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Showing posts with the label Online Games

On (and off) the wall vocabulary activities

I often make students (and teachers I work with) get out of their seats. I think movement in the classroom is important whether you believe in the now  hotly debated concept of learning styles  or because  cognition is embodied . Apart from onion ring debates and mingling activities, there are many movement activities you can do using classroom walls. A  recent article in English Teaching Professional suggested ideas for taking advantage of all four classroom walls using whiteboards. I would like to share some ideas on how I use walls in my classrooms without any additional whiteboards required. All you need is paper (usually cut-up) and some Blu-tack       Taking strips of paper OFF the walls This is a “kinaesthetic” alternative to a vocabulary matching activity. Stick the words on the walls around the classroom and hand out to students (in groups) lists of different definitions. Students have to walk around and take off the walls the words that ma...

Spent but enriched

In this activity, students play an online digital game (in pairs or alone at home) and then focus on the lexis related to money. I've never liked online games, apart from  Airport Madness 3 and  Airline Manager on Facebook - my childhood fascination with airplanes is probably to blame. I would even make snide remarks about people who do like them, such as: "My life is interesting enough I don't need online games" or "I have imagination, thank you. I don't need to escape into the realm of fantasy". However - now this may sound platitudinous - it all changed when I took Graham Stanley 's online course "Language Learning Using Online Digital Games" on SEETA (South East Europe Teachers Association). By the way, if you don't know what SEETA is check out their website - they run great courses and you can take part in some of them even if you're not a member of a teachers' association in any of the 12 member countries. Graham's ...