My ELT Bubble

Posts

ADAPTING ENGLISH TEACHING MATERIALS FOR STUDENTS WITH SPECIFIC NEEDS

Teaching English might be quite challenging when dealing with learning difficulties. However, learning English or, at least becoming familiar with the language is key in a global world. We listen to music, watch films, search for information on the Internet, or travel around the world. As teachers, we must keep in mind the support our students need, not only the ones with learning difficulties but also the group class to: Provide help to all students. Provide catch up options to the newcomers. Adapt the syllabus to students with specific needs. The key to adapt students’ materials is to know your students and do the arrangements depending on their needs, interests, and motivations. However, here are some ideas about how I adapt SPEAKING, LISTENING, READINGS, AND WRITINGS. ADAPTING SPEAKING I adapt speakings by: Giving options orally so that the student can choose and speak Providing sentence examples Providing substitution tables with the structure to practice ADA

USING PADLET TO ENCOURAGE SPEAKING

Padlet has become an endless teaching tool. I discovered it in a workshop I did around 2 years ago. Since then, I’ve been using it with different purposes: To do an initial diagnosis of what students know about a topic. To monitor students’ interests and motivations. To collect students’ questions and/or contributions about a topic. To present the written result of a learning process. During the lockdown, I realized I could also use it to record students voice among many other options such as uploading a file from the computer, including a direct link, google search, take a photo or a film from the device, record the screen, draw, add a location, or add a link to another Padlet. Encouraging speaking when teaching a foreign language is always a challenge and we are always looking for activities that motivate students to speak. I started a radio programme at school (it was not in English) and we have to stop it because of the lockdown. Then, a couple of weeks at home it occ

GAMIFICATION: BACK TO DINOSAURS' WORLD

During the lockdown, I learned about gamification, so I decided to create an educative escape room of my own called “Back to dinosaurs’ world”. The idea is to crack some passwords to reach the next level. The challenge was to find some young dinosaurs lost in the woods and bring them back to their families before the Cretaceous Period end with the extinction of the dinosaurs. The topic was not in my social sciences syllabus but as some students were quite motivated about those creatures, I managed to include it in my English class by emphasizing the reading comprehension activities, and the searching of information. Students had to move through the Mesozoic era: the Triassic, the Jurassic, and the Cretaceous period by entering the correct password. The tools I used to create it were: Google sites: I created the main page with the introduction to the game. Then, I duplicated it with the Mesozoic era, the Triassic, the Jurassic, the Cretaceous, and a help page with u

INCLUDING GENDER PERSPECTIVE IN CLASS

Last school year I planned to cover the contents about history with 10-12-year-old kids. Despite I find it rather fascinating as I studied humanities in my pre-college studies, I am aware the topic might not seem so captivating for students unless I made them feel involved in it. As teachers, we are also responsible for ensuring our students will contribute to making a fairer world in many aspects. When regarding the History topic I thought about including the GENDER PERSPECTIVE and GENDER EQUALITY as part of the project considering the following definitions in order to avoid gender stereotypes and break the classical gender barriers: · Gender equality implies to correct gender discrimination and value the rich differences between genders. · Gender perspective refers to the analysis of the feminine presence in certain spaces in order to identify discrimination, work for gender equality and promote educational equi

IDEAS' EXCHANGE MARKET

Writing stories is usually a great deal for students, not only when they are writing in their L2 but also in their L1. Two aspects I take in consideration when preparing writing lessons are: 1. To ensure that students know all the parts for a consistent and organized writing. 2 . To promote creativity in class though ideas generation. This article focuses on the second idea in order to avoid students saying “I don’t have any idea to write”. I created these templates to help students develop creativity when dealing with narrative. Students work as a group to contribute with their ideas in a board or poster created with the templates. There is a template for general ideas, one for the beginning, middle and end part of stories. Students can write or draw ideas and stick them in the poster using a post-it. Once they have participated, they can look at other kids’ ideas and use them if they like.

WILBUR IS NOT ENGLISH

Three years ago, I was teaching English as a foreign language to 7-year-old kids. For me, teaching this age is a great challenge as I find these young ones extremely demanding in a challenging way. Once I pass through the door, I know I need to have a set of activities prepared, all following a logical order and with multiple options just in case they don't find an activity enough motivating. However, there is a classic learning experience that always works no matter how old it is, Winnie the Witch's stories. Going back to when I was studying my teaching degree, we analysed some children’s books. One of them was “Winnie the Witch”. I actually sounded very familiar, so I assumed Winnie was one of this famous British characters such as Wallace & Gromit and I thought I had probably read it when I was a kid myself as a children’s classic. The day came when talking to my school language assistant I mentioned using some of Winnie’s books. My assistant was British, and she w