creating engaging classrooms

 Ok, here's a blog post strictly for Foreign Language teachers: possibly my favourite use of board games in the classroom - using Cluedo* to teach the passive! * Clue for US readers. It may be mildly morbid, but having students play this game (ideally in 3s or 4s) is a great way to have them practise the target language: "I think Dr Black was killed with the gun in the kitchen by Professor Plum." "I suspect Dr Black was murdered with the knife in the dining room by Ms Scarlet." Up the ante by making them mix in modals of hypothesis: "I believe Dr Black may have been killed with the rope in the living room by Reverend Green." Plus, if you want to be really gruesome, you can always introduce the weapon-specific verbs: stab, shoot, strangle, bludgeon, etc.  I like to start off the lesson in role as a police officer, miming locking the door, announcing that there has been a murder and that nobody is leaving until the culprit has been found. A game of ta...

So you're probably familiar with the word game (not the hideous 1990's alcopop) where one player describes a word and others have to guess it. This is a fantastic game for the classroom, in any subject : it brings loads of energy to the class; practices students' communication and recall skills; embeds key terminology; and, most importantly, gets the students engaged in each other's learning. There's loads of ways to do this, but here's how I play it with large (20+) classes: - divide up the students into teams of 3 or 4; - one player from each team comes to the front; - I show them all the same word (this is important); - in silence, they return to their groups; - I count down "3,2,1,Go!" and they have to explain the word to their groups; - the first person to shout out the correct answer, wins a point for their group. It's worth you, as the teacher, standing in the middle of the room for this, as close as possible to all groups, to avoid accusa...

 Have you ever been on a training session or team building activity where the organisers have kicked things off with an ice-breaking activity called Find someone who...  ? You know, the one where you have to talk to the other participants to find out who has a tattoo, who has back-packed around Australia, who can play guitar. (Tutors, this is great beginning of the year activity, especially if you have vertical tutor groups.) Anyway, this is basically a version of that. I call it a mingle ; it could be called an information exchange. Maybe you know it by another name. Let's say you are planning a lesson and have to give the students a huge amount of information. You could give them a hand out, which they will promptly not read or simple lose; you could dictate it and have them take notes (don't get me wrong - there's a place for this) or you could try a mingle.  Give each student a list of questions and a piece of information. That piece of information answers ONE of the ...