I came across the writer David Sedaris through the podcast This American Life and immediately fell in love with his dry and sometimes absurd sense of humour. Whenever I find gems like this, I turn it into a lesson plan, cross my fingers and hope that my higher-level students will find it as hilarious as …
A couple of months back, this video started making the rounds in the teacher Twitter-sphere (resurfaced, in fact, as the clip is about five years old). It deserves all the attention. It deals with adjectives, more specifically adjectives modified by the use of ”very”. ”Very” may be the language learner’s very best friend. You learn …
Music is an easy topic to build lessons around. With the exception of one student who purportedly did not listen to any music at all(!), everyone generally has an opinion about it and enjoys listening to at least one genre. What everyone seems to be able to agree on is that music as a phenomenon …
Lesson Plan: Why Music Is Important + Exploring Genres Read More »
Big questions make for great lessons. Whenever I jot down the question “What does it mean to be successful?” on the board, opinions start flying across the classroom like paper planes. This is a simple lesson plan I keep coming back to. Here are some questions on motivation to get your students started. Lesson Plan …
Lesson Plan: What It Actually Means to Be Successful Read More »
Turtle neck-clad art connaisseurs and high brows will have you know that there is truly art in everything. A layman like myself would, however, beg to differ. This lesson plan lets your students tackle this very question. I’ve used this mini-lesson as intro to one of the suggested assignments found at the end of this …
Once upon a time (sigh, had to get that phrase in here), I felt the crippling effects of time and wanted to remedy my malaise by having my students work with fairy tales. It’s a thankful genre to work with for many reasons: they are in general quite short, exist in most cultures, and most …
A quick glance at Google Maps and one might be forgiven for thinking that this tiny isle belongs to the French. However, borders are never drawn by common sense, and gifting land to the French for the sake of geographical coherence (let alone giving the French anything) is, well… most unthinkable. Existing in this geographical …
Lesson Plan: Jersey (The Island That Wanted to be French?) Read More »
I came across a free app with mental health/personal development mini-lectures, and I want to share it with you.
I’m a big fan of economist Steven Levitt’s podcast People I (Mostly) Admire. An episode in which Levitt interviews his two daughters made me prick up my ESL ears. Here’s why.