Author Archives

Teacher and Materials Writer

• Lesson tip: Wheel Decide

  By Pete on January 14, 2016 • ( 1 )

  

  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 ›

• Post-match interviews – a lesson using Premier Skills English

  By Pete on January 13, 2016 • ( 1 )

  

  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 ›

• Lesson idea: the youngest person ever…

  By Pete on January 6, 2016 • ( 0 )

  

  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 ›

• 15 ways I’ve developed as a teacher this year

  By Pete on December 19, 2015 • ( 9 )

  

  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 ›

• Help please: Frayer models

  By Pete on December 16, 2015 • ( 6 )

  

  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 ›

• Lesson idea: must, mustn’t, don’t have to…

  By Pete on December 10, 2015 • ( 4 )

  

  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…

• EFL Classroom Management Techniques

  By Pete on December 8, 2015 • ( 6 )

  

  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 ›

• Lesson idea: introducing inventions

  By Pete on December 7, 2015 • ( 3 )

  Lessons that involve designing a new invention or product have cropped up at 5 of the 6 summer schools I’ve worked at. I came across this video the other day that gives me a new lead-in to the topic… After… Read More ›

• Lesson idea: introducing dreams and ambitions

  By Pete on December 5, 2015 • ( 0 )

  You really must check out these two sites: All at C and Vocabulary in Chunks. I’ve started to use a lot more videos in class and these have some great resources on them! Sometimes I come across resources, especially videos,… Read More ›

• Lesson tip: tidy-up song

  By Pete on December 3, 2015 • ( 1 )

  Do you use a tidy-up song at the end of class? This is mine… My primary level students start singing this with about 5 minutes of the lesson to go. They love the challenge of getting everything packed away, plus the… Read More ›