35 ways to introduce your lesson topic – ELT Planning

Are you fed up with using the same old methods to introduce your lesson topic? Look no further! Here are 35 ways to kick off your lesson. How many have you tried? Using an anecdote Example topic: idioms You know I play football, right? “can I help you?” And I’m “yeah. She says “They’re £500” And I said “£500???? Here’s some example flashcards I made for teaching idioms. Cuisenaire Rods creation Example topic: Tourist attractions Give each pair of students a bunch of Cuisenaire rods. “Work in pairs. Students then look at each model and guess the attraction. Cuisenaire Rods model Create your own model using rods. (Here is my example of the UK political parties and their share of the vote, for a recent lesson on politics) Musical “Guess the topic” Example topic: family and relationships Think of 3 or 4 songs which in some way reference the theme/topic of your lesson Avril Lavigne – Skater Boi (“he was a boy, she was a girl, can I make it any more obvious?”) The Hollies – He ain’t heavy (he’s my brother)

https://eltplanning.com/2015/06/22/35-ways-to-introduce-your-lesson-topic/

Related: olgapelaezalvarez • CLIL secondary • Blogs • Resources

Low-prep icebreaker: time travel This icebreaker requires virtually no preparation from the teacher but is guaranteed to involve all the students and help them discover the things they have in common. A great option for groups at all levels, especially B1 and higher. The Task ONE-SENTENCE GAMES More doesn’t always mean better. Smarter is better. One sentence may be as useful for teaching purposes as a wall of text with lots of words. My today’s post is a collection of one-sentence games (see Word Games if you’d like to try some games with words). 8 Fun, No Prep Activities to Rock the New Year in the ESL Classroom – Get Up. Get Out. Get Lost. Coming back to school after the holidays is tough. Realizing the day before that you haven’t planned anything is worse. Lucky for you, I’ve stock piled a few simple no & low prep activities to get you through the first few days with secondary and the little dudes. And remember, they’re about as stoked to come back to school as you (ahem, not at all), so there’s nothing wrong with keeping day one light and fun for all involved! Since I see each of my secondary groups just once a week, I often spread New Year activities over a couple of classes. The first class I focus on New Year’s history, traditions and what they did over the holidays, and the second week I focus on goals & resolutions for the year to come.

UDL Tech Toolkit - Graphic Organizers Popplet Lite - Great for brainstorming, organizing, mind mapping. Easy to use.Idea Sketch - offers a linear as well as a graphic view as an organizing toolSimpleMInd + - mind mapping appInspiration Lite- can make five maps using the extensive template library or create your own from scratchKidspiration Lite - the visual way to explore and understand words, numbers and concepts for grades K-5 Mind Mup - Easy to use mind mapping/brainstorming tool, offers Google Drive or Dropbox storageLucid Chart - collaborative diagrams for mind mapping, brainstorming. Worksheet-free Vocab Revision Activities – Clare's ELT Compendium What do you do in those last 5 minutes of class when you’ve finished everything that was planned? Or when energy levels hit a low during a lesson? Or in that lull while the next student gets ready to present, or whatever?

Create Reading Activities from Authentic Text in Minutes with Quillionz As teachers, we are constantly hearing about the wonders of AI and how it will take over education and make all of our lives easier. Well here finally is a genuine example of something we can use to save time and effort. Quillionz is an AI-powered question generator that can help you to take any text from anywhere and create a range of comprehension or test questions around it. All you need to do to get Quillionz to generate your questions is register and the find the text you want to use. You can copy-paste your text (anything between 300 and 3000 words) into the Quillionz editor, give it a title, select a domain (the domain is the area of study) from the drop-down menu and then click on ‘Proceed’. It will then suggest some keywords from the text that you can choose from.

How to teach conversational lessons Hello, there. This post was written to share my favourite resources aimed at conversational lessons – both online and face-to-face. I hope you find it useful. The first minutes of the lesson are meant to arouse your students’ interest. You want to ‘hook them’ into conversing with you. 6 Digital Tools for Differentiated Instruction As educators, we are always looking for ways to address the numerous academic needs of our students within the classroom. There are students who need more help, students who need to be challenged more, and those students somewhere in the middle. Technology can help both assess what students need as well as challenge them to grow. So keep reading to discover six digital tools you can add to your repertoire to help differentiate instruction within your classroom, in addition to Schoology of course.

181 Prompts to Inspire Writing and Discussion Every day of the school year, we publish a fresh Student Opinion question. Below are all the 181 questions we asked during the 2018-19 school year (available here as a PDF), divided into two categories — those that easily lend themselves to classroom debate and persuasive writing, and those that are more suitable for creative, personal or reflective writing. Each question is based on content from The New York Times, and all are still open to comment by students 13 and older. Each linked Times article is also accessible without a digital subscription. Teachers tell us they use these questions to help students practice writing persuasively; as inspiration for lessons; as jumping-off points for class discussions and debates; or just to encourage student engagement with current events and with other young people from around the world.