TEACHING & LEARNING ENGLISH WITH FUN

Do you want to involve some movement and action in your lessons? You may use a big floor mat -you can either make your own one or use a ready made one by "twister "board game or "spaghetti twister" board game. The one I use is "spaghetti and meatballs" theme mat. The point is to have your students follow some orders so as to acquire new vocabulary items or new grammatical structures by putting their hands and feet on the proper colours. Some ideas you may want to apply are the following: 1) You can prepare cards of different colours (green, blue, yellow, red) with different orders aiming to practice imperative. e.g. Put your right hand on a blue meatball, put your left arm on a red meatball etc. 2) You can even make your own recipe by following the equivalent steps For example if you want to make spaghetti with meatballs you should:  -Step 1:put your left hand on a green meatball-Boil the spaghetti  -Step 2:put your ri

  The Road Not Taken  By Robert Frost Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. Using

Rudyard Kipling - If If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too;If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, or being lied about, don't deal in lies, or being hated, don't give way to hating, and yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise; If you can dream-and not make dreams your master; If you can think-and make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, and stoop and build 'em up with worn-out-tools; If you can make one heap of all your winnings, and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, and lose, and start again at your beginnings and never b

Coding and STEM in English lessons...Part 2 Using the material and props of the board game which is coding-oriented, I have organized a STEM activity about planets and solar system.   You can even make your lessons more vivid by using puzzles about planets or a globe! In this way you can help students make connections, understand the current positions and movements of the planets and realize where the Earth is in relation to the Sun and moon and planets. You can combine this activity with a visit to -NASA's website          https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/solar-system/our-solar-system/overview/ where you can set your orbital positions and travel around space as a planet!! Its is amazing!!! -or youtub e https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtU_mdL2vBM  to watch Earth from Space live!! For younger students I even made a spaceship with an alien!!!In fact I am going to use it in other activities as well, so stay tuned!! It is super easy to made. JUst

 Since we live in a society totally based on computer literacy and technological achievements, coding seems to be one of the most popular terms. Even younger generations seem to be using codes (even in primary stages)! So why not implementing coding in our English lessons so as to make students even more excited and interested? First of all you have to understand what coding is and how coding works. Coding is the primary method for allowing intercommunication between humans and machines. Computers are great but since they can't think for themselves (!), humans have to give them instructions that's why we use coding which is a list of step-by-step instructions that get computers to do what you want them to do. Coding makes it possible for us to create computer software, games, apps and websites.  When children learn to code, it helps them to develop essential skills such as problem solving, logic and critical thinking. Through coding, children can learn that t

My travel to Austria has equipped me with loads of realia, that is real items found in everyday life, which will help me teach ESL components effectively but most importantly in a highly creative way! Don't forget that the use of real life objects that students can touch, feel and why not smell and taste, makes our lesson more vivid So, let's start! Take a photo or a postcard of an opera house or a music hall (below: Vienna Opera House) and talk about the music history of a specific country. Compare it with your country's music and motivate them to visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8L4vvJFpBA so as to have them listen to Mozart Orchestra in Vienna Opera House. You can even show them Hansel and Gretel performance in Vienna Opera House on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obffbOgOnbg. Moreover, a wide range of museum guides which I have collected from all my educational visits to museums will give me the opportunity to create some i