The most annoying invention ever

Karaoke: if it's such fun, can it really be the most annoying invention ever?

Because its quirky news stories make great texts for use in class, Ananova.com is one of my default home pages: I spend 20 seconds a day there when I log on scanning the headlines in case there's something I could use in class.

One that caught my eye today: The most annoying invention ever: the Karaoke.

As well as the language and reading comprehension work that might come out of the text, my 20 seconds are about long enough to image my students, pre-reading, brainstorming their own lists of the world's worst inventions; and, post-reading, writing up their suggestions on a class blog and then taking a vote on it, possibly involving students in another class -- and possibly using the poll option that you can easily include on your blog if you are using Blogger to publish it (the steps being Layout >> Add a gadget >> Poll).

20 seconds a day scanning the stuff that comes to me: that, rather than wasting the day trawling Google-is-Evil...

Series of online articles on reading

Reading: what kind of help and motivation should you provide?

Over on TeachingEnglish.org.uk, Dave Willis has started a four-part series on reading, the first being Reading for information: Motivating learners to read efficiently.

Among other things I liked in the first article of the series was the idea that we should we should provide "a context and a reason for reading", though if -- as suggested -- we're reading to answer the questions generated by discussion, I think some at least should be student-generated questions.

If some of the students' questions don't then get answered by your text, then go webquest (even if "only" for homework!)

The rest of the series:

>> Part 2 Form focus and recycling: getting grammar
>> Part 3 Techniques for priming and recycling
>> Part 4 Techniques for form focus after reading

More evidence that Google is Evil ,- ) !

My husband... Now would that be "Google search" or "I'm feeling lucky"?

Ananova.com's bizarre news "Quirkies" section is one of my default start pages -- partly because some of stories amuse me greatly and partly because there's often a text there that you can use in class.

Among the headlines this morning, "Wife's £5m Google surprise":

A woman is suing her husband after she Googled his name - and found out he had won £5m on the lottery. >> Full story

What could you do with such a text...?

• Before reading, you could speculate from the headline what the story might be, something which you might do in pairs, with each pair then telling the whole class "their" story
• During reading, you could get people to determine which pair they think got closest to the actual story, which can get them to read more closely, and gives a natural reason for "talking about meaning"
  
• After reading, there are any number of discussion points that might come up -- do they believe the story, what can they guess about the people involved, have they ever "Googled" their own names (or those of their spouses!)
  

Persuade your learners to change their default start pages to a website where they are going to get themselves some reading (or listening) practice -- it's one of the most useful things you can do for them!

October 10, World Mental Health Day

This Wednesday (October 10th) is World Mental Health Day, the "Weekly Teaching Tip" from DevelopingTeachers.com tells me.

If you like your lesson plans gifted to you without too much thought on your part -- and directly into your own mailbox if you subscribe -- the Tip is a good place to look.

Personally, I like students as involved as possible from the start. This week's Tip quotes an article on stress from the BBC. The headings are:

• Symptoms of stress
• Dealing with stress
• Work-related stress
• Tackling work stress

I'd suggest starting there and, before the students read the article, get them to brainstorm what they think will come under the headings... Getting them to find which of the ideas they came up with and what other ideas the article suggests then gives you a natural reason for reading the article, and a natural reading comprehension question.

"Stress", some wit once said, "is when you wake up screaming and then you realise you haven't fallen asleep yet." If you're already stressed out yourself by your new term, now you know where to look...!

>> Bank of previous teaching tips
>> More free stuff in your mailbox

German kids set up own school

Here's one I spotted thanks to the fact that I'd set Ananova.com's Quirkies section as one of the default start pages that comes up every time I log on to the Internet:

In Germany, kids frustrated by "the way they were being taught" have set up their own school, believing that it will improve their chances of decent A level grades.

It was the headline -- "Pupils set up own school" -- that caught my eye. I wanted to read it, and I think the effect on my learners would be similar. Anything that makes kids want to read has got to be a good thing.

It also looks like a decent basis for a lesson, with a text giving me fairly obvious "before, during and after" reading activities, the "after" (and possibly also the "before") being whether or not my learners think the idea would work. They could plan (or even write about) the sort of school they'd set up...

Is your default start page one that is actually useful to you...? Do your learners have default start pages that help them learn some English...?

BBC Learning English

Another one that came to me via my RSS feeds [explanation]. I was going to start looking for a text on which to base a lesson, and there was one about the Edinburgh Festival, sitting there waiting for me, from the BBC's Learning English section.

The section has lots of things you can recommend to your learners (the Words in the News section, for example, for reading and listening practice) and stuff for you too, including lesson plans.

Bizarre stories from Ananova

In our session June 11, I mentioned an article I'd spotted out of the corner of my eye on one of my default start pages, Ananova.com, or more specifically Ananova's "Quirkies" bizarre news stories section.

The headline read:

Green blood shocker
Surgeons operating on a man were shocked to find he had green blood

Other recent stories have included:

Robber caught - by mum
A Czech armed robber who targeted McDonald's restaurants was grabbed by the ear and marched to the police station by his mum

Beatles blast for beer burglar
A judge sentenced a Beatles-loving thief by quoting 42 of the band's song titles in his verdict

What could you do with them?
With a story like the first you could obviously ask students to predict what they thought the explanation might be. They could then read the text to find out if they were right. I remember playing a game called Balderdash, in which you got a word, a correct definition of the word, and had to invent three more, with your opponents then having to guess which was the correct one; you could do something similar with stories like this one.

With the second, and others like it, there's always the question of whether or not such stories are true, or merely urban legends -- a discussion topic I've always found works well.

And the third might make an interesting piece of writing: how many song titles can your learners cram in, but still make a coherent story. They could obviously use someone other than the Beatles.

Not searching, having things come to you
In our session, I mentioned Ananova.com being one of my start pages as an example of how you can have things come to you, and not have to go searching the Internet for them.

An alternative to Ananova would be Yahoo's Oddly Enough news section, with similar stories.

Changing your default start page
Check this previous post if you aren't sure how to change the default start page of your browser.

Project #2 A class (library) blog

Level: Vary widely, Intermediate to well above

Circumstances: Students in secondary school, doing 6 hours English a week, with an extensive (though under-used) library of "graded readers"

Classroom time required: None; students do task as homework

Brief outline: Students are required to read a minimum 3 graded readers per term as homework. Once they have read a book, they will post their review on the class blog. Reviews to include title, author, brief plot outline, whether or not they liked it and why (not), links to 2-3 related websites, and an illustration.

Equipment required: None. All children have an Internet connection at home (with PCs also available to them at school).

To find out more about blogs and blogging:
This article on TeachingEnglish.org.uk gives a brief introduction, and you will find more posts on blogging here.

See also the "Quick Tour" at Blogger.com.

What can you do with a blog (5)?

Example 5 isn't a blog either -- again it's an idea for a blog, one that comes from my daughter, who is responsible for the illustration below:

In schools here in Spain, they get kids to write what they call "fichas" for the books they read -- name, author, plot summary, whether or not they would recommend it, etc (as you can see above).

In English language classes, graded readers (abridged, and with limited vocabulary) are used quite extensively, with some schools having class libraries of them.

My idea would be that each student in the class would read several graded readers, and post their "fichas" on a single class blog, which other students could then comment on.

Questions as before...