Blog & Teach

Zimmer Twins is an amazing Canadian website which allows you to create your own cartoon. You can use different backgrounds, characters with their different faces and expressions, movement and other extras. The interface is very user-friendly and intuitive. Simple clicks and drop-down menus help you create a nice story that you can later share with your friends. I’m sure students will love it!

Once you are in Zimmer Twins’ home page, register and  click on .

Now, select  from the main page:

That will take you to the creative space, wher you can start to make your own movie:

The library on the right, which you can navigate by selecting the upper tags, gives you the possibility to choose out of different images. Select a main character with a speech bubble:

See if you like it and modify the background by clicking here , or the character:

Add actions the characters can perform out of the library:

And modify again what you prefer with a simple click:

Add close-up expressions to portrait feelings:

And also text, captions and effects:

You can always control the process and re-order images through the storyboard:

And, when you are happy with what you’ve produced… just save and watch it. Other students can watch it through the website or you can send it via e-mail…

Enjoy it!

Here’s nice site brought to us by Mita Jordan. Create your own gingerbread cake and decorate it at your own will. Email the cake to your friends as a Holiday card or paste it in your blog! Click on the picture!

Here’s a listening from    with two people talking about Santa Claus in Canada and in Switzerland. You can read the text as you listen, and then have your students do the quiz. Click on the pictures:

Canada:

Switzerland:

Nice and short activity from , a nice website from Time magazine, which offers adapted news and other resources. Maybe the focus is a bit too much on the USA, but some things are useful. The game zone gives the same impression, but this activity I’m posting here on a green house, is a very interesting way to help students learn how to be more environmentally-friendly. It’s not a game, really, it’s just a small applet, but nice!

We often quarrel about teching methods. I think a communicative approach is basically what  attains the highest degrees of satisfaction amongst our students. Nevertheless, we should ot forget that, sometimes, it is also good to get hold of activities that help students to reinforce their linguistic structural foundations, that is, grammar. Eventually, I’ll be writing about websites whose goal is to help people get some more practise and skills on that field. There are many interesting websites that help teachers make grammar teaching less cumbersome.

BBC Skillswise is a very interesting website that deals with drills related to those foundatons we are talking about. Exercises are catchy, and they move away from old hot potatoes interface (Let us all praise this old and good application anyway!!)

Last summer I stayed at a very nice country house at the Collsacabra, near Tavertet: L’Avenc. The house is run by Belinda Parris, a colleague of us who teaches English and shows people who visit l’Avenc that we can live our life closer to nature than we usually do. her mother, at 81, is still teaching English with a communicative approach.

They have published a diary… a Country Diary, where you can read different texts both in English and Catalan related to the link between people and nature. An open diary which can be used any time and any year. An example of finesse and good taste. It’s both, a good resource for some activities for our students and also a good present for those who love nature and the countryside.