Sunday - March 25th, 2012
This picture story is from Pen Pictures 2. It helps students learn to structure their writing - each Part of the story corresponds to one 'step' in the classic narrative structure situation-problem-solution-conclusion.
Thursday - March 22nd, 2012
This activity is based on one of the lessons in our book Pen Pictures 3 (Oxford University Press). In this version, the picture story has been made into a video to help insipire the students before they do the writing task.
Monday - March 5th, 2012
This is a short mystery story in two parts. The questions challenge students to imagine or deduce what happened. The story was inspired by the Roald Dahl tale The Landlady, and I first wrote it for New Ways to Go 4 (CUP).
Sunday - March 4th, 2012
This is a short murder story, with a note taking activity. The story is rich in past simple passive, and there is an extension activity to focus on this language point. There are audio downloads in case you want to make this into a listening activity rather than reading.
Tuesday - February 28th, 2012
Here's a song/rhyme to focus on the pronunciation of the past tense ending -ed. There are three audio tracks to download: the poem read aloud; the poem read aloud with backchained drill repetitions for students to pause and repeat, and finally, the poem as a song lyric accompanied to music.