Neda Mirova

Neda and me are soulmates when it comes to teaching and she has been a huge inspiration. We share ideas, opinions, materials, inspiration... More from Neda at http://crimundo.blogspot.com.es/. Also have a look at Neda Mirova´s padlet on the basics of our teaching: HOTS, Collaborative and Cooperative Learning, Autonomy and Diversity. 

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Poetry and Creative Writing

Do you feel like being a little creative?

Why not start by exploring these resources on the Padlet that can help you plan your poems or short stories...

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You can learn how to make word clouds and brainstorm words around an idea before you put pen on paper.

Have you ever wondered how to write a shape poem? You can read the tips and have a go when you are ready?

Or maybe you need some inspiration before you start? Why not browse the poems on the Poetry Foundation´s website? You can search by subject, occasion, type, poet...you can even look for poems that have video or audio here:

Poems with Audio
Poems with Video

Have you heard of mini-fiction? What about reading some on mini-fiction.com where you can download a whole collection of stories?

And if you want to create a visually stunning poem, grab a book you or any page of a text,your pen or colours and try your hand at making a black out poem - it´s a great way to recycle old books, too.

RESOURCES: SHORT FILMS

Short films can be exploited in so many ways in class. Not only can we work on listening comprehension, and simple vocabulary enriching exercises,  but we can also use them as springboards to create interest in a topic and as the basis for interesting conversations. 

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Depending on our objectives, we may choose to do one or a few of the following activities:

- watch with / without sound (predict content, write the voice over or script the conversation before comparing with the original, choose soundtrack...)

- listen first without the image (predict content, images that you are going to see...)

- 50 / 50 viewing - students in pairs(or small groups) watch different parts of the video and try to reconstruct the narrative together before watching the whole thing together

- watch the beginning and predict the rest

- watch the end and talk about what happened before (could be good for practice of past perfect, modals of deduction, conditionals)

Foster self- and peer-observation

In order to increase students´ awareness of different aspects of communicative competence (speaking, talking, listening, reading and writing), we have developed a series of tools that allow them to observe these aspects.

These tools furthermore allow us to multiply the "role of the teacher" and to have every student in the classroom ACTIVELY participating.

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On this padlet you find an overview of some of these tools
- Detective cards for oral presentations and for writing
- Rubrics to observe different aspects of collaborative communication, the use of English in the classroom
- SCOBA Observation grids for different text genres (travel experience, opinion essay, personal letter,...)
- Bull´s eye to evaluate group participation
- Observation sheets for co-teaching activities
- Metaplan-mapping to decide on evaluation criteria