Creative posters from pinterest - Part 2

I've mentioned pinterest before - both for teaching and for working on language areas.  

Today, I wanted to mention a few things I've saved on my pinterest board.

Forever is over!

http://www.anatol.cc/images/objekte/nothing_lasts_forever2012.JPG

So many words are inside other words.......

When there's an earthquake, the earth quakes!

                                        Acting out of character?

char      er

     act

I'd like to have ......

http://pulpfreedom.tumblr.com/image/36702051634

What about you?  What would you like more of?

You could use posters like these to work on language.  Students can make their own.

http://wishflowers.tumblr.com/post/18929048409

For this last one, you could give students the verbs and they can choose the words to combine with them.
think                                                          daily
exercise                                                      happy
eat                                                             hard
work                                                          healthy
stay                                                            less
worry                                                         more
dance                                                         often
love                                                           positively
be                                                              strong

Which language is Arsene speaking? What's he saying?

In my previous post, I sang the praises of Arsene Wenger, coach at Arsenal Football Club.

When I was searching for a photograph of Arsene Wenger, I came across lots of very expressive photos of him.

It occurred to me that they would make a fun classroom activity!

Start by asking students if they recognise the man in the photos.  Tell students about this man.  His achievements:


He was born in a village near Strasbourg, France.

He can speak 3 languages (English, French and German) fluently.  He can also speak Spanish and Italian and a bit of Japanese.

When he was 29 years old, he did a 3-week English course in Cambridge.

He works in London.

He is the manager of an important football team there.

He has been manager at that club since 1996.

• Honours: English Premier League: 2004, 2002, 1998; FA Cup: 2005, 2003, 2002, 1998; FA Community Shield: 2004, 2002, 1999, 1998; French Ligue 1: 1988; French Cup: 1991; Japanese Super Cup: 1996

The players at Arsenal now can speak 12 different languages.

Next, in pairs or small groups, students discuss what language they think Arsene Wenger is speaking or thinking in in each of the photos.  They imagine that there is a speech or thought bubble coming out of Wenger's mouth.  They draw a bubble for each picture and write what he is saying or thinking in each one.

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQT2x6pu1PM18ifo_ZYUvRCu5cfBG5UiDs8l5AUz-VqcKz2i2xf

clipartsfree.net

2 pairs or groups join to work together.  They take it in turn to show their thought or speech bubbles to the other pair/group.  They try and match each bubble to the picture it was written for.

http://www.herald.co.zw/arsene-wenger-purring-2/

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00796/arsenewenger2708reu_796444c.jpg

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2009/jan/02/arsenal-arsene-wenger-transfer-window

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02104/th_2104704b.jpg

http://www.inthestands.co.uk/news/arsenal-and-arsene-wenger-are-doomed-warns-emmanuel-petit.html/attachment/wengercry_415

You just can't keep a secret these days!!!

I came across an amusing story the other day.  It really brought home the power of social media and how difficult it is for anyone to do anything quietly, without anyone noticing.

Of course, the thing that was supposed to happen quietly was quite likely to not happen that way - I mean you can't really hide a box this big away!!!

https://twitter.com/jenayres/status/420246173522198528/photo/1/large

Another image of this same box was also shared on Imgur with the question:

What's the largest item you can have shipped from Amazon? Because I think my neighbor just got it.

 Readers of reddit and viewers of Imgur started speculating about what could be inside this box.

Very quickly, Ad Age media news got hold of the story and linked it to a campaign announced last September by Nissan and Amazon.  3 car buyers would have their brand new Nissan car delivered in an Amazon box.

Nissan then planned to release pictures and videos of the deliveries via social media next week - but the general public beat them to it by sharing the photos on social media themselves!

http://adage.com/article/the-media-guy/unboxing-photo-giant-amazon-package/290947/

I think this story will make great class material.  Show the picture of the box on the back of the lorry and get students to speculate what's in the box and where the truck is, who it's for, etc.
Then, show them the box with the car visible inside.  They discuss why a car was delivered like this.
Next, they can read the story of how the secret was revealed on social media and they could also discuss if this is a good or bad trend.

Language work could include work on wordbuilding and collocation.  Here is a screenshot of the word 'secret' from the English Profile vocabulary profile.

And here are the results of my search for 'secret' in the Cambridge dictionaries online:

I'll keep an eye out for the official launch of this campaign next week and share it with you.

Amazing colours

I have been finding out what arrangements need to be made (and steps taken) for a colour blind student who will shortly be taking the Cambridge English: Starters Test in a school here in Cantabria.  Cambridge English Language Assessment have procedures for dealing with many different special needs

Obviously, because colour plays an important part in the Young Learner Tests, colour blind candidates would be at a great disadvantage if they took the test without these considerations being made.

Back in March, I wrote about types of colour blindness and recommended loading pictures onto Vischeck to see what they look like to a colour blind student.

Recently, I was reading about the Stroop Effect in a hotel magazine.  Click on this link to take a test and find out for yourself what the Stroop Effect is!

Fun and intriguing I found!

I then fed words from the Stroop Effect Test into an online tool (Vischeck didn't seem to be working so I found another site to do this: http://asada.tukusi.ne.jp/cvsconv/

http://informationbombardment.com/fun-stuff/stroop-effect/

Deuteranope vision

Tritanope vision

Notice how the words 'black' and 'purple' almost disappear if you have Tritanope vision!

And, of course, I found a great talk on Ted.com.  Fascinating.  I don't know if I could stand to have colour sounds playing in my head all day, but I suppose that Neil Harbisson's life has been enriched by being able to 'perceive' colour in a different way.

Artist Neil Harbisson was born completely color blind, but these days a device attached to his head turns color into audible frequencies. Instead of seeing a world in grayscale, Harbisson can hear a symphony of color -- and yes, even listen to faces and paintings

And of course, we often hear about colours being related to moods.  I found this image on pinterest the other day and that inspired me to bring together all my colour related pictures and videos and information and write this post!

Another great photo resource!

I was reading through some emails I'd received over the past few busy days in order to try and reduce the number of emails in my inbox.  (None of them urgent - I deal with those as they come in!)

While I was reading through one of the emails, I clicked on the link and read another of the tips submitted to the Cambridge English Language Assessment UK and Bell Teaching Ideas Competition.

The tip itself is a great one.  I've taken note and added it to my teaching resources.

And then, I tried out one of the suggested sources for photos for students to choose and compare.

I had never seen Tag Galaxy before.  I'll certainly be using it again (and again!)

Here is a description of how it works:

What it is: Tag Galaxy is a neat little tool that helps students to explore relationships between words and ideas as well as view pictures related to that word.  Type in a word to search and immediately you are transferred to a galaxy with the original word at the center and the associated ideas orbiting around it.  When you click on the word in the center, a globe populates with pictures from Flickr that are tagged with that word. Click on one of the orbiting words and tags related to that word start to orbit.  Tag Galaxy is a very neat way to view information!                    http://ilearntechnology.com/?p=3506

Here are two screenshots for the tag 'speaking'.  The first screenshot shows the original word 'speaking' with the related words around it.

The second shot shows photos 1 - 235 from flickr tagged with 'speaking'.

You can click on any of the photos to see it closer up and then you can go the original photo on flickr.  If you want to see more photos, you can choose the next batch of matches, or spin the globe to see the other side of it.

I'll DEFINITELY be using this resource a lot.

YLE Teaching Tips

I've mentioned before that I am subscribed to the Cambridge English South East Europe Blog.

This week, I've had three emails about posts describing activities submitted to a global competition run by Cambridge English Language Assessment UK and Bell which invited  teachers of English from all over the world to submit written practical teaching ideas for preparing their candidates for a range of Cambridge English examinations.

All three posts talked about suggestions for fun activities to prepare for the Cambridge English: Young Learners English Tests.

In Post 1, Natalia Cheskidova, from Russia describes an activity involving describing and drawing a picture.  Her suggested activity is recommended for YLE, Preliminary and First. 

In the second post, Julieta Caffarel, from Uruguay again uses a picture and drawing and colouring activity to practise for all 3 of the Cambridge English: YLE tests papers.

And in her post, Daniela Mirza,  from Romania, suggests recording an interview and then creating a comprehension activity.

It was great to be able to see both Natalia and Julieta 'in person' on Cambridge TV!

I leave for Rome in under 4 hours' time.  Hope to inspire and be inspired!!!!!

Is this your (cup of) coffee?

A while back, I came across a quote about photography.  Having some aspiring photographers in the family, I shared it with them and also saved it on my computer.

This morning, I came across the image and thought again and googled for "Life is like ..."

I found a few interesting analogies on Quotelicious, such as:

Life is like pictures in a photo album. You can look back on the moments, but you can never recapture them.

Life is like walking through snow. Every step shows.

Deep thoughts for a Monday morning!!!???

What about this one (being a teacher of course, it appealed and I had to save and share!)

Life is like a multiple choice question, sometimes the choices confuse you, not the question itself.

And then, I ended up at a new site - Flickspire.

If I were to offer you a coffee, which cup would you choose to have your coffee in?  Why?

Click to watch a short 'flick' called 'Life is like coffee.'

The clip made me think about my coffee drinking habits - I usually choose a particular cup or mug to drink it from.  It tastes different I think, or I enjoy it more depending on the cup.  I also drink different quantity depending on the time of the day.  And I find it hard to live without my mid-morning coffee!!!

Anyway, I think I'll be using the clip in class and maybe get my students to come up with their own comparisons to complete the sentence:

Life is like .....

If you've never failed, you've never tried anything new

I was looking at the latest posts on Facebook by friends and pages that I'm subscribed to.

I came across this and liked it (in both senses - I clicked to say I liked it and it struck a chord!)

http://www.facebook.com/HealingwithArt

Then, I clicked on a link on a friend's Facebook page and ended up on YouTube, watching a short video.

I think it would be a great video to use in class.  You could ask them what they know about some of the people mentioned in the video (Walt Disney, Michael Jordan, Albert Einstein, Eminem...).  Ask them what thing the people have in common, then they watch the video to find out.

For more information and material to use in class on this topic, you could try some of the activities on Famous People Lessons, for example, this text and activities about Albert Einstein.


Hope you feel inspired now!!!

Pictures of Christmas

Hello again!
Just got back from London, where I spent the long holiday weekend.

I love this city at all times of the year, but in December, even more so.  The streets are busy with shoppers and party goers.

And wherever you look, you will see decorations.  There are some fantastic ones around this year.

This giant reindeer is at Covent Garden.

Inside, you can see some topiary candy rock:

and some giant baubles:

And outside again, a tree:

For me, a tree and baubles are an essential part of Christmas.

So, maybe I agree with the people who are protesting about the abstract tree in the Grand Place in Brussels.

For such an old square, the modern tree is certainly a contrast to the 17th century buildings around it.

I have added a new board to my pinterest account.  I have found and pinned some photos of different things and food associated with Christmas onto the board.

I have prepared some definitions for the things in these pictures.  You can either read them out and students point to the picture for the word, or print them out and do as a reading activity.

Definitions

1      You wrap these with paper and give them to your friends and family.

2      You make this with fruit, flour, eggs, etc.  You add marzipan and icing to the outside.  It’s delicious!

3      Two people open this by pulling on each end.  Inside, you will find a paper hat, a joke and a gift.

4      Some people buy a natural one, and others have an artificial one.  They are tall and you put them in a room and then you decorate them.

5      In some homes, people hang this from the ceiling.  When two people ‘meet’ under it, they have to kiss!

6      People put these on Christmas trees.  They are shiny and metallic and in bright colours usually.

7      People put these on Christmas trees.  Then they plug them in and turn them on.

8      This is metallic and shiny and bright.  It is very light and people put it round the branches of Christmas trees or hang it from the ceiling.

9      In some homes, people cook this bird in the oven for Christmas lunch.

10  People put these on tables, then they light them.

Key

1      presents

2      Christmas cake

3      crackers

4      Christmas tree

5      mistletoe

6      baubles

7      Christmas lights

8      tinsel

9      turkey

10  candles

I'm off to put up my tree now!!

Great resource! Starters Word List Picture Book

Cambridge ESOL has recently published a book for teachers and parents to use with children.

It's full of beautiful scene pictures - At the zoo, My friend's birthday, At the beach - to name just a few.

You can download here too as a pdf document.

On pages 22 -24, there are three games - finding adjectives in a wordsearch, scrambled letters to write numbers as words and writing the correct preposition of place under pictures to describe where the monkey is.

I have prepared one or two more activities to share with you via this post to use with one of the scene pictures.

My favourite food (pages 12-13)

Lead in
How many people can you see?  (11)
How many people are sitting down? (8)
How many people are standing up? (3)

Ask students to find food and drink in the picture starting with these letters (suggested answers in brackets):
a   (apple)
b   (banana, bread, bean)
c   (cake, coconut, chips, chocolate, candy, carrot)
d   (drink)
e   (eggs)
f   (fish)
g   (grape)
i   (ice cream)
j   (juice)
l   (lemon, lime)
m  (mango, milk)
o   (orange, onion)
p   (pear)
r   (rice)
s   (sweets)
t   (tomatoes)
w   (water, watermelon)

And don't forget - you can use these pictures with higher levels - for example here is an activity to use with Movers students.

Have names on pieces of paper.  Students listen and put the names on the person (or point to the person if you put the picture onto a board or screen).

Possible names:
  Dan, Kim, Lucy, Nick, Sam, Grace, May

Read out:
Listen and put the names.
1  Grace is making the food today.  Can you see her?  She's got a pear in her hand.
2  May is coming into the restaurant now.  She's with her dad.  She's wearing her favourite yellow and pink jacket, and she's very happy!
3  My cousin Lucy is here today.  She's there, with the glasses.  She's enjoying some chocolate, lemon and watermelon ice cream with red fruit.  Mmm!
4  Nick is sitting at the green table  His trousers are green too.  He's having meat and potatoes today.
5  Dan is wearing his red and white hockey shirt this afternoon.  He's got chips and sausages today.
6  Sam loves burgers.  Today he's having a big burger with chips and a glass of grape juice too.  Can you see the purple juice?

Key:
1  Grace is the woman behind the counter.
2  May is the small girl in the doorway.
3  Lucy is the girl at the yellow table with glasses.
4  Nick is the boy in the striped shirt eating a potato.
5  Dan is the boy in the red shirt with number 17 on it.
6  Sam is the boy with brown hair sitting at the blue table, eating a burger.

Stories from Italy

Back from Italy now - fantastic trip from all angles - I met loads of great people, shared activities with many, many teachers and learnt a few myself too!

Every day in Italy, there was a session on storytelling.

In Turin, Marcus Tubby told us a story about the Frog Prince.

As you can see in these photos, I held one line of the story (washing) line.  ( I mentioned this in my previous post).

Marcus gave a set of pictures showing the different characters and elements in the story to two 'volunteers'.  They had to peg up the pictures in the order they were mentioned in the story.

Marcus has put the pictures and the story on his blog here.

And two days later in Rome, Norman Cain from International House Rome had us listening to and telling more stories.  The slides from his presentation are available here.

A short (working) week here in Spain - Thursday is a national holiday and so is Saturday.  I'll upload another post before I head off to London - I love London in December (well actually, at any time of the year!!!)

pinterest - a great tool for classes!

Yesterday evening, I was teaching the vocabulary for containers and the things usually contained in each type.

It suddenly occurred to me that pinterest could be the perfect record (and teaching and revision) tool for vocabulary areas like this.

I have created a pinboard for this topic.  You can see it here:

http://pinterest.com/annerobspain/containers-lexis/

Maybe we could start boards for the different levels of the Cambridge exams, especially for the topic areas that appear on the Cambridge English: Young Learners English Tests and the Cambridge English: Key and Cambridge English: Preliminary Tests??

Spain seen from two sides

After watching the news yesterday evening, I switched on the computer to take a look at the photographs that have been submitted to Antena 3, the Spanish TV news channel's website, in response to the article and the pictures that appeared in the New York Times on September 24th:

Spain Recoils as Its Hungry Forage Trash Bins for a Next Meal

(See this and the other photos here)

One of the biggest criticism's of the photos is that they paint a very one-sided picture of Spain and they are all in black and white.

There are 150 photos on the antena3.com website.  They are all in colour - some of them are very colourful indeed.

After looking through all the photos, my teacher's brain began thinking about how I could use them in class.

One way would be to use a couple of them to illustrate ways of completing three different sentences about Spain:

1  Spain, the perfect place to ...

 (ride a bike)

2  In Spain, we still have ......

 (bubbles and smiles)

3  Visitors to Spain should see:

(Granada)

As a follow-up, students could be asked to find three images of Spain to submit to Antena 3 for the campaign (1 picture for each sentence).

And the pictures make great material for the speaking tests for Cambridge English: Preliminary, First, Advanced and Proficiency.  Either the teacher or each student/pair of students could choose a pair of related pictures and then be asked to write the intoductory rubric (and follow- up question) for the pair of photos.

For example:  (For Cambridge English: First Speaking Practice)

I'm going to give you two photographs.  Both your photos show people from different generations spending time together.  I'd like you to compare your photos and to say what things the two people in each picture can learn from each other.   You have about a minute for this.

I hope you enjoy looking at the (Antena 3) photos as much as I did, as well as reflecting on the photos from the NYT.

  

Just one thing

If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, which one would it be?

If you could choose only one place to live for the rest of your life, where would you choose?

If you could only listen to one song for the rest of your life, what would it be?

If you could only kiss just one person for the rest of your life, who would it be?

If you could only support one team for the rest of your life, which team would you support?

If you could watch just one film for the rest of your life, what film would you choose?

If you could look at just one piece of art for the rest of your life, which one would you select?


These seven questions appear in an interactive campaign for Volkswagen Golf VII.  onething.com

All onething.com users can create their own profile and share their answers with their friends via the Facebook, Twitter and Google+ social networks

I thought these questions would be great for use in class.

I suggest you could start with a bit of grammar practice (very useful for Part 2 of the Cambridge English: First and Advanced exams), by showing students the questions with the relative pronouns deleted then they have to supply who, which, where, what.  

To stimulate discussion, students could watch the video below and see the different answers given to three of the questions:

Then, students could choose their answers individually before sharing and discussing them with their classmates.

Finally, they could compare their choices with the most popular answers to each question.

In Spain, the most popular song is Imagine.

The most popular food is pizza.

61% said they would prefer to live abroad.

Women are quicker then men at saying who they would prefer to kiss.  (Average time taken = 2 seconds!)

Pulp Fiction, Titanic, Forrest Gump are among the most cited films.

And Mona Lisa is by far the most popular work of art.

A jewel from my 'For later' bookmark file

Sometimes when I'm working on the computer and using the internet, I come across interesting websites that I want to come back to, so I have a 'system' for not losing them - I bookmark them in a file called 'For later'.

Just now, I decided it was time - and that I had some time - to check my For later file.  I discovered that over the summer, I had stashed away rather a lot of webpages there.

As you can see from this snapshot of my 'For later' bookmarks, there are a LOT of them and I haven't had the time to organise them - not even alphabetically!!!

I chose one easily recognisable site - http://www.bbc.com/travel/blog.

When I got to the site, I was reassured that my first impression - that it was definitely worth revisiting - was correct.

There is so much stuff that you could use with students here.

Being a blog, the start-up page has the most recent posts, but you can also explore the blog using the drop-down headings at the top:  Explore destinations/Explore themes.

There are articles and videos like the one I have just watched about Madrid.  The reporter, Rafael Estefanía, had to ask local people for advice as to where to find the best street art, how to move around the city in an unusual way, where to watch the sun set

Photo:  http://www.theulifestyle.com/2011/06/living-city-part-i.html

and where to sing to the locals.  

(Interestingly for me, as usual my head started to make connections - at the end of August, I was in Madrid, watching people watching the skyline from that terrace.  I was staying at a hotel right opposite the Circulo de Bellas Artes and was talking about that terrace with my daughter Cristina. It brought back happy memories!)

The video is short - just over 5 minutes - so in my opinion, an ideal length to use in class.  I haven't got time right now to prepare activities for this video (another 'For later' task!), but I would suggest that it could be used among other things as a springboard into talking about what things students do when they visit another city.  They could also prepare a leaflet/presentation/blog entry... with advice for unusual things a visitor could do where they live.

All these suggestions off the top of my head - I'm sure you can think of more.

Oh - and while writing this post, I have just added to my list of 'For later' bookmarks!

I'll no doubt be writing about some of them in future posts!

From a different angle

As you will probably know already from several of my previous posts, I love photos and pictures.

So when I was reading the Telegraph online, I was attracted by the link to a collection of photos :

The London 2012 Olympic Games from a different angle

Photos like these are amongst the collection.  

I think they could be very useful for classes - students could discuss which sport they show, what might have happened just before the photograph was taken, what competitors have to do in this particular sport.