I’ve been handed a group of beginners. It was quite a challenge at the vocational school as my loyal readers will remember. However, I was thinking of this post by English Raven.
Teaching Unplugged – A beginner level class from Jason Renshaw on Vimeo.
This lesson recalls for me a conversation I had recently with a fellow teacher about whether CLT will ever go out of style in the same way that audio-lingualism or grammar-translation has. This kind of teaching represents the extreme edge of CLT and I have to say that …Continue
My name is Walton. I'm an English teacher in New Haven. This site is mainly where I share my lesson plans and activity ideas to try to help other teachers and also to hopefully get some feedback. Feel free to use anything here, but just don't put them up on your site or pass them off as your own, please.
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RSSwalton@englishadvantage.infoSeeking Gun or Selling One, Web Is a Land of Few Rules, via @nytimes nyti.ms/ZyBCBL
I was just inspired to write about one way I teach the perfect tenses by a post on the Teaching English Facebook page on whether it’s ok to translate grammar or not in the classroom.
Personally, the more I teach, the less hardcore I become about forcing students to use English only. There are psychological reasons, such as making students feel a little less pressured. There are functional reasons, such as when I can explain a nuanced vocabulary word for ten minutes or have someone translate it in ten seconds and …Continue
Can I use, “I came here to chew some gum and kick some ass.” As an example of good parallel structure?
RT @rmbyrne: Ninja Girl Alphabet Animals – An App for Learning the Alphabet ow.ly/haSH1
RT @NicolaPrentis: Looking for way to motivate your students or yourself towards some specific goal? Try a new approach to motivation ht …
I didn’t give you your grade, you earned It! redbubble.com/people/mobii/w… via @redbubble
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I still think this is one of the best ways to use voicethread, to put up odd pictures and scenes and have students leave speculations on it. So here’s a scene I ran across the other day at the shopping mall. Feel free to comment away with theories and ideas.
RT @LeVostreGC: Edward III: “Hey Ich juste mette yow / And thys is Crécy / But heere are my archeres / So surrendir maybe?”
I made a 14 song playlist from The Mountain Goats to Carly Rae Jepsen with #boilthefrog static.echonest.com/frog/?src=moun…
RT @EdWeekTeacher: Teaching Now: Study: Student Motivation, Study Strategies Trump IQ for Learning Gains bit.ly/VdYG7V #education
Verb tenses have meanings, but they aren’t always what we think they are. Here’s a fun experiment-put these three sentences up on the board and ask a group of low to intermediate students what the difference between them is.
I played football this morning.
I was playing football this morning.
I have played football this morning.
I had played football this morning.
Listen to the wrong answers. Students might say the difference has to do with how far back in time the events were. Or whether you finished or not. Or even how many people …Continue
One other side project I’ve been playing with is T-shirts. I made this Knowledge Shirt for a friend and she loves it!
It’s a bit of an inside joke, so I’ve been thinking of something a little more universal. I just got an iPhone so one idea I had was to make an iPhone case myself and then see what the reaction was to it. I definitely need a case because I tend to drop my phone quite a bit! So I’ve been browsing cell phone cases for ideas. I haven’t …Continue
I suck. I had a baby and since then have had little free time to blog. I also picked up a bit of an extra project at work which kills what free time I do have. I do have ideas for posts and even a few draft posts. But there is plenty of stuff on here so I don’t feel too bad. If you have a technical problem and I haven’t talked to you then I do feel bad. I will try to get on any situation where you paid …Continue
