Listening English Songs in E.L.T Classes

Under this title, I can write lots of things for pages:) you wonder why? the reason is simple. The more your students listen songs in target language the more they get used to pronounce correctly,learn  new vocabularies. While trying to sing it, they feel confident and happy. They even wouldn't know that they are learning someting. That is really enjoyable and useful isn't it? Here is a song list for you to play in class.I spent a little time to share these. The appropriate song list for secondary classes in teaching English as a second language.

Number : 1

There are many vocabularies which kids have already known also new ones. I use it teaching Comperatives and Superlatives :)

2.   

Bruno Mars/ Count on me

It's about friendship and there are many examples for conditionals:)

3. English Man in Newyork/Sting : It's really easy for students to sing alone:)

4.Yesterday / Beatles: Simple past 

5.What do you mean?/ Justin Bieber: they love it!

6.Believe / Shawn Mendes

7.One way or another / One direction 

8. Happy/ Pharell Williams

9. We will rock you/ Queen

10.Payphone/ Maroon 5

The Brainstorming activities before new subjects

Brainstorming is one of the best techniques used to gather the different,creative ideas in a group. In classes, we use it as a  pre-lesson activity proving to show what the students know about some specific topic before learning more details. In my opinioin, using brainstorming before teaching breaks the ice between students and the lesson. Students at all levels can eagerly participate in these activities and feel confident. It's free to say what comes in to their minds. Enjoyable and relaxing.

e-Twinning

e-Twinning is an online community for European and eu border countries to collaborate, learn to learn, cooperate and share best practices. You can visit www.etwinning.net for more.
Personally, e-twinning is part of my lectures because of some important reasons. Let's take a look!

e-twinning  provides students;
Learning and practising English
Improving computer competences
Keeping learning alive
Creating motivation between students and lessons
Creating innovative and entertaining classroom enviromet
Making new friends from different countries
For teachers;
It helps teachers trying to find new techniques
It movitaves teachers towards his/ her job
It provides teachers to exchange ideas and collaborate with the collegues living in EU
  I seriously suggest you teachers to attend e-twinning and do projects with other schools,teachers and students in Europe. It is free and practical in all types of schools and lessons.

Before Ending The First Term

What a messy and tiring day it was! Fortunately, There is only one week to finish the first semester of the year in Turkey:)  Checking homework lists , entering students' lesson notes in to system, appreciation of past months are some of the most tiring duties.
   As all you admit that teachers should  give motivational reinforcements  towards lessons. Since English lesson or other foreign language needs more motivation to keep up with. Every month in this semester, I gave a success certificate to the best performer ones in English lessons. You can easily design and print or find out from websites. I downloaded mine  from this www.teachervision.com

I collected all the certificates and made a poster with my students. Cut some starts and wriite the names of the students who got the star performer certification. Here is my star students:) Do not forget this quote as a teacher ;"BE THE BEST VERSION OF YOU" 

Writing Activities for Secondary Class

Here is my best and practical writing activity list that can be used in even crowded classes;

1. Writing Bag: Write different subjects on colorful cards with a simple instructions how many sentences, grammar structure, conjuctions, phrases are supposed to  be used  in writing the text , then put them in a carton bag. Let your students choose one and write about it during a limited period. For feedback, read their passages and correct mistakes with a red pencil.

2.  Expand the sentence until it blows: In this activity, The students think that writing is not such hard thing. They have difficulty in writing longer sentences due to thinking in their mother tounge before writing in English.
     Write a sentence on board and want them to expand/make it longer as possible. and follow the path until they have learnt how to write longer sentences. look at the example please:

I went shopping with my mother. → This is a simple sentence written by the teacher. And the teacher wants the students expand this sentence without changing it  by adding time,place,some adjectives,adverbs,conjuctions etc. Every one says a word,prep etc. And look at the expaned version of it.

I  went shopping mall at 5th street with my lovely mother to buy gloves and scarfs yesterday evenning at 5.00 pm. but we came back quickly because my father got sick unexpectedly. 

Say your students, Expand it until it blows, I mean you can exaggerate totally as long as you write longer sentences:)

That poster is a good example of writing longer sentences.

3. Dictation : This is the most effective way against misspelling  punctuation mistakes. If you dictate  ( they write what you are reading without seeing the text written on board or book) a paragraph everyday, they will learn how to write with correct forms of words and correct mistakes quickly after you show them the original.

Television Unit

 In my opinion television unit is one of the best unit in 7th grades curriculum in Turkey. Turkish people love watching tv even if it's not a good thing  for students watching it  long hours. Students are fond of talking about tv programmes. Teaching them how to watch tv in right way is also an advantage. The lesson starts with these simple questions;

Do you like watching tv?
What is your favorite tv programme?
How many hours do you watch tv in a day?

After the warm ups, motivate your students talk about some movies and programmes. Teach them how to talk about its type , a movie's plot, main characters in it etc. Here is the favorites of my students. To start the speaking, You should be the first who gives the example. And your students will follow you and feel more confident during his/her speech. Do not let them write down what he/she is going to say. It makes them hesitate and they always look at the notes and cannot focus on his/her sentences.

Do a brain storming about the advantage and dis advantages of  watching tv. Prepare a poster showing the results.

Teach them how to recommed a movie that they really love. If you want , you can prepare a huge poster with the recommended movies by all students.

Lastly, the craziest moments we shared in class were performances of some programmes behind a tv frame made of wooden or carton. Some students performed as a weather forecast presenter. Some were the quiz show tv programmers or reporters in news:) We laughed,they learnt. Mission completed. Let's go home:)

Floor Games

  Say the answer, step forward and jump, jump, jump!

Break times are the free spaces among 40 minute, tiring and sometimes boring lesson periods. If you have enough space you can draw and paint an educative also entertaining English floor game. There is no rule and exact number of player. A student can play it by his/herself. He/she can test  his/her basic information about English lesson. 
Teachers! Do it with your elder students at your school. On the other hand, that would be a project work for them. This games was designed by secondary grades and mrs.Sahin for beginners 6-9.  First decide on what you want to write in boxes,second take the brushes and do it altogether.