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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…
Related posts: 
Things I [...]
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 [...]
Texts learners actually want to read
Here's a story I spotted this morning when I opened Google Reader, as I do first thing every morning. I do that because almost every morning it brings me something I could use in class.
The headline that caught my eye was Miami Invaded By Giant, House-Eating Snails, and I immediately bookmarked it on Delicious, in fact even before I'd actually read the whole article. I'm not sure when I'll use it or with which class but it's exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for…
What I'm thinking as I scan the headlines is that any story with a [...]
How green is your Internet?
How Green Is Your Internet? from Patrick Clair on Vimeo.
Another reason to hate Facebook (only kidding!).
I used this in class as listening comprehension material and got late teens/young adults to try and record all the figures they heard and got quite a good discussion out of it afterwards.
Related posts: A map of the internet Happy 40th, Internet! Listening material on the Internet
Video for Business English classes
These links came from posts on the IATEFL Business English SIG…
In the video, Phil Dourado talks about his book The 60 Second Leader. You'll find lots more "60 Second" videos on YouTube and I think they'd work great in a Business English class.
They're not all 60 second videos, which is a shame — as the shorter, the better for listening activities in class, in my experience.
But they are at least videos, not audios, and it's so much more interesting to watch than just to listen. Let's get rid of listening comprehension and bring in watching comprehension, [...]
Getting teens to listen, and write, in English
I very much liked one of the many suggestions Usoa Sol made in her talk, Listen up! Getting teens to listen in English, given at the IH Barcelona ELT Conference — getting kids to write emails from the protagonists of the song.
Usoa suggested Dido's Thank You, though I wonder if it's got a strong enough storyline and whether or not it tells us enough that we can interpret about the characters. Perhaps White Flag might work better, partly because you've got a YouTube videoclip there that appears to add something to the story.
I'm showing my age [...]
New Learning English site
The BBC's excellent Learning English site has had a makeover.
Among the changes is a new option to download the audio for the Words in the News section, the archives for which go back to 1999. You also have the 190+ episodes of The Flatmates, a section on pronunciation, plus a section for teachers.
It's definitely a site to recommend to your learners (and perhaps suggest that they make it their default home page) but it also has things you could use in class.
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VideoJug: a cool alternative to YouTube
Halloween? Kissing? Halo 3 Tips…? The "How to" video is on VideoJug
My colleague Carolyn Edwards has just told me about VideoJug.com. It's not quite YouTube but has stacks of "How to" videos on it.
As a lesson, you could probably get a lot of mileage out of asking your learners before watching "How to" go about a particular task; get them to make notes of the stages involved; then watch and, while watching, get them to tick in their notes which are mentioned [...]
Great stuff on YouTube for English teachers
Bruce Springsteen interviewed on the OGWT in 1978
There's a ton of great listening comprehension on YouTube, stuff that's so much more interesting than the things that come on your coursebook CD — to start with because (especially to kids!) watching a video clip of (say) a song is so much more interesting than a CD…
Getting them to do the workOne of my colleagues suggested having the learners, in pairs, search for a suitable interview with a famous person, and then write listening comprehension questions for another pair. Get them to choose the video — don't you make [...]
Horse race dictation
Another idea from teachingenglish.org.uk, which came to me via its RSS feed: a horse race dictation, in which "students try to predict the order of words in a jumbled sentence before listening for the answer" — the listening requiring the teacher to give them a horse race commentary with the words taking the place of the horses.
I've not actually tried it out, but it sounds like a lot of fun…!
Related posts: Cuisenaire rods Great new things from a great ELT site Experimental School Gets Rid of Classes, Teachers
BBC World Service Radio
BBC World Service Radio
One for your learners: BBC World Service Radio, which you can listen to live as well as to featured programs (eg. the "Dollar a Day" series, in the image, above, an excellent one).
Recommend your learners to change the default start page of their browsers to the BBC and recommend them to listen — every day. How many of them are in jobs in which they do listen to music or the radio on their headphones..?
It's such good practice, if it's regular — [...]
Experimental School Gets Rid of Classes, Teachers
The New Country School in Henderson, Minnesota [website], has decided to do away with teachers, says this story on NPR.org, and pupils now "spend most of their day in front of their computers, working on interdisciplinary projects".
They have no classes, working instead on projects they select themselves; no teachers, no school bell, no fixed schedule, no walls and no janitors (the loos they have to clean themselves!)
Would it work…? Would it work with your learners…? What do they think…? Sounds like a discussion that might work…
NPR is also a great site for listening material — and one [...]
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All posts by Tom Walton, teacher trainer at IH Barcelona
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Online course for teachers
April 22nd—June 2nd 2013
Barcelona, Sat.8th June 2013