Ten Keys to Happiness

This week, the topic I'm working on with my class is happiness - quite an appropriate one for this time of year when most of us are suffering from the January blues!

Here is a reading/ speaking activity I've created, based on an article from February's edition of Psychologies Magazine. 

Reading Task

I've simplified the original article to make it more accessible for B1 learners. It outlines Ten Keys to a happier life from the Action for Happiness movement. 

Find out more about Action for Happiness here and how you can get involved:

http://www.actionforhappiness.org/

VISION BOARDS

Creating a personal 'Vision Board' (sometimes known as a 'mood board') is a great way to get learners to think about and understand what's really important for them in their lives. Basically, this is a life-coaching technique, but I think it works really well in the EFL classroom because it's fun, hands-on and creative. The completed boards can be used in a number of ways to generate discussion.

TASK 1 - Making a Vision Board

You will need: 

• A large sheet of card or coloured paper for every student. 

• A selection of old magazines, holiday brochures, catalogues etc. Glue.

• Inspiring/ motivating background music (optional)

• A few pairs of scissors (optional)

Ask  your learners to look through the magazines and find pictures that appeal to them in order to create their personal Vision Board.

They should choose pictures and words that show:

·        things they love

·        things they want more of in their lives

·        things or activities that make them happy

·        dreams for the future

Ask them to look through the magazines until they find something that appeals to them. They rip the picture (or word) out and stick it to onto their board with glue.

This creates a Vision Board.

TASK 2 – Discussion

When they have finished, ask them to move around and talk to other people in the class. They could show/ compare their boards and explain why they chose those pictures. They could ask each other questions about their boards or try to guess what the pictures represent. They could say whose board is the most creative/ interesting/ unusual...etc.

Ask students:

What did you learn in this lesson about yourself and other people?

(image from a workshop by vitaliscoaching.com)

Click here for Lesson Handout

Find out more about mood boards as a coaching technique

Channel 4's Unreported World Series

"15 and Learning to Speak"

Unreported World is a critically acclaimed TV series which focuses on the lives of people in some of the fastest-changing areas of the world. You need to sign up to watch on demand, but it's free and easy to do. 

The documentaries are all around 20-25 mins in length, which makes them suitable for using in the classroom.

This particular programme is amazing to watch. It follows the inspirational work of sign language teachers transforming the lives of deaf children and adults in Uganda who have never been able to communicate in their lives and who are often treated badly at home because they are deaf.

Click here to view programme

I've created a simple handout for this documentary (suitable for B1 +) 

Click here for worksheet

You could also pre-teach some useful vocabulary before watching e.g. remote/ boarding school etc. if you think this will help your students.

REALIA

10 Ways to use students' stuff in the classroom

It's amazing what students carry around with them in their bags and rucksacks. Why not use these things, which they are familiar with, as a resource to help them feel more 'at home'? This helps to personalise it more - thus making the content/language more relevant and memorable for learners. 

Here are 10 suggestions:

1) Whose is it? /Possessive adjectives/ possessive pronouns and possessive 's

Collect stuff from tables, mix it up, then ask students to guess whose it is (e.g. 'Piotr, I think this is your phone..../no it's not mine - it's Jen's.

2) Where is it? / Prepositions of place 

Ss put stuff in different places, hide things etc. 'Where's the book? I think it's in the drawer'

3) How many/ how much? Countable/uncountable nouns/There is/there are/ he/she’s got some/any/a few/ a/an/ have you got....etc
Ss guess what's inside their partner’s bag or describe what’s in their own bag/ pockets etc.

have you got any fruit? etc.

4) Describing objects/ order of adjectives/ lost property role-play etc.
Ss describe each other’s stuff. It’s a big, red, leather purse.

5) Phone role-plays, describing people, talking about family or friends
Get Ss’ to hold their actual phones during a phone role-play or show each other photos of friends, family or places during a discussion. I find it helps them to relax a bit as it mirrors life outside the classroom.

6) Chemist or shopping role-play
Use their actual money and stuff for a role-play (perfume, tissues, cough sweets, make-up etc)

7) Going to + inf/ infinitive of purpose/ other tenses?
Ss take stuff out of their bags (e.g. a sandwich) and say what it's for etc. 

Why have you got a ....with you/in your bag? =I’m going to have it for lunch.

8) Spelling race 

A good filler. Put stuff on the table. Ss spell the words in teams.

9) Scavenger hunt/Alphabet race in groups 

In teams, Ss find things for each letter of the alphabet e.g. apple, book, crayon...Award extra points for the most unusual collection.

10) Find Someone Who's got a..../ who's wearing a brown watch etc. Mingle activity.

11) Other ideas?...

All of these ideas would work well with lower levels (beginner-pre-intermediate). However, with higher levels it is also worth thinking about how you could personalise things more or make students feel more 'at home' in the classroom. 

*Some students don't carry much, but almost all of them are likely to have a phone, a wallet, keys and other bits and bobs on their person.

Watch this space for more ideas in January!

Dictogloss Technique

I mentioned this technique in an earlier post about using poetry and thought I'd follow it up with a few examples of how we can use it to introduce other authentic texts.

Dictogloss is a teaching technique where learners reconstruct a short text by listening and noting down key words. It has several advantages:

• It integrates the four language skills: listening, reading, speaking, and writing. 
• It provides opportunities to talk about both content and form (i.e. grammar, lexis). 
• It can be used to present new information and encourage listening for key points. 
• It's good for confidence building, as learners are encouraged to participate in groups.
• It can be adapted for different levels and age groups

Choosing a text:

• songs (or part of a song)
• poems (see my Tim Burton post for ideas)
• stories/ anecdotes
• recipes
• letters 
• postcards
• e-mails
• Short newspaper articles
• Audio clips

Consider the level and age of your students and the relevance of the content. Look for examples of structures you want to introduce or that you have been working on e.g. tenses, phrasal verbs, collocations, vocabulary etc.

How to use the technique:

You can adapt the technique to find out what suits your learners, but here are a couple of ways to try.

Version 1

1. read the text at a normal, natural speed while students just listen - they do not take notes at this stage.
2. read the text again. Students listen and note down key words only  (or draw pictures)
3. read the text again. Students listen and make notes.
4. in groups of three or four, students compare their text and try to get it as close to the original as possible.
5. The students write their final text, then compare their reconstruction with the original

Version 2

1. as above
2. after listening, students individually write down as much of the text as they can remember.
3. read the text again. students do not take notes while the teacher is speaking.
4.  students make changes to their previous text.
5. in groups of three or four, students compare their text to get the text as close to the original text as possible.
6. read the original text one last time.
7. students write their final text, then compare their reconstruction with the original

What's the point?

• to introduce language features (grammar/ lexis)
• to improve students’ listening and note-taking skills
• to help students to focus on meaning and content as well as form
• to develop proof reading and editing skills (spelling, punctuation etc.)
• to help students synthesize information
• to provide a real opportunity for student-centred, collaborative learning
• to assist weaker learners and learners who require support with reading and writing activities.

sample lesson plan

52 Inspirational Quotes

We all need a bit of inspiration in the winter, don't we?

Here is a list of my 52 favourite quotations (various extracts from books, songs, poems etc.) or you could create your own?

Click here for my list

One way to use these in the classroom might be to create a gapfill, or a matching  (beginnings/endings) task. 

Here's an example: 

Confucius handout

Alternatively:

• ask students to read and choose their favourite quotes from the list, then discuss and compare in pairs/groups
• help students to compile their own lists (mini-project)
• ask students to create motivational posters for the classroom wall.
• create a class 'book' of inspiring quotes or sayings from around the world...
• other ideas...?

The Wonderful World of Tim Burton

Using poetry in class is a great way to focus on 

• rhyming words
• intonation
• sentence stress
• word stress
• phonemes
• vocabulary

etc....

I'd like to suggest some fun ways to use poetry in the classroom and in this post I'll be focusing on the work of Tim Burton (1958), American film director, producer, artist, writer, and animator. He is best known for his dark, gothic, macabre, and quirky horror and fantasy films such as Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Corpse Bride, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Dark Shadows and Frankenweenie, and for blockbusters such as Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Batman, its first sequel Batman Returns,Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland.  

(Source - Wikipedia)

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) is a musical fantasy-comedy film which tells the story of Jack Skellington, a being from "Halloween Town" who opens a portal to "Christmas Town" and decides to celebrate the holiday, with some dastardly and comical consequences. It's based on the original poem written by Tim Burton in 1982, while he was working as an animator at Walt Disney Animation Studios.

Here's a link to an animated version of the poem, narrated by Christopher Lee. Underneath you'll find a copy of the text, with all the rhyming words highlighted and potentially tricky vocabulary underlined. 

The Nightmare before Christmas Full text

Another fun resource I've used with my learners is Burton's  The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and other stories - a brilliantly bizarre collection of illustrated tales involving a cast of misunderstood outcasts, all struggling to find love and acceptance in their cruel worlds.

My personal favourites are Robot Boy, Toxic Boy and The Girl with Many Eyes. 

There are lots of creative ways you can use poems in the classroom. Here are a few ideas:

• read aloud together focusing on rhythm and intonation
• gapfill exercise (cloze)
• matching game with rhyming words (before or after reading)
• sort words according to same sound in the phonemic chart (e.g. thunder, wonder, sun)
• students decide which words are stressed then listen and check
• focus on weak forms 
• mix up the lines and ask students to rearrange them
• dictogloss technique  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictogloss

Click here for the poems (with illustrations):

The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy

and find out more about Tim Burton here:

http://www.timburton.com/

Stay tuned for more posts on using poetry in the English Language classroom!

New Skype Translator

Microsoft has released a preview of it's new Skype Translator, which allows real time conversations between English and Spanish (with more languages to be added later). According to this article from the Guardian, Microsoft hopes that the system will break down language barriers, though of course this will rely on accurate translations.

Here's a video of the new Skype Translator in action. Pretty funky, isn't it?

Could make for an interesting discussion, perhaps?

Click here for news item and video

Regrets, I've had a few...

'I Regret my Face Tattoo'

I came across this on the Guardian website today and I thought it could be an interesting topic for discussion.

The context is also ideal for introducing structures like 'I should(n't) have', 'If I could turn back time, I'd...' , I wish (or if only) I had/hadn't / I regret + ing  etc...

Click here for task and article