When you have no idea there’s a helping hand!
How many times have you experienced a total blank in your head when crossing school’s entrance on Monday morning? You quickly think of what you’re supposed to do with you students except from course book exercises. Or, imagine, that you have just found out that you are a supply teacher for another hour and you have no idea what to do. Well, there is a helping hand!
700 Classroom Activities. Instant Lessons for Busy Teachers by David Seymour and Maria Popova (Macmillan Books for Teachers Series, Macmillan) is an excellent choice if you are looking for a book that will become your best friend in need. On 152 pages you will find various ideas for lessons, 10-minutes warm-ups or just time killers.
The book is divided into four sections: conversation, functions, grammar and vocabulary. Within each section there are sub-sections. For example, when opening the book on conversation you will find: accommodation, animals, crime and punishment, culture, education etc. It is very clear and easy to use as the sub-sections are arranges alphabetically.
The authors have thought about all levels of language proficiency, and therefore, each lesson has an information about its difficulty and suggested language proficiency level. You may use it for E – elementary, P – pre-intermediate, I – intermediate and U+ – upper-intermediate students.
An interesting issue is a use of an exclamation mark placed within a triangle. Topics where such sign is visible are perceived by the authors as those that may offend or embarrass certain students or lead to misunderstandings. It is advised to consider whether the topic is relevant for particular group of students.
Last, but not the least, advantage of the book is the possibility of using the assignments as outside the classroom projects. In the area of global network and technology that is present in most modern language labs, bringing Internet based projects into classroom is highly desired.
If you know that sometimes you need a stimulus to make your lesson different from the others or you just need a little help, go and get the book.
Agnieszka Walczak
