Spicy Tooth

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.

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,…

Cuisenaire rods

Cuisenaire rods are a physical learning tool that are used primarily in the teaching of maths concepts, such as fractions. However, they also have application in language learning, such as for showing word stress and intonation. Examples of how cuisenaire rods can be used in language learning can be found on many websites, including an…

Eye halve a spelling chequer

I have recently been looking at the peculiarities of English spelling, which prompted me to dig out a poem I came across a number of years ago. I believe the poem below is the original version, although various modified versions of the poem also exist. The British Council website has a good activity for the…

Spot the mistake

This was spotted and taken in Sudbury, London in December 2016 by one of my students. Can you see what is wrong?

Maths worksheets

There are numerous (geddit?) websites offering maths worksheets. Here are some of my favourites. I have replaced one of my previous recommendations because of the high number of trackers the site uses. themathworksheetsite.com themathworksheetsite includes a limited range of free worksheets that are generated dynamically. I particularly like the free number line generator, which generates…

Teaching Reading Skills

Here is an infographic I created to accompany a session I gave on teaching reading skills to a group of trainee teachers. Additional resources English is a piece of cake has a detailed explanation of the stages of a reading lesson. Here is a link to online versions of newspapers that are presented in traditional…

Word clouds – Wordle, WordArt or Tagxedo?

Word clouds are a method of displaying words on a screen. It is particularly useful for showing the frequency of words in a text, with words that occur more frequently in the text appearing in a larger font than words that occur less frequently. An example of their use could be to get learners to…