Welcome to the Creative Teaching in the Secondary Classroom blog!  It was specially created for the 2 weeks of the course at the Lake School of English. 

Below you can see the class enjoying a beer or two together at the local...... Cheers, everyone for being such a fab group :-)) 

Mustafa sent me some fab images, including the one below of the same pub evening. I have added a border to it.

 

Another lovely photo sent in by Anush, showing the group enjoying yummy chocolate muffins and coffee on our last day at SAID. 

This is what the class brainstormed as the KEY skills necessary to be a SURVIVOR TEACHER.  

Best of luck to everybody!

Music & Songs in the Classroom

'If music be the food of love, play on'.  This quote demonstrates the power of music in our lives.  It would be a dull world without the joy that music brings.  It is a great unifier, it has no boundaries, it is timeless, it is evocative and inspiring!

Useful Links
Eva Simkesayan from A Journey in TEFL blog has just written a post called : Using Songs and Music in Class.

In addition, Eva has an excellent page on Songs in EFL Classroom. 

Arjana Blazic has a lovely page full of Learn English with Love Songs

ELTChat has fab resources here: Teaching English through Songs in the Digital Age

Great resources on:

 http://www.tuneintoenglish.com/ 

http://www.karaokeparty.com/

Learn Phrasal Verbs and have fun with Fluency MC (Jason R Levine)

Language in Motion: Teaching with the Flow

The English language is in a state of constant flux.  Nothing stays still for a moment  We need to keep up with the rapid flow. Below you can read through a presentation I did for Connecting Online e-conference a few years ago. It is called 'Language in Motion: Teaching with the Flow'.

There is a list of sites to help you keep up with your English at the end of the presentation.

Please click on the Youblisher booklet below to view the presentation in a bigger format.

6 MyCloud words

Well Done!

A message from Janet!

 

Below is an image of a Dvolver movie that PILAR created!  Click on this HARD WINTER link and it will take you straight to her Dvolver movie!

MIDORI created this fab Dvolver movie called Burn the Midnight Oil.

You can view the complete movie at this link:

http://www.dvolver.com/live/movies-886803

STEFAN created this fab newspaper snippet!

STEFAN also found and shared this fun image below:

MAGDA created this lovely Tagxedo word cloud review of Idiomatic Intensifiers we learned last week. Can you connect which words go with each other?

MUSTAFA had another go at creating a GoAnimate movie and this one is great fun!  Click on the 'idioms' link above the image below to access the animation.

idioms by mustafablc on GoAnimate

Blended Learning Session

 Image created with Image Chef: http://www.imagechef.com/

 What is 'Blended Learning' exactly? This post here may give you some ideas.

Image source found here: http://freshmancomp.com/2012/07/27/the-best-of-both-worlds-hybrid-courses-at-gcc/

Blended learning is........................................................................................

How much technology do you use in class?
What technology do you use in your lessons?
How much technology integration do you plan for the new school term?

'I don't want no Edtech!'

View this video. Do you sympathize with this teacher who has been forced by her school to teach with 'edtech'?



Sue Lyons Jones (the singer in the video) outlines a very useful list in her blog of ready made online lesson plans.  You will know 3 of them already :-)

http://www.suelyonjones.com/index.php/lesson-plans/

Modern Students

View the video below called 'A Vision of K-12 Students Today'.  Whilst viewing, make notes and be prepared to give your opinion of what you have seen. Think of the following points:

Do you think your students expect you to be technologically prepared for their future?

Are the young pupils in the video expecting too much from their teachers?



You may find this presentation interesting. It's called 'A Teacher's Guide to Web 2.0 at School.'

A nice Wordsearch Maker you can use for your classes: The Ultimate Wordsearch Maker

Make Your Own Word Search

List of links on scribd

Blended Learning 2013

 
diigo
I store all my bookmarks on a social bookmarking site called Diigo.  You can find my list on Blended Learning sites & tools here.

You can find the Lake School's bookmarked resources here: https://www.diigo.com/list/creativeteaching
You can find the Lake School's Blended Learning resources here.

Some Useful Sites & Links to explore..........
British Council Innovations in Learning Technologies for English Language Teaching
Russell Stannard's Lecture at Oxford University:
The Round: http://the-round.com/
Macmillan Dictionary: http://www.macmillandictionary.com/
The Guardian Classroom Materials: http://www.theguardian.com/education/series/classroom-materials
The Toolshed Wiki: http://thetoolshed.wikispaces.com/ 
Learning Technology Scoop.it: http://www.scoop.it/t/learning-technology
Janet's Comics & Cartoons Scoop.it: http://www.scoop.it/t/comics-and-cartoons

Apps & Tools from A - Z

Spice Up Your Teaching with Apps & Tools from A - Z from Janet Bianchini

All the resources linked to this presentation are on my JanetAbruzzo wiki page

http://janetabruzzo.wikispaces.com/VRT+2013+Resources

Fluffy's Blog

You can read all about Fluffy's web 2.0 adventures in his very own blog below:

http://fluffythekitten.co.uk/
 

Picture Activities

What do images inspire? Use a mind map tool such as bubbl.us to do a brainstorm..

 

  
By  Janet Bianchini

Trip Advisor Slideshow
This is a slideshow of Oxford Highlights that I created a while back for my students. I used TripAdvisor Tripwow! You can create your own very quickly and easily by clicking on the link given in the slideshow at the end. This tool is very useful for getting your students to create projects using their own digital images. You will need to register for this site, but it is a great tool for fun slideshows.

Oxford Highlights Slideshow: Janet’s trip to Oxford was created with TripAdvisor TripWow!

Bookr  

You can also create a nice e-booklet using Bookr.  The web address is: http://www.pimpampum.net/bookr/index.php

There is an excellent video tutorial on how to create a Bookr on Nik Peachey's Learning Technology blog.

Mustafa's Dvolver Movie

A wonderful Dvolver creation  here by Mustafa!  Thank you :-)

The link:

http://www.dvolver.com/live/movies-886285