Links for creative avatar apps.

• Tellagami 
• Tom and Ben News
• Talking Tom Cat 2
• Sock Puppets
"Sock Puppets lets you create your own lip-synched videos and share them on Facebook and YouTube. Add Puppets, props, scenery, and backgrounds and start creating. Hit the record button and the puppets automatically lip-synch to your voice."

Sing 'Frozen' from Let It Go in 25 different languages. If you can!

This multi-language version of the song that parents all around the world just wish they could hear one more time brings a tear to my eye - what a truly international collaboration. 

Very impressive.

Quirky Videos

Use the stop-play technique to elicit language from students with these imaginative short films. 

1. The Black Hole - dir. Phil and Olly
2. Signs  - dir. Patrick Hughes *
3. The Note - dir. Jon Greenhalgh

A few possible questions to ask students:

• What is the man is going to do next?
• Is he going to take something?
• What?Are the man and woman going to talk to each other?
• Do you think they will go on a date?
• What will the note say next?

 * In Signs there is one brief moment at 6.19-13sec you'd be wise to skip over if you teach young teens!

Recommended sites for creating web comics.

• makebeliefscomix.com
• marvelkids.com
• Pixton 
• ToonDoo

Free Professional Development in ELT - Coursera x The University of Oregon

I've spent the last five weeks doing an online course through Coursera called Shaping the Way We Teach English, 1: The Landscape of English Language Teaching. It's run by the University of Oregon and the best thing about it is, it's all online, it's collaborative (you get to meet and discuss topics on ELT with teachers from around the world) and it is free of any charges. All you need is a computer connected to the Internet.

Basically with course each week involved:

• a reading from an academic journal
• watching a classroom video
• a quiz based on the reading & video 
• compulsory posts in discussion forums
• a two-phase lesson planning project

I have gotten a lot out of the course and in just five short weeks it has already impacted the way I teach. I've started trying out a bunch of new things on my students, like projects (not easy to do in just 45 minutes once a week), silent time, replacement role-plays, and lots more.

The peer evaluations are particularly valuable, the aspects I enjoyed reading in other teacher's lesson plans ended up in my classroom the very next week. Some teachers actually found doing peer evaluations addictive.

I have enjoyed the course so much that I am doing the next five-week course which starts in 9 hours! No rest for me until March 16th.

Fairy Tales in ELT

Guessing Game Cards

My students love this activity. I'm posting it firstly as it's part of an assignment, secondly because I really appreciate other teachers sharing resources they've made and of course I am keen to contribute to the ELT community.

I usually do the activity something like this.

1. Ss. put all the cards face down on a desk. 
2. The first student takes a turn to read a card out to the group.
3. If a member of the group knows the fairy tale as it is being read, they put their hand down flat on the table.
4. When the reader has finished the story, they ask one of the students with their hand down flat, 'What story is it... (Maki)?' 
5. (Maki) says, 'I think it's (Cinderella). 
6. She is told, 'That's right.' Or, 'Not quite. Anyone else?'

It would be a great introduction to a fairy tale writing activity. 

The best part of the game is that reticent students get caught up in the fun of it and listen keenly to the speaker, so I look forward to watching my students play this game every year.

These are some ideas on main activities to do after this warm-up. Thanks to my classmates at Coursera.org for many of these ideas!

Have students:

• modernise the fairy tale - students pick a modern moral to tell, e.g. the dangers of texting and walking, drugs, stranger danger, etc.

• erase the last few lines of the story and write a new ending.

• switch the gender roles - for example, The Sleeping Cutie and the princess who wakes him up from his 100 years of slumber. Cinderon, the boy who is treated badly by his evil stepfather and dreams of going to the ball to dance with the princess.

• put out some props that you wouldn't expect in a fairy tale and have each group choose two that they have to incorporate into their version of the story, like a toy helicopter, a cellphone or some soap.

• tell the fairy tale from the perspective of one of the supporting characters. For example, retell Cinderella from the Prince's point of view. Or the Fairy Godmother's, Cinderella's father, one of the mice, etc.

• comparing the fairy tales from different cultures - e.g. what are the similarities between Japanese and Serbian traditions?