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
Technology, art and inspiration have combined into a glorious interactive Christmas tree in the halls of the world’s largest museum of decorative arts and design, the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London. Every year, the museum commissions a designer to create a Christmas tree for the Museum’s Grand Entrance. This year, it’s the set designer Es Devlin who has installed a mesmerizing, constantly changing audiovisual Christmas tree, to which you are asked to contribute. You don’t have to be in the city to do so. You can actually do it online! Watch the video below to see how this year’s tree was made, where Es Devlin’s inspiration came from and how people actually transform the tree. For more information visit the relevant page and if you feel like it, contribute your own wish-word to the tree!
https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/christmas-tree-installations
Hesitating for too long during the Speaking Part of any exam is a piece that every candidate wishes and needs to improve. It usually happens when you don’t know what to say after a difficult question for example and it may get worse due to anxiety. This can be overcome with practice and a stock of useful phrases that will really buy time. So, watch the following videos and follow the tips to see how they work with you (They are suitable for every intermediate and above exam, I think!) The first one uses music and rhythm to help you repeat and remember!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n3OYFGCRno&feature=youtu.be
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
Do you ever find yourself drawing aimlessly, just playing with curves, lines and shapes, creating patterns or figures for just no reason? You probably do and this is called doodling read more (περισσότερα…)
Photo: www.hellowonderful.co/post/8-CREATIVE-WAYS-TO-GET-KIDS-TO-EAT-SALAD
Summer indulges us in fruits and vegetables inspiring nutritious creativity! Either for a party or our personal pleasure, salads can be refreshing not only to our palate but eyes, too. Have a look at this collection of what I think easy and impressive salad decoration ideas along with their instructions.
Photo: www.savvymom.ca/index.php/partysavvy/easter-party/4184/food
Beginner or not, revise and play with some fruit and vegetables vocabulary with the following resources.
photo: www.simplifylivelove.com/easy-summer-fruit-snack/
GAMES
Listening matching game at digitaldialects.com
Fruits Listening Memory Game and Vegetables Listening Memory Game at eslgamesworld.com
Fruits crossword puzzle and Vegetables crossword puzzle at iteslj.org
Choose the kind of word game you like at manythings.org for fruit and vegetables
QUIZZES
Vegetables vocabulary quiz at englishmedialab.com
Comprehension exercises at tolearnenglish.com and a4esl.org
Fruit listening quizzes and Vegetables listening quizzes at 123listening.com
Rain In Summer
How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!
How it clatters along the roofs
Like the tramp of hoofs!
How it gushes and struggles out
From the throat of the overflowing spout!
Across the window-pane
It pours and pours;
And swift and wide,
With a muddy tide,
Like a river down the gutter roars
The rain, the welcome rain!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
April Rain Song
Let the rain kiss you.
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.
The rain makes running pools in the gutter.
The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night –
And I love the rain.
Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
Read the poems. List all the verbs that the poets use for the rain. Describe the images of the rain in each poem. Are there any similes in the poems? Compare the two poems: how are they similar/different? What feelings do you get from them?
You can copy these poems on a template or write your own and create some art. Get inspired!
Read more
International Workers’ Day, also known as Labour Day in some places, is a celebration of labourers and the working classes that is promoted by the international labour movement, socialists, communists and anarchists and occurs every year on May Day, 1 May, an European spring holiday since the late 19th and early 20th century. The date was chosen for International Workers’ Day by the Second International, a pan-national organization of socialist and communist political parties, to commemorate the Haymarket affair, which occurred in Chicago on 4 May 1886. The events were triggered off during a labor rally in support of workers striking for an eight-hour day and in reaction to the killing of several workers the previous day by the police. The police responded with wild gunfire, killing several people in the crowd and injuring dozens more. Find out more about May Day along with language activities here.
The struggle for better labour conditions has been long and alive. What is often neglected in textbooks and the media is the impact women have made in labor history despite the numerous roles women have played to organize, unionize, rally, document, and inspire workers to fight for justice. Relevant sources and material follow below.
“Bread and Roses” is a political slogan as well as the name of an associated poem and song by James Oppenheim. It is commonly associated with the successful textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts.
Women in the labor movement at buzzfeed.com
Women in labor unions at shmoop.com
Women who sparked labour movement at theguardian.com
Women in labor history at zinnedproject.org
Bread and Roses Strike of 1912 digital photo collection at zinnedproject.org
Bread and Roses slogan at en.wikipedia.org
Teaching Resources at bctf.ca
Poems for workers-An anthology at marxists.org
I’ve found this cute illustration at The English Student http://www.theenglishstudent.com/blog/expressing-love
Can you think of any other ways to say “I love you”?
Source: www.grammarcheck.net