Sabrina’s Weblog

It’s been a long time since my last post. I’m sorry but I’ve been extremely busy. Well, in fact,  I’m still busy but I’ve found a great resource online that I would like to share with you. If you are a fan of web 2.0 (just like me), and I’m sure you are. If you are always on the lookout for great new webpages, blogs, and so on and so forth. You will cherish In Suggest as much as I do.

In Suggest is an online tool that helps you find new websites based on your personal taste. You will just have to enter the addresses of your favourite websites, and you will instantly get recommendations for new ones. It is also possible to do the same with images from flickr and also with… your bookmarks in delicious (remember that I’m sabridv in delicious, if you would like to be part of my network)!!! It’s amazing. I’ve already tried it out and found lots of interesting sites related to esl, efl and tefl.

EXTRA BONUS: To make up for all the time I’ve been away from this blog, I will share with you another resource I’ve found using In Suggest. Esl pod tv is a great podcast for learners and teachers of English as a foreign or second language. There you will find short video clips and mp3 sound files which are available to download from the site as podcasts. The lessons are aimed at students with an intermediate to advanced level of English and are also supplemented by online interactive exercises. In addition there are PDF files of lesson plans based on the podcast materials that teachers can use in the classroom.

Hope you find it useful and don’t hesitate to share with us the wonderful resources and webpages you’ll find using In Suggest.

Surfing the net I came across an excellent tool: TIME TUBE. If you enter a key word, the system creates a timeline for you with videos taken mainly from you tube. I haven’t used it yet in any of my classes, but I believe it has a great potential for the English classroom (and for most of other subjects too). You can use it for practising narrative tenses, dealing with history topics, current news and whatever you can imagine. I’m planning to use it for discussing with my students the economic situation in our country (Argentina). I’m sure that you will have plenty more ideas. Why not share them with us?

Today is Bono’s birthday, so let’s take this opportunity to bring a bit of music into the classroom. I have prepared some activities for the song Bono has dedicated to his father: “Sometimes you can’t Make it on your Own”. You will find activities for teaching vocabulary, listening comprehension and grammar (don’t have to vs. mustn’t). Download the file, play the video from You Tube and that’s it.

A great fun lesson to enjoy with your students. Don’t forget to tell us how it works and if you have any other idea : SHARE IT WITH US

PDF File: You_can\’t_make_it_on_your_own

The 3rd May is “World Press Freedom Day” so why not take the opportunity to discuss this important issue with our students? A great film we can use to bring about this topic is “All the president’s men”. Here you will see the trailer of the movie.

You may decide to watch the whole film with your students or concentrate on the scene in which Carl Berstein confronts the public relations executive and secures information about Mr. Dahlberg (at about one hour into the film). Before watching the film, you can discuss the meaning of free press and explain to them that they are going to watch a scene from a film about the of role the press. Students will need to have information about the Watergate case. If you find it necessary, provide them with some background information (e.g from Wikipedia)

Divide them into 4 groups and ask each group to view the film from one of the following perspectives: the investigative reporters, the editors, the people being investigated, and US Citizens. They should collect information for a debate about:

1) The techniques used by investigative reporters. What type of questions do they ask? What ethical standards do they follow?

2) What risks are involved in running a controversial story such as this? What ethical standards do editors follow?

3) How people being investigated respond to the press? How are they feeling? Are they honest?

After watching the film, give them some time in groups to organise their ideas for the debate. Then, make a whole class debate. To sum up the discussion, you might pose the following questions: What values seem to conflict with freedom of press? What can we do to ensure free press? What limits, if any, do you think we as a society should place on the press?

If you don’t have acces to a VCR or DVD player and you still want to deal with this topic, there are several lesson plans on the net. The ones I liked the most are the following two:

1) An article on press censorship in the bbc learning englich central website.

2) An article or listening activity at Breaking News English ESL Lesson Plans.

Hope you find it useful. If you have any other idea, don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

Have you ever wondered how much “nature” your lifestyle requires? Why not take this opportunity (Earth Day, which is on 22nd March) to reflect upon what we are doing to our planet? You can start the class with a short warm up activity. This Ecological Footprint Quiz estimates how much productive land and water you need to support what you use and what you discard. Beware, you may be surprise at the results!

A good film that fits perfectly with this topic is Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”. Here you will find a list of questions that you can use to discuss with your students after watching the movie. You can finish the class by watching this video, which I have found in video jug, in order to promote some action. What can they do to help solving this problem?

Finally, if you want to revise making predictions (using goign to and will) you can find out whether they are pessimistic or optimistic about the future of our planet. Ask them to make some predictions. They can talk about the climate, the anvironment, energy, health, transport, agriculture and many others.

Hope you find it useful and don’t forget to share your ideas or experience with us.

Are you bored of dicussing current news with your students always in the same way? Finding a piece of news in a newspaper, True or False, questions, vocabulary work and personal reactions to the text seem to be the only way available. However, there is more to it than just that. Having a look at Larry Ferlazzo’s blog I have found another online jewel for teaching English. It is a game called Play the News, with which you will be able to have some fun with your students while working on the well-known “current affairs topic”.

Play the News is an interactive game based on current news. You are given some background information and you can watch some videos in order to get informed for the game. Then, you are asked to choose a role to voice your opinion on the subject. Finally, you are given the possibility of predicting what is going to happen in the real world. To be able to play you have to register for free.

I believe it will become a great tool in most of my Business Classes and in some General English classes too. What do you think about it? What are the possibilities that this game has to offer? As always, please if you use it, share your experience with us.

Talking about films, I would like to share with you a wonderful resource I have just found surfing the net: TEFL Clips. It is an excellent and very useful blog in which you will find a lesson plan per week based on a You Tube video. I believe that You Tube has opened up tons of possibilities for TEFL. We are able to expose our students to real English with material that is fun and attractive. So why not cut down on the amount of time we spend planning and use the lesson plans available here? Share with us your opinion about the site and what you do with You Tube videos in your classes.

Happy women’s day! Continuing with this topic I have prepared a lesson for my intermediate course on men and women role stereotypes that I would like to share with you.

I have found a good lesson plan in English-4u, a webpage where you’ll find lesson plans based on news and hit songs, to introduce the topic. The title of the lesson is “Jobs About the House” and it is a reading activity based on some statistics by the UK Office for National Statistics. After doing the activities proposed there, we can discuss whether we live in a man’s world and who is expected to do all the household chores.

To finish off the lesson, we can work on an episode from friends (season 9, episode 6): “The one with the male nanny”. Here, we will be able to discuss stereotypes at work. Are there jobs for women and jobs for men?

Here you’ll find some activities you can do with your students while watching the video:

1. Make a list of things the men that appear in the video do, that are not generally associated with the male sex.

2. How’s Ross feeling when he talks to Sandy? Why?

3. What reason does Ross give for firing Sandy? Is it the REAL reason? How do you know?

4. Does Sandy need recommendations? Why?

5. What’s Ross problem? What happened to him when he was a kid?

6. Is Ross a stereotype of the “Macho Man”? Why?

Hope you find it useful. Looking forward to your comments…

As you all probably know 8th March is the International Women’s Day so why not take the chance and reflect with our students on the roles of men and women in our society. I have found a very interesting video in You Tube to work with my students.

But first, let’s do a bit of history. If you go to this page you will find a great lesson plan based on this topic. There are two different reading sections; the first talks of why we have Women’s Day and the second how the day came about.

I have decided to use this day as an excuse to deal with a topic I wanted to discuss with my upper intermediate course: “The Images of Women and Sex Roles in Advertisements”. I have found a great presentation in You Tube to show them:

After watching the video they can discuss about:
What were the people in the ads like? What kind of men did you see? What kind of women? What were they doing? How were they dressed? What emotions were shown by whom?
What is the difference between the way men and women are seen in advertisements? How realistic are (either of) these images? How have ads changed over the years? What does this reflect? What kind of image do you think the advertisers have of women?

If you have any other idea on what to do on this day, don’t hesitate to share it with us. If you use this lesson plan or modify it to adapt it to your class, share your teaching experience with us we can all learn form each other.