She's not just a pretty face

This lesson contains a warm-up activity to build vocabulary around the world of work, jobs and professions and a listening activity which would lead to extensive reading about the role of women in history. As a follow-up activity, it suggests working with a song and asking your students to discuss further questions.

Step One: Warm-up

• Show your SS the following pictures to see if they can name the job. Ask them what they think the job involves. Do a bit of open-class chatting about the positive and negative aspects of the jobs.

(This collection of pictures belongs to #eltpics gallery. If you want to know more about it, check out this blog entry)

Step Two: Nobel Prize Winners Quiz

• Tell them they should watch carefully the set of photographs of famous Nobel Prize Winners for 5 seconds. (Credit for this idea goes to Mark Hancock who mentioned this activity during his workshop on "Motivation: the inside story" at VII Congreso EOI in Madrid)
• Explain that they are going to listen to a lovely Voki talking about one of the people they've seen. Tell them to raise their hand as soon as they know who she is talking about.
  
  Nobel Prizes by Eva Gutiérrez
  
  
  • Ask them if they know other women who won the Nobel Prize and if they know their specialty. Make sure this leads to a discussion about women's roles in history.
  • Put your SS in groups and ask them to find out more about at least two women in each category here. Get them to report back to the class.
  
  Step Three: Song "She's not just a pretty face"
  
  • Before listening ask your SS to predict the content of the song from the title
  • While listening to the song, SS fill in the blanks in the lyrics with names of jobs
  • After listening, SS must supply a job name for some lines from the song
  • Either in pairs or as a whole group, open the debate on gender discrimination in the world of work

Song by Eva Gutiérrez

Hope you enjoy the activity.

There's been a grave misunderstanding

Here are some activities you may like to use before, during and after watching Tim Burton's Corpse Bride around Halloween time or at any time you like. Click to access the PDF document.

Hope you enjoy the activity!

ELT Pictures

Eltpics is a wonderful ever-expanding and continually updated collection of photographs, based on a weekly theme, collected by teachers, trainers and writers from around the world. These are, in turn, available free to others in the field of ELT under a CC license. Created in October 2010, it includes so far more than 2,000 pictures classified in a couple of dozen categories ranging from 'shopping/ shops' to 'beverages', 'means of transport', 'art and craft' or 'close ups', to mention only a few of the most recent additions. Anyone interested in joining in can tweet an image with the hashtag #eltpics.

icicles close up

Joining the edusphere...

The use of blogs has become popular in educational contexts.

There are many teacher related blogs on the internet where teachers can share information with one another. This can include specific content that they are working on in their classroom or lessons that they wish to share with other teachers. It is a tool for educators to share ideas with one another on what has worked with students and what has not. In this way the blog often acts as a support system for teachers where they can access ideas, tools, and gain support from other professionals in their field.

Teachers also use blogs as a way to communicate and enhance study outside the classroom environment, posting important information such as homework, important dates, missed lessons, projects, discussion boards, and other useful classroom information that is accessible by all. (retrieved from Wikipedia, Edublog (last visited Mar. 5, 2011). "For further information..."

This new blog is born with this double purpose: on one hand, as the place to share materials, lessons and experiences in the classroom with other English language teachers and on the other hand, as the virtual extension to the classroom itself for my students. Hope you all find it useful.