Part of the Cool Sites series

Every Friday I am presenting free webinars thanks to American TESOL! We have an incredible time. Recently, we shared ideas for integrating drama in the classroom. Teachers do not have to be skilled in acting. Instead, the webinar was away to introduce teachers to different games that get students to tap into their creative juices and get them moving! As Ken Wilson said in a recent interview with me, “Animate your classes!”

Classroom activities that include drama skills include:

• role plays
• puppets
• pretend games
• mime
• pantomine
• total physical response
• dance
• music
• dress-up
• improvisation games
• puppetry
• storytelling
• digital storytelling

Find more activities by watching this webinar, Using Drama in the Classroom!

Drama Activities & Resources

Check out these resources to help you animate your classes!

Improv Games: Videos

• Game 1: Yes And (click to watch a video example)
• Instructions:
  • Put students into pairs
  • One student begins with a sentence and the other student says “Yes and” then adds more information.
  • Use a timer to get students speaking for 1 minute or longer.

• Game 2: Rumors (click to watch a video example)
• Instructions:
  • Put students into pairs
  • Student A makes up a rumor to tell student B.
  • Student B adds to the rumor then both students giggle.
  • Student B then makes up the rumor and student A adds to the rumor.
  • Use a timer to get students speaking for 1 minute or longer.

• Game 3: Pass the Prop (click to watch a video example)
• Instructions:
  • You will need an everyday object such as an eraser, a chair, a broom, or other object. You can choose to bring in as many as you want. We will use a broom as an example.
  • Place students in a circle.
  • Place 2 students in the center of the circle with the broom.
  • Student A decides what to pretend the broom is either than a broom. For example, student A may decide the broom is a spaceship.
  • Student A then demonstrates the broom is a spaceship through acting and using dialogue until student B figures this out.
  • Student B determines the broom is a spaceship and plays along matching the dialogue.
  • When a student in the circle imagines the object is something else that student taps student A or B and replaces that student in the skit.

• Game 4: Jibberish to English (click to watch a video example)
• Instructions:
  • You will need a bell or whistle.
  • Put students into pairs
  • Have the pairs make up a scene or give them one. They are choosing a scene they can easily talk about so they may want something simple like going shopping, playing a sport, etc. Or you could have the scene match your lesson topic.
  • Student A begins by speaking about the topic. Student B rings the bell every 10 seconds or so. When student B rings the bell, student A must speak in Jibberish (a made up language).
  • Use a timer to get students speaking for 1 minute or longer.

Resources for Using Drama With Young Learners

• Serious Drama With Young Learners by Ania Kozicka on Ken Wilson’s blog
• Teaching English Vocabulary to Young Learners via Drama (PDF)
  • research and activities listed
• Drama with Young ELLs
• Drama Techniques for Teaching English
• Storytelling and Drama by Carol Read
• Watching Young Learners at Work: From Practice to Principle by Marisa Constantinides
• ESL Children’s Drama Games
• Puppets in Primary
• Several Puppet Making Resources & Scripts
• Digital Storytelling- several links and resources

More Drama Resources

• My Drama Wiki with videos and more!
• Using Drama and Movement to Enhance English Language Learners’ Literacy Development
  • amazing background information (8+ pages) on using Drama with English language learners. You will get a solid understanding of the benefits and pedagogical basis for various activities
• 40 Drama Resources via Sean Banville
• Roleplay Tutorial
• Several Drama and Theater Resources via Cybraryman
• Animating Stories by Marisa Constantinides

Recommended Reading

• Drama and Improvisation by Ken Wilson
• The Drama and Theatre Category of Ken Wilson’s blog

Challenge:

Try one of these ways to animate your lessons!

If you enjoyed this post, you may want to subscribe for FREE to receive regular updates!

Interview 12 of Twittering for Education

The majority of classrooms have curricula based on coursebooks. Many teachers might feel that teaching from a coursebook kills creativity and makes learning boring especially when coupled with multiple choice tests. However, in many schools teachers are required to teach from a coursebook. A coursebook is just a tool. We can still teach fun lessons that get students applying their learning, but many of us just don’t know how. That is why I was extremely excited to speak with my special guest, Ken Wilson (@KenWilsonLondon), the author of Drama and Improvisation, which is filled with over 70 simple activities that help teachers animate their lessons. In the interview, Ken explains his background working with the English Teaching Theatre then shares some simple activities to help teachers animate their lessons. Ken also talks about the importance of integrating activities that help all students show their talents, creativity, and skills. I first met Ken on Twitter then attended his workshop at TESOL France. During the workshop, Ken had the audience of teachers be the students and become the teachers. His ideas were really helpful and the entire workshop was a lot of fun! He made gapfills become more like games and even animated the Table of Contents of coursebooks. I am super excited to participate in his upcoming workshop this weekend, 10 Things I Think I Know About Teaching.

Bio

Ken Wilson is a teacher trainer, an author of ELT materials and until 2002, an artistic director of the English Teaching Theatre. He trained to be an English teacher with John and Brita Haycraft at International House London and taught English in Seville before moving back to IH London, where he worked as a teacher and teacher trainer before going freelance. In the seventies, he wrote and recorded Mister Monday, the first-ever collection of ELT songs. Since then he’s written and recorded about 150 language teaching songs, many which you can read about and even download from his blog. He has worked as a performer, sketch-writer and eventually director with the English Teaching Theatre, a theatre company which used to tour the world performing stage-shows for learners of English. The company made more than 250 tours to 55 countries, in Europe, Latin America, Africa and the Far East. His most recent publications are Smart Choice, Just Right Advanced, Quick Smart English, Matura Masters, and Drama and Improvisation. Find him on Twitter, @KenWilsonLondon.

Previous Interviews

Check out the previous interviews Twittering for Education- Jo and Phil Hart, Twittering for Education- Eric and Melissa Sheninger, Twittering for Education- Will and Elle Deyamport, Connected Principals- George Couros, 1:1 Programs- Rich Kiker, Mobile Learning with Kids- Scott Newcomb, Effective Leadership: Interview with Patrick Larkin, Using Skype for ELT Lessons: Interview with Marisa Pavan, Teachers as Leaders and Continuous Learners: Interview with Dr. Doug Green, Blogging with Students: Interview with Greta Sandler, and What Does the Innovative School Look Like? Interview with Dr. Tom King.

Challenge:

Try one of the ideas suggested by Ken Wilson to animate your lessons!

If you enjoy this series, you may want to subscribe for FREE!

What are your thoughts?

Part of the series: The 30 Goals Challenge, Goal 13: Give Students Reign

I will start this post by thanking my students for having inspired me to write it, and I would like especially to thank Gisela for being so generous as to share pieces of her life with us every class. One of those was this photo, and a moving retelling of her mother’s 60th birthday.

This post was also inspired by Karenne’s Dogme challenge. The quote for this week is, “Dogme is about teaching materials light.”

I have to admit that on the day in which Gisela brought this picture to the classroom, I had entered it material heavy, as I had prepared a lesson based on an article from The Guardian newspaper. However, as soon as I entered, I noticed one of my students had come carrying a burden too. Of course, as you can imagine, everybody (including me) was more interested in her burden than in mine. So I let things flow in order to see what came out of it. She opened her rucksack and a magical element came out of it:

Not only was she going to impose her own agenda in my class, but she was also going to obligue me to plug it, when the whole TEFL blogosphere is all the rage for unplugged teaching! How cheeky of her! (jajajaj) No, seriously! At that moment I realised she had been well-trained. What an honour to have a student in my class who was becoming autonomous and getting in charge of her own learning. And what’s more, without having realised it. She said, unaware of my enthusiastic thoughts, “I’ve brought the pictures of my mother’s birthday. Remember I’ve told you about it?”. Yes! Of course I remember!

She started going through the pictures and telling us about what was going on there. She even showed us a video. Everybody was looking at the screen, asking questions, happy to finally put a face to Gisela’s daughters. While we were discussing the pictures, I wrote some things on the blackboard. We revised how to make questions, I introduced them to vocabulary to talk about people’s personality, and so on and so forth. Time flew and it was almost time for ending the class. My students realised they had learnt lots of things without having noticed.

Gisella told us that her mother loves painting and that’s why the party had been thematic, art had been everywhere! The guests before leaving the party had to paint a little part in a picture that had been started by her mother’s teacher. I loved the idea. Everybody had to paint a bit as a gift to her mother, no matter how good or bad at it they were. Here you can see the final product:

And what I loved the most about it was the metaphor… everybody needed to paint for the picture to be concluded. Does it ring a bell? The teacher had started the picture, but then, everybody followed their own path. I’m very happy because this resembles what happens in my classroom. My students are the ones that come material heavy to my classes. They are the ones that are painting the picture in whatever way they like. I’m just their assistant. I’m there for whatever they need, but they are the ones who give the orders. We can all paint, and all of us should paint!

This post was originally posted in Sabrina’s blog!

————————————————————-
Sabrina De Vita is from Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has been an English teacher for 6 years.  She has studied at the teacher training college, Joaquin V Gonzalez. She’s currently working at Saint Exupery primary and secondary school, http://www.saintexupery.com.ar/ where she teaches in company and delivers some EFL online classes. In addition, she teaches online ICT courses to school teachers in Spanish, http://www.universitatis.com/. Her blog is www.sabridv.wordpress.com and her class blog is www.saintexupery5.wordpress.com. You can find her on twitter: @sabridv. She loves being in touch with other passionate teachers and learning collaboratively.

Download your free copy of The 30 Goals Challenge: Join the Movement e-book!

Join the 30 Goals Facebook Group and find support for all the goals!!

Submit a guest post for The 30 Goals Challenge Series!

Part of the series: The 30 Goals Challenge, Goal 25: Plant a Seed

(picture from www.veezzle.com)

Marisa Pavan from Argentina shares this post about her journey with Goal 25: Plant a Seed and how she planted a seed with her students….

A couple of years ago inspired by the members of my Personal Learning Network (PLN) via Twitter (@Mtranslator) I decided to start using technological tools in my group classes. I teach English as a Second Language to 15-16-17-year-old teenagers who have intermediate and upper-intermediate levels. My thrust has been the relevance of helping students become independent, life-long learners. Although my students lack the necessary maturity to value the significance of becoming autonomous, I am convinced that I have planted a seed. I have received the approval and support from the director of the school of language where I work and parents’ compliments. I have noticed how motivated my students feel in class when we use, for example, videos of movies to practice past verbs like in http://moviesegmentstoassessgrammargoals.blogspot.com/2010/02/coraline-past-perfect-x-simple-past.html or when we play vocabulary games, such as http://www.smarttutor.com/home/lessons/Vocab_PrefixSuffix_L3_V1_T3a.swf. I have devised blogs and wikis in which I upload the links of the material we use in class so students can reuse the material at home, projects the students can develop at home and tasks for further practice.

As Shelly Terrell has expressed in her publication of the 30 Goals, it is not easy to keep the faith. However, I am a persevering person and I am not going to give in even though when I ask students if they have visited the blog/wiki to play language games I upload or to do a listening task, they reply negatively. When I show them those links in class, students express enthusiasm but it fades away quickly. I am sure that my students will need technological skills in their future careers and will give the importance to this opportunity in the future.

Like Shelly, I believe in passion and I feel passion for teaching English. However, I know that as a teacher of English I am not only helping my students develop language skills but also contributing a great deal to their growth as social beings. It is essential for them to learn how to be independent responsible members of society. For that reason, I need to make it clear for them that I am a guide, a facilitator, an assistant in their learning process but that they should assume responsibility for the goals they want to achieve. Besides, it is necessary for me to confer self-assurance to them so that they become strong to face their challenges.

What seeds (values) do you feel you have planted in your students?

————————————————————-
Marisa Pavan holds degrees in translation, interpretation and teaching from Instituto Superior Nº 28 “Olga Cossettini”, Rosario and has two decades of experience in teaching English as a Second Language. She has over 6 years experience working as a freelance English-Spanish/ Spanish-English translator. She is skilled in languages, translation, interpretation, training students to develop listening, speaking, writing and reading strategies, CAT tools and communication. You can also find Marisa on Twitter, @mtranslator.

Challenge:
Try Marisa’s challenge and plant a seed in your students whether it be through using or a methodology!

Download your free copy of The 30 Goals Challenge: Join the Movement e-book!

Don’t forget to leave a comment that you accomplished this goal using the hashtag #30Goals!

Submit a guest post for The 30 Goals Challenge Series!

Part of the Cool Sites series

As an English language teacher I love opportunities to teach culturally responsive lessons (CRT), a type of curriculum that celebrates and responds to various cultural issues through student-centered instruction. In a previous post, Do Our Students Realize They Live in the World, I explain why all students need to develop skills in collaborating with others worldwide. These skills are rarely thought in schools. How many teachers do you know in your school that participate in international projects?

Nelson Mandela is an incredibly wise man who realized that one way to unify people in a nation is through sports! The World Cup is the sporting event that unites nations and brings the world together to rejoice, cheer, kick, scream, rant and now blow our vuvuzelas! My adult English language learners are having rich discussions about the World Cup and my kindergartners are also enjoying learning about sports! However, you can use the World Cup to teach any subject, such as math, history, and statistics.

Lesson Ideas

Below are the resources I have been using with my adult English language learners (pre-intermediate level) and hope they provide you with ideas:

Sean Banville’s Listening Exercises & Quizzes

To prepare for the class, I suggested my students complete these activities in our wiki:

1. Please read this article about Germany in the World Cup
2. Then listen to the MP3 of the article without reading the article
3. Now take these quizzes to check your understanding- Quiz 1 and Quiz 2

Sue Lyon’s Video & Listening Quiz On Vuvuzelas

• In class, we sparked thoughtful discussion by watching a video on the ESOLCourses blog about banning Vuvuzelas.
• As a class we created a concept map of what we remembered from the video about Vuvuzuelas and what we had each observed.
• Then we took this video quiz.
• We then separated into two groups to debate the issue if Vuvuzelas should be banned! We had an incredible discussion with the majority of the class voting on Sue’s poll to not ban them. Many of the students came up with great arguments, such as Vuvuzelas being a tradition, a symbol of hope, preventing coaches from communicating with players, and more!

Can I Play This at Home? The World Cup Online Game

• In class, students also created questions for this fun game, Can I Play This at Home.
• This game has the students choose a team, then answer questions correctly to make the footballers make a play.
• Students are submitting their questions on the website then having their classmates play the game at home.
• There are also preset questions in several categories, such as math, spelling, and grammar.

Here are more World Cup resources and ideas:

• Use these free creative common photos from Pic App of players, crazy fans, and more to have students create dialogues using Super Lame Word Balloon generator.
• Quizlet: Want to Sound Like a World Cup Expert? created by Ana d’Almeida!
• Pearls of Wisdom from Soccer Greats by Ken Wilson- Students will have a fun time seeing famous players and discussing the quotes they say. Students then find their quotes from their own favorite players and a great photo to accompany the quote!
• More World Cup Lesson Ideas by Eva Büyüksimkeşyan!
• The Best Sites For Learning About The World Cup by Larry Ferlazzo
• The World Cup 2010 – Quizzes & Activities by ESOLCourses
• World Cup Video Lessons by ESOLCourses blog
• Over 50 World Cup Lessons, Resources, & Ideasby Sean Banville

If you enjoyed this post, you may want to subscribe for FREE to receive regular updates!

I would like to thank the following bloggers for mentioning Teacher Reboot Camp in their posts of 10 blogs you should look at. Please, look at their blogs and if they are in this list, It’s Worth Voting for These Blogs, then consider voting for them. I read these blogs on a regular basis and find so many incredible gems in them. I will describe these briefly, then go into detail about the ones I nominate. Unfortunately the rules say I can’t include these in my top 10.

• The PLN Staff- One of my favorite blogs that is always filled with incredible wit and a lot of charm.
• A Journey in TEFL- Eva describes her use of web 2.0 tools with her students. Love her reflection!
• Sean Banville’s blog- I admire how Sean describes incredible ways to use technology effectively with students.
• The Island Weekly- Anne shares videos, music, and posts that are thought-provoking. She also covers culture and other issues.
• Sheetal Makhan- Some of these posts have literally had me in tears. She shares world issues many are too afraid to blog about.
• Doing Some Thinking- Henrick makes educators reflect on how students learn best. I love the pedagogy and critical view of teaching practices.
• Early EFL- Leahn shares incredible tips and resources for teaching young learners.  This is a new gem I recently subscribed to.
• The VE Blog by Miguel Mendoza- Provides great insight into various technologies for professional development and classroom use.
• Bright Ideas Blog- I find some truly amazing videos and resources on this blog which is why I tweet it so much!

If you are tagged, follow these rules:

1) Insert the picture above into your blog with a link back to the blog that nominated you
2) List 10 blogs you feel others should read
3) Tell the bloggers you have nominated that you have tagged them

Here are my 10 (in no order) recommendations in 2 categories, including the reasons why you should visit their blogs and my favorite posts.

English Language Teaching Blogs

• Linguistic Consultancy by Marisa Pavan- This is a relatively new blog but is filled with great tidbits of how to use technology effectively. What I really enjoy is Marisa’s honest reflection on the tools she uses and how it impacts her learners.
  • Check out What Do Students Learn When They Learn a Second Language?
• Education Technology in ELT by Vicky Saumell- She shares so many incredible technology resources and blogs how to integrate them effectively with students.
  • Check out Visual literacy: Flickr-fed web 2.0 tools
• TeflTecher by Ian James- I love the lesson plans that go along with some the most innovative uses of technology I have seen. They are the kind you can’t wait to try in your classroom.
  • Check out Talking Photos : Fotobabble and Wallwisher
• ELT Ideas by Marian Steiner- Reading Marian’s posts is like reading beautiful prose. He explains teaching in a very poetic way that is quite beautiful.
  • Check out What Twitter Feels Like
• Esra’s Englishous Blog by Esra Girgin Akiskali- Esra shares great tips for teaching English to young language learners. She also reflects on various instructional methods.
  • Check out A-Z EXPERIENCE LIST OF A TEACHER: TEACHING VERY YOUNG LEARNERS
• Ozge Karaoglu’s Blog- You won’t the amount of technology resources she shares anywhere, which is why she is known as the Edtech queen.
  • Check out 100 Digital Storytelling Tools for Your Digital Selves + Natives (Part 1)
• Burcu Akyol’s Blog- I have learned so much about professional development in ELT in this incredible blog.
  • Check out the entire Spread Your Knowledge Series
• Nik’s Quick Shout! Blog by Nik Peachey- The most difficult part was trying to decide which Nik Peachey blog I would list. All are incredible and deserving of numerous awards for his incredible contribution to getting language teachers to use technology effectively with their students.
  • Check out Future of Educational Technology 1: The Digital Divide
• Digital Play Blog by Kyle Mawer and Graham Stanley- I love the free online games shared and explored in this blog! You’ll be hooked as well.
  • Check out Top Ten interesting ipod/iphone apps for English language learning
• Jeremy Harmer’s Blog- This one has been named many times by others and for a reason, it is simply a must read for all educators. Jeremy makes educators reflect on their presentation styles and actions on social media. Yes, Jeremy has been mostly read by the entire ELT world but really he should be read by all educators.
  • Check out Hot Metal, Apps, Dogme in the World of Avatar

Education Blogs

• The Nerdy Teacher by Nick Provanzano- Nick writes with such pizazz and energy. Daily it seems he knocks out another thought-provoking post. He challenges educators to rethink the way students learn.
  • Check out the entire 10 Weeks and No Tests series. Scroll to the bottom and read up!
• ICT in Education by Terry Freedman- Daily Terry’s posts make me reflect on the way I teach with technology. There is no sugar coating in this blog, but challenges to become a better educator and the experience to back this up.
  • Check out Shock tactics: 7 ideas for teaching with technology
• Technology Tidbits: Thoughts From a Cyberhero by David Kapuler- Daily David shares the best free tools and resources available for educators. He includes brilliant examples!
  • Check out 50 Sites in 60 Minutes
• Pair-of-Dimes For Your Thoughts by David Truss- His posts continuously make me reflect on my pedagogy and instructional practice.
  • Check out A Brave New World-Wide-Web! (The video version)
• Sue Waters Blog- I learned how to blog through Sue’s wisdom! Without her help and encouragement this blog would not be where it is.
  • Check out Running A First Time Reader Audit On Your Blog
• Teaching With Soul Blog by Lisa Dabbs- Lisa Dabbs is an administrator and leader who writes with continuous passion.
  • Check out Holding on to Hope…(not losing it)
• Education on the Plate by Deven Black- This blog amazes me with the amount of passionate posts. It’s thought-provoking and inspiring like its author.
  • Check out I Screw Up & Come Out Ahead
• You Blog by Monika Hardy- Monika is extremely passionate about education. She posts often and full of passion. Her blog aims to revolutionize and improve education and her students are doing this!
  • Check out In the craziness of innovation, how does public school assess it
• Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age by Maryna Badenhorst- I love reading the creative way she implements technology in her classes. It is unique and makes you want to just dive in!
  • Check out Claymation/Stop Motion
• So You Want to Teach- Joel has a real voice that speaks with passion and honesty about the teaching profession. He inspires growth and has been doing this for 3 years!
  • Check out 9 Reasons To Quit Teaching (And 10 Reasons To Stick)

Narrowing down to these took some time, because I read several blogs and love them all. Please check the blog roll for more favorites or follow my tweets @shellterrell.

Challenge:

Take time the rest of the week to read these blogs and see which ones to add to your daily read! If you’re tagged in this post, please spread the love.

If you enjoyed this post, you may want to subscribe for FREE to receive regular updates!

I live in Germany. This week I was going to fly to NYC to the #140 Conference and see many members of my Personal/Passionate Learning Network (PLN). However, like many people I was grounded by the volcanic eruption in Iceland. My inconvenience is nowhere near the suffering people are facing with this natural disaster. However, I am not letting this completely stop me from attending this conference.

That is why we have the Internet and the WWW!

This week I will be attending two conferences virtually and encourage you to do the same.

How does this work?

NYC #140 Conference

Starting at 8:45 am EDT (NYC time) on Tuesday, April 20th, you can begin watching the live stream of the speakers on UStream! Also, follow the hashtag #140conf to get the latest scoop. You can watch celebrities like MC Hammer, Ivanka Trump, and Ann Curry speak. However, what you really don’t want to miss are the education speakers. We have many in our PLN representing us. Below is a schedule of the education speakers:

** Note: All times are EDT (NYC) time
** I will be blogging about the two days on the Parentella blog in case you miss anything!

Tuesday
9:10am Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) – ” I teach journalism at NYU, direct the Studio 20 program there, critique the press and try to grok new media.” The Self-Informing Public

10:05am Chris Lehmann (@chrislehmann) – Principal of the Science Leadership Academy
Social Media + Education

3:10pm Real Time Communication & Education panel
Aparna Vashisht (@Parentella) – Founder, Parentella (moderator)
Kevin Jarrett (@kjarrett) – K-4 Technology Teacher
Lisa Nielsen (@InnovativeEdu) – Educational Technologist – NYC Dept of Ed
Mary Beth Hertz (@mbteach) – K-6 Computer Teacher and Technology Teacher Leader in Philadelphia

Wednesday
8:30am The twitter Kids of Tanzania panel
AJ Leon (@ajleon) – co-creator, #twitterkids
Melissa Leon (@melissaleon) – Creator of #twitterkids
StaceyMonk (@StaceyMonk) – Founder of Epic Chang, co-creator of the #TwitterKids

10:45am Mo Krochmal (@Krochmal) – Professor, Hofstra Univesity, The State of Now in Journalism Higher Education: Students Look to The Future

3:50pm Twitter and Animal Farm (and some 8th graders), George Haines (@oline73) – Technology Teacher, Sts. Philip and James School

4:05pm Real-time web and Education #2
Eric Sheninger (@NMHS_Principal) – Principal of New Milford HS (NJ)
Kyle B. Pace (@kylepace) – Teaching K-12 teachers about technology infusion
Steven W. Anderson (@web20classroom) – Technology Educator, Blogger, Co-Creator of #edchat
Tom Whitby (@tomwhitby) – Professor of English in Secondary Education

Virtual Round Table Conference

Starting at 9am GMT/ 5amEDT on Thursday, April 22nd, you can participate in several workshops, panels, and unconferences! The theme of the conference is Language Learning and Technology and we are featuring many of the best in the field live! We have over 50 presenters on language learning with technology. Did I mention this 2 day event (April 22nd-23rd) is free and we are giving away prizes! You can download the conference program here! Also, we will be featuring 2 Pecha Kucha nites!

Challenge:

Attend one of these conferences in order to celebrate Earth Day!

';

One of my favorite TV moments is when Norm of the series Cheers walks into a bar and everyone shouts, “Norm” as if they were welcoming him home. Part of the Cheer’s theme song, Where Everybody Knows Your Name by Gary Portnoy, goes:

Making your way in the world today
Takes everything you’ve got
Taking a break from all your worries
Sure would help a lot
Wouldn’t you like to get away

Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name
And they’re always glad you came
You want to be where you can see
Our troubles are all the same

And this is what Twitter is for me, a place where my Personal/Passionate Learning Network (PLN) knows my name, they’re glad I came and we find out all our educational problems are pretty much the same.

IATEFL Conference

This past week, I attended the IATEFL (International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language) conference in the UK. Maybe you saw the hashtag on Twitter and followed along. Our tweet-ups (meet-ups with people who are on the social network Twitter) were regularly at Christie’s Pub and many of us were Norm from Cheers as our PLN shouted our names, embraced us, and we chatted and joked like old friends. Many of us had only meet for the first time, yet it always feels like we’ve been friends for a long time.

IATEFL….

was the largest Tweet-up for me so far and I got to spend as long as 9 days with some of my Twitter friends.

As educators…

we face enough troubles. Our governments continue to not support us by making policies that cut our tenures, salaries, retirement, benefits, and so forth. Education policy around the world is usually not run by educators who spent years in the classroom with students. High stakes testing punishes teachers if they don’t get the right scores. Now entire staffs of teachers are being fired and our leadership is supporting these measures.

When someone asks why a Personal/ Passionate Learning Network (PLN)? Why Twitter?

My response is, “Why not?”

Why not have a support system that reminds you why you decided to teach in the first place, helps you self-reflect, collaborates with you, and at the end of the day is glad you are there? When our government education policy and school systems fail us that is when our PLN helps us.

IATEFL Highlights….

Thank you PLN for making this an incredible conference with your incredible presentations, support, love, and friendship! I’m always glad you came….

From my IATEFL Flickr Stream

Watch Jan Blake tell stories!

harrogateonline on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Hear Jeremy Harmer‘s poetry with the beautifully haunting melody of Steve Bingham!

IATEFL Links

In case you missed the conference, here are related video links & resources:

• Ozge’s and my wiki for our presentation- Technology 4 Kids
• My IATEFL Interview
• IATEFL Interviews
• IATEFL Video Sessions
• IATEFL Pecha Kucha Night
• IATEFL Reporter Accounts of Various Sessions

Posts about IATEFL

Please read the following in depth posts about the conference:

• Let us Now Praise Famous Women by Nik Peachey
• Tweet-ups and tweet-watchers – how IATEFL Harrogate changed ELT conferences for ever… by Ken Wilson
• Sophie at IATEFL Harrogate by Tamas Lorincz
• IATEFL Pwned by Gavin Dudeney
• Waiting For the Great Tweet Forwards by Mark Andrews

Which conference touched you? Did Twitter or your PLN play a part of the experience?

Part of the Cool Sites series

An Xtranormal Kind of Introduction

Teaching phrasal verbs is my favourite activity of all!  Why is this so?  Well, in my experience, I have found that students generally don’t like studying them because they find them “too difficult, miss!”  I set out from elementary level to train my students not to be afraid of them, but to look forward to showing off their newly acquired knowledge of them. To stand out from the crowd. To use phrasals in a natural way.  In the correct context.  How do I do this?  I will explain.

I encourage them to chill out during the lessons if I see they look a bit stressed out.  I ask them to come up with ways of using new phrasals both in class and outside of class.  I encourage them to ask each other this question as a natural starter “Have you come across this word?  Do you know what it means?”,  if for example, they don’t know the meaning of a word.  Instead of asking me all the time, students are encouraged to ask each other first, always using this phrasal verb until it becomes instinctive for them and of course, second nature.  On a Monday morning my first question is inevitably “What did you get up to over the weekend?”  Students then ask each other in pairs and dialogue ensues following this prompt.  Another question would be “Did you get through the weekend homework?” I make sure that these questions are all in context and provide opportunities for practice.

Slideshare

Below is an example of a Powerpoint presentation converted to Slideshare. I have created this in order to maximise opportunities for student discussion. This would either be used as an introduction to this set of verbs, or as a review and recycling activity.  I have introduced 18 phrasal verbs with some follow-up activities at the end. I have experimented with whole pictures as background for added interest.

Bookr

Bookr by Pim Pam Pum is a nice tool for exploiting images to enhance your  phrasal verbs lessons.  You can easily create a “book” in minutes by selecting pictures, according to the theme you want to explore, and then simply dragging them into the pages of the book. You can write a short sentence on each page.  The example below is one I created especially for this post to demonstrate how it can be used.

Dvolver

This is a great site for dialogue exploitation. The animations are easy to create with a set group of characters. There is a choice of background music which adds to the special effects. There is no sound for the characters.

Go!Animate

This is another cool site for creating animations. Go!Animate can be used by students to recycle phrasal verbs learned or indeed, any item of vocabulary that needs to be reviewed.

GoAnimate.com: Getting Down to Phrasals by Janet Bianchini

Create your own at GoAnimate.com.

The ZimmerTwins

I registered on the ZimmerTwins site for the purpose of researching for this post.  I was surprised at how intuitive and easy it was to create my very first animation.  I have a feeling that students will love this tool!

Have a look at Phrasals in the Jungle!

ToonDo

I love ToonDo because it’s easy to create cartoons for any topic you like.  Students enjoy creating small dialogues or comic strips.  Here’s one I created which has a phrasal verbs theme.  The cartoons can be easily embedded into your class / student blogs or posted via email.

Create your own Toon!

PhotoPeach

The last on my list of favourite e-tools to make teaching and learning phrasal verbs fun is PhotoPeach.  I was able to create a simple quiz using my own photos. You have to select a synonym  out of the 3 options given for the verb in the picture.  I hope you enjoy it!

Test your Phrasals! on PhotoPeach

Challenge

I hope I have inspired you to use some of these cool sites with your students. You can adapt them to suit whatever theme you are working with. Why don’t you try one of these out for your next class? I am sure your students would enjoy creating short animations and dialogues or short books or indeed quizzes to test each other on new vocabulary or structures they have learned with you.

Have you had experience with any of these tools? If so, I would love to hear from you to learn how you and your class got on with them!

—————————————————-

I would like to thank Shelly for giving me this wonderful opportunity to write for her Cool Sites series. It’s a great honour for me to be here.

Janet Bianchini (@janetbianchini) has been an EFL teacher for over three decades.  She still loves teaching and she is enjoying the challenge of learning more about new technologies and how to integrate them into her lessons. She writes a blog called Janet’s Abruzzo Edublog.  When she is not writing, studying or teaching, she loves to spend time in her rather wild garden with her menagerie in tow.

Part of the Cool Sites series

Perhaps your students are like mine and are not quite ready to make the leap to begin blogging. I work with very young language learners and adult language learners. Many of my adult learners will not put the effort into blogging but that doesn’t mean they will not try learning from a blog. I have found several valuable blogs for my students to learn English. Daily they can receive a lesson through e-mail or through RSS readers. Last semester I decided to teach my students how to learn with blogs.

This was how the first lesson plan went:

• We were learning about travel in America, therefore I had my students read Shonah Wraith’s post, Big, Bigger, BIGGEST.
• I asked students to leave comments on Shonah’s post.
• Shonah did a great job of responding to my student’s questions and comments. Scroll down to the end of the post to see the fantastic results!
• You can do the same lesson in any subject by telling a blogger ahead of time that your students will visit the blog and asking the blogger to answer the students’ questions.

2nd Phase: Video Tutorials

In the first phase, my students became familiar with the process and realized the amount of learning they could receive through interacting with blogs. Therefore, my next goal was to get my students to subscribe to the blogs. In order to teach them how to do this I made a video tutorial on how to subscribe to blogs with e-mail and get a lesson in their inbox regularly.

I shared this video so that students could also subscribe by Really Simple Syndication (RSS).

List of Blogs

I also shared a list of blogs the students could subscribe to. I told my students to explore the various blogs and subscribe to the ones that best appealed to their learning styles and interests. Each of the blogs had different aspects. Some had audio, others had video, and some had written words. I put these links in my wiki for my adult students to explore. Below are the English lesson blogs I suggested sorted by e-mail subscriptions and RSS subscriptions:

Blogs with e-mail/RSS subscriptions:

• Daily English Activities
• The English Blog
• Perfect English Grammar
• Helping You Learn English
• Business English Pod
• Business Spotlight
• A Clil to Climb
• The English Web
• Dalango
• ESL Video

Blogs with RSS subscriptions only:

• Miss Shonah’s Blog
• The Island Weekly
• Ego 4 U
• Breaking News English
• Improving English Language Skills
• Free English Lessons

Challenge:

Have your students learn English by interacting on blogs. Gather a list of blogs in your subject area for students to explore.

You may want to subscribe for FREE to receive regular updates!

What are your favorite blogs in your subject area (math, history, science, English, etc.)? You can have your students even interact on their own blogs?

Do you want to add more blogs to my student list?