Here’s a short poetry task that worked well with YLs and teens. It’s based on a poem from A Nest Full of Stars by James Berry. Before you ask, no. I haven’t suddenly gone all NLP. Aims Create a… Read More ›
lesson ideas
EAL presentation tasks
I’ve been teaching an intensive English course this term. It works out (online) at about 8 hours per week, would have been a lot more had we not been back in lockdown. Seven students, Japanese, between 12 and 14 years… Read More ›
Get published! Working with Peachey Publications
It’s about time I did more than just praise Nik Peachey on LinkedIn and in Twitter posts! Another six months has passed, the royalties from ‘30 Role Plays for TEFL’ are in. They’ve covered a dentist bill, a crate of… Read More ›
18 more ways to introduce your lesson topic
This term I’ve tried out a few different ways to introduce a lesson. These ones have worked well. They might be worth reading if you’ve exhausted my previous list! Song lyric gap fill Example: 3rd conditional, regrets Do a short gap… Read More ›
Twinkl in Action: Facts as a foundation
Year 9 Geography. The assessment task involves looking at the impact of tourism in Kenya. Some of my EAL learners are quite new to English, and their prior knowledge of Kenya is limited. They’re gonna need some support. I get… Read More ›
Lesson idea: Video games
Just a quick idea for a bit of video game chat. We did a 5-week module on the topic, this was my context builder. Took about an hour as the teens got into it. Step 0: Lead-in questions if you… Read More ›
Lesson idea: ‘used to’ for describing past appearance
I made this activity up in class and it worked well! Really creative, loads of interesting language, and also a good way to practice ‘used to’ for describing past appearance. Procedure: Students work in pairs Everyone has some scrap paper… Read More ›
‘so’, ‘such a’, and cheap cocktails
Another one of my ‘making things up as I go along’ reflections. This time, something that actually worked! The materials from one of our in-house, pre-int lessons the other day reviewed so/such (a) in the context of travel / holidays… Read More ›
General ideas for teaching pronunciation
(This is a follow-up to my post on phonology-based activities. I’m sharing it now because some of our teachers are about to begin training for the Trinity DipTESOL. Phonology/pronunciation features quite a bit on that course, so I want to… Read More ›
10 useful websites for ELT
A self-development task during my diploma last year asked me to list all the websites I found useful in my ELT practice. The document I created spanned about 6 pages – it could easily have been longer. I’m sure there’s… Read More ›
ELT Planning 