Box of random fun

Today I had a pleasure to read several articles, like this one, for example, that suggests running a Box of Random Fun in your classroom, which is a splendid idea.


As for other ideas that I gleaned today:

1) One-word-inspired essay. As it occurs, at All Saints' College in Oxford used to have a one word entrance exam. All students would turn their exam papers at the same time and see some word. Only one. For example, innocence or tenderness or friendship. So they had then some limited amount of time to write an essay inspired only by that word.

2) Role-writing. When setting up a wiritng (or speaking activity) you can inspire and spur your students by assigning them some special role. That is, you give the same essay topic to everybody but they all have different perspectives to discuss this toipc from. It is better and more vivid to use some realia while doing this activity - that is to use hats or maybe some other attributes. There is a whole 6 thinking hats method developed by Edward de Bono, by the way. You can use it or assign your own roles: e.g., green hat is for writing from a point of view of a nature-lover, white hat is for writing from a highly moral person and so on.

Article on an effective reading technique from the book "Speed reading in practice" by Pavel Palagin.

Harvest reading technique

When substitution becomes an adventure. Part 2

So the second part of my substitution day today was devoted to Elementary group a list of which consisted of 7 people. However only two showed up at the lesson and I must say that the rest five would have defenitely regreted their decision if they had seen the Harry Potter game prepared for them. Other 4 teachers that work at that educational centre prepared a very nice quest for their groups, which my kids and I were offered to join. In no way I intend to take at least the smallest part of the glory of their project, I just want to note it down here so that it may inspire someone, help out with the topic or whateverelse. I must confess I would love to arrange something similar, with the same HP topic, for my kids at the last lesson. I will probably take the HP topic as a base as it's magical and fun although as it turned out some kids didn't even watch a single movie needless to say read a book.

For those who might find it useful and/or inspiring (and for myself aswell) I will shortly describe how the game went.

0) Do some lead-in, familirize students with the topic vocab they might need, arrange a small-talk on the topic, a lot of things might be used as a lead-in (I sometimes think that the way craftsmen collect and keep every little thing to use later as material, teachers do the same thing for lead-ins and ice-breakers/warmers with different kinds of music, videos, games, cards, whatever).

1) Divide all the students into four Houses. Be the hat. Ask questiones and depending on the answer divide students into for equal parts. You can do it with 2-3 students at a time to save time.

1.2) If your students are from different groups (like in the game I took part in today), play a get-to-know activity with each House, so that they can get acquainted and brake the ice a bit.

1.3) Give each house a paper to design their emblem and moto. About 10-15 minutes to draw and then 2-3 minutes to prepare presentation of their House infront of other groups.

2) First task. Real quest. All teams are given the first clues. They need to follow the lead and move around the whole room/building to find the next clue and so on. Here they can be given points/small prize/special items that will allow them to procede with further excercises.

They are in Hogwarts now, they need to attend lessons. So four groups go to different classes where different teachers and subjects are awaiting.

3) Potion challenge. About 10 differrent bottles with liquids of different colour are infront of students. They are given a riddle, a logical one. It has about 5-7 sentences and describes where which potion is. There 3 types of potions: killers, 1 potion that lets you move forward in the game, harmless liquids like juice or water. Students need to solve the riddle and find the potion that will let them continue their journey. If they guess it right they get 8 points. If they guess it right + tell which are killers and which are harmless, they get 10 points. If they drink a killer you can take points away from them.

4) Deal with Cerberus. You need to make the three-headed dog fall asleep by singing to it. Students are given fill-in-the-gaps song worksheet. They listen to the song 2 times filling the gaps. Check their answers with the teacher and then sing the right version all together. In this case it was a funny song about Harry Potter's story.

5) Vocabulary lesson. It was a stage filled with different wordsearches/quizzes/speaking activities/sharades/matching games. All of them were short activities so that children had a chance to play about 5 games in 20 minutes or so.

6) Wake up your senses/Potion lesson. Here students at first talked about senses and their importance. Then they were offered four cups, one at a time, filled with some mixtures of unknown ingridients. Just by smelling and/or tasting it they needed to guess the ingridients.

At each of these stages the teams could get maximum 10 points. So when they finished going through all of them they united all together in one hall again and teachers summed up their results. All the children got candys, The winning House got an additional prize. It all finished with a group photo.


Some of the children found this activity more interesting, some - less, of course. But it defenitely was a great last lesson where they had a chance to use different skills, apply knowledge, built a team spirit and have fun.

I am really glad that I could take part and watch this whole game being carried out.

When substituion becomes an adventure. Part 1

Today I was substituiting a teacher from a different educational centre: it was the last lesson in the semester for two of her ESL groups - elementary1 and eng2a, which is group for young learners of 5-6 grade.

I didn't have much time to prepare, so my game choice was rather classic, however kids loved it (probably for the reason of competition spirit and being allowed to move around the classroom).

So I would like to put here the list of activities we played in order to add them to a piggy bank of games.

1) Make as many words out of a longer word (ex. establishment) as possible in 3 minutes. P.S. it's better to divide the time into halfs, so that they don't loose the sense of time and when the timer indicates a minute and half they know that they need to speed up and focus

2) Dragon's tail. Write a word starting with last letter of the previous one. P.S. 1st variant - divide students into 2-3 teams and make them compete over who writes more words in 2 minutes or who writes a 15-words line faster. 2nd variant - make a circle and throw a ball to each other. The person who cannot provide the next word in 5 seconcds is out. Play till there's one or two winners.

3) Alphabet chain. Make a circle, students throw the ball to each other saying words on each letter of the alphabet in the correct order. P.S. Be sure to note that other students are not allowed to help the person with the ball. Make them compete. You can either give points for each word (if the group and smalland then on 1-2-3-4-5 the move just transports to another player) or you can apply the "out of the circle if you can't provide a word" strategy.

4) Alphabet competition. Students make a circle and throw a ball saying the alphabet as fast as possible. One person - one letter. Make 2 or 3 rounds shortening the goal time every turn.

5) What am I? Invite one student to sit with his back to the board. Draw something on the board. The student has 15 yes-no questions to ask the group and guess the word. P.S. 1st variant - score the points. If the students guesses the answer in 6 questions, you give him 9 points. 2nd variant - print a funny picture in advance, the student needs to guess not just one object, but the whole picture (ex. 2 talking oranges).

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ACR meeting

Yesterday 5 of my pre-int and ele students and I visited a lecture on Russian and American stereotypes at the American Centre on Nikoloyamskaya street. Unfortunately I didn't take any photos, but the meeting turned out to be really cool for us.

The lecture was held for about 2,5 hours with some heated discussions between some people who believe that only their opinion is right :D

The audience was approximately 50/50 Russians and Americans - students mostly from Texas who study Russian and came to Moscow for this summer to study and practise. Really cool guys with who we had a chance to talk after the meeting. I had to ask to of them to come to my students and say Hello=) I knew my students would be to shy to try to say something and I'm really greatful that some guys and girls came up to have a chat aftewards.

I feel so sorry for these poor Americans who study Russian because it's such a hard language and anyone studying it is going to get confused from time to time with all the word-endings, singulars, plurals and so on. But they are doing great, I must say!

I hope we'll have more chances to take pics as I hope we'll stay in touch.

And now I've got to go back and prepare for 8 lessons as next week is going to be tough - lessons from Monday to Thursday every day on different unit each with both ele and pre-int groups. But making plans is exactly one of the things that I love about teaching!

Have a good evening everyone, let the world make you smile :)

It's been in my mind for quite a while - to start my blog, my t e a c h e r blog. Wow, that word - teaching - being a huge and amazing part of my life is rather surprising to me as well as to many of my friends. I never dreamed of becoming a teacher, never talked about it when I was a pupil myself (remember, how 1/3 of the class wanted to be teachers, another 1/3 actors, and another 1/3 - singers. Well it was like that in my school).

But now I loooove it! I feel that teaching is something I can't live my life without. I love the subject I teach, love children I teach, love the very essence of teaching.
I've been teaching for a year and a half now and still have so so so much to learn, and I look towards it (learning new things about teaching) with great excitement in my eyes.

I hope that this blog will do 4 things for me:
1) help me to develop professionaly (as I will analyse and share my experience)
2) help me to interest my students
3) connect with my collegues all other the world
4) store my plans, printouts, ideas and so on.

Oh, and yes,
My name is Alice, I'm from Russia, recent economic faculty alumna (so happy I  understood that economics is not for me) and a teacher who adores the company she works for. UNIUM - Federal net of educational centres in Russia, where children are loved, employees are highly appreciated and continuous development is in great value. I'm so greatful that I work there.

Let the fun of blogging begin =)