I’ve been searching for some sounds for an activity dealing with actions and I found this great website http://www.findsounds.com, there you can find sounds for almost everything, try ‘tap dancing’ for example, and there you go!

example of activity:

- Have sts guess what the people are doing as for practicing the Present Continuous Tense.

What other activities can we do? Write them in Comments!

Here’s great news: Scott Thornbury, leading ELT author and writer of recently published “Teaching Unplugged”, has just started his own blog, An A-Z of ELT at scottthornbury.wordpress.com/ And he kicks it off with D is for Drills by asking two very important questions,

“Have drills disappeared? And, if not, how can they be used “optimally”?

So, why don’t you pay Scott a visit and join the conversation?

Cheers,

Fernando

Those of you who have known me for some time will know how deep into technology I am. On the other hand, I’m also probably as deep into ELT methodology. Much of my life revolves around these two “-ogies” and I’m interested in reflecting on how the first affects the latter and vice-versa. In my “Interactive White Elephant?” talks this year there have been great opportunities to gauge the reactions and attitudes of fellow teachers when probed (challenged?) in their pedagogical beliefs. Clearly such reflection and discussion are timely and welcome since more and more of us have incorporated different technologies into our teaching practices. What makes me wonder is how many of us have been doing so in a reflective manner.

Marisa Constantinides, an EFL teacher from Greece, has recently written an insightful post on the issue here. I strongly recommend reading her considerations and, as the end of the school year in Brazil draws near, muse on what our attitude and approach to technology x pedagogy will be in the coming year.

“Technology is wonderful when it is not the end but the means to education” [Marisa Constantinides]

Cheers,

Fernando Guarany

Here’s a clipart collection I stumbled across while planning one of my lessons.It’s not a huge database, but you can surely make use of some of them. They’re all drawings (line art) of basic concepts like warm, cold, fast, plus verbs , nouns, etc. On their site you’ll also find link to other websites offering royalty-free cliparts for EFL instruction

The site is: http://tell.fll.purdue.edu/JapanProj/FLClipart/

Have fun!

Fernando Guarany

If you’ve sort of run out of ideas for writing practice, here’s a website with loads of [writing] topics to choose from:

http://www.creativewritingprompts.com/

You could possibly get your students to pick a number between 1-329. Then send them to the website.

Just an idea.

Cheers,

Fernando Guarany

Following Dyego’s post on short stories, here’s a website I’d like to recommend: Reg and Lellow – http://www.regandlellow.com/

On their site you can find a series of “PowerPoint stories featuring the characters Reg and Lellow by Chris Roland. The stories have been designed to help young children learn English and can be used in class with pre-school, infant and primary levels.  As they have been written by an English teacher, they also have a number of pedagogical features to aid language acquisition, make in class storytelling as easy as possible for the teacher and story content easily integrated into schools’ English curriculum.”

Worth a visit.

Cheers,

Fernando

Our Teen sts and Teps will soon face some reading either from books of short stories in order to do their Book reports. For this level I´d rather have then read an online short story, because they can choose at their own pace in an environment they are quite used: the internet. I selected some websites tha t I´ve analysed to check:

http://www.rong-chang.com/easyread/index.html – Easy reading for beginners. The T can have the stories on boar and there is the possibility for LISTENING to the stories. Great choice.

http://www.eslfast.com/ - this works the same way, but for higher levels.

Now if you want to learn more about how to work with short stories for adults, I´d recommend this one, it´s full of ideas and reference: http://www.yourdictionary.com/esl/short-stories.html

Now, if you´re looking for short stories for kids, you could really take a look at these websites:

http://www.britishcouncil.org/kids-stories-short.htm

http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/childrenindex.html

Come with more suggestions if you have any, and before I forget: HAPPY TEACHERS´DAY! =D

this image was borrowed from http://elsadossantos.wordpress.com/

http://elsadossantos.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/kid-reading-book.jpg?w=380&h=252

For those who haven’t grasped what Dogme ELT is all about, this video should make it clear. =D

“And now for fun, the video, Any Given Dogme, starring Al Pacino as Scott Thornbury, directed by Lindsay Clandfield.”

Watch it here: http://www.overstream.net/view.php?oid=u6agsdm7nuex

Cheers,

Fernando