February Gems!

☆GEM ALERT☆

Anyone teaching business/in-company English?  TED The Way We Work is an original video series where leaders and thinkers offer practical wisdom and insight into how we can adapt and thrive amid changing workplace conventions.

Have you discovered anything worth sharing recently? 

Could you please tell me if ... (indirect questions with a twist)

Good afternoon Everyone! 

I've already told you how much I love using games in teaching. I also mentioned my fascination with Black Stories , a spooky card game with mysterious riddles. In this short post I'd like to share with you how I exploit this game to practice asking indirect questions with my teenage and adult students. This game is appropriate for both lower and higher levels (A2-B2). 

After explaining the difference between direct and indirect questions ( feel free to use this worksheet  ), write the below riddle up on your board:

Thank You

A woman goes into a pub and orders a glass of water. The man behind the bar grabs a rifle and aims it right at the woman. She thanks him and leaves. 

Clarify any vocabulary items your students might not know. Their task is to ask you yes/no indirect qestions to solve the mystery. Some example questions might include:

1. May I know if the man and woman know each other?

2. I was wondering whether the man is crazy.

3. Could you please tell me if she was thirsty? 

You should limit your answers to yes and no only, without giving your students any clues (unless, of course, they get stuck). The solution to the story:

The woman had hiccups and wanted to get rid of them with the water. The man behind the bar understood straight away and wanted to help her by giving her a real scare. It worked!

*For those of you who don't know it yet, it's believed that getting a fright might stop hiccups. 

You can find more black stories here. 

These cards are my students' favourite game and I can definitely say it's one of my best purchases :) 

Are there any board/card games you really like using in the classroom? How do you exploit them?

New Year, New Resolutions!

After a tough start to 2019, I'm finally back on track! It's nice to come back to see so many new followers...Welcome!

 One of my New Year's resolutions is to work harder on my professional development...joining a webminar or two sounds like a good start!

These webminars have attracted my attention and I'll be registering soon.Hope to see you there too!

How to help learners engage with vocabulary both during lessons and independently.

Talking to Teenagers in the English Language Classroom.


What do you do to keep up with the news in ELT? Feel free to share your tricks to become a better teacher :)

November Gems!

Can't believe it's December! Time flies... November was full of discoveries which I'd like to share with you in this short post. Here are some gems you might find useful:

Free Webminars on ELT- Macmillan English

Free Resources for Business English Teachers and Students

Graded Reading- LearnEnglish Teens British Council

Stories- LearnEnglish British Council

Collaborative Essay Brainstroming Strategies by The Daring English Teacher

12 Fun Speaking Games for Language Learners by Edutopia

Little Fox- Animated Stories for Young English Learners

Are there any websites/activities you'd like to share? 

What would happen if every human suddenly disappeared?

In this post I'd like to share a lesson I prepared for my upper-intermediate/advanced, adult students. I'm sure it could also work well with older teens and young adults. The lesson aims at revising the second conditional, practising listening, reading and speaking skills, as well as introducing some vocabulary.  


I. Divide your students into four groups and give each group one of  these photos  (or  photo 1, photo 2, photo 3, photo 4  ). Each group needs to describe their photo to their classmates in as much detail as possible.
Then ask everyone what the photos have got in common (they show a world without people)

II. Ask each group to discuss the following question: What would happen if every human suddenly disappeared? Let students brainstorm a few ideas in their small groups before sharing them with everybody. (Remember to encourage everyone to speak and use the second conditional.You can write their ideas up on a whiteboard).

III. Play this TED talk and ask your students to compare their previously discussed ideas to the ones from the video. Ask them to remember/note what the speaker says about the world without people. After watching the video spend some time on discussing it.

IV. Hand out this  worksheet   and ask students to do exercise I. Check their answers and talk about anything they found surprising.

V. Move on to exercises II and III to work on vocabulary. I told my students to do the exercises on their own first and then discuss their answers with their partners but you can choose another interaction pattern. Check their understanding of the words by asking various concept questions and asking them to use the words in a context. 

VI. Question IV might be answered in small groups first and then turned into a whole class discussion. Your students can later use the ideas to write a short essay on this topic (perfect homework ;) ).

You can play this  taboo game  in your next lesson to revise the vocabulary and have some fun :)

Hope you and your students will enjoy my lesson!

Teaching English to Young Learners- Useful links

A fellow teacher who's just at the beginning of her teaching career has asked me for some resources for her younger learners. I've compiled this list of useful websites which I'm also sharing here with you.

                                                 

 ⇩  ⇩  ⇩  ⇩  ⇩  ⇩  ⇩  ⇩  ⇩  ⇩  ⇩  ⇩  ⇩  ⇩  ⇩  ⇩  ⇩  ⇩  ⇩  ⇩  ⇩  ⇩  ⇩  ⇩

British Council- Learn English Kids a must for every English teacher working with children;

ISL Collective   plenty of downloadable worksheets for students of all levels and ages;

Busy Teacher    a classic with teaching material for students of all ages and levels;

One-Stop-English  plenty of downloadable worksheets for students of all levels and ages;

Super Simple Learning   younger learners (songs and worksheets);

Teachit Languages various resources;

Twinkl teaching resources for teachers of various subjects (including ESL);

TES educational materials;

Yummy interactive resources for young learners (Polish and English version available);

ESL Kids stuff - to use this website you need to pay and become a member but there are also some free downloadable worksheets;

I child might be quite useful- I used it with my kindergarten kids but there are some materials for older kids too;

MES-English flashcards, crosswords, bingo cards, etc;

Little Fox animated stories for English learners- really good! includes songs and games;

Book Box another webiste with animated stories for children;

Fluentu some ESL activities for children.

Are there any other sites you would include in this list? What advice would you give an EFL teacher who is just starting their teaching career?

Business Phrasal Verbs Taboo Game

Sunday afternoons usually mean one thing for teachers: lesson planning ;) It's the end of a long weekend for many of us here in Europe so I'm sure you want to go back to work with something energising for your students...something that will wake them up after four days off. I bet a game will do the trick :)

In this post I'm sharing a Taboo Game which I've created for my adult students to revise some business phrasal verbs we'd been learning before the break (look forward to, go over, put forward, hand out, lay off, get on to, get out, get down to something, get away with (something), come up with, pull out of (something), knock off, stand out, slack off, go under, fall through, go down a storm, run ouf of).

I love playing taboo with my students: it gets them to speak and it's entertaining for adults and teens alike. Also, it teaches how to describe terms- a skill I find essential in working towards being communicative in a foreign language. Taboo, like any other game, might be played to revise vocabulary after finishing a unit of a textbook or it could be a great time filler at the end of a lesson. It's also a good way of waking your students up if they're a bit sleepy.

Taboo cards are easy to make and can serve you for a long time so you can reuse them (if you laminate them, you can have them forever...and who doesn't like laminating?!?!?!). 

If you've never played taboo and aren't sure how to play it, click here to familiarise yourself with the rules and read some useful tips. 

Enjoy :) 

🎃 Halloween 2018 🎃

Do you teach your students about Halloween? What are your favourite activities? While looking for some spooky ideas for my students I came across these three Halloween activities:

Ricardo Barro's Halloween Conversation Lesson for Adults
Beatriz Solino's Halloween Lesson for Pre-intermediate Students
Beatriz Solino's Halloween Lesson for Advanced Learners

Apart from great Halloween ideas, Beatriz and Ricardo present other interesting lesson activities so don't forget to explore their blogs :)

If you're looking for more Halloween ideas check out the post I wrote last year in which I described my own Halloween activity for teenage students and shared plenty of links with other lesson plans :) 

Happy Halloween!

🍁🎃🍁🎃🍁

Present Simple and Present Continuous Board Game

Aloha! 

Hope you're reading this post from a nice and sunny place sipping on something delicious :) It sure is sunny here but I'm hiding from the heat in a cosy cafe. Unfortunately, my internet connection hasn't been very stable since I changed flats over a month ago which made my lesson planning a bit tricky...but not being able to connect to the internet forces me to review and reuse my old materials which I have forgotten about. Looking for a way of practising the present simple and continuous tenses I came across a board game I created some time ago to practice these structures. I know how you guys love board games so I've decided to share this one with you :) Just click  here to download and/or print the game and you're ready to play! It's suitable for A2-B2 teenage and adult students who need to revise how to use the two present tenses. 

Hope you and your students like it and feel free to comment if you have any suggestions :) 

Humans of London: Rebecca's Story

After a long break (work, work, work), I'm back to share another activity that I created for my pre-intermediate/intermediate students to practice the past simple and the past continuous tenses.  The activity worked really well with my adult students but I'm sure your teens will enjoy it too.

Since my lesson inspired by Humans of New York has been quite popular (if you haven't checked it out yet, click here ), I decided to prepare something similar, but this time I looked for inspiration on Humans of London . 

To warm everybody up, ask your students if they know what Humans of New York/London/Amsterdam are. Have a quick discussion about the photoblogs and ask if there is any story your students would like to share if they were approached by a journalist working for any of these blogs. 

Tell your students they are going to read a story told by Rebecca- a middle-aged woman from London. Show them these two photos of Rebecca  and ask them to describe her appearance and think of some personality traits she might have (always elicit why). 

Now on the whiteboard write down these verbs: have, work, can, grow, cry, divorce, break up, run, lose, go, meet. Tell your students that all these verbs appear in Rebecca's story. Divide your students in pairs/small groups and ask them to write a story about Rebecca using the above verbs in the past simple and the past continuous forms.You might need to go over the forms with your students beforehand if their level is weaker. Give them enough time to complete the task and compare the stories they came up with. Correct where necessary. 

Then, give each student a copy of Rebecca's story which they have to complete with the right form of the verbs. Depending on their level, you might need to pre-teach some vocabulary. Give them enough time to do the task and check it together. Compare the real story to theirs and ask them what they think of it. 

Hope the lesson works for you as well as it did for me :) 

Speaking Board Game

Here is another board game to encourage your students to talk about a variety of topics. It can be used as a time filler or practice for speaking exams. I'm going to play it with a new group of students in order to get to know them and assess their spoken English level. I particularly like to ask my new students about their favourite and least favourite teachers (questions 6 and 8) to find out their preferences and adapt my teaching methods accordingly. You can download the game  here. 

If you're about to start teaching a new group of students and are looking for some fun activities to break the ice with them, you can check out my other post in which I shared my favourite icebreakers → your first impression is your last impression

You might want to start the course by involving your students in a discussion why they are learning English, and getting them to brainstorm benefits of learning a new language. Knowing my students' reasons for learning English plays plays a crucial role in the way I shape the course, plan my lessons, and choose materials.  This lesson plan , based on one of the most touching videos I've ever watched, will definitely help your students talk about the topic

Happy Teaching 😸