First, let`s start with speaking one of the most tough things for all students irrespective of age, and basically I`ll touch on organization of project activities. We can achieve it with the help of IT resources, I mentioned 3 sources here: Storybird, Inclewriter, Pixton. Storybird is connected with a joint story making, so how does it work? You go and register there as a teacher and students as students. The site provides with templates which are free, students can write these stories together online using illustrations and audios that they can record and present during the class, from where I stand it can be used as homework and classwork too.
The second resource is connected with making comics through Pixton. It`s not the only one of course, there is also one source named as Stripcreator. Comics can be created by students focusing on lexico-grammatical rules studied during the class. These comics are created based on the characters of previous lessons, they are familiar students, they already know their present, past and for instance, now they`re creating their future.
Speaking
Visual information is very crucial for various age groups of students, particularly “Wimmelbucher”. These are books with plot pictures linked with some special situations, the main author of these books is Suzanne Berner, she has (summer book, autumn book, winter book, spring book and night book) these are books with plot pictures of our daily life in the city, but the city is a German one, but as far as I am concerned there are Wimmelbuchers with the map of Russia too. Activities involved in these books are really motivating for students, they can be in forms of retelling the text, or one student describes the picture, and makes a mistake but not a grievous grammatical error but something connected with the picture and the second student corrects it, Wimmelbucher is very useful for practicing verbs of movement.
If we want our students to practice speaking at home, they can do it with recording something, it can be a diary about their everyday life, a monologue, thoughts, ideas, etc. Then they can send it by any messenger or just upload it in VoiceThread where they can discuss the recording or the video of their classmate during the lesson. No one can get access to the recording or video, so it`s closed for others. Why do I find this exercise very beneficial, as the student practices speaking, others listening (by listening the recording) and writing by writing down the details of the recording and discussing it with others. Plus it`s a very important assignment for keeping students engaged during after the lesson which is a key aspect of any language learning.
Writing
Moving on to writing, I am eager to introduce Kialo. Here the teacher simply asks a widespread question :” Where is it better to live in a city or in a village?” Students should wright in Kialo their ideas and thoughts, somehow it prepares them for the discussion in class and boosts their self-confidence, because they already have something to say, they don`t need to construct sentences in their minds, I guess this one bests suits students of B1-B1+ level. (Storybird can also be used here). Writing is a big stretch for all students, to color it a little bit we can involve their favourite phone apps, like whatsapp, viber, messenger. Create a group with students and keep them in good shape out of the classroom. What can you do for that? Write the beginning of a simple story and ask you students to write the continuation in groups and share them in your mutual group. Just bear in mind not to ask for long stories, usually we should keep these messenger stories as short as possible. Then you can organize a competition between stories, upload it on Facebook, Instagram wherever, whose story gets more likes that story wins and the winners are awarded with certificates, sweets, flowers, cookies, books. Isn`t that inspiring? Or you can ask one student to type a sentence and ask others to continue using the last word of the sentence. You tell them the order not to mess up everything. I wouldn`t trade this assignment for anything as it always keeps my students in touch with me even out of the classroom.
Reading
Reading requires quite a passive interaction with students, as opposed to other skills, that`s why here I place high priority on creating exercises based on texts, which can be achieved with the help of such apps as Padlet, Miro and LearningApps. This last one is my favourite as it has absolutely whatever you need, all grammar rules, vocabulary with different topics not only in English but also in other languages. In reading all students should be involved, they read a text, ask questions to each other, here the teacher is like a conductor who controls this. In the abovementioned app Storybird you can come across various level texts, which can be a good support for teachers in terms of finding reliable reading passages.
Listening
It will not come amis to mention that here we teachers have a big plus in terms of using internet resources such as YouTube other video and audio resources. Not surprisingly, songs, musical videos, short films, TV shows, advertisements and trailers. I like the idea of asking a student to watch 2, 3 trailers of movies, then they have to choose a film to watch and clarify why he wants to watch exactly that film. Or they watch the trailer and write a short description of a movie, what it is about, who plays there, or he can create the title of the film. At times I also assign role-plays, depending on the topic of course, if the topic is health and care I ask them to act a dialogue doctor-patient with different illnesses, it can be assigned as homework or done right during the lesson. Once I told them to shoot a movie with the whole class offline of course, and then watch it together in class. You can`t even imagine their enthusiasm and interest, how engaged they were, they were students of the 12th grade, they shot a short drama, unfortunately I couldn`t find it to demonstrate here.
If we`re speaking about programs which can be used for creating listening exercises I basically use- Edpuzzle, TedEd, YTCutter. Edpuzzle is the most popular app for building exercises based on videos, and the most widespread exercise here is filling in the gaps in subtitles, but you can also find some interactive exercises, the easiest app is our well-known TedEd. YTCutter allows you to cut some fragments from youtube videos. Videos can be used in many different ways, the 1st one you can unmute the video the students need to act the video according to images, the 2nd one, you can stop the video and ask students to continue, or start the video from the end and ask them to tell the beginning.
Coming to games I want to mention that`s it`s a little bit complicated to play games during our classes, for that matter there numerous online games that are worth paying attention. The 1st one is The Bragging Game.
This activity not only helps your students expand their vocabulary and practice using comparative and superlative adjective forms but also helps them to be more creative.
How to play
Start by saying a simple sentence. For example, you could say, “I live in a house.” Then, the student has to “brag” by saying something greater or more exaggerated than your sentence but still within the same topic, such as, “Really? I live in a bigger house, with a pool.”
Continue this bragging game by going back and forth trying to top each other’s claim (for example, you could then counter with, “Well I live in a mansion with a pool and a jacuzzi!”). The circle ends when a person cannot think of anything to top the last example.
The 2nd one “Story Dice” you can find it both in apps (AppStore, PlayMarket) or online.
The Standard Method
You get a student to roll the cubes and then they must link all the pictures together through the use of a spontaneous story. Begin with ‘Once Upon a Time’ and tell a story that links together all the Dice images. Start with the first image to grab your attention. Use three cubes for the beginning, three for the middle and three for the end of the story if using the 9 dice. Really, there are no rules to this game. Most importantly, there are no wrong answers!
Review Grammar Forms
If you have been focusing on grammar in your class, you can use the story dice to help creatively review the key grammar from the lesson. Roll the story dice and have students pick two of them. Then in pairs or groups get students to write their own example of the grammar using the images on the dice. This works well in free grammar practice. Be sure to correct any mistakes in the target grammar.
Random Discussion Topic
Roll the dice and choose one of the die to talk about a topic. For example, in this case the topic could be ‘travel’ or ‘aeroplanes’ and so on.
Taboo
Clue cards have the clue word on the top of the card and the taboo words listed below the clue word. Clue-givers then start and keep the timer and must get their team to say the guess-word on the card without using one of the taboo words in one of their clues. If a taboo word is used then Team B must sound the buzzer which penalizes Team A by causing the current guess card to go into the discard pile.
Alias
Alias is a fun word explanation game that is played in teams of 2 or more people. The aim is to make your teammates guess the word you are explaining by giving those hints and tips. For each correct guess the team moves forward on the game board, and the team that reaches the finish space first wins the game!
Sentence Maker
This game is best for reviewing vocabulary or grammar concepts that you’ve taught in previous classes.
How to play
Write a list composed of 15 words with mixed parts of speech (i.e., nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions). Then, ask the student to choose any word from the list and make a correct and logical sentence with it. You can encourage students to be creative and have fun with their sentences to keep the game interesting. Provide a point if the sentence contains the word and is grammatically correct.
Circle or cross out the first word that the student previously chose so it can’t be used anymore. Afterward, choose two new words from the list and let him or her make a new sentence using them. Give the student two points for a grammatically correct sentence containing these two new words, then circle or cross them out from the word list.
Then, the student must choose three new words from the list and create another sentence. Follow the criteria for the previous rounds.
The game ends when the last remaining five words are used in a sentence.
ESL Jeopardy
This ESL game for teaching online, which is inspired by the popular TV game show of the same name, is effective for reading comprehension, vocabulary, and even math skills.
How to play
Before class, get the game set up on your whiteboard.
Decide on about four to six categories for which you’ll come up with questions for the student.
Make sure some of the categories are suitable for grammar/vocabulary questions, such as “verbs” or a flexible category like “name three.”
Make other categories fun topics you know will interest your student, such as “movie characters.”
Write these categories vertically along the left side of the virtual whiteboard.
Along the top of the whiteboard, make columns for increasing point categories (i.e., 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 points).
If you have five point categories (from 10 to 50), you’ll now need to come up with five questions under each of your chosen categories.
As you write your questions, remember that the higher the number of points, the more difficult the question becomes.
When you’re ready to play, explain the categories and points to the student. Then, ask the student to choose a category and a number of points. (You can have the student use the language from the TV show: “I’ll take ‘name three’ for 50 points.”) Ask the student the corresponding question. He or she earns the points if the answer is correct.
If you’re playing with more than one student, another player can “steal” the question if the first student doesn’t answer it correctly by attempting to answer the same question.
