Creative Teacherette

This post is another one in the "section" of creative writing. As I have already said, it can be pretty difficult to get your students to write their own stories, so these methods can be of great help.  Mini saga is a story of exactly 50 words, that your students have to write. It can also have a title of up to 15 words, but the title can also be omitted. It is great to stimulate creativity and determine the crucial elements of a story. Here's an example of a mini saga by Daniel H. Pink: "When I was shot, fear seized me at first. No surprise that. But once I realized I wasn’t going to die – despite the thermonuclear pain and widening puddle of weirdly warm blood – my mind recalibrated. And one thought, comforting yet disturbing, leapt into my head: I need to tweet this."

When I was a child, I loved to fill out things in workbooks and magazines for children. When I started going to school, I loved to fill out things in course- and workbooks and today I love doing so as well. No wonder, I have collected English coursebooks and workbooks throughout my whole education. Those were not only my personal ones, but I also have a collection of my brother's English coursebooks and some of my mother's as well. Some of my friends have also been so kind as to give me their coursebooks. So, as you can see, for us, (future) teachers, it can be pretty easy to get to materials on certain topics. And the best thing is that you can re-use these as many times as you want. 

I'm still pretty busy, but yesterday I spent the whole day doing this DIY project for my practicum, so I just wanted to share what I made with you. I had to hold a class to 6th graders and I wanted to amp it up a bit because the topic wasn't very interesting. Therefore, I decided to create these true / false flags for the students to use during a typical true/false activity. I read some statements connected to the text we were working on and they had to raise a "T" flag if a statement was correct and an "F" flag if it was false. They were ecstatic when they saw the flags, so if you have some free time, try spending it on creating them, your students will love you and you'll be able to reuse them for sure. So, you'll need the following: - some long and thick straws in two colors - some paper in two colors - scissors - glue - ruler - markers

Remember my blog post about creative writing activities , where your students have to connect the titles of their favorite songs into a story? Well, besides their favorite song titles you can use visual statements, which can be found everywhere on the internet.  Some of my favorite web - sites for this are: http://weheartit.com/ http://www.visualstatements.net/ http://pinterest.com/fashark/visual-statements/ http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/visual%20statement http://www.someecards.com/ You can also use these to teach your students how English language functions in terms of irony and sarcasm ( someecards ) . If they are longer you can tell them to write a story about what a visual statement is saying. Or you can make a bigger project where your students write their impressions about learning English on a poster and incorporate some visual statements in their stories, so you end up with a "picture story" of some sort. Another idea is to use vi...

Hi, everyone! I know I've been MIA for the last month or so, but I had a lot going on at the university. I'm slowly finishing my studies and although there's still a lot to be done, I think I'll be able to spend some of my time on this blog in the next couple of months. Today I wanted to tell you how my first time in an EFL classroom as a student of teaching foreign languages went by. Once again, I got reassured that teaching is what I want to do for the rest of my life! One of my colleagues and I visited a local elementary school and we got to observe an English class of third graders. Their teacher, Jelena, blew me away. I always thought that teaching kids at such young age is chaotic and exhausting and all over the place, but seeing this class made me realize that all the things that we were taught in college really can be transferred to an enjoyable practice. The topic of the lesson were days of the week and some activities that can be done in one’s...