Teacher's Pet

Kate Nash "The Nicest Thing": Song Lesson

noreply@blogger.com (Anastasia Geinrikh) — Mon, 15 Sep 2014 11:49:00 +0000

Last week my class was revising I wish constructions and I tried to find a new way to talk about it. I found the perfect song and this is how you can use it.

1. Ask Ss what people usually regret about. Elicit 4-5 categories such as appearance, money, family etc.

2. Ss work in pairs and tell each other the regrets they may have from this categories. They report back to the teacher on what they've found out from their partners.

3. Show 4 stills from the video. Ask: what does this person regret about? Elicit - relationships/love. Tell Ss you're going to listen to the song where the singer has a lot of regrets and wishes about her relationships. First of all, they have to look at the video stills and try to finish the phrases.

4. Ss report on their guesses.

5. Play the video while Ss check their prediction. Elicit the correct sentences.

Ask: What kind of song is it? How does the singer feel? Do you remember any other regrets she has?

6. Give Ss the gapped text of the song. Listen to it one more time and ask them to complete the gaps.

7. Check the answers and any unknown vocabulary.

8. Ask them to describe how the singer feels, what she means with the sentences like "I wish that you knew when I said two sugars I actually meant three".

9. In the next task ask your Ss to be creative and write an extra verse for this song that follows the patter "I wish ...". Remind them that they have to write it from the point of view of the singer. If your Ss are not on-the-spot-creative gave it to them for homework as I did.

10. The last activity I took from Carissa Peck's blog. She describes it prettey well in her blog. It is fun and perfect for this lesson. At home prepare the papers with I wish sentences. For example I wish I had longer nose, I wish I had pizza for every meal etc. Give them to students on the lesson and ask them to make a doodle. Then they cover the sentences and pass the doodle around. Next person has to write a sentence with I wish that describes the doodle. The papers have to come the full cicrle. At the end, roll out the papers and check if anyone's sentence has been guessed. I guarantee you, it's loads of fun!

Back to School!

noreply@blogger.com (Anastasia Geinrikh) — Sat, 06 Sep 2014 16:37:00 +0000

So the first week of school is over! And I'm quite proud of how I started it. I was happy to see most of my students back and excited to meet the new ones. There are a lot of new things happening this year: I have a group of seniors - absolute beginners, teaching for IELTS again and trying to use Skype more in my lessons.

But I'm also apprehensive of what's going to come: initial excitement of the new year is usually substituted by overworked mind, all kinds of binging and laziness :) So my main goal this school year is to keep a balance of work and personal life and peace of mind in general. I would also like to continue my professional development that I started this summer. These past months I would read edu-blogs almost every day as well as esl books.

So I decided to sign a contract with myself, the sort of contract Lizzie Pinard made with herself on learning Italian. My contract will also be a learning one, but on "learning teaching". I will outline some activities I believe are useful for my professional development and try to follow them for at least one month. Then I will come back to it and revise it.
This is how it goes:

Post here once a week
Read at least one blog post every day
Watch at least one educational video every week.
Start reading Jeremy Harmer's How to Teach English and finish at least 3 chapters by the end of the month.
Have at least one day a week where I don't prepare for the classes.

OK, this looks simple enough, we'll see how it goes. Good luck to me!

A Map of My Heart - a quick project

noreply@blogger.com (Anastasia Geinrikh) — Mon, 01 Sep 2014 11:46:00 +0000

We've been discussing personality and character traits with my private students when she mentioned that she is an introvert. The other day I stumbled across this witty drawing of Introvert's Heart by Gemma Correll.
Next lesson I showed it to my students and we discussed whether she would agree with this depiction. Along the way, we revised geographical names as well as more advanced words connected to personality (e.g. recluse, hermit). For homework, I asked my students to draw the map of HER heart and try to express her vision of herself. And this is what she made!

With the rock-rock-rock music coast, river of waiting till the hiatus ends and friendzone cape :P

I like it when the inspiration for my classes is instant like that. Sometimes I spend hours looking for a video or a poster going through many variants before I choose. And it's not even a matter of my time (although it is pretty priceless), but a feeling of bringing something really current and relevant to the class. So, I guess, I'll just keep my eyes and ears wide open this year in the hope of finding a perfect lesson material.

Ideas for using Tour Builder

noreply@blogger.com (Anastasia Geinrikh) — Mon, 11 Aug 2014 15:36:00 +0000

This summer I got lots of free time and I finally caught up with my "teaching english" blogroll. Having found, no doubt, plenty of useful tips, I moved on to my "technology" roll. And here I discovered a brand new world :) The most relevant blog was Richard Byrne's Free Technology for Teachers that reviews and publishes updates on many useful class apps, gadgets and programmes. Now that I have time before school, I'm spending hours exploring websites, creating projects and generally playing around with different web-tools.
Here is one that caught my attention: Google Maps Tour Builder. First of all, Richard has written two very useful posts here and here with educational how-to video, and I recommend everyone to read it and watch it. On my part, I've been thinking how I can use it in an esl classroom and came up with couple of ideas.

Why can it work:

it's relatively easy to create
it incorporates pictures, text and maps
it can take a form of a lenghty project or light homework

Uses for the classroom:

Here are couple of ideas I sketched out.

1) How I spent my summer.
Instead of asking questions on the first lesson after summer break, ask your ss to prepare a presentation of their summer that can include pictures and comments from them.
Here is the example I have created about my summer.
2) How I spent my year.
A variation of the previous idea. Ss need to create a map of all the places they visited during the year. Good as end-of-the-year activity.
3) Story of my life. The logical continuation of the previous two. Ss need to show all of the places they have visited starting from the place they were born in. Good for teenagers as they don't usually travel as much during the year.
4) Tour of your street. If you have a lesson on home, streets or local sights, you can incorporate this project in the lesson. Ss need to tell the story of their streets, the building, places they like going to etc. The good thing about this idea is that it allows ss to work in groups.
5) Tour of your city. An obvious idea but variations can make it more exciting. For example, ss can choose their favourite places in the city or hidden, non-touristic sights. It also can take a form of a group project.
6) Book travels. Ss will need to create a map of the travels of the main character. Good if you're using graded readers and books in the classroom.
7) My future travels. Ss need to imagine where they want to go, research the information about these places and put it on their maps.

Some stuff to think about:

with technology you have to make sure that everyone understands how to use it. So before assigning the project, I would first give them a how-to video and my example to study as a homework.
how to present finished project. Will they show it only to the teacher (boring) or share with classmates? Now it seems ideal to make a presentation in class for everyone, but my class is not equipped well enough for that.
how to grade it. It seems reasonable to introduce rubrics to make it easier to assess project like this.

I'm currently thinking about the first project and how to implement it smoothly in my class. So I'll keep you updated on my work. Have you used this tool before or have you got any ideas on how else to use it? :)

Using Pyramid Game to Practice Relative Clauses

noreply@blogger.com (Anastasia Geinrikh) — Tue, 05 Aug 2014 13:40:00 +0000

I like using popular game shows in my class. Here is one example that fit well in my class on relative clauses and the topic of entertainment - Pyramid. It is an American game show based on guessing words.
Level:
confident pre-intermediate, intermediate and above
What you need:
video projector/ a laptop
cards with words
paper pyramid (or whiteboard to draw it on)

Procedure:
1) Exposure. We followed Upbeat Intermediate book and they present the topic of relative clauses through the text about the entertainment. Ss had to read it at home. So we started off with the discussion of the text.
2) Presentation. I used part of the sentences from the text to draw attention to the structure of relative clauses. My students were quite familiar with the topic, so I let them talk and elicited as much as possible about the difference between defining and non-defining relative clauses. To introduce some new information I drew their attention to the cases where relative pronoun can be omitted
3) Practice. Do some controlled practice first. I had an exercise in the book fitting my aims perfectly, so Ss did it on their own and then compared in pairs. Do the whole class feedback.
4) For a less controlled practice I chose a simple definition game. The aim of the game is to define a word that you have on a card. I demonstrated the activity by giving them couple of riddles. Elicit the language we use to describe people, things, actions such as
It is a person who
It is what you do when
I used a worksheet from New English File Pre-Intermediate Teacher's book Unit 1D. Set the time, monitor the activity and help with difficult words if necessary.
5) Say that today you're going to play a more complicated and more exciting game. Show them the video from Friends and ask what the rules of the game are.

or the longer one with worse quality

Questions to ask:
What should you do?
How many people play this game?
How are you supposed to do it?
How much time do you have?

6) Watch again and ask Ss whether Joey is good at this game and why/why not.
7) Consolidate the rules of the game and write up do's and don'ts for the game
8) Now it's time to play Pyramid! Divide your class in pairs or teams, if you have an uneven number of students one of them could be a facilitator.
9) Reveal (or draw) the Pyramid. You can choose to put the names of the categories inside the pyramid, or just put the numbers which adds an element of surprise. That's what I did and it looked like this

Here is the worksheet that I made. I glued the questions to the cards to make it a little bit more official and easy to hand.

10) Ss chose the category/number, decide who is going to explain the word. Then you (or facilitator) set te time and the game begins!

The team with more points win. That's it! There could be additional variations and rounds if you feel like spending the whole lesson on it.

The teams can drop out of the competition (think ahead about how to occupy them ) and the best ones should battle in the finale.
Award more points for more difficult questions,
Have "cat in a bag" category

My first Coursera Course Completed

noreply@blogger.com (Anastasia Geinrikh) — Fri, 01 Aug 2014 11:48:00 +0000

Well, actually, it happened in May, but now I have some time to finally reflect on the course I took.
I wasn't completely new to coursera, I attempted couple of courses but never finished them. Now I can say it happened because I didn't have enough motivation. Motivation, in its turn, didn't pertain because I wasn't very good at the subject I studied. I got low results on the quizzes or peer assessment, my English was constantly pointed at (as illegible) and overall I felt disappointed. So when I came across Shaping the Way We Teach I didn't have great expectations. But to my surprise I completed it and even got a high score.

The "secret" to that was that the course explored the topic I was familiar with (teaching English) and was relevant to my current interests.

How did the learning happen?
This course took five weeks. Each week consisted of a video lesson, required reading, quiz and required forum posts. Apart from that, weeks 2 and 5 had a lesson plan assignment; weeks 3 and 5 peer assessment assignments. There was also a variety of additional readings and video sources. It took me about 3 hours per week to complete all of the assignments.

What were the topics?
The course explored topics of authentic materials and realia, pair/group work, critical and creative thinking, learner feedback and assessment, language in context. Most of the material was familiar to me. However, course stuff made a point of including this topics in the lesson plan assignment. So we were required to think about these ideas in the context of an actual lesson. The course material and tasks were divided for the teachers of young learners and for the teachers of teenagers/adults which was a sensible thing of them to do. However, we could have studied both parts if we wanted to.

What I found useful
As I noted before, most of the material was not brand new to me. It was useful to revise and consolidate the knowledge of these topics especially in the light of my upcoming TKT exam. Another thing which I found the most useful was their youtube playlist which contained recordings of real lessons from all over the world. And although, I found very few of them to be "ideal" lessons, I still consider watching other educators teach one of the best ways of learning for me. The course was also linked to the American English website that contains a bunch of resources for teachers starting from lesson plans to articles and books that we read for the course.

What I didn't like
There were couple of things that almost prevented me from finishing the course. First of them being the required forum posts. And although I understood that the forums was supposed to be the most useful part of the course, I found myself dreading this part of the assignment each week. Maybe it is because I'm naturally shy and prefer to watch rather that participate. Maybe it was the element that made it OBLIGATORY that didn't excite me. Anyways, I don't think I used this part of the course to the fullest. Another disappointing thing was the skills level of the students. The lesson plan assignment demonstrated both the best and the worst examples of the supposedly working teachers. Either the concept of learning online wasn't grasped entirely or the actual knowledge wasn't there, but some teachers' works left me speechless.
The quizzes, seemingly easy, were not always easy to understand. The form of the questions was ambiguous, couple of times I found myself guessing the most probable answer, though I studied all of the materials thoroughy.

Overall, it was a useful experience, but not useful enough for me to continue with the second part of their course.

End of the Year Jeopardy

noreply@blogger.com (Anastasia Geinrikh) — Wed, 30 Jul 2014 09:20:00 +0000

In the language school where I teach end of the year means exams. We spend a lot of time preparing and revising. That's why by the end of the year my teenagers feel exhausted.

This is how my students feel at the end of the year, I imagine

To lighten the mood I try to leave the last lesson (which is also a lesson before the exam) for something entertaining and relaxing. I usually go with a variation of a classical quiz. This time around I decided to quiz them on the topics they are quite familiar with.

The topic of the Jeopardy was themselves, their peers, teacher and our lessons.

The categories were

Our students

Our teacher

Our lessons

Our world

The questions are the most important part of this game. Try to recall all of the funny situations, inside jokes and hilarious stories that happened throughout the course and made them into questions. Some of the examples from my quiz.

Students: "Where does Katya go every weekend?" (She spends every weekend in her country house and tells me about it every Monday) or "In the "reunion" activity Borya had that many children" (Obviously, requires some remembering).
Our teacher: "What instrument did you teacher use to play?", "Once, your teacher told you a story about the terrible journey she had. Remember where from and where to she was travelling".

Our lessons: "On the Valentines day we had a problem with our player. Remember what was the film we were trying to watch" and so on.

It's ideal if the questions are personal and funny. Although, they don't test any specific language point, it offers a great language practice in a relaxed and personalised way.

Procedure:

1) Draw up the Jeopardy grid on the board, with the above-mentioned categories at the top of the column. Each category had 5 possible options from 100 to 500. The more expensive it is the more difficult it's supposed to be.

2) Divide the class in teams in any manner you want.

3) A team takes turn choosing the category and the "price". Read the question you prepared. They have 20 seconds for discussion.

3) If their answer is correct, they get the points. If not, another team has a go. However, it has only 10 seconds to discuss. And here is the twist: in case the opposing team gives the correct answer, they get twice as many points as the initial price.

4) Deduct points for using L1 or any possible discipline issues. Of course, it's better to inform the students about it before the start of the game.

5) The winner is the team with the highest score. You can award them with funny certificates, sweets or stationary.

My students loved it and it was the best possible way to finish the school year.

And the results are IN!

noreply@blogger.com (Anastasia Geinrikh) — Mon, 28 Jul 2014 07:53:00 +0000

I returned from my holiday yesterday and already got some good news. I went down to the exam centre today and picked up my TKT exam results: both bands 4!

I can't say it was a complete surprise, but as any written exam it has an element of unpredictability. And here are my thoughts on the exam itself which maybe useful for you if you're considering taking it.

What is it?

It's a multiple choice test that checks basic knowledge of English and English language teaching. There are three basic modules of TKT and some more additional modules like Young Learners and CLIL. Each module has 80 questions and you have 1,5 hour to do the test.

Why take it?

TKT is recommended for new teachers but can be useful for more experienced ones. If you have CELTA certificate, I imagine basic TKT modules will not be an interesting choice for you (however, some of the additional modules can be). I was interested in the exam itself, it presented some kind of a challenge and helped me organise my esl studies. While preparing, I had more motivation to read extensively on esl topics, finally created my esl blog feed (which i still read regularly) and more importantly followed it.
In addition, it's relatively cheap and you can take it module by module in any order.

Is it difficult?

It depends. If you are a complete rookie in teaching, then yes. I have 6 years of one-to-one teaching experience, 3 years of which are in private language schools and 2 of them I was more or less actively studying esl books, reading teachers' blogs and participating in various training seminars and conferences. The exam was not difficult for me. My average mock test result was 78 out of 80. In terms of studying the relevant books, I would say 85 % of the terms were familiar to me. Out of these, 50% I had a very definite notion of and the rest needed some clarification or revision. A practising teacher meets many of those in their course books and accompanying teacher's books as well as in specialised literature.

How to prepare?
I bought a TKT handbook which contains theory sections and practice tests. In a shop I was hesitating between the first and the second edition (difference in the price, obviously). I haven't regretted having chosen the latter since it has additional references to Internet resources and some more 'additonal stuff' which I cannot comment on since I don't have the first edition.

The exam has an official Glossary which can be found on Cambridge website. It can be useful to download it and check yourself on the knowledge of the terms before the exam.
An alternative to the above-mentioned book could be Learning Teaching by Jim Scrivener. I found that it covers almost entirely the material tested in the exam.
To consolidate your knowledge I highly recommend to follow esl blogs (there are examples on the Links page in my blog). Apart from being extremely useful they also recycle the vocabulary tested in the exam.

So why again?

Overall, I found it relevant at this stage of my professional development. It helped me to broaden and consolidate my knowledge of basic terms and concepts related to second language teaching. At the same time, I understand that the knowledge of theory itself does not make me a better teacher. But it does make my self-studies easier as it introduces you to the context of language teaching nowadays.

I passed first two modules to get a feeling of what the exam like and just see if I can perform well on it. Since it has lived up to my expectations I'll start preparing for the third module very soon.

Phrasal Verbs Storytelling activity

noreply@blogger.com (Anastasia Geinrikh) — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 17:42:00 +0000

In the book we follow phrasal verbs are divided by prepositions and I find it challenging to study/revise the verbs with almost nothing in common, but creating stories is a real life saver in this situation. Here is one I came up with.

1) First, introduce new phrasal verbs (we had verbs with ON). We did couple of activities from the book to make sure the meaning and the use are clear.

2) I prepared a story at home containing plenty of phrasal verbs ( I included some phrasal verbs we studied before)

Olivia woke up at 8 o'clock. She was late. She couldn't do it again. She wanted to turn up in time for the important meeting. Frankly, she didn't want to go because she didn't get on well with people from work. She got up quickly, put on some clothes, grabbed a sandwich from the kitchen and left her place. She made couple of steps from her house, when suddenly something small landed at her feet. She screamed and looked at it.It was a flower pot. Somebody must have thrown it out of the window. Olivia picked it up. She liked plants because she grew up on the farm. She looked up but all the windows were closed so she couldn't find a person who did it.She wanted to carry on walking but wasn't able to do it. She was no longer hurrying up to work. Olivia said "Hold on" to the plant and went back home. There she put the flower on her sink and replanted it. Next day she went to a community college and took up a course in biology. She's going to be a farmer!

I drew some marvelous illustrations to the story.

3) In class distribute the pictures and encourage predictions. Then read the story to the class, ask sts to listen carefully and number pictures in the correct order. After that they have to assign a phrasal verb to each picture. You may want to read the story again.

4) After we checked the order and the verbs, I asked them to work in pairs and try to remember my story with as many details as possible. Then have a brainstorm session with the whole class.
5) Now the fun part. Ask students to work in pairs and on the basis of the pictures create a new story. They can use them in any order they want. Give some time to plan it. Then ask them to use 6 phrasal verbs in their story (by this time, we'd had a list of phrasal verbs on the board that we studied in this course). Monitor the accuracy of phrasal verbs use.
6) Sts write their story down but put the gaps in places where phrasal verbs are supposed to be. Then they exchange stories and try to figure out which phrasal verbs are missing. Having done that, they read their stories out loud and check the verbs the put in.
7) After that its time for teacher's feedback.

This activity turned out unexpectedly well and kept everyone in the class engaged. Hope you enjoy it too!

Zero Conditionals Writing Experts Activity

noreply@blogger.com (Anastasia Geinrikh) — Fri, 28 Mar 2014 08:15:00 +0000

I came up with this activity for my Elementary group. We use Upbeat Elementary and one of the lessons focuses on personality traits and zero conditionals.

source

1. Dictate a sentence to your students. It can be plain nonsense or it can contain a language point of the lesson. Ask them to translate it to their native language and also write it down (because students' English and L1 writings are usually a bit different).

2. Collect the papers, show two of them to the class and ask what the difference is between them. Hopefully they notice the handwriting. Have a little discussion on the topic of writing and personality. Ask them "Do you think you can tell person's character just by looking at their handwriting?"

3. Then distribute the worksheet and tell students there is the "key" for understanding someone's handwriting. First, they need to put sentences in the correct form.

4. After they have done it, distribute the pieces of writing that belonged to other students, ask them to analyze them and write a conclusion on personality of the writer. Some words to check at this point are to slant, average, straight, neat, sloppy

5. In the end, students share their conclusions and think about whether they are accurate.

My students loved it and you can extend it to homework by asking them to analyze the writing of their friends or parents. If you have stronger class, you can ask them to develop their own "test", for example, based on what colour you like or what kind of food your prefer. They can draw it up on a piece of paper (my student love to draw) and test their peers.

Course Opportunity from British Council Russia

noreply@blogger.com (Anastasia Geinrikh) — Sat, 22 Mar 2014 11:35:00 +0000

British Council announced an opportunity to attend an online course on Communicative Assessment in April-May 2014. To get more information and complete an application form go to this page.

Christopher Graham Seminar

noreply@blogger.com (Anastasia Geinrikh) — Sat, 22 Mar 2014 08:46:00 +0000

On 17 March OUP presented 2 seminars of British educator Christopher Graham.

sourse

The first seminar was called "Teenagers: how can I make them speak?" where Christopher highlighted 3 elements essential for successful speaking practice
Language an ability to express your ideas.
Motivation consists of many issues. Sometimes teenagers just don't know what to speak about. In Christophes' opinion that is why teachers needs to select their topics carefully. It should be either things they hope for, things that matter or things they want to complain about.
Self-confidence is vital for motivation. There are many ways a teacher can help students to build up self-confidence from appropriate and relevant tasks to creating a positive atmosphere in the classroom. A great deal of confidence is dependant on how teachers give feedback to students. It should always be constructive and it should be clear for students which criteria a teacher uses to assess their work. A golden formula for giving feedback from Christopher is
describe what you hear
describe how you feel
describe what can be done

exmple of bad feedback

Opportunity. This is the hardest element to give to our students as they have little exposure to English in their lives. However, the Internet has changed the situation a lot in this regard, and our task as educators is to connect our classroom activities to the world out there. The teacher though still remains the main sourse of exposure to language and it is a good idea to rethink the structure of the lessons to maximize students' speaking time.

E-Merging Forum 4 Memories

noreply@blogger.com (Anastasia Geinrikh) — Sun, 16 Mar 2014 18:14:00 +0000

I've just got back from E-Merging forum 4 organised by British Council in Moscow. It was my first experience in ELT conferences and so far I'm happy with it.

Ready for the Pub Quiz!

First of all, the conference is free of charge and organization is quite superb I must say. I especially liked that they sticked to the schedule so there were no delays and any changes were reported promptly.
Now the speakers. There were few foreign speakers who held plenary sessions; among them Tony Prince, Nicky Hockley and Jamie Dunlea. After plenaries, participants could wonder off to 5 independent workshops dedicated to Assessment, ESP and EAP, Young Learners, Literature and Culture and Learning Technologies and listen to the presentations of both Russian and foreign speakers.

source

I've visited some very engaging and extremely fruitful workshops as well as few ... less successful ones (which was great experience anyway as it showed me how NOT to present). I guess, I was most impressed by Learning Technologies section which I attended on the last day and where we were actually working on our own presentations.

Here I am presenting on behalf of our group BYOD

Here are some bits and bobs I carried away with me from the conference:

"can do outweighs know-how", especially in academic writing. An example of academic writing lesson can be found here (by Zhenya Bakin)
and on the topic of writing: "there is no good writing, there is only good re-writing" as suggested by V. Zabotkina
and a formula I'm going to give to my students: essay should be one third descriptive and two thirds evaluative by Tony Prince
we assess not only student's progress but the learning process itself (summative vs formative assessment - definitely new terms for me)
great lesson on Pacific NorthWest Tree Octopus (one I heard before though but still amusing). I will definitely try it with my students one day.
as well as endless possibilities with hilarious literal videos
mobiles CAN be a useful device in the class as was proved by our group! I should go back to this idea more often and utilize it as much as possible
leader boards and badges now have a name - Gamification! I've heard about a positive experience organising studies this way and I should definitely go back to it myself and try it on one of my classes.
new words learnt: a four oh four- a problem as in Internet search problem; to wilf (what was i looking for) - to wonder away in browsing from your initial point
and finally as our amazing Pub Quiz team proved Napoleon from Orwell's Animal Farm was a Boar not a Pig!

Many thanks to British Council for this wonderful experience!

More detailed information on the speakers and talk can be found here.

SHARK TANK Lesson Plan

noreply@blogger.com (Anastasia Geinrikh) — Sat, 08 Mar 2014 10:26:00 +0000

I have a Pre-Intermediate business group and we've been covering a lot of negotioating language material. (We have The Business pre-int book). To liven up the classes a little bit I decided to show them a part of American TV show Shark Tank. There is a British version called Dragon's Den, but, in my opinion, the former is much more entertaining. The premise of both shows is entrepreneurs' search for investment in their, often a bit crazy, product or service. This is the activity I've developed.

1. First, introduce the show and watch the beginning of the episode and ask students to sum up the purpose of Shark Tank. Then give them the names of the sharks, play video again and ask them to connect the shark and the description.

Kevin O'Leary
Barbara Corcoran
Daymond John
Robert Herjavec
Marc Cuban

Immigrant who has a technology business
Venture capitalist who started his software business in a basement
Billionaire who also owns a sports team
Real estate entrepreneur from New York
Owner of fashion brand FUBU

2. After checking the information about the investors, move on to the episode. I chose a part of episode 3 from season 3 about an entrepreneur who created parfume called Money. You can find it on youtube, the part starts from 11.33

Watch the beginning of his speech till 12.30, stop the video and ask students what his product is. Even if some language is still a little bit difficult at this point, they will be able to understand the idea from the visuals. Make them discuss what they think about this idea, whether it can be successful or not.

3. At this point you may want to introduce some challenging vocabulary. I picked the following words: bill, the come up with, to licence, distribution, retailers, to seek, scent, fragrance, subtle. Then start from the top again and watch the video till 15.35 and ask students to find answers to the following questions.

How much money is he seeking?
Does he own the name?
What are his sales?
What is the problem with retailers?
How much has he invested?
How did he come up with this idea?
What kind of proposal did banks make him?
What's unique about his packaging?
What do you think is his USP?

(The last question was inspired by the topic of advertisement we've studied recently. If your students are not familiar with this concept yout can omit it)

4. After students check the answers in pairs and with the teacher (you may need to rewatch some parts), ask them whether they think he would strike a deal with anyone. Then watch the rest of the video which contains the negotiations and ask them to answer the following questions

Which sharks are out? Why?
Which shark(s) make(s) offers? What kind of offer?
Does he accept the offer(s)? Why/Why not?

5. You can have an open discussion afterwards on whether he made the right choice or not.

6. Then move on to the tasks on the language from the video. I decided to focus on some colloquial phrases the sharks and the entrepreneur used. In this activity, students watch the video again and put the phrases in the order they hear them and write the name of the speaker next to them. In pairs they discuss the meaning of the phrases.

You are a wantepreneur not an entrepreneur
You have an offer on a table
Can I get an Amen? Preach, brother, preach!
The 80% was just out of line
Money can't buy you happiness... but who cares?
This is your big play here. You got to walk out of the tank with the cash in your pocket.
That's always a red flag.

7. After you have checked the understanding, you can have a role-play. My students have written a business plan for a food business before, so we used it as a material for presentation. Students worked in two teams where one team was presenting their business and the second was acting as investors. Their purpose was to decide whether to sponsor the business or not. You can distribute the lines from previous exercise and ask students to use them in their speech.

8. As a homework option I developed two vocabulary exercises on the language from the video. If students really enjoyed it you can ask them to watch the first part of the video (the guitar entrepreneur) at home and write a short summary (what's the business, details of the business, how negotiations went, did he strike a deal etc).

Student's worksheet with answers is available here.

"Martha" by Tom Waits. SONG ACTIVITY

noreply@blogger.com (Anastasia Geinrikh) — Sat, 15 Feb 2014 15:39:00 +0000

For this St. Valentines day I prepared a song activity for my two teenage groups. It is based on a beutiful song by Tom Waits and includes predicting exercise, correcting the lyrics and discussion.
I used this song after watching the short animated film Paperman and using lesson ideas from Kieran Donaghy website. I also asked my class to write two narratives describing the story from the point of view of the man and the woman. After listening to their stories I asked them whether they think these people are still together, which led us to a discussion of not so happy love stories.
Before listening to the song, I put 5 lines from it on the board and asked students to predict what kind of love story it is (happy, sad), what happened and whether the couple is still together. Here are the lines I chose:
a) I love you , can't you see?
b) We were so young and foolish
c) Meet me out for coffee
d) You know that I got maried, too?
e) It's been so many years.
Students suggest their ideas and then listen to the song without lyrics and put the lines in the order they hear it. The correct order is: e, c, d, b, a

While listening. I distributed the lyrics of the song with one word in every line in italics. Students have to listen again and decide whether highlighted word is correct or not. In the latter case students have to correct it.
Worksheet
Answers: days-years
thirty-forty
speak - talk
better-older
boyfriend-husband
sensible-impulsive
think - guess
feel-see

After listening. I find this song perfect for discussion. First of all, the language is relatively easy, and then it has a clear setting, story and characters. There are many opportunities for discussion. I went over each verse with my class and asked following questions

Verse 1

Who is the main character? What's his name? (Tom Frost)

What is he doing? How does he feel? (He is calling on the phone, nervous, sad)

Who is he calling? (Martha)

What is he afraid of? Why? (that she won't remember him, it's been 40 years)

What does he suggest? (meet for coffee)

Verse 2

Where are they? (probably, at a cofee place)

What do we find out about the characters? (they are both married, Martha has kids)

How does he feel about her? (happy for her)

Verse 3
What do we find out about the character's past? (He was impulsive, they split up)

How does Tom Feel about Martha now? (He still loves her)

Chorus
When is it set? (In the past as opposed to all the verses)

What do we know about their life in the past? (They were very happy, they had romantic relationships)

Can you guess what happened between the characters? Why did they split up? (Here students can speculate based on what they found out in the verses. For example, it might have to do something with his impulsive character, the fact that he needed to assert himself as a man. Also the fact that they lived "like there is no tomorrow" can contribute to the fact that their romance was short-lived.)

Students will need to speculate using the lyrics of the song.

In the end, we listened to song one more time. I allowed them to sing and many of them happily agreed!

Homework options: 1) Write a dialogue that could have happend between Matha and Tom in the cafe.

2) Choose an English song about love, find lyrics to the song and compose an exercise (similar to one we did in a class or just a cloze text). On the next lesson, distribute the exercises among students and ask them to listen to the song at home and complete the lyrics.

I hope you enjoy this song and activity too!

SCANNING EXERCISE

noreply@blogger.com (Anastasia Geinrikh) — Sat, 15 Feb 2014 14:53:00 +0000

I'm currently preparing a very talented student for FCE and have encountered a certain problem. While reading, the student doesn't want to employ scanning techniques and tends to read everyhting in detail.A strict timing was an obvious solution. First, I ask her to skim the text and give her only 3 minutes to do it (usually it's enough). After asking questions on general understanding, we move on to the questions.For every question I give her 30-40 seconds for each and set the clock.

To make it more fun, you can employ a hangman strategy. When every 30 seconds passes you can draw a part of a hangman, although I prefer a different kind of story. I read this idea somewhere on the web and use it ever since. The principle is completely opposite. Teacher draws a parachutist with many straps attached to his back. As given time passes one strap is erased. So if there are 7 questions, I give my student about 5 minutes (allow some extra time) and draw 8 straps. When every 40 seconds passes a strap is erased. My student finds it really fun and motivating. She usually gets the scanning done before the parachutist falls from the sky.

well, challenge accepted, sir!

noreply@blogger.com (Anastasia Geinrikh) — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 09:18:00 +0000