Start the new school year with some hands-on motivation and upcycling! Old books or newsparer pages can be turned into wall art for students rooms by just applying some water colour or adding inspirational quotes. Get a few ideas below.
www.favecrafts.com Bird-and-Text-Collage-Wall-Art
www.instructables.com How-to-make-upcycled-art-with-old-books
This quote by Pablo Picaso is a perfect match to the Day!
Celebrate the annual tradition of April Fools’ Day in a completely different way. Instead of playing practical jokes on each other, explore how “lies” and deception can create art, op art! Op art is short for ‘optical art’. The word optical is used to describe things that relate to how we see. Op art works like an optical Illusion. Artists use shapes, colours and patterns in special ways to create images that look as if they are moving, curving or blurring. When looking at Op art, our brain is deceived into believing a complete lie! The Op art movement was inspired by advances in computing, aerospace, and television in the 60’s.
Find a selection of Op art worksheets below to get creative and talk about shapes, lines and the feelings you receive. A list of descriptive words to critique art may come handy!
Op Art Worksheets at bonlacfoods.com
Op Art Worksheets and Optical Illusions at mindgearlabs.com
Op Art in Steps at tanaallen.weebly.com
Op Art inspired by Vasarely at woojr.com
photo: pixabay.com
Browsing around for new school year first day ideas, I came upon some activities that would be interesting to try out. I also found some classroom posters that are really cool. So here they are:
1] TeamExercises is a youtube channel full of team games that can be used throughout the school year. You can absolutely find a game to start the day!
2] A first day lesson proposal that uses poetry and can match all levels.
3] Just a reminder for Categories, the classic vocabulary game that most students love playing and can be adapted to match a first day by asking for classroom objects or school subjects or school routine verbs!
4] Free download colourful icebreakers along with suggestions on how to use them.
5] 10 Motivational Posters for Your Classroom to brighten up the space and also generate discussion about classroom rules and moods!
6] Finally, an article on how to be kind to ESL learners!
If crafting sounds as a more appealing first day activity, here’s an older entry with some ideas: last-minute-new-school-year-crafts
image from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk7N-Rsv408
This is an idea for an Easter-themed lesson that combines language and computer skills, but mostly fun. The tasks that the students are asked to complete are both practical and intellectual in the form of a competition.
Easter tables are begging for colourful and cute decoration so follow the video and learn how to fold a napkin into a bunny. Can you give instructions for it? Check yourself further below.
![[Picture+27.png]](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_L-deInbQA9c/SeDNgqLjkwI/AAAAAAAAAzw/9hVA5v5j340/s1600/Picture+27.png)
image from http://www.designdazzle.com/2009/04/bunny-napkins-and-a-beautiful-table-setting/
No need to search around for kids classroom games this Christmas. Amazing Anna from themeasuredmom has gothered more than 40 printable ideas here.
If crafting sounds more appealing to your pupils, then the following tutorial on how to make salt dough ornaments will prove an easy and fun to do activity. Enjoy!
Would you like to use your poetic skills and compose some love quotes? Follow the presentation below to revise some basic figures of speech and then get inspired to use them right away! Combine this activity with some hands-on valentine crafts to make your inspiration and romantic mood real!
There is an earlier article on figurative language for further practice if you feel you need to clear up details.
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FOLLOW-UP ACTIVITIES (some suggestions without implying any endorsement)
Draw a live card online or use a ready template, save drawing process as time-lapse animation and get a permanent link to it to share card or embed to blog or email it to a friend.
Happy Valentine’s Day! Love our English!
Fully into summer holidays and ancient Greek drama festivals are being held around the country. Watching at least one ancient Greek drama performance has always been in my summer holidays agenda as a natural part of it, since my hometown is close to an ancient Greek theatre with a long festival history.
Walking on the sleekly eroded stones, along with the flow of spectators, I cannot help but think of a similar procession some two and a half thousand years ago, only not for an evening’s entertainment but for an all day experience. Ancient Greeks came to watch three entire tragedies, followed by a comedy play as this was the scheme for the drama contest taking place.
There is no contest in our days, but it is definetely considered great honor for directors and actors as well to have the chance to present their work in one of these theaters. As for the audience, I am sure they share a similar attitude towards the didactic nature of ancient drama with their ancestors. The theatre in ancient Greece was regarded as a place of instruction, an educational institution.
These thoughts triggered my desire to scan the web in connection to esl/efl and here we go:
ANCIENT GREEK THEATRE AND DRAMA
bbc.co.uk photos, facts, activities, games for children
greece.mrdonn.org information, clip art for children
youtube.com tragedy and comedy
theatrefolk.com who,what, where, when of ancient greek theatre and drama
artsedge.kennedy-center.org historical development of theater in Ancient Greece for high school students along with a “Stage your own Tragedy” online application
Δείτε το στο slideshare.net
odysseus.culture.gr theatres and odeums in Greece
whitman.edu a virtual reality tour of ancient theatre in Greece
youtube.com the ancient Greek theatre – the theatre of Epidaurus
greekfestival.gr Epidaurus festival 2014
MAKE ANCIENT GREEK DRAMA MASKS AND COSTUMES
activityvillage.co.uk mask craft
education.scholastic.co.uk mask craft
hunkinsexperiments.com dress up in a Greek chiton
LESSON PLANS ON ANCIENT GREEK DRAMA
childdrama.com a Greek play project
brighthubeducation.com Greek Theatre history in a fun way
incredibleart.org art lesson plan: Greek Theatre Masks
ket.org characteristics of Greek Theatre 
Role-playing is essential for children. Drama is a wonderful way to introduce language learning , letting kids improvise, assume roles and use the language in an entertaining way. Explore some of the thoughts and research bibliography about the use of drama in the EFL/ESL classroom in Chris Boudreault’s article at iteslj.org and also check Using Different Forms of Drama in the EFL Classroom at hltmag.co.uk
For a quick brainstorm about the different aspects concerning drama in the classroom go through this presentation:
Δείτε το στο slideshare.net
PLAYSCRIPTS, IDEAS AND INFORMATION ON DRAMA AND LANGUAGE LEARNING
freeeslmaterials.com an extensive list of links
shellyterrell.com ideas, improvisation games, resources
esldrama.weebly.com play resources
freedrama.net free playscripts
childdrama.com lesson plans
kidsinco.com playscripts
one-act-plays.com browse this site for one-act playscripts
“All come true, all burst to light!” Oedipus
So, what can come true on your classroom stage?
Are you hot for summer? Here’s a collection of Summer themed classroom activities to get inspired and maybe use in these last days of school.
There are so many creative people out there and I’m thankful that I am able to reach their work and ideas, especially when these are kindly offered and can really inspire me and my work! Such is the case with patternsforcolouring (the first two pictures) and doodle-art-alley (the third picture belongs to this site), where amazing colouring pages can be spotted. All you need to do is choose a pattern you like, download it, print it out and start colouring. The colouring pages in patternsforcolouring are offered under a Creative Commons licence (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 UK).
I particularly like these sites, because there are artistic colouring pages, like the ones above, that can generate writing activities. I am thinking of using the “kitties” one as a prompt for a cartoon-like dialogue among the kitties, after the pupils colour, cut and stick their figures on a seperate sheet of paper. I will ask my pupils to write summer themed dialogues and this is going to be a cute activity for the last days of this school year.
I can do something similar with the “Happy” one. The children can assort their colouring with sentence completion:
In summer I am happy because…
Summer makes me happy because…
In summer there are a lot of happy moments. I like…I usually…
As for the underwater scene, it is a game itself since it belongs in the Blopper category, where the colouring pages hide irrelevant figures. When the students have spotted them, they can simply label them or even create a story according to their level.
Great! I have new activities for this year’s last class! What are you planning to do?
It has been a while, since the 1st Graders learnt, painted and played with the farm animals. The templates for the animals were provided in the curriculum pack and we followed most of the activities suggested.
The painted animals with the peg legs came out really cute and they needed their own stage to help the pupils role play some farm dialogues. Two pieces of polysterene foam, some crepe paper, two empty boxes of cereal and some internet search provided me with the materials to set up a farm scene.
The pupils participated in twos to act out simple dialogues like:
– “Hello! I’m a cow. I’m black and white.”
– “Hello, cow.I’m a horse. I’m brown. “
– “How are you, horse?”
– “Fine, thank you.”
The barn template came from homemadebyjill.blogspot.gr and I found it here. It is for personal use only.
The farmer template can be found here.
More inspiration for farm craft ideas here.
I have recently stumbled upon this cute and easy to put up template at madebyjoel.com . I instantly thought how beautifully pupils could use it to create a small city and practise buildings vocabulary, prepositions of place and directions. Since there are little paper dolls included, pupils can grab their own and role play dialogues or follow directions.
I haven’t tried it, but I suppose this printable could be easily glued onto a piece of cardboard so as to form a 3-D city. With a couple of multiple printouts, they can form their city the way they like and even put labels on the buildings and name their streets and avenues on the cardboard. This could be done as group work and when finished, pupils could start playing and practising the city related language.
I am sure the reality of the three diamentions will help pupils clarify phrases such as “opposite the cinema” or “walk past” and “cross the street” as opposed to “go along the street”, not to mention the simpler ones like “left” and “right” which some children take time to tell apart.
You can find this template here. Craft and find your way in the city!