Merry Christmas to all!

Cool Web 2.0 tools for teachers

Here we find a selection of web tools for teachers and students to use to create their own comic clips, characters, etc.  Take a look at the selection prepared on this prezi self guided presentation:

Cool Fun Web 2.0 Stuff on Prezi

Facts about Spain

There are many links giving us different facts about Spain.  What do you think of the ones in this link? Do you agree? Do you think there are any facts missing that should be included?

http://www.euroclubschools.co.uk/page15.h

Christmas Crackers

Some of you may remember our attempts at making christmas crackers as an activity a couple of years back.  For those who don't know of this other christmas tradition in England (and are interested, of course), here we have a couple of videos: one showing what the cracker looks like and what things typically come inside and the other showing crackers in use around the christmas meal table.

Updated Christmas Carols

Christmas is soon coming, as we are now constantly reminded by advertising and shop sales.  Christmas carols are traditionally sung from door to door on the days coming to Christmas. On that note, here is a new updated version of the traditional carol 'Silent night' with a beatbox touch. Would be a great pleasure to have these singing at my door!

Trinity GESE Exams

Trinity GESE exams are oral based examinations graded from 1-12. They are aimed at both adults and children. Candidates must be at least 7 years old when they start being examined. Examiners come from any part of the United Kingdom. At The Red Lion School, the exams are taken at the school on the last week of June.

For those doing the exams, or thinking about doing them, here are a few example videos of various levels.

The Silent Method

This is another method of teaching English, where the students focus on pronouncing the sounds by following a colour chart. Once all the sounds are learnt, the teacher is mainly silent and it is the students that follow the sounds to pronounce the words. Any opinions? Would you like to be taught this way? Do you think it would be effective?

How do I write a story?

How do I write a story? by Mopoke on Storybird

Solomon Grundy: days of the week

Traditional Tale.. Can you tell which?

Children´s Top Rated Games

"http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/games/"

Which Exam?

Cambridge offers a variety of examinations for all levels ranging from beginners to teaching specialism, and for different areas of purpose: academic, leisure, business. This video gives a brief explanation of each exam. It also explains the equivalence of each exam to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. (Please see link for the CEFR)

The British vs the American slang

There is surely some new vocabulary here for teachers too! lol

Long and Short Vowel sounds

This is especially useful when applying to certain phonetic spelling rules. Contrary to many European beliefs, the English language does follow its own sets of phonetic rules where we pronounce what we see written. However, these rules differ from most other latin based languages.

One of these rules looks at the order of consonants and vowels in a word to confirm the use of a long or short vowel.

There are 5 vowels in the English language and each vowel has a long and a short sound.

A Short Vowel is used when the word has a Consonant-Vowel-Consonant (CVC) structure. ie: rat /rat/; sit /sIt/; not/not/; cut /c^t/

A Long Vowel is used when the word has a Consonant-Vowel-Consonant-Vowel (CVCV) structure. ie: rate /reit/; site /sait/; note /nout/; cute /ciut/

The magic 'e' at the end of the word changes the previous vowel to a long sound.

As seen in the video clip above, there are many other ways of changing vowel sounds from short to long.

Vowels	Short	Long
a	/a/	/ei/
e	/e/	/ii/
i	/I/	/ai/
o	/o/	/ou/
u	/^/	/iu/

HTML Tables

It's important to practice your pronunciation

Repeat, repeat and repeat.. learning progresses through repetition! hehehe

Found this hilarious

Whilst surfing, I came over this video clip, which brought tears to my eyes. The clip comes from an American comedy show called MadTV, which is worth a look if you like comedy.

Can anyone remember this ad?

A Finger of Fudge is just enough to give your kids a treat, a finger of Fudge is just enough until it's time to eat...

Online English Games

Not interested in the traditional grammar completion activities? .. have a look at this site to find another approach in learning.. through a variety of games. Have fun!

Grammar of Doom

A scary adventure game to look at grammar

Facts about Britain

Grammar Quizzes

This collection of quizzes should keep your grammar up to scratch!

Future Tenses

Here is a first attempt at a blog.. still learning, so please be patient. The idea is to give information to students and provide links which may help the progress of their English studies. The first and most obvious link is to the school webpage: www.theredlionschool.com