Keep Calm and Teach English

21st March is World Poetry Day . It is a celebration of poetry for everyone, everywhere. It's a day to promote the reading, writing and teaching of poetry and to connect it with the other arts such as theatre, dance, music and painting. It is a chance to use poetry to say things that can’t be said in prose. Photo by congerdesign How can we use poetry in the EFL classroom and have fun with our students on this day? Here are some ideas: An easy way to start is by reading and writing haikus.  They are short, easy to write and memorise and can be used with students of any age and level. They are made of three lines with five, seven, five syllables respectively and their themes are usually inspired by nature. For ideas on how to write haikus on paper or online you can visit an older post here. I am poems : students can talk about themselves and  express the way they feel, what they hope, think, dream, enjoy and so on.  The lines in each poem begin the same way: I a...

Writing a CV is a real-life skill our students should practice at least once before leaving High School as it is something they may have to use immediately either for a part-time job or volunteer work or later on for their further education and career. photo found in  thebalance.com As a growing number of Europeans move across the continent for work, volunteering and study every year, a CV framework that seems relevant for classroom use is   Europass .   Europass is a collection of five documents, two of which are freely accessible: the Curriculum Vitae and the Language Passport . The documents can work both online and as printed templates. Since its official launch in 2005, Europass has helped European citizens make their skills and qualifications clearly and easily understood in Europe. Recently there has been a proposal on a revision of Europass to   make the tool more accessible to all Europeans, including those with disabilities. Until the u...

Infographic from Jack Milgram, in CustomWriting

One of the most important rules a learner of English should learn is basic word order in English. It is very common for Greek EFL learners to write incorrect sentences as Greek syntax is very flexible in terms of word order. The English language however follows stricter rules and any sentence that does not follow the rules not only sounds  wrong but is  in fact wrong. We tend to emphasize the order of certain words within a sentence, like for example adverbs of frequency, but we don't give our students enough practice on basic sentence structure.  photo by  stevepb The following lesson  has been in my mind for a long time as whenever I correct my students' writings I observe the same word order mistakes over and over again. I found an interesting diagram on SVOMPT in  engames.eu  but I decided to design it a bit different.  So here it is:

Welcome back and Happy New Year Holidays are (unfortunately) over, and we are all looking forward to new and creative lesson ideas to spice up our classes.  Below is part of a story created with the help of  Plot Generator , a helpful little site, which promises to give you "inspiration for your next novel, film or short story".   Students can have fun and learn how to build narratives by

Summarising involves taking the main ideas from a piece of text and rewriting them in your own words.   The ability to summarise a text is an important reading and studying skill as it can show that you have really understood the text and that you have identified its main points and ideas. It is also an essential writing skill as it requires the presentation of these ideas in your own words. The following Graphic Organiser can help your students when working with short stories or narratives. Summarising Graphic Organiser

Writing letters is not usually considered a fun activity. If you have a computer lab available you can use the Letter Generator  which provides an interactive approach to the task. Ideal for young learners, it walks them through the letter writing process step-by-step and teaches them about each step along the way. It can be used for writing both friendly and business letters.  

Writing haikus is a popular activity in education as they are simple to write, read and memorise. Their short, fixed form make them easily accessible to students of any age and level. Below is a simple lesson idea where students analyse the form of haikus and later are invited to write their own. If computers are available, students can use the Haiku Poem Interactive  found in  readwritethink.org/ .

A fun way to introduce or re-introduce Poetry in the EFL classroom is through concrete or visual poetry where the poem is arranged in a way that illustrates its theme. Concrete poetry can be playful and creative enough without having to be complicated or comforming to rules.

Writing a CV is a real-life skill our students should practice at least once before leaving High School as it is something they may have to use immediately either for a part-time job or later on for their further education and career. CV formats are similar in both English and Greek so learning to write a good resume can be tranferable in any situation. The lesson that follows is based on the Europass CV  page which is a European Commision project aiming to help people looking for a job within the European Union.

With schools opening soon I couldn't think of a better post to start the new year than an icebreaker activity to use with students you already know from previous years. Basically what they have to do is write a poem about themselves following the  "I am Poems" format. The activity can be very motivating as teenagers love talking about themselves and the better their level of English the more interesting the results. If you are able to work in the computer lab the results can be surprisingly creative!