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50 ways to use music and song in the classroom
Just a quick link to a wonderful collection of great ideas on using music and song from David Deubel's excellent blog.
Heres' one of my personal favourites for using song, from the same source, though if I had to pick one idea for exploiting songs (and particularly YouTube video clips) I'd have to say using them as a starting point for writing collaborative stories — for example with Norah Jones or Bruce Springsteen.
Favourite Edmodo+song activity: when someone (preferably not the teacher) shares a song video and it generates a huge amount of unexpected discussion…
If students designed their own schools…
I'm not sure where I got this one from (Mashable?). At 14'26" it's way too long to watch in its entirety in class but I think not watching it in class, and just asking the learners to finish the sentence (the title of this post) would probably be a great starting point for discussion, especially with teens.
Posting it on an Edmodo group and then having the discussion (and the reactions) continue there, once they had watched it, outside class, would probably also work well.
Wonderful job interview ad for class
This one would work particularly well with adults, level say B1+, with experience of job interviews.
As an obvious lead-in, you have your learners' experience of job interviews (bizarre or otherwise). A series of "What if" questions might also be discussed such as, "What would you answer if you were asked "What's your management style?" or "What would you do if your interviewer collapsed?" (watch the video!) might be an alternative.
For a while-watching task, you could then get learners to observe what the "candidates" actually answered and did and then stop the video at [...]
Writing task: Letters to complete strangers
Here's another one which is "just an idea" for class, and which I found in an article on today's Guardian.
You might not want to do it as your learners' first experience of creative writing, but if they were to do it anonymously and each receive a letter from another member of the class, it would be at least both original and creative, two things we surely want in our classrooms.
Alternatively, you could have your learners post them on noticeboards and so on around the school. You never know, you might start something…!
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A map of the internet
Unfinished example produced in class using the interactive whiteboard
Here's just an idea, rather than a complete lession plan, which originally came from Terry Freedman's excellent Educational Technology site. Terry suggested using a map of the internet for discussion but I thought it might be interesting to see if we could actually create our own maps.
A rough outline of the idea, which I tried out in a session with trainees currently taking their CELTA course at IH Barcelona:
Divide learners into groups of 3 or 4, each to [...]
Five things to look for in YouTube clips
What YouTube clips are going to "work" with your learners? Here's one, which I've not used with a class of learners (yet!) but which seems to have a lot going for it…
With just about any YouTube video you use with learners you want:
A short clip, under 3 minutes definitely, under 2 better, under 1 terrific! Clear sound Something that it will lead on to, perhaps discussion, definitely use of the language and interaction between the learners
This one I spotted today on The Guardian under the headline Brad Pitt's Chanel No 5 ad: the smell [...]
Things I take to class #6: 6 secret letters
From my session at the APABAL Convention in Palma, September 10th…
Shoes. Discuss… A great activity for Edmodo.
The 6 secret letters I take to class are the access code to the very best of the "Web 2.0 tools" that I've tried with learners: Edmodo.
Edmodo allows you to set up groups [see Edmodo Help section] which then give you a private walled garden, a digital space in which your learners can do and share things. It's very easy to use, very like Facebook, and thus immediately familiar to anyone who [...]
Things I take to class #9: Photos for speaking activities
From my session at the APABAL Convention in Palma, September 10th…
I like to take good photos to class: ones that will produce a lot of response and thus a lot of language. They invariably do not come from Google Images and never include boring things like watches (which could be drawn on the board), or mobile phones (which could be pulled out of a pocket) or people like David Beckham (who everyone knows anyway).
For the following activity, you need 6-8 photos; in my APABAL session I used photos of baby animals which I obtained from National Geographic's Photo of [...]
The most beautiful buildings in the world
This one, Are these the world's most beautiful buildings?, came from my RSS feed for the Telegraph.
That's precisely the sort of thing I'm looking for when I take 10 minutes every morning to skim through the feeds on Google Reader: material (text or images, or both, but not too much), sometimes displayed on an interactive whiteboard, that will interest my learners and, above all, get them to talk, often through a brainstorming session.
With this one, everyone can come up with buildings that might be included, but the potential for disagreement (great!) on what should be included is huge. To [...]
26 seconds of a rather disturbing ad
This one came from Mashable. I've not used it in class and, because of the subject matter it raises, I'm reluctant to do so: you just never know when there might be someone in your class for whom it's a bit near to home.
Shame, as otherwise it would probably give rise to lots of discussion… And I like to be able to get a lot out of next to no material.
It's one of those ads you can stop in class (stop this one around 26 seconds) and see if your learners (a) [...]
Never plan a class you couldn't do with a piece of chalk
Someone came to me the other day for help: they wanted to download a YouTube clip, remove the vocals but keep the music, record their learners singing the same song, splice the new vocals on to the YouTube clip, lip-synch it and upload it back on to YouTube… Could I help?
I said "No" (don't you just hate the guys in Technical Support, sometimes?), on the grounds that it was going to take so much time for so little return (in terms [...]
An idea is worth a thousand photocopies
Another of the ideas from my talk last Saturday, with a quote from my former DELTA course tutor…
At the previous talk I gave at the IH Barcelona ELT Conference, a year ago, I explained how I'd taken a vow of abstinence, had had my own photocopy code disabled, and not made a photocopy since, using instead some of the wonderful digital alternatives (blogs, Edmodo, shared Google Docs, wikis…).
Because we now have free online access to a vast number of articles on subjects of all kinds [...]
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All posts by Tom Walton, teacher trainer at IH Barcelona
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April 22nd—June 2nd 2013
Barcelona, Sat.8th June 2013