Five Reasons for Using Authentic Video in the Classroom | TeachingEnglish | British Council | BBC

Five Reasons for Using Authentic Video in the Classroom | TeachingEnglish | British Council | BBC:

"This blog entry gives five reasons for using authentic video in the classroom as part of teaching English. With the proliferation of video websites teachers are turning their eyes on this resource to bring some life and energy into the classroom. In this context taking cues from Antonia Clare's (you can watch her talking about her experience in writing SpeakOut here: http://www.pearsonlongman.com/speakout/author_antonina.html) webinar on the same topic the blog entry presents some thoughts on using video in the classroom."

How to overcome the Lonely Teacher Blues

a cLiL to cLiMB, ELT CLIL EFL ESL ELL Online Games & Activities, Resources: How to overcome the Lonely Teacher Blues:

"Teaching is, often, a lonely job. If you're lucky, you get to talk about your problems, exchange ideas, or periodically receive some level of motivation in the staff room. Most of the time, however, you get thrown in the deep end, with only a marker and the coursebook to clutch.

Some seek to fight this problem by attending conferences, and others do courses, but these tend to be costly, and teaching is not noted for a generous pay scale. So, unless some form of backing is available, most of us can't do either of those.

However, the situation has improved tremendously in the past decade or so. As Barbara Sakamoto said in my interview with her, "Get online!" There's a bewildering amount of information and resources available on the Internet, so much so that one can easily get lost. If you're reading this, you're probably among those who are already fairly knowledgeable about the world of blogging, Twitter, and webinars. It is our duty, then, to enlighten the uninitiated."

How to teach … Christmas | Education | The Guardian

How to teach … Christmas | Education | The Guardian:

"Your lesson plans are likely to go out of the window this week as pre-Christmas excitement takes hold of your pupils.

But do not fear – the Guardian Teacher Network has lots of festive resources that will engage your class in the run-up to the holidays.

Younger pupils will love Kessie's Gift for Santa, a story about a little girl who suddenly feels that Santa should get a present. Suitable for KS1 and KS2, the story explores the themes of giving and receiving and provides a handy stimulus for Christmas-themed drama activities.

For KS2 and KS3, 'Twas the Fright Before Christmas is a humorous play that re-works Dickens's A Christmas Carol. Featuring three ungrateful children and a reformed Scrooge, the play has plenty of parts to get your whole class involved. A scene from the film A Muppet Christmas Carol is used in this English lesson to get pupils talking about Dickens's classic Christmas tale. The KS2-KS4 resource includes links to an edited and abridged version of the novel, particularly useful for Esol students and reluctant readers. Suggested activities include writing a diary entry for Christmas Eve. Scrooge writes his first Christmas card is a KS3 lesson in which students read an article and answer questions about the beginnings of the Christmas card in Britain. During the activity, pupils will discover what the first Christmas card looked like and why people complained about it."

English resources and lesson plans | Guardian Teacher Network | guardian.co.uk

English resources and lesson plans | Guardian Teacher Network | guardian.co.uk:

"Welcome to the Guardian Teacher Network English teaching resources page. Here you will find everything you need for delivering exciting, engaging and informative English lessons for all ages. Our resources include exclusive Guardian content, written by expert teachers, materials created and uploaded by teachers worldwide and Guardian articles on key topics. Browse and use the resources, add your favourites to your personal lesson planner, and download individual components for use in your own lessons."

Christmas and Other Winter Holiday Resources

Past posts:
http://dreaminenglish.blogspot.com/search/label/Christmas

Christmas Links from Isabel Perez's ESL Site:
http://www.isabelperez.com/xmas.htm

Christmas Lesson Plan from Developing Teachers:
http://www.developingteachers.com/tips/xmasplan_01.htm

Christmas Adjectives (Gap-fill exercise):
http://www.englishpage.com/holidays/christmas5c.htm

Breaking News English ESL Lesson Plan on Christmas:
http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/xmas.html

Listen to 'A Christmas Carol' by Charles Dickens:
http://www.world-english.org/christmas_carol.htm

Make and print vocabulary handouts for Christmas vocabulary:
http://www.toolsforeducators.com/handouts/christmas.php

Free Christmas Coloring Pages:
http://childparenting.about.com/od/funcelebrations/a/Free-Christmas-Coloring-Pages.htm

Christmas Graphics:
http://www.christmasmyspacegraphics.com/
http://www.christmas-graphics-plus.com/
http://www.christmas-graphics.net/
http://jsmagic.net/xmas/
http://www.glitterfy.com/graphics/Christmas/
http://www.satisfaction.com/codes/merry-christmas-comments-1.php
http://www.1netcentral.com/christmas-graphics.html

Santa and Other Traditions Printables:
http://homeschooling.about.com/od/holidays/ss/santaprint.htm?nl=1

Christmas Treasure Hunt:
http://www.teachers.ash.org.au/denise/ChristmasTreasureHunt.htm

Christmas Around the World Webquest:
http://hrsbstaff.ednet.ns.ca/nbarkhou/christmaswq/

Christmas Traditions Around the World:
http://www.santas.net/aroundtheworld.htm
http://www.the-north-pole.com/around/
http://www.soon.org.uk/country/christmas.htm
http://holidays.kaboose.com/xmas-around.html
http://www.theholidayspot.com/christmas/worldxmas/
http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/lesson041.shtml
http://www.teachers.ash.org.au/denise/HowChristmasIsCelebrated.htm
http://www.rochedalss.eq.edu.au/xmas/world1.htm
http://www.dltk-holidays.com/xmas/christmas_play.htm

Christmas Teaching Resources:
http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/teacher/christmas.html

Christmas Lesson Plans:
http://www.eslflow.com/Christmaslessonplans.html

The 12 Days of Christmas:
http://homeschooling.about.com/od/freeprintables/ss/12dayscolor.htm?nl=1

Christmas Writing Printables:
http://specialed.about.com/od/holidaysthemes/tp/Christmas-Writing-Printables.htm?nl=1

Christmas Activities and Ideas:
http://familyfun.go.com/christmas/

Merry Christmas - Digital Play:
http://www.digitalplay.info/blog/2011/12/10/merry-quizmas/

ICTMagic Advent Calendar:
http://www.wix.com/ictmagic/christmas#!

600+ Christmas Icons:
http://www.designrshub.com/2011/12/600-free-christmas-icons-for-your-blog.html

Winter Holiday Traditions:
http://712educators.about.com/cs/winterholidays/a/winterholidays.htm

Hanukkah / Chanukah:
http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Chanukah-Activities-6106520/
http://voices.yahoo.com/free-hanukkah-chanukah-printables-670421.html?cat=11
http://homeschooling.about.com/od/holidays/ss/hanukkahprint.htm?nl=1

Kwanzaa:
http://voices.yahoo.com/kwanzaa-information-websites-free-printable-activities-681223.html
http://712educators.about.com/cs/winterholidays/a/winterholidays_5.htm?nl=1

More resources for traditions:
http://www.scoop.it/t/celebrations-for-education

Can teachers ever have a work-life balance? | Teacher Network Blog | Guardian Professional

Can teachers ever have a work-life balance? | Teacher Network Blog | Guardian Professional:

"Teachers are, at times, a much-maligned and misunderstood community. Your friends will rib you about knocking off at 3 o'clock. "Oh, and you get all those holidays don't you?" they will quip. "How hard can it really be?"

To cut to the chase, teaching is a stressful profession. Many of those friends of yours who jest about your extended holidays will not understand the complexities and strains of being in the profession."

Ode to #Pencilchat: Technology Integration in the Classroom

Ode to #Pencilchat: Technology Integration in the Classroom
by: MiddleLevelEd
 
"In honor of Twitter's #pencilchat, I put together some of the more memorable tweets to create this video.  I plan to use it for upcoming professional development workshops about technology integration in the classroom. It's a light-hearted look at the spectrum of where we sit regarding technology in the classroom and meeting our students' needs. Enjoy!"

CLIL Citizenship: Recycling | TeachingEnglish | British Council | BBC

CLIL Citizenship: Recycling | TeachingEnglish | British Council | BBC:

"As citizens of a world with limited resources we all need to think about how best to use these resources, whether we are in the developed world or the developing world. This activity will help pupils think more about recycling at home and at school. It is aimed at older primary or younger secondary pupils."

Cooking in Britain Today | TeachingEnglish | British Council | BBC

Cooking in Britain Today | TeachingEnglish | British Council | BBC:

"This lesson consists of a series of activities to help students talk about food and cooking. The main focus of the lesson is a text based on a recent survey in the UK indicating that British people are becoming more adventurous and experimental in their cooking and eating habits due to the growing popularity of cooking programmes. This lesson should challenge stereotypes of British food and encourage students to discuss their own preferences and attitudes towards food and restaurants."

Education World: Bullying and Cyberbullying: Six Things Teachers Can Do

Education World: Bullying and Cyberbullying: Six Things Teachers Can Do:

"What Can Teachers Do to Reduce Future Occurrences of Bullying?

Discuss Bullying: Give students the opportunity to discuss bullying. Have the class come up with rules against bullying and involve them in determining that bullying behavior is unacceptable. Provide classroom activities and discussion opportunities related to bullying and violence, including the harm they cause and strategies to reduce their incidence.
Teach Cooperation: Teach cooperation by assigning projects that require collaboration. Such cooperation teaches students how to compromise and how to assert without demanding. Take care to vary grouping of participants and to monitor the treatment of and by participants in each group.
Develop a Plan: Develop a classroom action plan to ensure that students know what to do when they observe a bully-victim confrontation."

Read the whole article here:
http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/what-schools-can-do-to-stop%20bullying.shtml

Why You Should Always Start With a Warmer

Why You Should Always Start With a Warmer:

"Starting with a warmer is important for a number of reasons. Your students need a chance to settle down into the class and get their minds focused on the lesson ahead. Delving straight into difficult subject matter isn’t going to help them in the least bit."

Type with me :a quick educative online collaborative tool



Type with me :a quick educative online collaborative tool:

"Typewith.me is an online document collaboration tool which works in real time .It is a very important web2.0 tool for teachers and educators .it is free , easy , simple to use and above all doesn’t need any registration .It has a cool functionality that allows users to work on the same document and at the same time."

Top 10 Board Games for the ESL Classroom

Top 10 Board Games for the ESL Classroom:

"Board games can be a useful and ready asset for the ESL classroom. Most require little to no preparation, and with a little patience, your English learners add a new resource to their language studies. On top of all that, board games are a fun way to learn new vocabulary and make a change from the normal routine."

Killing Us Softly 4







"In this update of her pioneering Killing Us Softly series, Jean Kilbourne takes a fresh look at how advertising traffics in distorted and destructive ideals of femininity. Killing Us Softly 4 stands to challenge a new generation of students to take advertising seriously, and to think critically about popular culture and its relationship to sexism, eating disorders, and gender violence.

Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D. is internationally recognized for her groundbreaking work on the image of women in advertising and for her critical studies of alcohol and tobacco advertising. In the late 1960s she began her exploration of the connection between advertising and several public health issues, including violence against women, eating disorders, and addiction, and launched a movement to promote media literacy as a way to prevent these problems. Kilbourne is the creator of the renowned Killing Us Softly: Advertising's Image of Women film series and the author of the award-winning book Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel and co-author of So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids."