Creative Teacherette

I love tongue twisters. I think they are great for pronunciation practice, for spelling practice and they are so fun to work with, especially when you have to do those boring drills. So here's an activity that is great for pronunciation and spelling practice for learners of any age and proficiency level. First you have to choose some tongue twisters you want to work with. I found the best collection here and here . Print them out and tell your students to form pairs or small groups (3-4 people). Give each group or pair a different tongue twister and tell them to learn it by heart.  Give them some time for that and then each pair or group should chant the tongue twister in unison over and over again while the rest of the class tries to write down what they are saying. The important thing is for the group who is "performing" not to stop at the end of the tongue twister, but to repeat it over and over again without a pause. They can stop only when someo

No, this post won't be about Adele's song, but about an activity that can not only make your students practice listening and speaking, but also learn a lot about communication. This is an activity for the whole class and it's great to use if you have some behavioral problems within your students. If they are in their teenage years, there will certainly be many ups and downs between them, especially if you take into account that rumors can sometimes make a person's life unbearable. When doing this activity you can show them how a rumor starts, while they practice their speaking and listening skills. You should ask at least 4-5 of your students to volunteer for the activity and tell them to step outside the classroom for a few minutes. They should wait in front of the door until you call them in, one by one. Tell them not to eavesdrop on what is going on in the classroom, as that will ruin the purpose of the activity.  When they are out of the classroom, yo

The game of Taboo is one of my favorite party games and here's an idea how to use it in class when revising vocabulary . The game itself is a word guessing game, which is played in pairs. The objective is to have your partner guess the word you are describing without using that word and another three to five words written on the same card.   You can make your own taboo cards for a specific topic, but you can also make a Power Point presentation in which you put a word (or a picture of it) and some other words that are closely related to that word, but may not be used. If that's the case, you can divide your students into teams and they can play against each other. A student from each team has to come forward and sit or stand with his/her back to the screen and then the rest of his/her team have to describe the words. If the student guesses the word, the team gets a point and then it's another team's turn. You can even measure their time, so just give them a min

I'm sure you're all familiar with the chain story as a form of writing exercise, but today I'll present a little spin to the activity. You can use this method whenever you want, but let's take an example of dealing with conditional sentences. When practicing conditionals, you should start a sentence with: "If I was a rock star..." and a student should continue the sentence with their own words, e.g. "If I was a rock star, I would be very popular." Then another student should continue like this: "If I was very popular ...". You do this until everyone has said their own sentence.   You can also use some alternatives and here is where Twitter comes in. As you all know, a Twitter message can contain up to 140 signs, so you can tell your students to write their example as long as possible, but no longer than 140 signs. They can do this on paper or really use their Twitter accounts if they have them. Twitter is even better for real chai

A cinquain is a poem consisting of 5 verses, which can be used for many different things in an EFL classroom. This is the pattern of the poem:  1. the first line is a noun describing the subject of the poem; 2. the second line consists of two adjectives describing the noun in the first line; 3. the third line contains three verbs (infinitive or gerund form) that give more information about the subject; 4. the fourth line is a four-word phrase describing feelings related to that subject; 5. the fifth line is a noun again, a synonym of the subject in the first line. When doing literature, you can ask your students to write a cinquain about the story or about another poem. You can ask them to write a cinquain when introducing a new subject to see what their pre-knowledge is or use it as an introduction for a discussion in class. When there are some problems in the class you can also tell them to write a cinquain to express their feelings and you can always use

A paper snowball is a great prop for revising vocabulary. I made an activity with a paper snowball when I had to prepare revision of numbers, but it can be used for anything else. You just have to print or write certain words, numbers etc. on separate sheets of paper, each sheet containing one word, number, etc. Then you start forming a snowball. First you crumple one sheet of paper as much as you can. Than you wrap another one around it and crumple it as well. You continue doing that with the rest of the paper until you wrap everything and it looks like a snowball.  Tell your students to stand in a circle and start throwing the snowball to each other. Each student that catches it has to unfold one paper, show it to the rest of the class, read the word out loud and then translate it, or use it in a sentence, or explain what it means or whatever you want them to do. Make sure to explain how to throw a ball inside the classroom beforehand and make the letters of the words visi

I’m sure you’ve all probably noticed the banners on my blog, which lead you to the Book Depository web site if you click on them. Now it’s time to tell you something more about that. I decided to put them out there for you to notice this amazing online bookstore because I’ve been their returning customer for a very long time and I absolutely love their service. Here’s what they say about themselves: About The Book Depository The Book Depository is the UK's largest dedicated online bookseller, offering the largest range of titles in the world, available for dispatch within 48 hours. Founded in 2004 to make 'All Books To All' we focus on selling 'less of more' rather than 'more of less', differentiating ourselves from other retailers who increasingly focus on bestsellers.  Free Worldwide Delivery The Book Depository is an international bookseller shipping our books free of charge, worldwide, to over 100 countries . By working with various w

If you want to spice up your classes when it comes to teaching and practicing tenses, try this idea for practicing future tenses or use it as an inspiration for something else.  I really enjoyed playing with the fortune teller origami as a kid, but even now, 15 years later, it's still really amusing. I tried out this method in one of my classes and it worked great, so I hope you'll have fun with it as much as I and my colleagues did. This activity will help your students practice the Future Simple tense. They should work in pairs and tell the future to one another. They will use the fortune teller origami that you can make for them, but the better option would be to let them make it. Here is how you make a fortune teller origami: After you have folded the paper in the right way, you should write certain things inside of the fortune teller origami. I would suggest writing some names of the cities, people, cars, brands, colors etc. In the middle part of the

I think that the easiest way to learn something is if you have fun while doing it. That’s why this post is about a game of numbers for young learners, which can be adapted to any level and any topic. While playing this game, students develop their competitive spirit and practice naming numbers. They also practice speaking, counting and receiving instructions. All you need is some cardboard paper, some colorful marker pens, scissors and about an hour of your free time to make this board game. First of all, think of all the different tasks for your students – they could count, they could name numbers, they could count backwards, they could even do some TPR activities while doing all that stuff. When you figure out what you want them to do, make little cards with challenges and questions and color-code them. After that just think of a design of the actual board, draw in the shapes, color it according to the cards and write down the instructions.