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)

#30Goals Cycle 6 Goal #9: Share Your EdTech Success Story

When I came across Sylvia's goal for educators I was more than excited because I owe my success in teaching mainly to technology. That's why I decided to share with you 6 tech activities which made the process of teaching&learning more fun and effective.

digital treasure hunt

#1 Digital treasure hunt
What your learners need: A camera 
Target language: Prepositions of place
Procedure: Write on the board sentences which include prepositions of place. Students in pairs or in groups need to take photographs of what they read on the board. The team who get the highest number of correct pictures win.



#2 News Report
What your learners need: A camera, a microphone 
Target language: Different verb tenses, any topic
Procedure:  Tips on how to make a video news report

#3 Show'n Tell "Backtoschool"Icebreaker
What your learners need: A digital camera/mobile phone/smartphone
Target language: Past tenses 

show'n tell

Procedure: Learners show pictures they took during their summer  on their devices to their peers and have a discussion of where/when they took the picture, who they were with, etc.

#4 Facebook  picture quizzes
What your learners need: A Facebook profile (website/smartphone app)
Target language: English language exam grammar/vocabulary
Procedure: Use a presentation software to create multiple-choice questions such as the ones they may see in the exam in the form of a picture or cartoon. Share them on Facebook. Your students can reply to them and, after a while (in the evening or the following day), you can post the correct answer.





#5 Educanon video-listening activity
What your learners need: www.educanon.com 
Target language: Improving listening skills
Procedure: Sign up the website, upload a video and type the questions, save the bulb and share it with your students. See an example below.
The Poppy Story




#6 QR Code review test
What your learners need: QR code scanner app
Target language: Grammar/Vocabulary review 
Procedure: Use a QR code generator app to create questions and give an answer sheet to your students. Stick up the QR codes around the classroom/school. Learners need to scan the codes and answer the questions on their paper.

I look forward to reading more posts about this goal!

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!

Harrogate Online - The 48th Annual International IATEFL Conference & Exhibition (part 2)

My first report is about the session Teaching with mobile devices: choices and challenges by Nicky Hockly.
http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2014/sessions/2014-04-02/teaching-mobile-devices-choices-and-challenges
The presenter:
Nicky is Director of Pedagogy of The Consultants-E and has worked in the field of face-to-face and distance education since 1987, as a teacher, teacher trainer and consultant. She is involved in materials development, for both EFL course books and online learning. She is currently joint Co-ordinator of the IATEFL Learning Technologies Special Interest Group. Nicky has written many articles on education, technology and online learning, and she is a plenary speaker at conferences all over the world. She is a well-known author of methodology books on the application of technology to language teaching.

The session:
Teaching with mobile devices: choices and challenges

The content in 40 words
The workshop dealt about the choices and challenges involved in teaching with mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) in the classroom. There were also examples which showed practically how to implement mobile-based activities with beginner, lower-intermediate, and intermediate students.

Nicky started her workshop by showing the meaning of Mobile Learning. She considered three aspects:
1. when devices are mobile (smartphones and tablets, not laptops)
2. when learners are mobile (students move around the classroom/school with their devices or they use their devices at home)
3. when learning experience is mobile (how mobile devices can be used in language learning tasks)

In order to better explain the third point Nicky showed examples of activies she did during her teaching experience in Cambridge last year. I was particularly interested in the following task activities.

The first activity was one she integrated to the course book with lower-intermediate students. The

topic was water and students were asked to go around the school and take pictures of things which were connected with water but not water itself. They shared the pictures on the group of Whatsapp. Then they justified their choices. The pictures raised a lot of discussion among students.

The second activity was aimed at beginner students and it involved the use of QR codes and it was a
sort of treasure hunt. Students were supposed to go around the school, take pictures and ask questions to the staff. This activity allowed the students to recycle the language learnt, practicing speaking (they asked questions), reading and reviewing grammar.

The third activity is based on geotagging and was done by mid-intermediate students  They used a free app called Woices (it can be used both on Android and Apple devices). They created an audio guide of a place they liked in Cambridge. This activity was carried out both in the classroom and at home over the weekend.




Nicky also took into account the practical aspects of bringing mobile devices into the classroom such as the age of students, using students' belongings or school's, the mobile integration to the course books or assessment.

Finally, she considered the learning aims, the logistic and legal (especially the role of parents when students are young learners) aspects of using mobile devices.

My consideration in 40 words:
I am especially interested in the combination of technology and daily life and this session gave me food for thought. I can’t wait to adapt the activities carried out by Nicky’s students in my classes to meet my students’ needs.