E V O L V E S C H O O L: TeachingEnglish Newsletter 24 November 2010

TeachingEnglish Newsletter

24 November 2010

Jamie Keddie is our Guest Writer this month and he has just posted his second article for TeachingEnglish; why not leave him a comment here.

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Welcome to this week's TeachingEnglish newsletter. We have plenty of contributions from readers this week, including an invitation for you or your students to free conversation lessons in the virtual world Second Life. There are two things for you to try in your class including a well known lateral thinking puzzle and a Britlit kit that features work by the children's poet laureate.

Our Guest Writer Jamie Keddie is still with us and this week we feature his second article and an interesting new blog post on how to edit videos for your classroom.

Best wishes,

Duncan
TeachingEnglish Team | British Council | BBC

Lateral thinking

I like to use this activity to promote recognition and then practise the past continuous. It utilises a well known lateral thinking puzzle. Prepare cut up versions of the text attached and then put students in pairs or groups and give out the cut up story below. Ask students to put it in the correct order.
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Orange Juice

Children's laureate Michael Rosen has a way of presenting vexing questions in verse. In 'Orange Juice' the voice of a youngster is heard wondering how to get revenge on the thief who keeps stealing the orange juice left on the doorstep each morning by the milkman.
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Video recorders in the classroom

I have just become an uncle! My new nephew Tomás is three weeks old today. Mummy and daddy live in Barcelona but his maternal grandparents and great granddad live in Scotland. As you can probably imagine then, Tomás is currently getting used to the mobile phones, Flip camcorders and other video recording devices that are being habitually pointed at his little baby head.
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"Santa loses it all" (Practical ideas to work on a short short story by Nancy A. Cavanaugh)

Can Christmas be cancelled? This blog introduces teachers to the world of "the short short story". It also gives teachers some ideas about how to go about minifiction in the classroom to help learners read a "short short story" as a vehicle for extensive and intensive reading.
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Digital scissors and sellotape

What are the basic technical skills that we need, as teachers, if we want to use online video in the classroom? We already considered hardware issues in a previous posting. Here I am thinking of the skills that allow us to manipulate video as material - skills that can be referred to as 'digital scissors and sellotape'.

Weekly conversation class in Second Life

Hi everyone, just wanted to let you know that we have been holding free weekly conversation classes on the British Council Isle in Second Life for adult learners of English. The classes are every Wednesday at 20:00 UK time and last an hour. They are free and open to any learners of English.
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