Spicy Tooth

Type IPA phonetic symbols

There are occasions when you need to enter phonetic symbols into a document. For example, in a lesson plan to show the phonetic transcription of a word or in a language analysis assignment. Entering the phonetic transcription would typically involve using the ‘insert symbol’ function in Word, or memorising the keyboard shortcut for each symbol….

So, you’ve just started your CELTA…

A new cohort of trainees started their part-time CELTA at my organisation today. The first day involved going through a lot of formalities – who’s who, course handbook, CELTA 5, tour, pre course task and the foreign language lesson. We, the trainers, were modelling some of the techniques used in English language teaching (ELT), with…

Word Maker

Wordmaker is a useful website that will create words from any series of letters you type in. Here are some ideas on how it can be used: As a warmer, learners are given a word from which they must create as many words as possible. For example, the word ‘vocabulary’ can be used to create…

Half a Crossword

There are a number of websites that allow you to create crosswords, such as Teacher’s Corner, Puzzle-Maker and EclipseCrossword. What sets Half a Crossword apart from the others is indicated in its name. Half a Crossword allows you to create crosswords that can be used as a jigsaw activity in the classroom. Students work in…

random.org

random.org is a great numeracy resource which generates random numbers. It’s not just a simple random number generator; it has lots of useful applications, such as random dice, random playing cards and a random time generator. The dice and playing cards came in very handy for demonstrating arrays to learners, ideas which are explained in…

NRICH Maths

NRICH maths is an extensive collection of resources that promotes maths through problem solving. There are many interesting activities that encourage learners to think of different ways of solving problems, which is a change from many of the worksheet-based maths sites. NRICH covers a wide range of levels, from primary to secondary. The website is…

Quizizz – Not Just A Kahoot! Clone

Quizizz is an up-and-coming real-time assessment application, which at first glance looks very similar to Kahoot! However, looks can be deceptive and after some initial scepticism I am becoming quite fond of using Quizizz with my learners. As I have mentioned in other posts, the use of real-time assessment applications have become a viable alternative…

Conditionals

Here are the activities to accompany an input session I gave on conditionals to a group of trainee teachers. They were adapted from The CELTA Course, Trainee Book, by Thornbury and Watkins (2007). Complete the song lyrics The original activity involved trainees listening to songs. The audio is not available here for copyright reasons. 2…

e-Learning

Here is an infographic I created to accompany a session I gave on e-Learning to a group of trainee teachers.

Book review: Teaching Spelling to English language learners

Is it just me, or has spelling taking a bit of a backseat in the classroom? We spend a lot of time teaching grammar and the four skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening, but when it comes to spelling, I find that I usually only scratch the surface of the topic. The other day,…