Happy New Year!

With very best regards from me, FabTeacher - may your 2010 be all you want it to be!

Check out this BBC New Year´s greeting in no fewer than 32 various languages. Can you identify them all?!

Christmas Webquest

Ho, ho, ho! Yes, it´s almost Christmas and I know many of you will be looking for something a little different for your last class before Christmas.

I hope you enjoy this webquest for Upper Intermediate students I found recently- the students research Christmas traditions and write up their findings as a class magazine.



Christmas Webquest

Fun Vocabulary Activities

It´s always a real problem getting students to remember and then recall vocabulary, isn´t it? What is the trick? Well, your activities need to be memorable! Here are a couple of fun activities which work on clothes vocabulary and will appeal to your kinesthetic, visual and linguistic students.

1. Statues
Recap clothes vocabulary. Ask ss to stand up and move round the room. When you give a signal, they stand back to back with a partner. Then they try to remember what the other student is wearing.

2. You Have Changed
Divide ss into groups of 4- 6. Each group is to study the other groups. Ask them all to turn away and make some changes to their appearance, eg. exchanging pullovers, changing a watch from one wrist to another, removing rings, etc. They present themselves to the other group who has to point out as many changes as possible.

3. Spelling Game
Divide the class into teams. Each team takes it in turns to add a letter to a word and each letter must contribute to a word in English related (in this case) to clothing, BUT the team which completes the word loses and the opposing team is awarded a point.
Eg. Team A says H. Team B says A. Team A says T.. Therefore team A loses as they have completed the word HAT!

It´s that time again- testing and revision....

Well, as Christmas draws near, it´s also time for most of us to start preparing tests and then, horrors!, marking them! But just how can we get our students involved in the whole testing and revision process? Here are two techniques I find useful as they also help develop our students´ autonomy, making them reflect on their learning more deeply.

1. Question Challenge Based on Textbook
Each student prepares two or three questions based on the last three units or so in their coursebook. Put ss in pairs or small groups in the next lesson to pool their questions. Then they challenge another team to answer the questions. You can direct the quiz by giving categories such as countries, food, school, geography, etc. (Good for cross curricular content and CLIL).


2. Revision Bubbles
A good way of doing student – generated revision of structures and vocab. Draw a bubble on the board and ask for suggestions from students to fill the bubble, eg. words from the previous 3 units. In groups. Students make as many sentences or questions as possible using their words. 10 minutes. One point for each correct sentence. Or students can use the words to write a dialogue and act it out

Webquest of the Month!

Here is a lovely webquest about Ireland which fits in with any unit on the Emerald Isle..and makes it all much more fun! Enjoy!

http://sites.google.com/site/annejeanpark/home/blog/Ireland-DiscoveringModernCelticCulture-Process.mht?attredirects=0&d=1