A Whole New World

 Good Afternoon one and all,

I hope ths finds you well and in good health. 

After such a strange year 2020 has brought about a whole new way of life, especially in the world of education. Classes are up in the air and distance learning is now a normality as opposed to a last resort. 

With all of the changes I've aso decided to take a new direction. For 13 years I was a teacher/teacher trainer and recently worked as an ELT Consultant for Pearson. This new job has taught me an awful lot not only  about the world of education but also about myself. Travelling to many different schools and academies I saw the wide variey of styles for both teaching and the way in which educational institutions are set up. It left me with a feeling that I could really help. I've enjoyed learning about how differnet people teach and learn. For that reason I've decided to focus my attention on the area of teacher training for both the online and physical classroom. 

If you or you insitution is interested in training essions for teachers or students I can provide a wide variety of classes. A list of my most popular sessions are below. 

New Normality Based talks:

How to Hybrid. A guide to setting up your hybrid/extended classroom with some fool proof activities to boot.

The Masked Classroom. 13 Games and activities to take on the in a socially distanced classroom

Zooming around. A whole raft of tried and tested activities to keep you online students fully engaged

I Wat to Break Free. My favourite 7 ways to use the Breakout room.

General Classroom ideas

STRIP: A bluffers guide to pronunciation

A Fistful of Fillers: A raft of ideas to fill your class with fun packed learning

Breathe Some Life into your Online Classroom: Some simple tips to making your online class more engaging for your students

Getting the Most out of Video Materials

Speaking Exam Training, Without the Exams

Cambridge Exam Masterclasses

I've done each of these session plus many more at conferences from TESOL Spain to ACEIA not to mention in academy sessions. 

If you'd like to get in touch about any of the above sessions or if you have anything more specific in mind please contact me at harrywatersenglish@gmail.com. 

Happy Teaching one and all. Here's to a brighter tomorrow.

Get Toned

After my last post I felt like I was hit by some kind of mega evil throat infectiony train that whacked me on my back for a couple of days. thankfully that's done and dusted and I can stop acting like a typical man and acting as if the world uis about to end because my throat was a bit fatter than usual.

So last week I talked a bit about tone and how it can be adapted to convey some very different meanings. This post is going along very similar line but with a slightly different twist. It'll keep your students focussed on the importance of tone but not bore them with repartition. Yet again, it's a quicky. A wee five minute filler just to keep pronunciation at least at the back of your students minds.

Again it uses the premise of using the same sentence (last week it was a word) and presenting it to a partner in a different tone of voice.

Before setting the students off I tell them the three tones they are going to use.

Happy and Excited
Sad and upset
Nervous and worried.

i then tell them to think about different situations when they have felt those range of mixed emotions and quickly tell their partner about them.

Then I give students the sentence. "I've got something to tell you." Next I set the Ss to task with telling their partner the sentence for one of their previous situations. They then have to guess which one it was and switch. The winners are obviously the team who gets the most situattions correct. A always giving students a good model is absolutely vital.

For the powerpoint with all of these pronunciation ideas and a handout to go with it please take a look across at the more materials link. It's all there and free for anyone to do with as they please.

that's all for now peeps.

Game of Tones

Good afternoon all,

In further adventures from the land of STRIP I bring you. "You Had Me at Hello" This is a wonderfully quick activity which helps students understand the difference tone makes. With a great number of languages tone is absolutely vital so this concept is usually be very easily transmitted.

I start by asking the Ss what difference tone can make. I then arm them with two words. Hello and Really.  I  make sure they are aware the power these two words can weild and then I let them unleash that power on their partners.

For the first half of the activity I ask students to use one of the situatuions on the powerpoint (paper, boards) and speak to their partner in the tone of voice one would imagine a person in that situation would use. Their partner then has to guess which one they are trying to convey. If they get it wrong and feel their partner has misunderstoon the phrase then they can show them how it should be done.

It always helps to model the first two or three situations just to get students up to speed with the task. Especially those who aren't as quick as your star students.

When the students get to the Really section, I get them to translate or simply share with the class what each phrase means. Then they get 5 minutes to practice with a partner and finally they are called upon at random to do the same action as before, however, this time to the whole class. He, (or she) who guesses correctly get's to choose who speaks next.

The funnier you make the situations the more fun the students will have doing mock, over the top tones of voice.

As always you can find the slide for this within the STRIP presentation just there ------>STRIP materials
in  even more materials.

I hope your students enjoy this task as much as mine.

hasta la proxima.

H

What's that sound?

Good day one and all. A blog post with some new content, how strange I hear you cry from the rooftops.
Here's a little activity I love to do with all ages and levels. It's on of the more interactive, tactile, jumpy around activities we talked about at the conference on Saturday.
I like to choose my two sounds from the minimal pairs list. (Check the slides on the STRIP PowerPoint #jazzhands)Next I stick them on either side of the room and elicit what each sound is and draw students attention to their mouth shape when using the words.

The next step for my is to run through the words I am about to use in the activity. I usually do this with a simple slide and some coloured board markers. I get students to work in pairs and decide which colour is which sound. With the slide pìctures you can see two examples.

When the students are up to scratch with the words, their sounds and meanings I split the class into two or three groups.  There is a team leader who picks the words (which have been cut up and put in a cup) then they say the word to the next memeber of the team. Player two attaches a piece of blue tac to the word and passes it to player three. Again repeating the word. Player three then must say the word and stick it under the relevant phoneme stuck on the wall without looking at it.

When the time is up students sit down and check each others answers. The winning team is the one with the most correct answers. to push the students a little further I give them three minutes to then write a sentence or paragraph using as many of the words freom the previous activity. After three minutes each group has to read their sentnnces aloud.

I've found this last bit of drilling, in context, really helps improve the use of the sounds in question and since i've implemented this final part I've seen far fewer mistakes in the pron. Especially with the 3: sound. No longer do students talk about their beerday and their birthday is something we can all talk about together.

right that's all for today. It's great to be back blogging again. With some real content. I hope you find it of some use.

til the next tim