Higher or Lower

A super simple game I use in class is Higher or Lower. It takes no time to prepare, gets students really engaged in an activity and can be used to practice a wide range of skill sets.
To start with numbers. The is a myriad of numbers you can practice all. Prices, times, dates, weight, height, number of people at a place. The list is endless. If it has a number you can use it.
You can also use it to practice modals of deduction and some simple language chunks that will be useful both in life and when the students goes in for their dreaded Cambridge exam.
I tend to arm my students with the chunks of language they are going to need at the start of the game.

I think it could be....
I don't reckon it's more than....
I can't be sure but....
I'm guessing it's about.....
Well, it's obviously more than.....
You said Claudio was close so it must be around...
It's clearly between ..... and .... so my guess is....
Ok, so the number must be....

Then I draw a simple grid on the board. 2 columns and two rows.

In the title row I put the comparatives necessary for the activity. If I were doing the price of a car one side would read:

More expensive than....   and the other.              Cheaper than....


I'd put a picture of the car up (google images) and I'd get the students to start guessing. Asking each students in turn to provide me with a number.

I'm not sure how your students are with numbers and the different ways in which we use numbers in English but after just 5 classes which have included the height of a mountain, the price of a car, the time of my alarm on my phone, the age of a painting and the number of tourists to visit The Alcazar in Sevilla. I've seen 90% of my students being able to use "Big" numbers with almost consummate ease. It's a fun way of drilling numbers and it gives everyone in class a chance to practice.

Right then. That's it for today. Coming soon some fun musical ideas and post-it notes galore.

Til the next time.

The Fix is in.

I'm not sure how many of your students love lists, but I have a whole bunch of them who absolutely love lists. I think it might have something to do with the Spanish exam mentality that makes them enjoy pouring over list after list of phrasal verbs and dependent propositions. for some of them, it obviously works.
It's for that reason that I decided to spend far too many hours of my time making this list of prefixes and suffixes. It's just a list. No extra exercises, just a big long list.
The downloadable worksheet is available from the link right up there ^ it's called Just a few materials.

Anyway, there is a little taster below but for the whole docume t you'll need to click above.

Verb-forming Suffixes	Meanings	Examples
-ate / -en / -fy -ise / -ize	make / become render (as) / treat (as)	Activate / Shorten / Purify Minimize / Crystallize / Idolize

Adverb-forming Suffixes	Meanings	Examples
-ally / -ly	in the manner of / with respect to	Emphatically / Musically / Nicely / Alternately

Where exactly is the cat sitting?

I must admit my most commonly used sentence over the past seven years is probably; "The Cat Sat on the Mat." I use it when helping students develop their imagination and write a story that is less one dimensional and I use it to show what a difference stress can make to a sentence.

Today I'm going to talk about the latter. Next time I shall delve deeper into the former.
This is just one of three activities I use throughout the year as a quick reminder to my studets that stress can change everything.

I write this simple sentence out on the board. Next I underline one of the words in the sentence and get the students to stress said word. Almost immediately stdents pick up on the difference the stres can make. 

For example. The CAT sat on the mat. The stress on the word cat shows us it was a feline creature and not any other beast. 

The cat SAT on the mat. With the stress lying on the verb it shows us that the cat wasn't dancing, nor was she singing and was in fact just having a nice little sit. 

I continue with the other words in the sentence then I get students to write there own sentences and choose a word to stress. Other students have to decipher the meaning and share with the class what the stressed word indicates. 

And that my friends is about that. 

If you want regular updates you can follow me on twitter @EFLuencyfella

Reported Speech and Sporcle a match made in movie heaven.

Here is the return of an old favourite from my old blog. It's a fantastic way to work reported speech and movie trivia into th classroom

There are a myriad of games to allow your students to practice their new found skill of reporting. One I was introduced to a couple of days ago tests your students movie knowledge, their ability to transalte from the language they first saw the movie and then how to convert some of the most famous quotes in movie history into reported speech.

Your students level will, obviously, dictate the difficulty of the task, the reporting verbs they use and whether they chuck a few adverbs in there as well.

The first step is to get onto the fantastic  http://www.sporcle.com/games/happy101/best-movie-quotes-imageshttp://www.sporcle.com/games/happy101/best-movie-quotes-images then run through each of the images to identify which movies the quotes come from.

Step two, hit the timer and get the students to take turns in giving you a quote to one of the movies on the screen. 

Seven minutes later the time will have run out and all the missing quotes will be revealed and the students will have a chance to take the famous quotes and report them to their classmates.  

This works as a wonderful cooler after going through the "rules" of reported speech or as a warmer in the next class to make sure they still have it down.. My students really enjoyed it.

 A big thanks to my colleague Neil for pointing me towards the quiz and sharing his idea with me. 

I hope your students find it as useful as mine did. 

Right that's all for today.  Have a great holiday whereever you may be. If you don't have a holiday just go ahead and have a great weekend.

For regular updates why not follow me on twitter @EFluencyfella

Looking Forward, then back

I've often found myself wondering whilstplanig my next class, what do the students already know. we are all well aware that before we start a class we should really take into account and think about any assumed knowledge the class have on the subject we're about to embark upon.

You'll read it in every book, you'll hear it at every training session but how often do you actually check what students know before you start teaching it?

What I like to do is check at the end of the previous class what they might know. I always review what we have done in that lesson (I check again in the next) and then using a spidergram or somethingof that ilk on the board I just get students to come up and write any words or phrases relating to that subject of the next class.It's a simple way to get the mind going and into gear. If uit's a grammar point simply asking a student to explain it rather than a boring diagram up on the board. All it ever sounds like to me is
 Subject +blah + bla-ing and I'm teaching it.

So for vocab. Preview known vocab with a spidergram and thern in the following class open with a quick round of Catagories on mini whiteboards or in Ss notebooks. Starting the class with a game is always great and students have almost always thought of a new word or two since the previous class as you've left that idea there in their heads.

I have been know on the odd occasion to tell eams it's their turn to look for new vocab on the topic and start the next class by explaining it to the other students.

These ideas are hardly revolutionary. I don't claim to have any ownership whatsoever over them. They just make classes flow a lot easier and take the subject matter from the hands of the teacher and puts it into the hands of the students.

These ideas take a a little bit of forethought. Just flick to the next page in the book before the class finishes and see what's coming up, if you're a class to class planner, like me. If you're even more organised and you plan a few classes at a time then you're already set. These ideas have helped me an awful lot and have saved time in lengthy explanations and most importantly got the students thinking about what they've learnt and what they're going to learn.

It's very rare that a class will have no idea at all about the suject matter so give them some credit and relinquish your power........ to an extent.


That's all you're getting for this week.

Enjoy your weekend.