOVE collocations and QR codes

Here it comes Valentine's Day, the day we celebrate all types of love! Why don't teach/learn some LOVE collocations?

1) Print out the worksheet with the collocations.

LOVE collocation worksheet

2) Print and cut out the QR codes and stick them up around the classroom.

QR codes love collocations - definitions

3) Students use a QR scanner app to read the definitions and then they copy them below the collocation (on the envelopes). 

4) Have fun and lots of love ;)

Teaching for exam? Touch your students' hearts

Lately this video https://vimeo.com/152985022 has gone viral on social networks. I was so moved when I watched it for the first time that I decided to introduce it in my exam-oriented classes. Today I'd like to share with you the lesson plan I used for my Cambridge FCE (B2 level) which focuses mainly on developing speaking skills.

STUDENTS: Teenagers (b2)
TIME: 1h30
AIM: Learning vocabulary about free time activities
Developing speaking skills for the exam.

1) WARM-UP ACTIVITY: Write on the board The Present and ask your students:
What’s the best present you have ever received?
(Spice-it-up version: Show a present box and tell your students you just got a present. Let them predict what's in the box)
2) VIDEO ACTIVITY: WATCH, PREDICT, ANSWER
Tell your students you are going to watch a video whose title is The Present

Start watching the video. Stop it at 00:50, ask them:
What do you think is in the box?

Start the video again up to 1:10, ask them:
Why doesn’t he like the dog?

Continue up to 1:25, ask them:
What does the dog want to do?
How does the boy react?

Continue up to 2:00, ask them:
Does the dog find it easy to play with the ball?
Does it give up or keep on trying to catch it?

Continue up to 2:40, ask them:
Choose three adjectives to describe the dog in the video.
CUTE - SAVAGE - DETERMINED - DANGEROUS - SWEET - WILD - FRIENDLY

Continue up to 3:00, ask them:
What does the boy decide to do?

2a) FOCUS ON LISTENING
Watch the video again and answer the following questions:

What language function do these statements express?
“Hey sweety, sorry I got home so late.”
__________________________________________________________

“Why don’t you stop playing and open the present I got for you?”
___________________________________________________________

“Mom, we’ll be outside.”
____________________________________________________________

3) Teach VOCABULARY

- Pair/group up students and give them the set of paper strips below. (Cut them out before giving them)
- Give them two labelled plastic bags 1) indoor activities 2) outdoor activities and ask them to put the strips into the right bag. The activities which can be done in either places will be left outside the bags.

- Have feedback and explain new vocabulary.

4) SPEAK UP!

Show these two pictures and ask students to do the task above.

or SPICE IT UP: Put students in pairs and make them sitting back to back. Give each one of them a picture and this grid. Students take turn to speak about their picture and tick off the words/phrases from the grid used by their partner. In this way they will practise the skills mentioned above.

4a) SPEAK UP AGAIN...

PASS THE TENNIS BALL GAME
- Get a tennis ball or a small ball.
- Make the students sit in a circle.
- Tell them you are going to ask them some questions.
- Pass the ball to the first student and ask one of the questions below. The student, then, will choose another student to pass the ball to. The second student will say if they agree or disagree with the previous student and why.
- Let 4-5 students express their opinion for each question.

People say “ A trouble shared is a trouble halved”. Do you agree?
Have you ever helped a friend in trouble? What did you do?
Are dogs really man’s best friends?
In what ways are dogs helpful to humans?
Do you think some owners care too much for their dogs and not enough for other people?

6) Homework is fun!
There are some people who become unfriendly because they have a physical disability or a problem. Prepare an encouragement quote using
www.quotescover.com (WEB)
InstaQuote (iOS) - Kwote (Android)

The power of mobile apps - No3 FaceGoo Lite (a lesson plan)

I got the idea for this lesson from a TV game show I used to watch a couple of years ago. It was successful with my students because it made a thorny grammatical issue seem funnier and easier.

Learners: Teenagers - Adults
Level: Intermediate
Time: 90 minutes

1) Show the learners the following picture

Speculate about who he might is by using modal verbs of speculation e.g. it might be, it can't be, it must be, etc.

2) I reckon you and your students cannot guess who he is, that's why you need to listen to this man talking about himself. http://www.fromtexttospeech.com/texttospeech_output_files/0302246001427045995/5416869.mp3
[I used a text to speech online software to create the tape, click on the link to download it]

By now you know who he is, don't you? Yes, it's Brad Pitt.

3) Hand in the handout above and ask the learners to answer the following questions

4) Tell the learners to underline the verbs in the speech bubbles meanwhile draw on the board a two-column chart.
Ask them in which tenses they are. The answer is: PRESENT PERFECT SIMPLE & PRESENT PERFECT CONTINUOUS.

4) Ask students to report the sentences in the right column and then together try to understand why you use whether present perfect simple or past simple.
In my case, I used a smart board and this was the result:

5) It's time to check if your learners have understood the difference.
According to the number of the students you can decide if they will work individually, in pairs or in groups of 3 or 4. In my case they worked in groups of 3.
Each group has a biography of a famous living person but there are 10 missing verbs. They need to fill in the gaps with the right verbs conjugated in the right tenses. Finally, they need to guess who the celeb is.

6) Monitor the learners while they are working and give them tips (e.g. "Do you know when the action happened?") or help them with the vocabulary.

7) Now it's learners' turn! (In class or as homework)

a) Download 1picture of a famous living person.

b) Write a short biography (80-100 words) about him/her using present perfect simple and past simple  (You can use www.biography.com to get some information.)

c) Edit the picture with the mobile app FaceGoo Lite (Free Android/iOS)

d) Record your voice while while you give hints about the mysterious famous person. Remember to use the 3rd person singular. 

e) Students listen to each other's biographies and try to guess who the mysterious celebs are.

I hope you and your students will enjoy this lesson. If you try it out please let me know in the comments ;-)

The power of free mobile apps - No 2 ThingLink

Here I am with the second post of the series "The power of free mobile apps".

Today I'd like to share with you some activities your students can do by using ThingLink (available on Web, Apple Store and Google Play).

What is ThingLink?

 Choose or take a picture with your phone’s camera and add interactive tags on your image such as YouTube videos, videos from your phone’s camera, twitter handles and text.
You can share your pictures with friends on Facebook, Twitter and Email.
If you sign up on the website as a teacher you can create a class and get email and password for your students to use.

Register your students

You can manage your groups

ACTIVITY 1

Grammar - Free practice - beginners/elementary

If you are teaching present continuous students can practise the TL by describing the actions of the people in a picture. 

What I did: My adults students chose a painting they liked and they described it.

See an example here The Luncheon of the Boating Party

ACTIVITY 2 

Literature -  Biography of a writer (any level)

Charles Dickens

[Remember you can add videos and links ;-) ]

ACTIVITY 3

CAMBRIDGE PET/PET for SCHOOLS - Speaking part 3

During this part the examiner gives you a colour photograph and you have to talk about it for about a minute.

Learners are often reluctant to speak in class especially shy students in large classes. By using ThingLink the learners can record their voice while describing the picture at home. 

What I have been doing: At the end of each class I ask my students to take a picture about the topic we have learnt in that session (e.g. sport, entertainment, the natural world, etc.) and describe it. In this way not only will they pratise their speaking skills for the exam but they will also revise the TL. 

[Remember that your video recording can be up to 30 seconds long so you must split your description in two parts]

Cambridge PET for Schools - Speaking part 3

If you have more ideas and activities to share I would love to post them here!

The power of free mobile apps - No 1 PicCollage

Dear followers,

Happy New Year! 

I am so glad to be back! I'd like to start this new year with a new series of posts. If you have been following my blog for a while you will certainly know I love teaching by using both tech and daily life objects, that's why I am going to share with you my classroom experiences and ideas about a free mobile apps every month. 

Free mobile app No 1

PicCollage 

Description from Itunes

"PicCollage is THE coolest collage-maker in town! Join 80 million people who use PicCollage to combine photos, Youtube videos, funky fonts, sassy stickers and cute cutouts to create the prettiest collages you'll ever see on a mobile device. We have stickers from Maroon 5, Beats Music, Universal Pictures, and LA-based independent designer, Sara M. Lyons. Check out our Contests section and create a visual response instead of just a plain text response. Share with your friends and followers on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and iMessage. You can also PRINT your collages into greeting cards or postcards to send to your loved ones anywhere in the world!"

Activity 1

Warm-up/Ice-breaker activity - level beginner

Ask learners to take pictures of the things around the classroom or the school they already know and then label them.

E.g. 

Activity 2 

Free practice (homework) - level elementary

After teaching countable & uncountable food nouns I asked my learners to take pictures of food items they had in their house. I asked them to create two different collages: one for countable nouns and the other for uncountable nouns.

This activity gave me the chance to check whether my learners had really understood the difference between countable & uncountable nouns since in their native language the distinction is not the same.

In this example one of my learners took pictures of countable nouns but as you can see there are three items which have uncountable nouns. 

How to give my learner effective feedback?

I shared this picture with all the other students without saying who had taken it. I told them that the collage was about countable nouns but there were three odd ones and they had 3 minutes to find them out. They worked in pairs and then we had collective feedback.

Activity 3 

Exam-oriented activity - Cambridge First for Schools (B2 level) Speaking part 2

From the Cambridge website - "The examiner gives you two photographs and asks you to talk about them. You have to speak for 1 minute without interruption and the interlocutor then asks the other candidate to comment on your photographs for about 30 seconds. The other candidate receives a different set of photographs and you have to listen and comment when they have finished speaking. The question you have to answer about your photographs is written at the top of the page to remind you what you should talk about."

As homework I asked my learners to take two pictures of people who were learning and put them together with PicCollage. When they came to the lesson I printed the pictures out and they swop the photos they had taken and they answered the following question:

What are the advantages of learning in these different ways?

If you have other ideas I will be pleased to add them here!