Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone! Here is a video about St. Patrick's Day history Enjoy!

St. Patrick's Day Activities

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St. Patrick's Day is arriving! Although it began in Ireland, Saint Patrick’s Day is celebrated in countries around the world. People with Irish heritage remind themselves of the beautiful green countryside of Ireland by wearing green and taking part in the festivities. Saint Patrick’s Day is usually celebrated with a parade. The one in Dublin, Ireland, is known to some as the Irish Mardi Gras. But the one in New York City is actually one of the biggest. It lasts for hours. Two Irish wolfhounds, the mascots of the New York National Guard infantry regiment the “Fighting 69th”, always lead the parade. More than one hundred bands and a hundred thousand marchers follow the wolfhounds in the parade. To promote sudents' awareness of this cultural aspect in the classroom, here are some ideas. Happy St. Patty's Day!

St Patrick's Day activities.docx
St patrick's Day isa.pptx

More Activities to Celebrate Women's Month

Four different activities to celebrate women's month. Click on the link below to download the activities.
women's month activities.docx

Women's Month Activity

In 1911 in Europe, March 8 was first celebrated as International Women's Day. Later, in the United States, March became the women's month. Contributions of women to events in history and contemporary society are highlighted throughout March.
So as to find out about some women's contributions, not only in British and American history, but also in Portuguese histoty, I gave students this webquest (WOMEN IN HISTORY), which I share with you.

women in histoty webquest.doc

To get more ideas and information on this topic, check out this site:
http://www.history.com/topics/womens-history-month

Teaching Listening - Resources

As promised in my last post, here is a list of some sites where you can find useful listening resources for your classes. I hope it'll be useful.

Listening Sites

TEACHING LISTENING COMPREHENSION

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Teaching listening skills is one of the most difficult tasks for me as a teacher. I think it is because good listening skills take a long time to be acquired and with lots of practice. It's also difficult for students, because there are no rules as in grammar teaching.
One of the inhibitors for students is often mental block due to lack of practice. While listening, students say they don't understand what is being said, because they want to understand every word and then translate it, which takes a lot of time. As a result they easily give up and listening turns into something frustrating for them, as well as for us.
The key to helping students improve their listening skills is to show them that they don't have to understand everything. I try to teach my students that they need to listen to English as often as possible outside the classaroom. This is not difficult as they usually listen to anglo-american music music, and watch movies quite often.

Listening skills are really important to develop. Of the 'four skills,' listening is by far the most frequently used. Although listening and speaking are often taught together, beginner/elementary students should be given more listening than speaking practice.

There are many types of listening activities. For example:
- Students can be asked to "Close the door" with a physical response;
- Students select an appropriate picture or object;
- Students choose the correct letter or word on a worksheet;
- Students draw a route on a map;
- Students fill in a chart;
- Students continue a story, solve a problem;

These are some activities, but there are much more, of course.
We all (teachers) know how difficult it is to get good listening materials for our students, so next time I'll post a list of listening resources here.

EYE ON IDIOMS 2

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Some weeks ago I promised I would write about one of my favourite topics again: idioms. They are not as often brought up in ESL lessons as they should (teaching speaking also involves teaching some idioms). They are not easy to teach, I know. Sometimes I use short texts to introduce them (usually related with a topic). Here is an example (the topic is the present economic crisis!):

On the Dole
Unfortunately the economic crisis means more people are out of work, because firms and factories are firing more people every day. So, presently a lot of people are on the dole. The present number of job seekers is increasing by the minute...

Well, you could go on introducing more idioms on the topic. I then ask the students to guess the meaning of the expressions in bold. Sometimes I ask them to write a short text or some sentences using the idioms they learned. The most creative ones come up with funny stories. Or you culd ask them to "draw" the idioms as in the animation above.
I found this interesting pps (www.worldofteaching.com). It´s another way of teaching them. You could ask the students to create one like this.

Idiom Dictionary