Looking Forward to the Next Class

I've often found myself wondering, whilst plannig my next class, what do the students already know. we are all well aware that before we start a class we should really take into account and think about any assumed knowledge the class have on the subject we're about to embark upon.

You'll read it in every book, you'll hear it at every training session but how often do you actually check what students know before you start teaching it?

What I like to do is check at the end of the previous class what they might know. I always review what we have done in that lesson (I check again in the next) and then using a spidergram or something of that ilk on the board I just get students to come up and write any words or phrases relating to that subject of the next class.It's a simple way to get the mind going and into gear. If unit's a grammar point simply asking a student to explain it rather than a boring diagram up on the board. All it ever sounds like to me is
 Subject +blah + bla-ing and I'm teaching it.

So for vocab. Preview known vocab with a spidergram and then in the following class open with a quick round of Categories on mini whiteboards or in Ss notebooks. Starting the class with a game is always great and students have almost always thought of a new word or two since the previous class as you've left that idea there in their heads.

I have been know on the odd occasion to tell eams it's their turn to look for new vocab on the topic and start the next class by explaining it to the other students.

These ideas are hardly revolutionary. I don't claim to have any ownership whatsoever over them. They just make classes flow a lot easier and take the subject matter from the hands of the teacher and puts it into the hands of the students.

These ideas take a a little bit of forethought. Just flick to the next page in the book before the class finishes and see what's coming up, if you're a class to class planner, like me. If you're even more organised and you plan a few classes at a time then you're already set. These ideas have helped me an awful lot and have saved time in lengthy explanations and most importantly got the students thinking about what they've learnt and what they're going to learn.

It's very rare that a class will have no idea at all about the subject matter so give them some credit and relinquish your power........ to an extent.


That's all you're getting for this week.

Enjoy your weekend.

Sporcle and Reported Speech

Happy Friday one and all. Just a few more hours 'til the weekend and for many of us the promise of a nice week off. Thanks easter.

As far as I can see, when we get to this stage of the year most text books throw up the idea of reported speech with varying degrees of difficulty.

There are a myriad of games to allow your students to practice their newq found skill. One I was introduced to a couple of days ago tests your students movie knowledge, their ability to transalte from the language they first saw the movie and then how to convert some of the most famous quotes in movie history into reported speech.

Your students level will, obviously, dictate the difficulty of the task, the reporting verbs they use and whether they chuck a few adverbs in there as well.

The first step is to get onto the fantastic  http://www.sporcle.com/games/happy101/best-movie-quotes-images then run through each of the images to identify which movies the quotes come from.

Step two, hit the timer and get the students to take turns in giving you a quote to one of the movies on the screen. 

Seven minutes later the time will have run out and all the missing quotes will be revealed and the students will have a chance to take the famous quotes and report them to their classmates.  

This works as a wonderful cooler after going through the "rules" of reported speech or as a warmer in the next class to make sure they still have it down.. My students really enjoyed it.

 A big thanks to my colleague Neil for pointing me towards the quiz and sharing his idea with me. 

I hope your students find it as useful as mine did. 

Right that's all for today.  Have a great holiday whereever you may be. If you don't have a holiday just go ahead and have a great weekend.

For regular updates why not follow me on twitter @sirhofthebomb

Where exactly was the cat sitting?

I must admit my most commonly used sentence over the past seven years is probably; "The Cat Sat on the Mat." I use it when helping students develop their imagination and write a story that is less one dimensional and I use it to show what a difference stress can make to a sentence.

Today I'm going to talk about the latter.

I write this simple sentence out on the board. Next I underline one of the words in the sentence and get the students to stress said word. Almost immediately stdents pick up on the difference the stres can make. 

For example. The CAT sat on the mat. The stress on the word cat shows us it was a feline creature and not any other beast. 

The cat SAT on the mat. With the stress lying on the verb it shows us that the cat wasn't dancing, nor was she singing and was in fact just having a nice little sit. 

I continue with the other words in the sentence then I get students to write there own sentences and choose a word to stress. Other students have to decipher the meaning and share with the class what the stressed word indicates. 

And that my friends is about that. 

If you want regular updates you can follow me on twitter @sirhofthebomb 

A Little Quiz

As it's getting so close to Christmas I thought I'd give my students a break in disguise. For the really good classes we've been playing poker. With the not so great classes or the ones who had no desire whatsoever to play poker I've been doing a wonderful little quiz which combines trivia, exam practice and Christmas bits and bobs.
It takes about an hour. The trivia answers are on the answer sheet on the below link. The PowerPoint for the quiz is in the very same place.

https://sites.google.com/a/thenglishouse.com/harry/
Christmas Pub Quiz (PPT) Christmas Pub Quiz Answers

Have a great one.

Zombie Outbreak

Constant speaking exam practice can be rather dull for both teachers and exam students. Sadly, as we all know what's important during the exam isn't the students' opinions, it's the language that they use. Creating new, more interesting, speaking exams can engage your students a great deal more and lead to a much livelier debate.

Below is an idea which will forever be popular among teenage students, even more so now with the ridiculously popular TV show the walking dead.

I have to give huge props to Matt www.tiredwireframes.tumblr.com for the Zombie idea.
As always the PowerPoint and worksheet are availiable for download @ https://sites.google.com/a/thenglishouse.com/harry/

So now you've got them interested, how do you get them to use relevant language and stop repeating themselves over and over again? More on that later.