English for begiNNers

This short lesson plan is designed around a Christmas advert. It is mainly aimed at upper-intermediate and advanced students because these are the groups I usually teach, but can be used with any other level with little adaptation.

STEP 1 WARMER

We start by discussing in small groups and brainstorming some (as many as students can think of):

1.- reasons why people learn a second language (to find a job, for pleasure, to enhance brain activity, to travel/ live abroad…)

2.- reasons why people decide to go and live in another country (looking for better working conditions, for love, weather/climate/ health issues, political reasons…)

3.- strategies/ useful tips for learning a foreign language and improving: grammar, pronunciation, listening, speaking, vocabulary etc. at both a beginner and at a more advanced level 

4.- the main advantages and disadvantages of learning a language at a young/ old age

English for BegiNNers Scribd by Eva Gutiérrez on Scribd

STEP 2 POOLING THEIR IDEAS AND TIPS

Go through the students’ answers. After conducting feedback and sharing their ideas and recommendations with the whole group, tell them they are going to watch the start of a short film entitled “English for beginners” in which they will see the difficulties of learning a foreign language at advanced age.

STEP 3 WATCHING AND PAUSING

Pause the video after 1:46 and comment on those difficulties most of us have gone through.

Ask Ss what they think is the reason why this old man is trying to learn English. Let them take guesses while predicting what happens next. Give them some time to come up with an interesting and original ending for the video.

STEP 4 AFTER WATCHING

After watching, ask your students if they like the film and tell them this is a viral Christmas advert. Get them to guess what they are advertising, debate what makes a successful Christmas advert and how they feel about this type of Christmas ads.

Hope you enjoy the activity!

E.

Keep Calm and...

This lesson plan is designed around an interesting video that tells the amazing story of the Keep Calm poster and mainly promotes listening and speaking practice at Upper-intermediate and Advanced levels.


1.- Show students this slideshow of propaganda posters and ask them about the kind of poster, their message and purpose, i.e. what the poster encouraged, whether it was positive or negative persuasion and who they were addressed to. We have from office propaganda posters in a soviet union-fashion layout and other preventive health campaigns, Obama’s memorable electoral campaign posters, to II World War Propaganda Posters (including the original Uncle Sam poster used to recruit soldiers during both World War I and II, the We Can Do it and the Keep Calm wartime propaganda posters)


2.- Focus their attention on this last nowadays-ubiquitous poster that has become a notable meme –the same as the other two- and ask them to tell you where they have seen it, which versions of the posters they have enjoyed most and whether they know about the origin and the secret story behind the poster


3.- Tell them we are going to watch the video below about the story of these Keep Calm posters while they try to answer the following comprehension questions

Keep Calm and Carry On by Eva Gutiérrez

  

4.- As the popularity of the poster in various media has grown, innumerable parodies, imitations and co-optations have also appeared with messages that range from the cute to the overtly political, typically with references to other aspects of popular culture turning it into an iconic image of the 21st century. Here are some other versions that may work as inspirational examples

5.- Let them now use Poster generator apps both for IOS and Android or any of these merchandising websites offering poster generators and personalized products (Keepcalm-o-matic, Keepcalmstudio and Keepcalmandcarryon) for personalizing their own Keep Calm posters to remind class rules or just for fun.

Hope you enjoy the lesson!

E.

Science: A Girl Thing!

TASK 5.1 MobileLessonPlan- ... by Eva Gutiérrez

Bang Bang

This activity combines picture and video telling to revise simple past tenses in an attempt to give a practical edge to the wide array of tools we are presented with as part of the INTEF course for storytelling as I cannot see the point in making videos without any purpose for actual use in the classroom.

STEP 1

Tell students that you want them to draw two sketches to activate vocabulary. Tell them to listen to your complete instructions before they start. Give the following instructions:

I’d like you to draw a scene from a western film: the main characters are, as usual, Indians and cowboys. There is a young Indian all tied up with a rope around his body standing immobile at gun point, while an equally young cowboy, holding him close by the rope, threatens to shoot him down. There are speech bubbles coming from their mouths.

I also want you to draw a second picture. In this one a bride dressed in a beautiful white wedding dress holding a bouquet is standing alone in the middle of the church aisle in front of the altar. Church bells are ringing, benches are decorated with flowers but there’s no one sitting there. There’s a thought bubble coming from her head.

Ask students to repeat the instructions back to you before drawing. Ask students to consider what the characters in their sketches might be saying/ thinking about and what might have happened (i.e. she must have been left at the altar, they might be children playing Indians and cowboys…etc.) Elicit as many possible answers as you can.

STEP 2

Show them the following bunch of pics and add they tell the whole story. Ask them to order them chronologically and get them to try and tell the story behind the pictures using simple past tenses.

Bunch of Pics by Eva Gutiérrez

STEP 3

Play the video without sound to show how the images link togetger. Luckily by now, some of them may have recognized the images illustrate a popular song. Teach students the full song lyrics and play the video with sound.

STEP 4

Tell them to choose a song (Tom’s Diner to work with present continuous, California Dreaming for conditional sentences… etc.) and encourage them to illustrate the songs with pictures or their own drawings, by scanning them and using editing software to create a collage to accompany the song just like Jamie Keddie did and inspired me to create these activities with his lesson plan here.  

E.      

Online Safety Activities for the INTEF course Digital Storytelling for Teachers

Photo taken from http://flickr.com/eltpics by @yearinthelifeof, used under a CC Attribution Non-Commercial license, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

ONLINE SAFETY ACTIVITIES- Eva Mª Gutiérrez by Eva Gutiérrez

Take a Seat & Make a Friend

This listening and speaking activity is based on the video below -and great powers of imagination as it's very unlikely that you can have a ball pit in your classroom if you teach adults-. ;-) It may be well used at the beginning of the course as part of the presentation activities or at any time during the year with large groups of students which tend to flock together and never really get to know everyone in class.

Tell them that when you're a kid, you can connect with almost anyone. But as you get older, friendships can be harder to find. Get them to imagine they’re walking down the street when they find a ball pit with a banner inviting them to get inside and meet a complete stranger. Would they do it?

Tell them this is exactly what people here in this video do. Let them watch it while they take a note of all talking prompts written on the bigger balls for them to speak about life’s big questions.

Play it again and conduct feedback while asking comprehension questions and going through some of the answers. Once done, encourage them to find at least two classmates in their group to go into “the ball pit” and try to make friends with by working through the issues together. Conversation practice guaranteed and a good laugh while handshaking, believe me!

Talking Prompts by Eva Gutiérrez

Instrumental Soundtracks

There's always a good opportunity to play this little game bound to make for a great time. With my Advanced groups it was given last Christmas when we were talking about muzak or piped music that is played in public places such as restaurants, shopping malls or the lift, whereas with my Intermediate groups, the chance came along while learning vocab related to films... plot, cast, soundtracks, and so on.

In any case I play those less popular soundtracks such as "Into the west" (The Return of the King), Blade Runner soundtrack by Vangelis... etc. and make them think about the way they feel about them. This brings about a good bunch of words to describe feelings. Get them to think next of the story behind, the scene that soundtrack may accompany or the few images the music conjures up in their visual mind with very simple questions: Where is the scene? Who is in it? How do they feel? What's happening? You'll be amazed at what they can come up with.

Play some more popular ones after (Ennio Morricone- The Mission, Life is Beautiful, La Valse d'Amelie, "The entertainer" from The Sting...) to see whether they can guess the movie or remember the real scene and encourage them to tell you about their favourite soundtrack, why they like it and let them know they can bring their own soundtracks to the classroom for the rest to take the guess challenge.

Well, just some ideas that usually work pretty well and that students often find motivating =)