teaching grammar

Grammar review using drawings

This was a good idea I came across Bucksmore summer school. A review for various tenses/structures.

Give students a piece of paper. Get them to split it into 4 squares.

In each of the squares they draw one of the following:

  • Something you’ve done
  • Something you were doing this time last year
  • Something you will have done by the year 2050
  • What you will be doing in the year 2050

They choose the squares for each drawing at random.

Go over the structures if you need to…

You’ve + V3

This time last year you were  + Ving

By 2050 you will have + V3

In 2050 you’ll be + Ving

Students look at each other’s pictures and use the phrases to guess what each drawing shows.

Tweak the above examples to include structures you want to review.

Good fun. The drawing bit doesn’t have to take too long, I mean look how bad mine are!

Level? This activity was used at Upper-Int level. It was actually a warmer just to review these structures. Copyright Bucksmore I guess!

I’m writing a series of short posts in response to Martin Sketchley’s blog challenge. You can view his new blog here.

Using story cubes

I bought these story cubes a few months ago, and I’ve tried them out a few times this term. They are basically dice with pictures onstorycubes1 them, so it’s really up to you how you use them. You can find a few ideas on the story cubes site, which include some demonstrations.

These are a pretty good tool to have in the classroom, and it wouldn’t be too hard to make your own (they can be a bit costly if you want a few sets). I find with my EFL classes that there’s rarely time for storytelling lessons, which is a shame as these cubes would be a great resource. However, I’ve tried to integrate these into lessons, with varied success. As you’d expect, the cubes mainly help students generate ideas for certain tasks. They’ve worked best with my teens.

Note: If you know about the specific sets of cubes then I’ve got ‘voyages’, ‘actions’ and the standard set.

Grammar tasks

A few weeks ago we did a review of using articles (a fairly common error for Thai learners) which was based on Jim Scrivener’s activities in Teaching English Grammar. The basis of this was creating a short story (about 5-8 lines). Student’s had to use articles correctly for new/known information. They then cut their story up line by line and gave this to another group to put in the correct order. The cubes helped with ideas and made the stories fun for other students to read. This also meant lots of emergent language. (more…)

What were the last 10 teaching books you used?

Last week my boss Martin Sketchley (eltexperiences) was sitting next to me compiling his list of recommended reading for the CELTA. It made me think about resource and reference books in general, and how I use them. I thought it would be an interesting self-development task to look at the last 10 ELT books I used, and explore what they tell me about my teaching. (more…)