App to Make Word-Clouds

High Intermediate
Paraphrasing
App - Cloudart

Many course books ask students to paraphrase what they have heard or read in the book. I find this task really challenging because such input often brings a high amount of words students simply do not know or cannot pronounce well. I downloaded an interesting app that works like my big time favorite word cloud maker wordle. In this activity, I had students underline keywords in a text about Jane Gooddal`s life that could help them paraphrase it. Then, we worked on meaning and pronunciation by having students use their own devices to access dictionaries. I projected the word cloud I made on Wordart while they were working on the vocabulary, and asked students to paraphrase the text, using the words they had chosen. I was impressed by how much awareness was raised, and I was happy to notice that students were taking risks while consciously trying to use new vocabulary items.

Finding Motivation in a Poem

Motivation is probably the most frequently used term for explaining success or failiure in any given task. It`s easy to assume that if students are motivated, they will learn more. Surely, there is much truth to this belief, and we should further our understanding of what motivation really is and learn how to use it in our favor. What does being motivated mean? How can we become motivated to reach our academic goals? If motivation is an inner drive, emotion, or desire that moves us in a direction, it must than be fostered if we are to succeed. To any language learner, creating, fostering and maintaining motivation is key to the learning process, but it is easier said than done. What can we do to get the drive to learn going, to feel pushed in the right direction and keep on until we become fluent speakers of the target language? Bring emotion into play and doing what really sparks sheer joy is my answer. What touches you, what moves you? That`s what you need to focus on.. Cooking, reading, music, poems, or stories conjure up emotions, memories and trigger our learning brains. Our souls are easily touched by the beauty of an inspiring poem, and we need inspiration to exceed our own expectations and move forwards . Please, watch the video below and find inspiration in a poem.

Teaching Simple Past - Short Biographies - John Lennon

• Pre-intermediate
• Teens; Adults
• Using pictures;Text reconstruction
• Biography
• Past simple
• video , worksheet. pictures

"Writing could be considered to be one of the most difficult skills to master. Few people, even in their native language, find writing a story, a biography or a descriptive narrative an easy task. However, even after just two semesters of instruction, we teachers ask our students to write. How can we make the writing practice more appealing?" I once attended a wonderful workshop at Laurels by Cathy Lonngren, and she provided the audience with some useful insights. I used some of her ideas to engage my students and guide them into writing a short biography.

1. Tell your students that you have a puzzle for them. Let them see the pictures and try to guess whose life it depicts.

2. Use the pictures as a prompt to encourage students to guess what the appropriate sentence is. Say the correct sentence and give the picture to the student who guessed the closest.

Illustrated by Cleide Nascimento

John Lennon was born in Liverpool, England in 1940.

He studied are and wanted to be an artist.

In 1962 he formed a band called The Beatles with Paul Mcartney, George Harrison and Ringo Star.

In 1968 John divorced his childhood sweetheart, Cynthia.

John married a Japanese girl named Yoko Ono.

The band broke up in 1970 shortly after recording one of the greatest albums, Let It Be.

In 1975 John's and Yoko's son, Sean. was born.

John spent five years helping take care of his boy.

On December8, 1980, a young man named Mark Chapman shot John outside his home in New York.

John died in a police car on the way to the hospital.

3. Class reconstructs the biography using the pictures as prompts.

4. After laying the pictures in the correct order, a gapped version of the text is given out. Students complete it with the correct verb tense or sequence markers.

5. Students then can write their own biography by following the model.