Author Archives
Teacher and Materials Writer
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Vocabulary review – fortune tellers
Did you ever make one of those origami fortune tellers when you were a kid? They were pretty cool. Anyway, I’ve just planned a lesson on shapes with my young learners (from Incredible English), and thought the classic fortune tellers… Read More ›
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Negative attitudes to professional development
In the 6 years I’ve been teaching I’ve encountered a lot of negative attitudes towards professional development. Sure, at times I’ve been negative or cynical too – no-one’s perfect! It’s just that over the last few years I’ve really come… Read More ›
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Great formative assessment tools
In the first ever guest post on ELT Planning, Kirsten Anne shares her teaching experiences and offers two great ideas for formative assessment. This post has been a long time coming. I’ve been promising to write something for ELT Planning for a… Read More ›
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Lesson tip: Wheel Decide
Wheel Decide allows you to create instant decision/scoring wheels in class. You can change the categories to anything you want, meaning the wheel could choose who goes next, the next topic of discussion, class groups, anything you want! I plan on… Read More ›
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Post-match interviews – a lesson using Premier Skills English
This is for all the football fans! Here’s a lesson I revised last year using resources from the brilliant Premier Skills English. You may have seen a previous post I did on using sports commentaries in class. It focused on… Read More ›
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Lesson idea: the youngest person ever…
We recently looked at an article in English in Mind about a child genius. She was the youngest black female ever to get a place at an American university. I created a few activities based on information in the text… Read More ›
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15 ways I’ve developed as a teacher this year
I’ve had a really busy year. I’ve taught in four different countries since January. They’ve included a quick winter camp in Spain (which was great fun), a short stint back in England, an amazing summer in Vietnam and now Christmas… Read More ›
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Help please: Frayer models
What better place to think through a lesson idea than on my blog?! Hopefully all you great teachers can offer a few ideas… I recently came across the idea of Frayer models while browsing Teacher’s Toolkit. I found other explanations and examples of… Read More ›
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Lesson idea: must, mustn’t, don’t have to…
I remembered a great activity for practising ‘must/mustn’t/don’t have to…’ that was modelled on my CELTA a few years back. I used it last week and it worked well. Give the students a table like this…
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EFL Classroom Management Techniques
I contacted Cambridge University Press last month. I said ‘If you send me a book, I’ll review it on my blog.’ To my surprise, a copy of Classroom Management Techniques by Jim Scrivener turned up in my pigeon hole at… Read More ›
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