Learning irregular verbs can be a tedious task for our teenager students. The moment when you give them that endless list you can see boredom in their eyes. However, irregular verbs are important. In fact, the sooner they learn them by heart the better, and it's the teacher's responsibilty to help them in this process.
If we take a look at the new technology world we can find some useful tools that may be really helpful.
One of them is an application called English Irregular Verbs Game and that it's easily found (and free) in Google Play or Apple Store. It is a really simple game where balloons with irregular verbs written on them fly around the screen. Students will have to burst those specific balloons which have the answer of the verb they have been asked to find, (it's simple than it seems!)
The game is organized by levels and at each level new verbs are introduced. A possibility is to challange students so to motivate them through competition: "Next class the person who achieves level 10 will get... "
One important thing to remember while teaching teenagers is that they care about what's going on in the world and that they should feel that school and the real world are not such different things.
Although I was supposed to know that, sometimes you just don't remember it. However, last week when I was teaching a teens class I realized they were worried about the terrorist attacks in Paris and about what is going to happen. They had a lot of questions and I took advantage from it to do a small debate about it.
Looking for some resources in order to provide them level-adapted information, I bumped into a webpage called "News in Levels" (http://www.newsinlevels.com) which has breaking news (written and audio news and some videos) each of them adapted in three different English levels.
In this webpage you can find breaking news but also small articles about science, curiosities, animals...
Here you have the article about the Paris attacks which I'll show to my students this week http://www.newsinlevels.com/products/attacks-in-paris-level-3/
When I started my English classes this year, one of my New year resolutions was to incorporate ICT in my classes, (as I had been a little bit afraid of them during last courses). So, taking advantage of my ICT classes at University, I decided to add new technology in my classes.
Phrasal verbs are one of the "biggies" that students have to face during their English learning process and I thought that I could find some tools that help them to study. Doing some research I discovered Anki.
Anki is a flashcard app that students can use in their computers but also in their smartphones. The idea is quite simple: you create a deck, for example phrasal verbs, and then you add cards to this deck. Cards may be written on the front, where you write the phrasal verb, and on the back, where you write the meaning of it. You can also add pictures or audio (for example if you are practising pronunciation).
Once you have created your deck you can study it. When you press "study", a flashcard will appear on the screen and you will have to think of the meaning. To check if you were right or not, you press the flashcard which will flip to show you the meaning. At this point you will have to tell if you guess it quickly, if you guess it but it was hard, or if you failed; with this information the app decides how long it has to wait until it shows the same flashcard again. When you finish studying the app gives you a score so that you know how are you doing it.
And why is it effective with teenagers? Well first of all, because before every class they show me how many times they have studied the deck (it appears on the app). It's also easier for them just to spend five minutes with their smartphone while they are in the train, or watching TV than to look for their English notebook and start to study phrasal verbs in the traditional way.
Although I don't believe in magic solutions in order to learn phrasal verbs I hope this app will help my students to learn the basics in an easier way. Of course this app can be used to learn other things like vocabulary, prepositions even some grammar aspects so if it works with phrasal verbs I'll carry on using it with other issues.
I add a video where it is explained how to use the app!
A really useful tool I have recently discovered is a newspaper generator that students can use in order to create fake news (and practice their writing skills, vocabulary and creativity)
To try this tool I decided to use it with the same group I did the whatsapp exercise a week ago. For those who haven't read the whatsapp entry, it was about a role-play situation using whatsapp where students had to plan a birthday party for one of them.
So last class I told them that we were going to imagine that, once the birthday had been celebrated, they had to imagine that a local newspaper was publishing a review of the party and that they were the journalists who had to write it. In order to work on food vocabulary (we are studying it at the moment), I asked them to pay special attention to the menu of the party.
In order to create a safe and respectful place to blog, we should agree on some general guidelines for our blogging.
-Do not share personal information or other people information: passwords, phone numbers, adressess... Always use your first name and your classmates' first names, do not mention last names.
-Do not upload personal photos or classmates' photos where faces could be recognizable.
-Always show respect and be polite
-Remember to use proper English and avoid chat language
-Plagiarism isn't allowed. Avoid uploading things that might be protected by Copyright
-Don't forget about Digital Footprints: you must keep in mind that everything that you post, tweet, comment or like is going to be part of your digital footprint, everything.
To start with this blog, I want to share with you an activity I sometimes use with my teenager students and which works pretty well.
The aim of this activity is to reach an agreement. Each student is given a piece of paper with information about his or her priorities for example "you want to be home before 3" or "you only eat vegeterian food". Once they have read it, I give them the instructions, for example " We want to celebrate Anna's birthday tonight, what shall we do?" You have ten minutes to decide where we go, at what time we meet, until what time...
And where is new technology? Well, the conversation takes place in a whatsapp group! Students feel more motivated and shy students are encouraged to participate more. I always take part in these conversations in order to guide them when necessary and to use some vocabulary that may be new for them.
As you will see in this example there are always mistakes (of course, they are learning!) So what I usually do is to print the conversation and bring it to class so that they can find their own mistakes.
I really don't like start talking without introducing myself so, here I go! My name's Carla, I'm 26 and although I've been teaching for nearly 10 years, I still consider myself a rookie teacher in some aspects so that's why I'm doing my MA, to improve and become a great secondary teacher.
I love travelling! I always have my next trip planned, it's easier to get up every morning if I know what's going to be my next destination. Without a doubt I'm a wanderlust.
So I'm going to use this blog to talk about ICT and teaching and how we can take advantage of new technologies in order to help our students during their learning process
