Easy Christmas Shape Poem for Your Language Lessons
Christmas Shape Poetry for French, German and Spanish Lessons Poetry is part of a country’s culture, but poems are not often embedded well or easily into language lessons. I’ll be honest, I don’t enjoy teaching poetry to my language students. I find that it’s tricky for them to understand. I believe they feel disconnected from the poetry they have encountered so far and therefore find reading poems inherently difficult. Particularly since, by their very nature poetry makes meaning by hiding meaning. Okay, so, reading and analysing the language and meanings in poems isn’t for me. However, I don’t see why I can’t use a form of poetry in my French…
20+ Valuable Teacher and COVID-19 Friendly Activities For Language Lessons
Teacher, Student and COVID-19 Friendly Low-Prep Activities and Ideas for Language Classrooms This post includes: Current government curriculum expectations General school and government safety guidelines 20+ COVID-19 friendly activities for language classrooms in the era of ‘the new normal’ DISCLAIMER: I am not a medical professional and can’t guarantee these ideas are 100% COVID-19 friendly, nor that they will stop the spread of COVID-19. However, I have considered the information from schools, the government and used some of my common sense. I hope you find them useful for your educational settings. If there are any ideas you can’t use in your language lessons, feel free to disregard them. If you’re…
21 Must-Use Reading Activities For Your Language Lessons
Fun Pre-Reading and Post-Reading Activities for All Language Classrooms I love language lessons which involve an element of reading. This is because there are so many opportunities for learning and improving language acquisition with topic-related texts. Reading activities are the perfect starting point to learn rich topic-related vocabulary (adjectives, nouns, verbs etc), pick up new grammar structures, steal ‘star phrases’ and ultimately improve comprehension and improve language acquisition skills. According to Moeller & Meyer (1995), reading, even at a slow pace exposes students to more sentences, grammar, and new vocabulary per minute than the average short class, TV show, or song. So, if you are in a rut with how you present…
Fun Games for The MFL Classroom
Fun Language Games for The MFL Classroom To Engage Learners Games are defined as ‘activities that one engages in for amusement or fun’. Nowadays, when learners think of language lessons, they don’t usually synonymy them with the expression fun. So, why not change their thinking? You can do this, fairly simply, by including some low-prep, fun language games for the MFL classroom into your teaching repertoire. Josh Beattie, Assistant Director at the Department for Education stated in 2018 that not enough pupils are taking languages, because “they either consider them boring, dislike their teachers or think they are too difficult.” Although I definitely don’t think that teachers have to have…
Low-Prep & Fun Open Evening Ideas for MFL
10 Fun, Low-Prep MFL Open Evening Ideas Wow future linguists with the FUN ideas and activities below which are extremely low-prep and most of which are very low-cost for MFL Open Evenings I rarely enjoyed taking part in Y4/5/6 open evenings at secondary schools, as I always thought they were a waste of time. This was until one student who came to our school in year 7 said they loved the activities that we had for them when he came to visit the MFL department with his family on a school open day. He also mentioned that he had never tasted the French, German and Spanish foods that we put…
Fun Speaking Activity for First Lesson in Language Classrooms
Want to get some weird looks and questions from your family when packing for a new term of college? Get some toilet roll out…! Ready for a fun speaking activity during first lessons in any language classroom. The ‘Loo’ Roll Speaking Activity For First Lessons Today, I started back at college, teaching a speaking and listening course. This ‘loo’ roll activity for speaking was the first fun speaking activity that I learnt during my teacher training course in 2009. I often use it to get students to talk about themselves from the outset of a new course or class. It works for post beginners, intermediate and advanced speakers and allows them…
The Ideal Teacher’s Reflective Teaching – Issue 1
Reflective Practice in Teaching This week was the first week back to school for The Ideal Teacher after the Easter holidays and although it went quickly, it was pretty intense! I came straight home on Monday at 5pm and went to sleep – not the ideal start to the week, but it shows how much and how quickly you can get out of the swing of your normal routine. Despite the shock to the system, I enjoyed my lessons and made some progress in my aim to becoming ‘The Ideal Teacher’ this week. If you’re interested in my journey of reflective practice in teaching, please read on! If reflective teaching…
Qualified German and French Teacher – Simplifying Language Learning
