Teaching holidays

02/04/10 • 3 min

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Podcasts – ESL Teacher Talk – ESL Podcasts for Teachers

Even though it’s February, happy New Year!Â Valentine’s Day is on the way and Mark has a new site with some cool teacher tools.Â Print With My Pic.com allows you to add your photo to cards, calendars or certificates.Â Since Valentine’s is just around the corner, why not send your Valentine a card with your photo!

This week’s show is about teaching holidays.Â Every time a holiday rolls around it seems like we should be teaching or working with those holidays and seasons.Â This show we discuss ways to teach holidays with beginners to advanced students.

new vocabulary or vocabulary that doesn’t go well in other places
low level classes, crafts and activities for these classes
worksheet and listening ideas
using the holidays as a chance to teach a bit about different cultures
using the holiday to dress up your current content
working with readings or holiday backgrounds
advanced speaking tasks associated with holidays
using video segments from Hollywood for discussion
discussing the differences between how holidays are celebrated in different places around the world

For Valentine’s and other holiday materials, check out the teacher printables at MES-English.com.

If you have any other tips or advice for other teachers out there on teaching holidays, we’d love to hear from you. Please post your comments here or over on the ESL Teacher Talk forums!

Game of the Week: Last Card out
This is a simple vocabulary review game or for practice after drilling.Â You just need your flashcards and a group of students.Â We also explain how this game can be adapted for use with small children to adults.

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new vocabulary or vocabulary that doesn’t go well in other places
low level classes, crafts and activities for these classes
worksheet and listening ideas
using the holidays as a chance to teach a bit about different cultures
using the holiday to dress up your current content
working with readings or holiday backgrounds
advanced speaking tasks associated with holidays
using video segments from Hollywood for discussion
discussing the differences between how holidays are celebrated in different places around the world

For Valentine’s and other holiday materials, check out the teacher printables at MES-English.com.

If you have any other tips or advice for other teachers out there on teaching holidays, we’d love to hear from you. Please post your comments here or over on the ESL Teacher Talk forums!

Thanks for listening!

Previous Episode

Motivating students

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Christmas is upon us ... ho! ho! ho! Merry Christmas everybody!Â Tis the season, so Matt has a new Christmas Song for you to download and use in your classes: Merry Christmas!Â It’s a play-like song with speaking, actions and a matching picture book!Â There are a few more resources discussed that are available for download from MES.Â You can find all those here, MES Christmas, if you are interested.

This week’s show is about motivating your students.Â Matt goes over his three keys for motivation your students and Mark comments and adds two more areas to think about in your lessons.

self motivation
when to encourage and when to challenge
setting up the right classroom environment
choosing an appropriate theme and format
using testing to motivate

If you have any other tips or advice for other teachers out there about motivating students, we’d love to hear from you.Â Please post your comments here or over on the ESL Teacher Talk forums!

Game of the Week: the Knock Out Race

This is a new board game from Tools for Educators that you can completely customize with images, text only or a mixture of both.Â It’s different than most board games out there in that it’s a loop.Â So you can practice your content several times and even increase the difficulty or add new tasks with the same content.Â It has been a big success in my classes and I hope your students enjoy it!

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Next Episode

High grammar but low speaking competence

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This week we welcome Dave from http://www.learnenglish-online.com.Â Dave is working at a language school and international high school in Canada.Â Additionally he runs his own website for students to “learn English online.”Â We’ll talk a bit about his website and also in general about website building/promotion later in the show.
In part one of the podcast, we focus on some of Dave’s students’ problems and how he handles them.Â He has a good number of Japanese students and they have a strong knowledge of grammar but a very low speaking level.Â Mark and Dave offer a few ideas on how to improve speaking competence and fluency with these learners.

breaking down the walls and barriers
stopping the calculating and perfect sentence building
reading to increase speaking competence
using music and acting
understanding errors are not necessarily mistakes

In the second part of the podcast we discuss Dave’s website.Â It offers students listening exercises with videos and music, help with grammar, quizzes, and provides them with a lot of feedback.Â The website is growing and the response has been positive for Dave.Â Mark and Dave also discuss a bit about how Dave built up the site and any mistakes people might want to avoid in make their own site.Â There are also some tips for promoting your ESL website or blog and getting more traffic.

Right at the end, we had some technical problems and I lost Dave, but Dave was kind enough to email me the Game of the Week section of the show that got cut off.

If you have any questions or comments about teaching students with advanced grammar but low speaking competence or if you have any questions about building and promoting your ESL site, please comment below or over at the ESL Teacher Talk forums.

We’d like to thank Dave for coming on to the show and encourage everyone to visit his site Learn English – Online.

Game of the Week: Speedy Subject Verb Agreement

This game is used to practice subject verb agreement in conversation.Â It is also designed to improve fluency and speed when speaking.

Put the students in partners
* Write these categories on the board:

1. Do/Does
2. Is/Are/Am
3. Have/Has
4. Was/Were
5. Doesn’t/Don’t
6. Wasn’t/Weren’t

Student A randomly says pronouns to Student B.Â (I, You, He, She, It, We, They)
* Student B must say the correct verb that matches with the pronoun.

Example: Round 1

Student A:Â He
Student B:Â does
Student A:Â We
Student B:Â do
Student A:Â They
Student B:Â do

After 7-10 words, the partners switch.Â After switching, they go to round 2.
* Students are trying for perfection, and then to develop speed.
* Make sure they say the pronouns randomly to avoid developing a pattern in their speaking.

Another option is to put the students into two groups and the teacher says the pronouns.Â Working through each round with one pronoun for each student, the two teams can have a competition to see which is the fastest.

This game works very well for students who know simple subject verb agreement on tests and in writing, but sometimes make mistakes when speaking.Â It is also very good to promote speed for students who still speak at a slow pace.Â In general, it makes students think and speak quickly, which gets their brains really working hard.
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