Eyes Closed - Ed Sheeran

 

Being a big fan of Ed Sheeran, I couldn't help taking this beautiful song to class. As the lyrics are a bit depressing, I thought it would be a good idea to focus on pronunciation and not in the topic of the song. Not for a Blue Monday, in fact! 😝
Find the activities and the key at the bottom of the document here. Hope you enjoy!

 The future is here

I've been thinking about this series for the whole week. It's as if I couldn't get it out of my head!

On top of that, this week in class we've started the topic of "Our changing world" and the blistering pace it has. So, found the perfect place to introduce the series to my students! I have prepared some activities revolving around the topic and some clips. I leave the document here in case you may find it interesting. 

Are we ready for the future? - Activities here.

Baby Boomers vs. Millennials - and other generations!

I'm a proud member of the Gen-X. For years I've been listening to repetitive preconceptions about my generation 

As this year I'm working with a mixed-generation group, I though it would be nice to see how we intercommunicate,  that is, how we understand each other. 

STEP 1 - RETRIEVAL PRACTICE FROM PREVIOUS SESSIONS

First, I have blue-tacked generation signs, to have a warm-up debate on how, when.....encouraging students to use vocabulary seen in previous sessions (mainly adjectives related to behaviour, personality...)
See my list here

STEP 2 - SPEAKING

Then, I prepared a Gallery walk aimed at sparking debate, ideas, conversation. Students go around the photos on the wall discussing or if they prefer, writing their main ideas on sticky-notes next to the pictures. 
You can use your own, of if you want to use these ones, here you are: 

Gallery walk posters

STEP 3 - TRUE / FALSE LISTENING

After this warm-up, let's go with some listening. The first video is from The Ellen DeGeneres' show. A contest between a Millennial and a Boomer. After watching it, the task can be either asnswering the open questions in the doc below or just commenting which generational misunderstandings have happened to us! 

The Ellen DeGeneres Show 

STEP 4 - BINGO LISTENING 

 This next video is gonna be harder, so, to start, and following advice from Cristina Cabal, I decided to introduce the listening with an easier task, which can let my students pull up their socks before getting into the real matter. 
Thus, I've prepared some bingo cards, one for each student. First, make sure we all know the words in our cards and then, listen to the video just trying to cross out all the words from your card. The first one gets an applause :)  This simple activity allows the students to recognise key words from the video, and to get a general idea what it is about before the "real" task later. 

Bingo cards here

Millennials, the Greatest Generation?

I've used AI to generate some True / False statements which may help our students get the gist of the video. (0.34 - 3.55)

In case you don't want to print posters, this adobe presentation  should do the trick!

See you soon!😏

Woman of the Year - Written mediation

 Happy International Women's Day 

 The fact that only in 1999 the Time magazine changed the title "Man of the Year" into "Person of the Year" made me feel unsettling. When I came across this link presenting an imaginary version of the magazine where Women were named Women of the Year for her achievements and contributions to humanity I thought I wanted to bring it to my C2 students . 

Click on the image to see the task

Passive sentences. Fancy a bit of grammar in C2?

In class sometimes we have to stop and breathe. That's the time to relax revising some grammar aspects we already know but may be a bit forgotten, or blurry or disregarded....

Recently we've been working on the topic of friendship and many aspects of it. We got stuck in the use of complex passive sentence structures. That's what we've done to overcome our doubts. 

Hope you find it useful. 😀

Why do we kiss under the mistletoe?

This, and other pagan traditions we celebrate during Christmas time. 

Escape Room "Stranded on a deserted island"

    Once a year, my colleague/friend Ana Alconchel and I take the plunge and prepare a digital escape room for students. It's open to anyone who wants to participate, no matter what language you are studying.

Click on the image and enjoy! Let us know your comments, suggestions..... thanks.