Keep Calm and Teach English

Celebrating Valentine's Day on February the 14th?     Here you can find a Valentine's Day cloze with the story of Valentine suitable for young teens at B1 level and a love song to work on its rhyming pattern and sing. photo by  TerriC Photocopiable handouts can be downloaded from the last page of the presentation or from here . Older students will appreciate this video from History.com , which explains w hy we celebrate Valentine's Day on February 14th and where the holiday customs come from. or this one If you decide to use the worksheets leave me a comment and tell me how it went.

On Safer Internet Day (SID) 2018 (Tuesday, 6 February), an EU-wide series of initiatives entitled #SaferInternet4EU  was launched at an event at the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Throughout 2018, a range of #SaferInternet4EU initiatives will reach children, young people, parents, teachers, and other EU citizens to become empowered and responsible digital users. It will cover a wide range of topics, such as critical thinking, media literacy and digital skills necessary to identify and combat fake news and the risks brought by emerging online technologies and connected devices; and provide tips on cyber hygiene. A number of initiatives will be launching as part of the campaign, including: a European contest to reward high quality resources and inspiring initiatives pursuing Better Internet for Kids objectives. The competition will cover three categories: professionals, teachers and youth. a massive open online course (MOOC) on child online safety with resources

Frankenstein  by Mary Shelley can be described as the first great horror story. Published in 1818 it has remained popular untill this day and has formed the basis for a number of films. The film adaptations tend to present the monster as an evil character, but the book itself tells us a different story… The following video presents an abridged version of the story for B1 students. Text and audio is taken from Opportunities Pre-Intermediate, Longman . I designed the worksheets in 2015 but some minor changes were needed in order for the tasks to work better. I also added a key to the tasks to make it more teacher friendly. The worksheets include Think-Tac-Toe homework activities which allow students to choose how they will show what they are learning, by giving them a variety of activities to select from. (For more information on Think-Tac-Toe activities you can visit one of my older posts on  differentiated instruction. )