Word Games & Tiny Twists #3: How do you spell…?

This is one of my favourite games which you can use at all levels and for a range of different purposes.  In a nutshell, you call out words and pupils spell them.  Sounds riveting, doesn’t it?  Well, there’s a bit more to it than that.  The basic questions which underpin any activity on this blog [...]

Word Games & Tiny Twists #2: Word Stairs

For this game, all you need is a write-on whiteboard or visualiser.  Write up dashes across and down the board so that each successive line has an extra dash: Pupils suggest words to fill in the dashes, each word being one letter longer than the previous word.  For a beginner’s class, that can be the [...]

Word Games & Tiny Twists #1: Word Chains

This is a new series of posts looking at ways of kicking off a lesson.  I’ve always preferred getting going as soon as the first pupil arrives.  It gives value to the start of the lesson rather than allowing a couple of minutes of down-time from which I’ve then got to drum up some pace.  [...]

Carrot and Stick

Recently I received this question on the blog from Giulia: Hi James, interesting views and good to have the updates. One of my teachers is having problems 
with discipline and classroom management with some boys that tend to be distracted and distract
 others around them. Could you give us any tips to overcome this in [...]