British Council Seminar on choosing and using resources

Yesterday, I received my weekly newsletter from British Council Teaching English.  (Another site I'm subscribed to).

If I have time, I look through the areas mentioned in the newsletter as soon as it arrives and click on the links to find out more about them.  (If not, the email gets transferred to my 'subscriptions' folder

and stays there till I have time to look at it properly!)

I decided to have a look at the email this morning when I switched on my computer and clicked on the link to

Choosing and using resources with ESOL learners Dot Powell, manager of the British Council's project to create a portal for ESOL teachers and learners, looks at criteria we use to make judgements about ESOL materials.

This took me to the Seminars section of the Teaching English website.  I clicked on:

I then watched Dot Powell, Project Manager for ESOL Nexus in a seminar with teachers discussing the criteria we need to apply when we are choosing and/or preparing resources for students.

Dot then provided examples of resources and applied the criteria with the teachers at the seminar.


The seminar lasts just under 20 minutes, but I found it so interesting and well-presented, that the time just flew by.

I then paid a quick visit to the ESOL Nexus website.

The site is targeted at a particular group of ESOL learners:

ESOL Nexus Welcome to the ESOL Nexus page for learners. The materials here have been specially designed and identified for learners who are working and making their home in the UK. We are sure you will find lots of interesting and motivating activities here which will help you to improve your English in lots of different ways, understand more about UK culture and learn more about UK society and work.

But I have just tried out a couple of activities from the site and I think that many of them would be useful and relevant to our students.
There are many listening activities and the Magazine articles seem interesting.
I liked the several of the poems in the Poems and Stories section.  I hadn't come across the No poem before!

I hope you will visit the Nexus site too and find it useful.  (Most of the stuff there is for higher level learners.

In a few minutes, I will look at the teachers section of the site - maybe for a future post......?


The British Council has lots more seminars on its website.  Here is the direct link to the start up page.

Toptenz.net and Toptenzphotos

As you know from previous posts like Camera Obscura, Camara Obscura 1, Life on the Edge, Compare and congrast challenge , I love sites with great photos for use in class.

A little earlier, I was looking at various bits and pieces on a site I like to browse from time to time (http://www.toptenz.net/).  The name says what it is - a wide and varied collection of 10 things on a theme.

To give you an example, here are four photos taken from their list of the top ten Strangest Hobbies.  What do you think the strange hobbies are?

Extreme ironing, soap carving, milk bottle collecting and mooing!!!  Never tried any of these myself!!!


I ended up at the toptenz.net sister site:
http://www.toptenzpictures.com/

When I clicked on one of the categories (Top 10 Live Moving Cinemagraph Pictures), I loved what I saw!  Here's one of the photos from the collection:

The term cinemagraph was invented by Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg.  They used the technique in their fashion photography.  Check out their photos here:
http://cinemagraphs.com/


Hope you enjoy toptenz.net and toptenzphotos.com!

The Big Egg Hunt

Some of you have already started your Easter holidays.  In Cantabria, we start on Wednesday :·)

I was preparing a few suggestions for some friends who will be visiting London next weekend, when I came across the Big Egg Hunt.

Next weekend (Easter weekend), 209 giant Easter eggs will be on display in Covent Garden. Up until yesterday, they were 'hidden' around London and people went round hunting them.

Want to see more of these beauties?   Visit the Fabergé Big Hunt webpage.

Unfortunately (?) my favourite - the Egg Letter Box has already been sold!!!

And for a very usable video to use in class or to ask your students to watch at home, I suggest this one from  SightseerTV:

It has an interactive transcript so that students can choose to read and listen at the same time - or you could use it to design a listening/viewing task.

Happy Easter!!!!