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Online vs Paperback Dictionaries

I definitely prefer paperback dictionaries. Working with paperback dictionaries allows students to see the connections between word families and word forms. I also like paperback dictionaries because you can play games with them. For example, I like getting my students to write OuLiPo poems. They start by writing a short 4-6 verse poem. Then they take dictionaries, look up each noun written in the poem and replace it with whatever noun comes seven dictionaries after the original. Let me give you an example:

Jack Sprat could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean

After replacing the nouns, this poem becomes:

Jack Sprat could eat no Father Christmas, his wildlife could eat no leap year

Obviously, the OuLiPo poems are nonsensical, but they're fun and good practice.

The Devil's Dictionary

Here are two definitions for a well-known job. Can you guess what it is?

In America the chief executive office of a country, whose most characteristic duties, in some of the Western and Southern States, are the catching and hanging of rogues - Source: The Devil's Dictionary

An important official of a county or a shire charged primarily with judicial duties (and executing the processes and orders of courts and judges) - Source: Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Videos for Hippie Teachers to Use in Class

Beneath the neatly ironed shirt and expensive slacks, I'm still a bit crunchy. Though I shy away from any and all things political with adults, I do have a bit of a tendency to get a bit preachy in front of a room of impressionable YLs. That's not to say that I stand behind my little bully pulpit of a desk assigning them reading passages by Naomi Klein and telling them that it's acceptable to spell woman with a "y." Rather, I like to combine project work and CLIL with socially conscious themes.

year I went to Mali and when I came back from vacation my YLs were filled with questions. "Why would you go to a Third World country for vacation?" "Were you scared?" "Do they have food?" The idea that someone would choose to go to a poor country was totally foreign to them. So we spent a couple weeks looking at poverty. We started with this very thought provoking video from National Geographic.

2 Quick Ways to Use Songs in the Classroom

Every TEFL teacher worth his salt knows that students of all ages love listening to songs in class. And we all know that in 3 minutes we can download the lyrics for any song and make a gap-fill that will eat a good twenty minutes of class time. With minimal thought anyone can find a song with at least a tangential connection to whatever he happens to be teaching. The Barenaked Ladies' If I Had A Million Dollars ties in nicely with the second conditional and Madonna's Holiday practically screams New Headway 3rd Edition.
The question then, for the motivated teacher, is how to get more educational value out of music?

1. TPR with Music for Beginners

Teaching beginners is tiring. Even the most creative teachers quickly run out of ways to make learning have got and my name is student-centered and communicative experiences. When I first started teaching beginners I searched and searched for ways that I could use music in my lessons. I needed something to take the monotony out of the seemingly endless stream of completely unauthentic dialogues, questionnaires and worksheets I was giving my students. That, plus I needed a way to get the 36 eyeballs in my classroom to look at something other than me.
Beginners need support and a rubric to work from. So start with something simple and build slowly. At the same time, it's important that you don't insult your students' intelligence. While Sesame Street's Hola Means Hello recycles the key vocabulary your students need to know, forcing a room full of adults to listen to Grover and the Toddler Choir may be a little discouraging.
Instead, the Beatles' Hello, Goodbye. The lyrics are simple "you say goodbye and I say hello / Hello, hello..." the melody is catchy and it appeals to students of all stripes. Start by making a gap-fill activity. Try to draw your students' attention to a half-dozen key words by removing them whenever they appear in the lyrics. Writing the missing words at the bottom of the page is a good way to help students with weaker listening skills and reinforce spelling. Listen to the song a couple times in class and make sure that all of the students have filled in the missing words.
Print the key words and phrases from the song (hello, goodbye, go, I, you, why, say, bye, oh no, I don't know) in big letters individually on sheets of coloured paper. Give each group of 3-4 students a set of all the words and phrases and to spread out on their desks.
Play the song again. This time, whenever your students hear a word in the song that matches a printed on one of the sheets in front of them, they need to hold that paper up over their heads. This is a really fun, activity that gets the whole class laughing and singing along.

2. Guessing Vocabulary Definitions from Context with Music

The great thing about using music in class is that whatever the topic you're teaching, you can be sure that someone, somewhere once wrote a song about it. With a little effort, you can find a song to match any lexical set. Start with a quick pre-listening activity to set the context. Put your students in small groups and give each group a series of pictures that represent key words from the song. Some of the pictures should be easy to interpret, while others could be a little more abstract.
For example, if I were to play Stairway to Heaven in my class, I'd give my students about dozen pictures, including a staircase (obviously to represent the stairway) and a shining star (to represent "all that glitters"). Each group would then have a few minutes to discuss the connection between the images and write down what they thought the song might be about.
Then, distribute a cloze activity. Rather than omitting the words represented by the pictures, put them in bold and leave out other words. Listen to the the song a couple of times and make sure that your students have filled in all the gaps.
Put them back in groups and have them look at the pictures again. This time they need to use the context of the song to figure out which pictures represent which words. Encourage them to be creative and explain their answers.