Your notebooks? No, don't open your notebooks. Open your messenger accounts

Practice, practice and practice on paper is time consuming for students to copy from the board and, honestly, quite boring !

Boring activities, experience tells, are sometimes necessary in the English classroom. However just a simple idea may make the difference.

A Synchronous online activity can be developed and the "practice atmosphere" is likely to change for the better. Using the messenger to replace paper and pen is something new for students and typing the same sentences they might have to copy on their notebooks in a boring way turns into a challenge that implies fun for them.

You type "Sheila is in London", expecting that they type back "She's in London". You type "Tony and Joseph are at school", expecting students to type back "They're at school", etc.

You also have the chance to type OK / right/ wrong (provide instant feedback) so as to give students the chance to correct themselves if they type sth wrongly.

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More online practice that sometimes is not so appealing when done on paper:

Countries and Nationalities
(click on the phrase "Play flash full screen" on apening)

Comments

Video to practise the Present Simple with kids

Some of the bad aspects of teaching Grammar is when you feel your students find the practice activities really boring. I always say that sometimes students have to put up with boring grammar exercises. But they also have the right to see something different (and not so unattrative) from time to time. You can create a funny video to get them to do what you want them to practise: One thing I learnt while exploring the web is that you have to be on the alert all the time-you can discover extremely varied sites /tools / resources that will trigger further ideas. This happened to me when I came across this site and I tried it . Then you can always use sites like Classtools.net to create some activities. ( Process shots ) I once used the same video to get students to practise a harder exercise

English Assisted by Computers. I mean it.

Great debates on the use of Technology have been on lately and they food for thought . The reading of those posts found me in front of my screen this morning, almost not remembering that I had to set up an activity for my pre intermediate teens who are dealing with the past simple forms these days. Here's how I exploited the computer / internet aids that I has at hand: I needed a song to deal with the PAST, so I asked "Google" for a famous song to practice the PAST TENSE (I didn't want to use the classic "Imagine" by J. Lennon) so there I was, asking for another classic...the feedback was immediate: "Summer nights" (from the musical Grease). Yes ! Lovely -I thought. So I looked for a clip on YouTube and the lyrics . The idea of a very long clip didn't sound appealing, so I used Chop Tube , a magic online tool to cut long YouTube vids short . And ...voilá ... this is the extract I decided to exploit with my students . I cut and pasted part of

MODELO PLAN GENERAL DE ESTUDIO PARA NIÑOS NIVEL INICIAL

En English Studio se ofrecen diferentes planes de estudio para potenciales alumnos, todos basados en los intereses y expectativas de cada uno. La imagen de abajo es solamente un modelo de planificación de una propuesta destinada a un niño de ocho / nueve años, con un segundo o tercer grado de escuela común finalizado. Con un ritmo normal de aprendizaje, en tres ciclos distribuidos a lo largo de seis, siete u ocho años de estudio, un alumno que inicia el idioma inglés con ocho años de edad podrá ser capaz de alcanzar un nivel B2 del idioma. Los siguientes 3 documentos de texto explican los niveles generales de inglés de acuerdo al marco europeo de lenguas, el cual es un standard internacional usuado anivel MUNDIAL. English Studio se ajusta al mismo en el diseño de todos sus cursos desde el año 2000 .

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