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 ›

ideas
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 ›
Lesson idea: activities for short videos
I use a lot of videos in class these days. There’s no shortage of inspiration for film lessons online, and a bit in print too. We received a copy of Film in Action last June, which Martin Sketchley reviewed here…. Read More ›
Lesson idea: The planets
Check out this great video – I came across it during the summer school at British Council HCMC. We did an activity where students described what was happening on each of the 12 planets. Then they created a 13th planet themselves, displayed their… Read More ›
Fluency practice: What do you know about Britain?
Here’s a fun way to get students sharing information, in the context of history and culture. I originally got this idea from waygook.org, which is a good source of lesson inspiration if you’re a teacher based in South Korea. Let’s… Read More ›
Lesson idea: UK politics and the election
Today I taught one of my best lessons ever. It’s a massive day for the UK, and there was no way I was going to ignore the general election in class. I had a group of 14 year old intermediate… Read More ›
Lesson idea: quick conditionals review
Here’s a quick idea for revising some conditionals. I used this the other day and it worked well: Ask students the following: What would you do if you were the last person on earth? Encourage creativity: If I were the… Read More ›
Lesson idea: using sports commentaries in class
Have you ever heard of the ‘instantaneous present simple’? I hadn’t until a recent diploma module. Apparently it’s used to describe events or occurrences with some level of immediacy. You find it in newspaper headlines (like ‘Brad marries Angelina’), verbs… Read More ›
British History Lesson: Boudica
I recently taught a great group of upper-intermediate Italian college students. They were from a humanities college, they requested lessons in history, psychology, sociology and so on. It was International Women’s Day the weekend before, so I thought it was… Read More ›
A fun lesson idea using Ed Sheeran’s ‘Thinking out loud’
How do you encourage a really shy class to express themselves? It’s a question I’ve been asking all week. My latest group of single nationality pre-intermediate teenagers are a lovely bunch, but they can be so timid. I haven’t found… Read More ›