50 ESL Pictures & A Few Teaching Variations

2 Dec
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I ran across this site and thought the images could be useful. They offer four different variations for usage. It is probably best suited for low beginner to high beginner.

I’m just going to throw my two cents worth in here while I’m at it.
When you are teaching, be sure to include the tactile/kinesthetic learners.

You can do this in two ways -

  1. tactile variation: let the students color/trace/cut out the images
  2. kinesthetic variation: have the students act it out

Both ways help the students acquire “muscle memory” which helps
in the acquisition process. (It lowers the affective filter too.)


Auditory learners may benefit from not only hearing and repeating the target vocabulary a few times, but it may help if you can search around
and find a sound bite to go with the image as well. For example,
here is a link to a site that has a boatload of sound bites to choose from.


This link will take you to a page of toothbrushing sounds.

FYI – Soundsnap only gives your 5 free downloads a month. This site is free all the time.

Click here for a link to a website that has royalty free photos.

Now, let’s take it a step further. Why not turn it into a game?
Put up three pictures on the board. Then play the sound bite and
have some fun letting them guess which one it is!

introduction

instructions

page 1

page 2

The Fantastic Mr. Fox

1 Dec
0

Fantastic Mr. Fox
The links below are mainly focused on elementary students. With that being said, I felt there are a lot of useful lesson ideas that can be gleaned from these resources.


HD movie trailer

Lesson plans & more

All about foxes

Two Top Picks For ESL Conversation Questions & Phrases

1 Dec
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Looking for a virtually inexhaustible resource for ESL conversation questions? Well, look no farther than here. Our good friends at The Internet TESOL Journal have a large database of questions. They are alphabetically organized by topics such as – annoying things, tipping and major American holidays.

The wonderful people over at ESL Gold have a page that is dedicated to Phrases for Conversation which are broken down into the following levels: Low Beginning, High Beginning, Low Intermediate, High Intermediate & Advanced. What makes this site stand out above the others is that it provides audio. The speakers are native North American speakers and they speak slow enough for the ELL (English Language Learner) to pick up on what they are saying, but not so mind numbingly slow that you want to bang your head against the wall.  Also, you can tell the narrators are some what professional because the inflection is in the right place, even if it does sound somewhat forced on some of the examples. This would be a great site for Chinese teachers of English to brush up on their English skills, assign as homework or use as part of a language lab.

Using Movie Trailers To Teach English

30 Nov
0

I love using movies to each English, but they can be too much – you know – too long, to boring, yadda, yadda, yadda. The Genki English guy, Richard Graham, has a suggestion. Use movie trailers. What a fantastic idea! He suggests using the Apple movie trailers. Good choice in that the movie trailers on the Apple site are offered in HD. http://www.genkienglish.net/usingmoviesinclass.htm

Below is the link to the trailer site. There is a veritable smorgasbord to choose from. It may not be such a bad idea if you want to mix things up and/or kill some time. Or, if you get a positive response from the students you could do it as a regular thing, turn it into “Movie Monday.” It doesn’t have to be on a Monday, but you get the idea.
http://www.apple.com/trailers/

You could do a bunch of different activities along with it, like:

  • transcribe it and have the student follow along as a simultaneous listening and reading activity
  • create a close activity from the transcript focusing on specific grammatical items, such as contractions
  • introduce new vocabulary and idioms
  • assign a movie trailer to be viewed cold (their choice) as homework. They have to view it and write down one new vocabulary word and find the appropriate definition to share with the class. (Homework – I know not the most popular choice, but this is not too difficult to do.)
  • have students perform it as a readers theater script
  • is there a song with lyrics involved? Assign small groups to sing the song to the class as others in the group act it out.

For example, Invitcus http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/invictus/ can be used to teach about Nelson Mendela and apartheid. If you’re a Rugby fan then “forget about it!” You could springboard a mini-unit about the game, history, rules, etc; Maybe you could get a Rugby club going with the students? Do you think they would go for that? I don’t know, but my teenage son would be totally into that (he plays’ American football – which is kinda like Rugby except with armor, right?)

What about Where The Wild Things Are? This story is a children’s classic. I remember reading it to  my son when he was a little guy. http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/wherethewildthingsare/ Can you get your hands on the book? This would be a great one to teach the kids.
Here is a random list of resources that can be found on the net:

This lesson incorporates math and science

Students create their own wild things

Character development lesson

Beginning, middle, end

Sequencing monster

What about A Christmas Carol? Another timeless classic.

and let’s not forget the ppt’s!

Then there is Amelia. http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox_searchlight/amelia/

Is she dead? Is she alive and living with Elvis on a deserted island?


lesson plans

Even if you don’t have the series, you can still glean nuggets that you can use in class.

biography

Forensic evidence – create a discussion – is she alive or dead? Let the students decide based on evidence provided by the following sources and then present their position to the class.
Is she alive? http://www.irene-amelia.com/index.html
Is she dead? http://www.nndb.com/people/943/000026865/

There’s lots of rich material to choose from. It can be used year after year once you put the lesson together. So a little bit of work will pay off in the long run.