Live Online Teaching: Creative activities for delivering language lessons remotely 9781914010415, 9781914010422, 9781914010439, 9781914010446

Table of contents :
Introduction
1. Video and audio
The tools involved
Technical tips for using video and audio
Teaching tips for video and audio
Video and audio activities
Introduction chain
Roll call
What next?
Finish with a smile
Farewell wishes
Adapting familiar activities to online teaching
Adapted running dictation
Silent dictation
Chain drill
Order the sentence
Total Physical Response (TPR)
Question-and-answer activities
Interview the object
The man with the moustache
What happened?
Where are you?
Mystery object
Describing and narrating activities
The ultimate potato
Turn your camera on if it’s true for you
Who am I talking about?
Professional development
2. Participation tools
The tools involved
Technical tips for using participation tools
Teaching tips for participation tools
Participation tool activities
Finished!
Faster/Slower
Competitions, questions and quizzes
Simple poll
How many likes can you get?
Would I lie to you?
Secret identity
Call My Bluff
Chatbox games
Cumulative story
Don’t finish the word
What’s missing?
Student-generated gap-fill
Idiom match
Professional development
3. Shared screen
The tools involved
Technical tips for using shared screen
Teaching tips for shared screen
Shared-screen activities
Picture dictation
Puzzles and competitions
Bingo
Collaborative wordsearch
Dialogue practice
Same words, different place
What are they saying?
Half dialogues
Creative writing
Story link-up
Art thoughts
Round-the-world trip
Professional development
4. Breakout rooms
The tools involved
Technical tips for using breakout rooms
Teaching tips for breakout rooms
Breakout room activities
Breakout room quiz races
I spy
Group consensus activities
Dreamtown
Role play
Difficult customers
Information-gap games
Spot the difference
Experiences (‘Find someone who …’ variation)
Professional development
5. Combining platforms
The tools involved
Technical tips for combining platforms
Teaching tips for combining platforms
Collaborative writing projects across platforms
Climate change booklet
Historical problem page
Interactive homework
Part and whole
In my life
The right hotel
Rom-com
Mingling
Witnesses
Something in common?
My street
The wedding reception
Professional development
6. Zooming out
Offline activities
Checking in, checking out, checking in
Exploiting the home environment
Where was I when I last wore this?
My recipe
Preposition participation
Getting outside
Stretch break
Out of my window
Round the block
Mobile quiz
Sensory poem
Professional development
Index

Citation preview

Live Online Teaching: Creative activities for delivering language lessons remotely © Lindsay Clandfield and Jill Hadfield. The authors have asserted their rights in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988) to be identified as the authors of this work. Published by: Pavilion Publishing and Media Ltd, Blue Sky Offices, 25 Cecil Pashley Way, Shoreham by Sea, West Sussex, BN43 5FF Tel: 01273 434 943 Email: [email protected] Web: www.pavpub.com Published 2021 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing of the publisher and the copyright owners. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Print: 978-1-914010-41-5 Epub: 978-1-914010-42-2 PDF: 978-1-914010-43-9 Mobi: 978-1-914010-44-6 Pavilion Publishing and Media is a leading publisher of books, training materials and digital content in mental health, social care and allied fields. Pavilion and its imprints offer must-have knowledge and innovative learning solutions underpinned by sound research and professional values. Authors: Lindsay Clandfield and Jill Hadfield Content editor: Penny Hands Production editor: Mike Benge, Pavilion Publishing and Media Ltd Cover design: Emma Dawe, Pavilion Publishing and Media Ltd Page layout and typesetting: Emma Dawe, Pavilion Publishing and Media Ltd Printing: CMP (UK) Ltd

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For full details of all our books, English Teaching professional and Modern English Teacher magazines, go to: https://www.pavpub.com/pavilion-elt Visit: www.etprofessional.com www.modernenglishteacher.com

Contents Introduction.................................................................................................. 1 1. Video and audio........................................................................................ 5 The tools involved....................................................................................... 5 Technical tips for using video and audio................................................... 5 Teaching tips for video and audio.............................................................. 8 Video and audio activities........................................................................ 10 Introduction chain............................................................................... 10 Roll call................................................................................................ 11 What next?............................................................................................ 13 Finish with a smile.............................................................................. 14 Farewell wishes.................................................................................... 14 Adapting familiar activities to online teaching....................................... 15 Adapted running dictation.................................................................. 15 Silent dictation..................................................................................... 16 Chain drill............................................................................................ 18 Order the sentence................................................................................ 19 Total Physical Response (TPR)............................................................ 20 Question-and-answer activities................................................................ 21 Interview the object.............................................................................. 21 The man with the moustache............................................................... 22 What happened? .................................................................................. 23 Where are you? .................................................................................... 23 Mystery object....................................................................................... 24 Describing and narrating activities......................................................... 25 The ultimate potato.............................................................................. 25 Turn your camera on if it’s true for you.............................................. 26 Who am I talking about? ..................................................................... 27 Professional development......................................................................... 28

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2. Participation tools.................................................................................. 29 The tools involved..................................................................................... 29 Technical tips for using participation tools............................................. 29 Teaching tips for participation tools........................................................ 30 Participation tool activities...................................................................... 32 Finished! .............................................................................................. 32 Faster/Slower...................................................................................... 33 Competitions, questions and quizzes....................................................... 34 Simple poll........................................................................................... 34 How many likes can you get?............................................................... 36 Would I lie to you?................................................................................ 37 Secret identity....................................................................................... 37 Call My Bluff........................................................................................ 38 Chatbox games ......................................................................................... 39 Cumulative story.................................................................................. 39 Don’t finish the word........................................................................... 40 What’s missing?.................................................................................... 41 Student-generated gap-fill................................................................... 41 Idiom match......................................................................................... 43 Professional development......................................................................... 45 3. Shared screen.......................................................................................... 47 The tools involved..................................................................................... 47 Technical tips for using shared screen..................................................... 47 Teaching tips for shared screen................................................................ 48 Shared-screen activities........................................................................... 49 Picture dictation................................................................................... 50 Puzzles and competitions......................................................................... 54 Bingo..................................................................................................... 54 Collaborative wordsearch.................................................................... 55

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Dialogue practice...................................................................................... 56 Same words, different place................................................................. 56 What are they saying?.......................................................................... 58 Half dialogues...................................................................................... 59 Creative writing........................................................................................ 60 Story link-up........................................................................................ 60 Art thoughts......................................................................................... 61 Round-the-world trip........................................................................... 63 Professional development......................................................................... 64 4. Breakout rooms...................................................................................... 65 The tools involved..................................................................................... 65 Technical tips for using breakout rooms.................................................. 65 Teaching tips for breakout rooms............................................................. 66 Breakout room activities.......................................................................... 67 Breakout room quiz races.................................................................... 68 I spy...................................................................................................... 69 Group consensus activities ...................................................................... 73 Dreamtown........................................................................................... 73 Role play.................................................................................................... 75 Difficult customers............................................................................... 75 Information-gap games............................................................................. 77 Spot the difference................................................................................ 77 Experiences (‘Find someone who …’ variation) .................................. 78 Professional development......................................................................... 83 5. Combining platforms............................................................................. 85 The tools involved..................................................................................... 85 Technical tips for combining platforms................................................... 86 Teaching tips for combining platforms.................................................... 87

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Collaborative writing projects across platforms...................................... 89 Climate change booklet........................................................................ 89 Historical problem page....................................................................... 93 Interactive homework............................................................................... 95 Part and whole..................................................................................... 95 In my life.............................................................................................. 97 The right hotel...................................................................................... 98 Rom-com............................................................................................. 101 Mingling.................................................................................................. 102 Witnesses............................................................................................ 105 Something in common?...................................................................... 108 My street............................................................................................. 112 The wedding reception....................................................................... 117 Professional development....................................................................... 120 6. Zooming out........................................................................................... 121 Offline activities...................................................................................... 121 Checking in, checking out, checking in.............................................. 121 Exploiting the home environment......................................................... 123 Where was I when I last wore this?................................................... 123 My recipe............................................................................................ 125 Preposition participation................................................................... 129 Getting outside........................................................................................ 129 Stretch break...................................................................................... 129 Out of my window.............................................................................. 130 Round the block.................................................................................. 132 Mobile quiz......................................................................................... 133 Sensory poem...................................................................................... 134 Professional development....................................................................... 135 Index............................................................................................................ 137

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Acknowledgements This book would not have been possible without the support and the thorough and professional editing of Kirsten Holt, Penny Hands and Michael Benge. Our thanks to them for their enthusiasm and inspiration. Jill would like to thank the organisations JALT, IH Torun, CUP and SOL, who invited her to do webinars on Zoom, increasing her knowledge of what techniques are possible. She owes a lot to the support and encouragement of Laura and Charlie during the writing of this book, and would like to thank them for their constructive feedback. In particular, she would like to thank Laura for suggesting activities and giving such valuable insights into teaching classes online. Lindsay would like to thank his colleagues at the Consultants-E, who have always been a source of energy and inspiration for all things teaching online. In addition, he is grateful to all the teachers who attended the webinars, live sessions and demonstration classes where he tried out various activities. Finally, and as always, thanks to his wife Sofia and his sons Lucas and Marcos for always being there, especially during the difficult years of 2020 and 2021.

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Introduction This book was written during a period in which many teachers had to turn to live online teaching, perhaps for the first time. The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020 forced schools around the world to close from one day to the next. Millions of teachers and learners were unable to meet in the real classroom. Live online teaching, involving the use of web conferencing tools, suddenly became the mainstream. Teachers were expected to continue their classes online using whatever means they could. To do this, they had to address numerous problems. Firstly, there was getting acquainted with the mechanics of new platforms such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams. After that initial stage, they had to work out how to adapt their teaching to the constraints of the platform. Teachers have had to address such questions as: ■ Am I going to have to change the way I teach? ■ Is my teaching going to be more top-down or can I create a

communicative online classroom? ■ How can I involve the students? How will I know they are paying attention? ■ How can I encourage the quieter students to participate? ■ How can I monitor work effectively? ■ Can I do familiar activities that I used to do in the physical classroom, for

example information gap tasks and role plays? ■ Do the medium and the students’ circumstances open up any new

possibilities? These are the questions we hope to address in this book by providing teachers with ideas for communicative activities with plenty of student involvement. In the wake of the Covid-19 crisis, a distinction has been drawn between online learning and emergency remote teaching. Online learning programmes require planning and are often set up in tandem with faceto-face offerings. They are implemented slowly, perhaps with a trial period at the beginning. A period of time is allotted at the beginning of a course for learners to get accustomed to the environment. Emergency remote teaching, on the other hand, is what happens when a school closes and the

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Introduction

teachers are expected to continue their classes online with little or no time to prepare, using whatever tools they have to hand. This is what happened in 2020. As the pandemic slowly subsides, however, aspects of emergency remote teaching may still remain or become more and more part of the ‘normal’ online learning landscape. Teaching live online lessons with web conferencing tools is one such aspect. Many books that address online learning tend to lean more towards asynchronous teaching, for example using email, forums or messaging services. In this book we want to explore the synchronous side of online teaching, in particular looking at live online lessons that occur in a platform such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Google Meet. It is our view that teachers will be increasingly required to be able to teach using tools such as these, if not for their whole course then for parts of it, or to be able to switch to giving a class online in a future emergency remote teaching situation. It’s undeniable that the live online class presents restrictions and disadvantages for communicative language teaching. It is in many ways less than ideal. But teaching in less-than-ideal circumstances can give rise to new and creative ideas that have value beyond the situation they were devised to address. Teaching large groups of 40 or more students, teaching mixed-ability classes or teaching in lecture halls with fixed chairs, are three other ‘difficult’ environments that have historically presented disadvantages for the language classroom. And yet language teachers have found ways of working in those environments. Sometimes they have found activities specifically for these environments that are communicative and very creative! We found that while writing this book we were also undergoing a similar journey. To this end, we have been looking at different kinds of activities that lend themselves to the live online environment. These range from lesson starters and finishers to ways of adapting ‘old favourites’ of the physical classroom into the online live classroom. All of our activities have been written specially for live online sessions, and we have also explored ways of exploiting the new circumstances – in particular the fact that students are all in different places. The activities in this book are classified into five broad areas according to the different kinds of tools at a teacher’s disposal when teaching online using a web conferencing platform:

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Introduction

1. Video and audio 2. Participation tools (such as the chatbox and interaction buttons) 3. Shared screen (whiteboard, shared documents, shared web browsing) 4. Breakout rooms 5. Combining platforms (using a live platform such as Zoom in tandem with an asynchronous platform such as Edmodo, WhatsApp or Facebook, to enable a greater range of activities). Within each section we look at how a teacher can create communicative and meaningful activities, involving role plays, questionnaires, quizzes and discussions. In addition, you will find activities that acknowledge that sitting for a long time in front of a screen is not always optimal for learning. We have called this final section ‘Zooming out’; it involves getting students away from the screen by sending them into their local environment to find something and to come back and share it.

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1. Video and audio The tools involved If you are teaching a live online class, you are probably using a web conferencing tool. Some of the more well-known tools are video conferencing platforms. Zoom became perhaps the most famous of all during the Covid-19 pandemic when it began in 2020. Other popular choices for teachers include Microsoft Teams, Google Meet (often integrated into Google Classroom), Adobe Connect and Blackboard Collaborate. However, even a more basic tool like Skype can be used for group calls and therefore online classes. These tools each have different features, which we will address in later sections, but what they all have in common is that they allow communication via video and audio. Any of the participants can toggle on or off their video camera or microphone when they want to speak, or leave them both on all the time.

Technical tips for using video and audio Space and lighting When setting up your computer and webcam, try to adjust the camera so that the lens sits at or above your eye level and no higher than your hairline. This will ensure that you are looking right into the camera. Make sure you aren’t sitting too close to the camera or too far away from it. Try to position yourself so that the camera captures your entire face and shoulders with a bit of room to spare. Light is also important. All cameras capture better video with good light. Try to avoid backlighting (for example having a window behind you). One easy trick is to place a light with a lampshade in front of you and behind the webcam.

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Figure 1.1: A typical webcam set-up

Remember to check what’s behind you. Ideally, use a non-descript room or a spot with a simple wall behind you. There is nothing worse than realising as you begin the class that you have some laundry hanging from a chair or a half-bottle of wine open on the table in the background. (We speak from experience!)

Checking audio and video beforehand Before you begin a class, especially if you are new to the platform, do an audio and video check. There will usually be a button somewhere that allows you to do this, or you can check in the settings on the app. If you are having audio problems, check that your microphone (if you’re using one) is plugged in, as are your earphones (if you are using them). If something is still wrong, close the program and open it up again.

Playing audio from your computer Many video conferencing platforms also allow you to play audio from your computer. There may be an option to turn this on or off, so look for it in the settings. Playing audio from your computer means that you can, for example, play audio files for your listening activities in class. Try this out with a friend first before doing it in class.

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Improving audio quality If you are starting out, you can probably manage with the built-in microphone on your computer. However, in time you may wish to use earphones as this will minimise any audio feedback that may occur if there are other people on audio at the same time. The room you are going to be teaching from can also have an effect on your audio. The bigger and emptier a room is, the more likely you are to have an echo. Smaller rooms with more furniture, carpets or curtains, help to improve audio quality. It’s a good idea not to sit close to an open window, as noises from the street (birds, people talking, traffic) can impair the audio quality. You may eventually want to invest in a better microphone, especially if you are recording classes. Look for a reasonably priced microphone that is listed as being ‘good for podcasting’. Your learners will notice the difference. Another alternative is a headset with earphones and a microphone. If you get one of these, make sure you get one with a USB connection as they are the most reliable.

Video quality and streaming If your video and audio quality is choppy or blurred, or if it cuts out from time to time, it’s more likely that you have a problem connecting to the internet. Here are some tips for improving your connection speed: ■ Use an ethernet cable to connect your laptop to the router. This means you

are using a wired connection as opposed to wireless. Wired connections are much more reliable. ■ Make sure your computer isn’t downloading something in the background. ■ Check that other family members aren’t doing ‘internet-heavy’ tasks on

the same network. Things like online gaming, streaming in high-quality video or downloading files will affect your internet speed. ■ Check that any apps like Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive aren’t

syncing in the background. You can turn off the auto-sync in the settings on these apps. ■ Do the best-known technical fix on your equipment: turn it off and turn it

on again. Do this for your computer and router. For the router, turn it off and leave it for 30 seconds before turning it back on again. ■ Place your router in an open space, not in a cupboard or behind furniture.

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1. Video and audio

Teaching tips for video and audio Smiling and eye contact Teaching online via a screen follows many of the same principles as teaching face to face. One of these is looking at the class and smiling: smiling makes the students much more comfortable and engaged with you. To make ‘eye contact’, make sure you look at the webcam. This can be difficult if not all the students have webcams on and you can’t see them, but it does really make a difference.

The first two to three minutes of every class Teaching online is prone to glitches; it’s just an unfortunate reality. You may find the first few minutes of class are taken up with questions such as ‘Can you hear me?’ and ‘I can’t see you’. Aim to spend the first few minutes checking that everyone can see and hear you. Try playing music as students arrive in the virtual classroom and check with students whether they can hear the music as a way of testing the audio.

Going on and off camera Just because you have video and audio doesn’t mean you always have to use both. You can ask the students to mute their microphones (and sometimes turn off their webcams) for parts of the class, perhaps when you are explaining something or you are playing a listening. You can also turn your video and audio off when you set the students an exercise to do individually. Sometimes, turning video or audio on and off can become a part of an activity itself, as we will see below. It is also worth mentioning that if you are having connectivity problems, asking people to turn off their webcams can help. But this doesn’t mean your class has to become overtly teacher-focused. Students can participate and turn on their video/audio to answer questions, read sentences, ask questions and present something. Many classes adopt as a policy for all the students to begin with their cameras and microphones off. In some classes the students are asked to keep their microphones and cameras off the whole time, which leads to classes being necessarily teacher-centred and lacking in variety. Where possible, try to make sure you have a balance in your online classes so that students get to see and talk to each other, and you get to see their faces.

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Privacy issues and backgrounds If you and your students are going to be on video, make sure you are careful about privacy issues. Recommend that your students have a simple wall behind them and that they avoid showing the whole room or any personal belongings. Some platforms, such as Zoom, allow you to select a special ‘background’ for your webcam. You may wish to allow students to use this feature (selecting a simple background, not one of the more crazy ones). Finally, do not record a session without the express permission of students.

Using video and audio cues to check if people are listening/following You can use video and audio during your class to check that everyone is following you. Nominate students to answer questions such as So, what exercise are we on now or Can you repeat the instructions to make sure I know you’ve understood? Or you can ask students to give you a thumbsup on their video to let you know they are ready. When students are speaking, look into the camera, nod and react to what they are saying. It is demotivating to be talking on a videoconference and to see the other person with their head turned away, paying attention to something else.

Try not to speak too much Many teachers teaching via video feel that they need to talk all the time. However, just as in a face-to-face class where you have had to train yourself to give students more time to think, to answer questions and to talk themselves, you will have to train yourself to do the same in the online classroom. It may help to say occasionally I’m going to turn my camera off and let you read the text/instructions to stop yourself from going on and on. You can let learners do more of the talking in a whole-group situation by asking them to read instructions or explain an activity in their own words. It takes practice, but it is possible.

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Video and audio activities Video and audio activities (with no other tools employed) lend themselves to whole-class, teacher-led activities. You will need other tools for more student-centred pair and group activities. Some of these activities are based primarily on teacher-to-student input, such as grammar clarification. Other activities can involve student responses to questions from the teacher or from other students. In this section we will look at possibilities for these more interactive whole-class activities. You will probably begin and end your classes using the whole-class video and audio features. You will want to begin by welcoming students and end with some kind of closure. Here are some activities that can be used to welcome and say goodbye to students either at the beginning and end of classes or in the first and last lesson of the whole course. They provide language practice and revision, and can be adapted and varied to practise different structures and vocabulary.

Introduction chain Aim:

 o allow students to get to know each other at the T beginning of a course

Topic:

Any

Time:

10 minutes

Level:

Any

Language focus: Introducing yourself Preparation: None Procedure: 1. When everyone has come online, ask them to turn on their video and audio. 2. Ask them to say their name and to tell the class one thing about themselves. 3. Start by introducing yourself in the same way. Then nominate a student. 4. When that student has finished, nominate another. For example: Teacher: Hi everyone. I’m Jill and I like cats. Katya – can you begin? Tell us your name and say one thing about yourself. Begin by saying: ‘That was Jill and she likes cats.’

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Katya:

That was Jill and she likes cats. I’m Katya and I play tennis.

Teacher: Welcome, Katya! Now, Salman you begin: ‘That was Jill and she likes cats. That was Katya and she likes tennis.’ Then say something about yourself. Salman: That was Jill and she likes cats. That was Katya and she plays tennis. I’m Salman and I am a bus driver. Teacher: Excellent, Salman! Maria can you go on? Maria: That was Jill and she likes cats That was Katya and she plays tennis. That was Salman and he is a bus driver. I am Maria and I sing in a band. 5. Ask everyone to turn off their cameras. Ask for a volunteer to turn on their camera. 6. Ask other students to (1) greet the student and (2) remember the fact they said. For example: Salman turns on his camera. Teacher: OK, someone say hello. Maria:

Hi ... Salman?

Salman: That’s right! Katya:

You like cats, right Salman?

Salman: No, that’s Jill. I am a bus driver. Maria:

Oh, that’s right!

Roll call Aim:

To call the register and simultaneously revise vocabulary

Topic: Any Time:

5 minutes

Level: Any Language focus: Any lexical set Preparation: Choose a vocabulary set you have recently-taught or want to review.

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Procedure: 1. At the beginning of the lesson, explain that you are going to call out a category. Everyone has to check in by saying a word in that category. For example: Teacher: Welcome everyone. Let’s make sure the audio is working. I will say a category and call your name. You have to give me a word in that category. Ready? The category is: ‘Furniture’. Chris, you start. Chris: Chair. Teacher: Good! Karina? Karina:

Coffee table.

Teacher: Excellent. Chia? 2. Continue until all students have checked in. Variation: This can be used with any lexical set that the students have recently learned. It could also be used with structures. For example, if the students have recently learned the modal verb can, they could check in by saying something they can do, for example: Teacher: Welcome everyone. Let’s make sure the audio is working. I will say a category and call your name, you have to give me a sentence in that category. Ready? The category is: ‘Things I can do’. Chris, you start. Student: I can swim. Here are some other ideas for categories: ■ ‘Somewhere you have been.’ ■ ‘Something you have done.’ ■ ‘What you did yesterday.’ ■ ‘What you like.’

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What next? Aim: To round off the lesson Topic:

Future plans

Time:

10+ minutes

Level: A1+ Language focus: going to Preparation: None Procedure: 1. At the end of the lesson, say to your learners: It’s the end of the lesson now. What are you going to do next? If their cameras are not on already, the learners turn on their webcams and mime the action that they will do next, for example: sleeping, making coffee, calling friends, playing video games, going for a walk. 2. As they mime their actions, call out what you think they are miming, for example: Mohamed, are you going to make coffee? If you are right, the student should give you a thumbs-up sign. 3. In future classes, ask another student to watch the actions and guess what their classmates are miming. Variation: ■ Ask different questions about future actions, for example, Who is the next person you are going to talk to? What are your weekend plans? What’s for dinner/lunch? ■ Ask about positive things in order to end on an upbeat note; for example,

What is one nice thing you can see in the room or out of the window? (e.g. a vase of flowers, clouds in the sky, the cat purring). What are you looking forward to? What music will you listen to next? How does it make you feel?

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Finish with a smile Aim: To round off the lesson on a positive note Topic: None Time:

2 minutes

Level: A1+ Language focus: None Preparation: None Procedure: 1. At the end of the lesson, ask learners to turn on their webcams (if they are not on already) and face the camera. They should also put their screen into ‘gallery view’ so they can see everyone else. 2. Explain that the objective is to look at the group and neither talk nor smile. If they start smiling, they need to turn off their camera. 3. Inevitably, someone will start smiling or laughing. They must turn off their camera (but they can stay on audio). The aim is to be the last person with a camera on and not smiling.

Farewell wishes Aim:

To round off the course on a positive note

Topic: None Time:

20 minutes

Level: B1+ Language focus: Well-wishing expressions with may … Preparation: Prepare a slide with the text below. These are examples of ‘farewell wishes’, which can be said to wish someone well at the end of some time spent together. Animate the text so that the lines appear one at a time as you play the slide. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm on your face. May nothing but happiness come through your door. May the road rise up to meet you. May the roof above us never fall in, and may the friends below it never fall out.

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Procedure: 1. Share your screen and explain the idea of a farewell wish. Go through the examples one at a time, displaying them and reading them aloud. 2. Ask students to think about which ones they like. Now read out the sentences again. Students use the thumbs-up tool in the chatbox to indicate their preferences. 3. Ask students to make up a similar farewell wish for the end of the course. Tell them they have five minutes to do this. They can get up and walk around their room while they are thinking about the wish they want to give. 4. Set a timer and turn off your camera. 5. When the time is up, call people back. Put them into groups of three or four and send them to breakout rooms. They share their farewell wishes with each other there, and to try to correct any language mistakes they think they see. 6. Give them a tight time limit (e.g. three minutes) to do this. 7. Call everyone back to the main room. They each type their farewell wish in the chatbox and read it out loud.

Adapting familiar activities to online teaching There are several whole-class activities that you will be used to doing with your classes; for example: dictations, reading and listening activities, grammar explanations or drills. Many of these are easily translatable to the video and audio tool, and need little modification. Others need a little ingenuity to be adapted to the online setting. Below are some examples of such adaptations.

Adapted running dictation Aim:

To revise recently-taught language

Topic: Any Time:

20–30 minutes

Level: A2+ Language focus: Any

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Preparation: Prepare a text for dictation to practise recently-taught language. Mark the sense groups with slashes (/). (See the Extension section of the next activity for examples of how to mark sense groups.) You will need a timer. Procedure: 1. Email a paragraph of text to one student, who either prints it out or opens it on their phone. 2. Tell that student to put their phone or paper on other side of the room. 3. The student will have to give a running dictation to the rest of the class within a period of time that you specify. To do this they have to run to the phone (or paper), memorise the sense group, and then run back to their computer to dictate the phrase to the rest of the class. Start a timer and tell the student to start the activity. Extension: When the dictation is finished, you can provide feedback in any of these ways: ■ Simply put up the correct version on a shared screen for students to

compare. ■ Ask selected students to read back what they wrote down, then put up

the correct version as above. ■ Put students in pairs or groups and send them to breakout rooms to

compare what they wrote and arrive at a final version. Then bring everyone back to the main meeting and ask one member from each group to read their version. Finally, put up the correct version for them to read.

Silent dictation Aim:

To revise recently-taught language

Topic: Any Time:

20–30 minutes

Level: A1+ Language focus: Any Preparation: Find a short text to revise recently-taught language. The text should contain vocabulary that can be conveyed through mime and gesture.

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Procedure: 1. Send one student a short paragraph. Everyone turns their webcam off except that student. 2. The student turns their audio off and then dictates the text to everyone else. Everyone can see the student on webcam, but cannot hear him or her. 3. The student reads the dictation slowly, articulating well, and pausing for others to write. They must also use gestures and mime to convey meaning. The rest of the class has to try and figure out what the student is saying and write it down. 4. When the dictation is finished, you can provide feedback in any of these ways: ■ Simply put up the correct version on a shared screen for students to

compare. You may like to get the student to repeat his/her mime as the class reads the correct version. ■ Ask selected students to read back what they wrote down, then put up

the correct version as above. ■ Put students in pairs or groups and send them to breakout rooms to

compare what they wrote and arrive at a final version. Then bring everyone back to the main meeting and ask one member from each group to read their version. Finally, put up the correct version for them to read. Variations: Write your own short texts to revise vocabulary and structures relevant to your class, bearing in mind that the verbs and nouns should be concrete enough to be conveyed through mime and gesture. A high density of abstractions – verbs like intended or nouns like imagination – will not be suitable for this activity. Here are two example texts on ‘Getting up in the morning’ – one at a lower level to practise present simple for daily routines and one on the same topic but at a higher level to practise the past simple. Tom gets up at eight o’clock. / He has a shower, / cleans his teeth / and gets dressed. / Then he goes downstairs. / He makes a cup of tea / and feeds the cat. / He makes toast and jam for breakfast. / He drinks the tea / and eats the toast. / Then he says goodbye to the cat, / leaves the house / and drives to work.

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Tom woke up suddenly. / His cat was patting his face. / With a big sigh, / he got up and went downstairs / with the cat. / On the last step he tripped over the cat and fell. / He got up and stamped crossly into the kitchen. / He fed the cat/ and made a cup of tea. / He took a mouthful – it was too hot. / He went upstairs / and had a shower. / The water was cold! / He got dressed / and looked at his watch – he was late! He left the house / and ran to the bus stop / but the bus was leaving!

Chain drill Aim:

To revise recently-taught language

Topic: Any Time:

20+ minutes

Level: Any Language focus: Any Preparation: Prepare a question to begin the drill, e.g. Do you like playing football? Procedure: 1. Students all begin this activity with their webcams off. Number students 1, 2, 3, etc. Then ask a question and nominate a student to answer it, e.g. Ari, Do you like football? 2. When they hear their name, Student 1 turns on their webcam, replies and then asks Student 2 a question, and so on. For example: Teacher: Do you like playing football Ari? Student 1: No, I don’t! Do you like cooking Yuki? Student 2: Yes I do! Do you like swimming, Eva? 3. As you listen, take notes of their answers (e.g. Ari doesn’t like playing football, Yuki likes cooking). 4. When every student has been asked a question, give a quick True/False exercise at the end to see what they can remember. Read the sentences (making some of them false). Students write in the chatbox ‘True’ or ‘False’ in response.

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Variation: This activity can be used to practise many different structures. It can also be done as more of a fun, game-like activity, as in the example below to practise I’d like to. Teacher: I’d like to go for a picnic. Juan. Student 1: But it’s raining! I’d like to play chess. Sara. Student 2: But a chess piece is missing! I’d like to watch TV. Xiaobang. Student 3: But ...

Order the sentence Aim:

To revise recently-taught language

Topic: Any Time:

10–15 minutes

Level: A2+ Language focus: Any (although it can be particularly useful for practising sentences where word order is an issue, e.g. frequency adverbs, reported questions, adjective order) Preparation: Prepare a number of long sentences to practise recentlytaught language. Here are a few suggestions: Frequency adverbs I sometimes go swimming in the summer but I never go swimming in the winter. Reported questions She asked him what he had been doing and why he hadn’t phoned. Adjective order She put the flowers in a green glass vase on the round wooden table by the red Turkish carpet. Procedure: 1. Send each student a word from a long sentence (via private chatbox message). 2. Everyone turns off their webcam and writes their word in big letters on a piece of paper.

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3. Set a time limit for the students to try and put the sentence together via audio. Then turn off your webcam. 4. When the students think they have the answer, they turn on their webcams and take turns holding up their word in the correct order for you to check. 5. You can put the correct sentence on a shared screen or simply read it out.

Total Physical Response (TPR) Aim:

To revise recently-taught language

Topic: Any Time:

20+ minutes

Level: Any Language focus: Any: TPR can easily be used with the cameras on in online teaching to practise many different structures and vocabulary. Preparation: Prepare a number of cues, statements or questions with accompanying commands to practise recently-taught structures or lexis, e.g. Did you read a book yesterday? Clap your hands. Procedure: 1. Ensure students have video and audio on. 2. Read out the cues and commands, for example: Do you like ice cream? Yes? Stand up. Have you ever been to France? Yes? Clap your hands. Did you read a book yesterday? Yes? Touch your nose. 3. Students listen and respond physically. 4. You can follow up by getting students to write their own cues and commands and to read them out for their peers to respond to. Variation: You can use this activity to practise vocabulary with single-word cues and getting students to mime, for example:

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■ Food vocabulary: the teacher gives a cue, e.g. hot soup, peas, spaghetti,

hamburger. Students react showing how they would eat them. ■ Sports vocabulary: the teacher says, I play ... tennis, football, etc.

Students mime the action. ■ Household chores: the teacher gives a cue, e.g. vacuuming, washing up.

Students mime the chore.

Question-and-answer activities Question-and-answer (Q&A) activities with either choral or individual responses are easily translatable into online settings using video and audio tools. You can either use audio alone for asking simple personalised questions or you can introduce a video element, with students asking and answering questions about an image or an object being held up to the camera. Here are a few activities that add an element of fun and imagination to Q&A activities.

Interview the object Aim:

To ask questions about personal information

Topic:

Personal history

Time:

30–40 minutes

Level: A2+ Language focus: Present simple, can, past simple, present perfect Preparation: Find an interesting object in your house that you could put in front of the webcam. Procedure: 1. Show the object on the camera. Tell the students that today you are going to try something a bit different. The students are going to interview an object – and you will answer questions as if you were the object! 2. Ask the students to think of questions to ask the object in an interview. Give some examples, e.g. Hello, vase, how old are you? Give them a little time to prepare these. 3. Put the students on mute. One at a time, nominate a student to ask their questions. Unmute that student so they can use audio.

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4. Respond to the questions as if you were the object, e.g. Hi Etsuko, I am 12 years old! Variation: Hold a photo of a person or a place in front of the camera. Students interview the person or the place. Students take notes during the interview and write it up afterwards.

The man with the moustache Aim:

To practise describing people

Topic:

People and appearance

Time:

10–15 minutes

Level: A1+ Language focus: Has he/she got ...? Is …? facial features Preparation: None Procedure: 1. Nominate a student to begin. They should think of one of the other students, but must not name them. 2. The other students guess who it is by asking questions, e.g. Is this student male or female? (Yes.) Has he got a moustache? The student being questioned can only answer Yes or No. To avoid a situation in which several students are speaking at the same time, put the class on mute and ask them to raise a hand when they want to ask a question. Then unmute one person at a time. 3. The student who guesses correctly is the next one to think of someone and be questioned. Variation: In some video conferencing platforms you can add funny elements to your video, such as a blue moustache, big ears or a Santa hat. You could ask students to use this feature at the beginning of this activity.

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What happened? Aim:

To practise past simple questions

Topic:

Asking about past events

Time:

10–15 minutes

Level: A1+ Language focus: Did …. ? Preparation: Imagine an event and find (or draw) a picture showing the result of that event, for example: an empty fridge (‘My teenage sons were hungry’), a crumpled newspaper (‘The cat read the paper before I did’). Procedure: 1. Introduce the scenario: show the students the picture. Ask them to think of questions they can ask to find out what happened that led to the scene depicted. 2. Call on students one at a time to ask their questions. Answer Yes or No. 3. Continue until a student guesses the right answer.

Where are you? Aim:

To practise present and past questions

Topic:

Asking about location and past events

Time:

20–30 minutes

Level: A1+ Language focus: Past simple questions; present simple questions, Is it ….? Vocabulary for location and actions Preparation: None Procedure: 1. Ask students to put up a virtual background. It should be an image of somewhere they have been, e.g. Paris, but it should not be too easily recognisable. So, they should not put up a picture of the Eiffel Tower, for example, because that would give the game away. Instead, they should find a picture of, say, a backstreet or a park.

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2. Put the whole class on mute and ask them to raise a hand when they want to ask a question. Nominate one student. The other students try to guess where they are, asking, for example: Is it far away? Is it in Europe? Is it in Spain? When a student wants to ask a question, they raise a hand and you unmute them. 3. The student with the background can answer only Yes or No. 4. When a student has guessed correctly, the whole class can ask more questions about when the student went there and what they did there. Alternatively, you can ask the student to tell the others three things about their trip (e.g. when they went, who they were with, where they stayed, places they visited).

Mystery object Aim:

To practise the present simple or making guesses

Topic:

Describing objects

Time:

10–15 minutes

Level: A1+ Language focus:  I s it …? Does it …? Can it …? It could be … It might be … Preparation: Prepare an object and a tea towel to cover it. Ask students in advance to select an object from their house and a tea towel or other cloth to cover it. Procedure: 1. Show the students the cloth with the mystery object under it. Ask them to guess what it is. They should use Is it …? Does it …? Can it…? or It could be … / might be … etc., depending on their level. You may have to put them all on mute and get them to raise a hand when they want to ask a question, then unmute them. 2. When they have had a first guess, draw the cloth back to reveal a little more of the object. They guess again. When they have guessed correctly, select one of the students to show the class their covered object. 3. The rest of the class try to guess what it is. The student with the object can gradually reveal more of the object until the others make a correct guess.

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Describing and narrating activities Video and audio tools can be used to get students to listen and respond to narration and description. Students can also use them to narrate and to describe things themselves. The following activities begin with the teacher giving a listening activity to which the students respond and then narrate or describe themselves.

The ultimate potato Aim:

To talk about abilities

Topic:

Abilities

Time:

20+ minutes

Level: A2+ Language focus: can or if/when (1st conditional ), I’d like … Preparation: Prepare a demonstration with a vegetable and text, e.g. This is a magic potato. It can make me fly or If I hold it, I can see the future. Procedure: 1. This is a role-playing game, where each person has discovered that they have a magic vegetable in their kitchen. Show them your magic vegetable and tell them about its magic powers. 2. Give everyone five minutes to find a vegetable and decide what powers it has: It can … If I …. 3. When the time is up, each student shows their vegetable and describes its powers. 4. As a follow-up, nominate students to talk about other students’ vegetables – the ones that they would most like to have, e.g. I’d like Johann’s potato because …

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Turn your camera on if it’s true for you Aim:

To revise recently-taught language

Topic: Any Time:

20–30 minutes

Level: A1+ Language focus: Any Preparation: Prepare some sentences to revise recently-taught language. You can prepare for this by asking students to tell you (privately) some facts, such as what they did last weekend, and what they like doing. Procedure: 1. Tell the class to turn their cameras off. Then tell them you are going to read them a statement about something you did at the weekend. They have to decide if it’s true or false. If they think it’s true, they should turn their camera on. 2. Read aloud a statement, for example: I ate some chocolate. Remind the learners to turn their cameras on if they think it’s true. 3. Ask everyone to turn their cameras off again. Continue with a number of statements about you and students in the class, using the information that you found out earlier in the preparation stage. For example: Pedro went to a party. Kyoko watched a movie. 4. At the end, you can use the statements you read out to make an onthe-spot quiz. For example: Pedro went to a party: true or false? All the learners other than Pedro try and remember. They call out their answers. Extension: Students write up all the facts they can remember under the title: ‘What we did this weekend’. Variation This activity can be done using a number of structures. For example: ■ present simple: Anika likes reading; Tamas plays tennis. ■ can: I can speak Japanese; Mario can play the violin. ■ present perfect: Soly has been to Paris; Xuen has ridden a camel.

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Who am I talking about? Aim:

To practise describing people

Topic:

Describing people

Time:

20+ minutes

Level: A1+ Language focus: the verb be, have, is + -ing Preparation: None Procedure: 1. Ask everyone to turn their camera on. 2. Begin describing someone (their clothes, their hair colour, etc.). 3. When the person realises it’s them, they raise their hand. 4. They now describe another person and then turn their camera off. 5. Continue until all cameras are off. 6. The last person now (from memory) describes someone. That person then turns their camera back on so the student can check their description. That person describes another person, and so on.

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Professional development Questions for reflection ■ Which of your favourite classroom activities have you been able to use

online? Which have you been unable to use? Can you think of an activity to adapt to online teaching? ■ These activities ask students to answer or ask questions in a whole-class setting. Reflect on how you can encourage equal participation from everyone. What strategies would you use for encouraging shyer students to participate and ensuring that more extrovert students don’t dominate?

Things to try ■ Write a list of ways you could use the activities from this chapter in your

teaching; then choose one to try out. Afterwards, make notes about what worked well and what didn’t. Use these notes to start building a bank of fresh teaching ideas. ■ Look at some typical communicative activities in your coursebook or in a teachers’ resource book. Would you be able to adapt them for use with video and audio?

Things to share ■ Try out an activity from this section. Write a list of hints and tips for making

it successful. Share this with other teachers. ■ Work with a colleague. Choose an activity to try out. After you have both tried it, discuss how it went for each of you. What worked well? What would you change if you did it again?

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2. Participation tools The tools involved Participation tools allow people in a live video or audio call to participate without speaking. The most common and ubiquitous tool is a text chatbox, which allows participants to type messages. Some platforms include ‘reaction’ buttons, which allow the user to show an emoji like clapping hands or a smiley face. There are also buttons that can be used to ask a speaker to speak more quickly or more slowly, for example. Some platforms offer the possibility of using ‘polls’ to quickly ask a question that participants can vote on.

Technical tips for using participation tools Take stock of what is there Take some time to find the options that are available. The chatbox should be easy to find, but the other buttons may be in different places. Sometimes they are under the list of participants, and sometimes (as is the case with Zoom) there is a dedicated button for ‘reaction’ emojis. When participants click on one or another button it will appear to you in different places, either on their screen or next to their name in the participant list. If you know where all these things are, it will be much easier to run a session that uses them.

Learn how the chat works Some chatboxes won’t allow you to post long stretches of text, which is a problem if you are copy-pasting text into them. Try typing into the chatbox to see how many characters you can write before it cuts off. Another useful option is private chat. This allows you to send a message to an individual participant. Make sure you know how to switch between sending private messages and public messages. If you send a private message to one person, and then you want to send a message to everyone, you will need to select ‘Everyone’ for the second message. If your platform supports breakout rooms, there may be an option for you to send a message to all the breakout rooms. This can be useful to send rules, time checks or extra information. Make sure you find this option as well.

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Prepare polls beforehand If your platform has a poll feature, it’s worth typing out the questions and the answer options before the session. Do this on another document first so you can copy and paste them into the poll during the session.

Think of mobile phone users Participation tools are generally quite easy to use on a laptop or desktop computer. They are more difficult on a tablet, and yet more difficult on a phone. Check how your session looks on a phone to see how easy or hard it is to use participation tools. If a lot of your participants join your sessions via their phone, avoid having too many activities that rely on these tools.

Teaching tips for participation tools Familiarise but don’t overwhelm If you intend to use these tools, hold a session where you familiarise learners with them. Make sure they know how to use those that you intend to use. If your learners aren’t very comfortable with the platform, be careful not to overwhelm them by showing all the tools on the first day. Begin with a simple one, like the chatbox. Then introduce others as you plan to use them.

Use the chat to ‘check in’ at the beginning of a session The chat is useful for people to ‘check in’ at the beginning of a session, especially if you have a large class. As people arrive, tell them to write ‘Hello’ in the chat, and say where they are joining from, e.g. ‘Hello from my kitchen table!’ or ‘Hello from sunny Milan’. To ensure that everyone is listening and ready, you can run a quick five-minute activity using the chat (see examples in this chapter).

Establish rules for use If you are using the chatbox a lot in your classes, you may find it useful to set some ground rules. Examples of this could be: always use respectful language, avoid writing things in ALL CAPS (which can seem like shouting) and avoid overusing emojis or punctuation marks (e.g. adding lots of question marks or exclamation marks such as ‘I don’t know!!!!!!!!!’). You may also want to specify or negotiate how much you will be correcting (or

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not correcting) language that is put into the chatbox. Keep in mind that it can be demotivating for students if you pick up on all their typos or slips in the chat. Unless you see something that you feel really needs to be corrected, consider saving such feedback for accuracy-based activities, such as dictations, or activities that practise a particular structure, e.g. ‘Chatbox games’ (see pages 39–44).

Get students to prepare things beforehand When asking students to report back on work they’ve done, ask them to write it first in another application (like a note-taking application, or a word processor document). Then, when the time comes to ask for feedback, they can paste their answer into the chatbox. This avoids a situation where everyone is waiting a long time for someone to finish typing something. This advice applies to you as a teacher, as well. Prepare any longer stretches of text you want to share via chat beforehand.

Learn and teach some common acronyms for chat While your platform will have a series of icons or emojis that cover basic things like clapping, go faster/slower and thumbs-up/thumbs-down, you may find it useful to teach some internet acronyms commonly used in chatrooms. Over the years, the number of acronyms used in text chat has probably gone down somewhat, but there are several common ones that persist. Your students may have already encountered or used these online, particularly those that are used in online gaming. Here are some useful ones for online classes. afk

bbs/brb ty sry nvm idk LOL/lol

= away from keyboard. Used when you need to absent yourself from the chat for a moment, or to explain why you didn’t respond. Example: sorry, was afk. = be back soon/be right back. Used when you are going to leave the chat for a moment. = thank you = sorry = never mind = I don’t know = laughing out loud. This is one of the most commonly used acronyms – no further explanation needed

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Participation tool activities Like video and audio activities, participation activities lend themselves to situations when the whole class is working together. This might involve either the teacher leading a session with questions and other stimuli or students asking and answering each other’s questions. In this section we look at three ways in which participation tools can be used: for monitoring student progress, for conducting competitions and quizzes, and for chatbox games. These are simple activities to monitor progress and get feedback on how students are responding to an activity. Are you speaking too quickly, for example? Have some students already finished an exercise you have set them, while others are still working?

Finished! Aim:

To practise a grammar or vocabulary point

Topic: Any Time:

10 minutes+

Level: A1+ Language focus: Any Preparation: Prepare a written grammar or vocabulary exercise for your students. Be prepared to chat with the early finishers in the chatbox, or, if you want to set the early finishers another task, prepare a short amusing text. See below for ideas. Procedure: 1. Display the exercise on a shared screen. 2. Students do the exercise and signal that they have finished by using the hands-up button or by typing ‘Finished’ in the chatbox. 3. Chat with the early finishers using the chatbox, give them another task to do or simply suggest that they have a break away from the screen. 4. When everyone has finished, students peer-check their answers using video-chat or messaging. Finally, go through the exercise. Extension: Here are some ideas for tasks for early finishers: ■ Simply chat informally in the chatbox.

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■ Find some question-and-answer jokes. You can either tell these to all the

finishers on chatbox or send individuals a message with a joke for them to tell others. ■ The British Council has a selection of short stories written specially for

English learners on both its general English and its Learn English Kids websites. They also have Learn English videos. You can either choose one for the early finishers to read or send them the link and let them choose. ■ Find a song for them to listen to. ■ Play a game in the chatbox; for example, ask them to look around the room

or out of the window and list all the things they can see beginning with T. The winner gets to choose the next letter. Or ask them to go out or look out of the window and find: something that’s moving, something that’s still, something noisy, something quiet, something big, something small. They then come back and report by typing their answers into the chatbox.

Faster/Slower Aim:

To practise listening

Topic: Any Time:

30 minutes+

Level: A2+ Language focus: Any Preparation:

Find a text to dictate to the students.

Procedure: 1. Tell the students you are going to give them a short dictation. 2. Read the text quite quickly and quietly. The students will probably call out that you’re going too fast. Stop the dictation. 3. Explain that you will start again, but this time they can control the speed and volume. To do this, they must use the faster/slower and the louder/ quieter buttons. 4. Begin the dictation again, this time at a regular speed. Monitor how the majority of students are responding and adjust the volume of your voice and your speed of delivery accordingly. 5. Follow up by asking a student to read back the text. This time, they must adjust according to your requests.

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Competitions, questions and quizzes These activities use participation tools such as the thumbs-up button to conduct questioning activities such as polls or quizzes. The teacher may begin the activity by asking the questions, but later on the students can both ask and answer the questions. The activities can be used at a variety of levels and to practise a variety of structures and vocabulary.

Simple poll Aim: To ask and answer questions Topic:

Any, depending on topic of lesson

Time:

30 minutes+

Level: A1+ Language focus: yes/no and wh- questions (tenses used depend on topic chosen) Preparation: Prepare a poll consisting of a number of yes/no questions on the topic of your lesson, for example, holidays, leisure, family, childhood, etc. Use the example on page 35 for guidance. Prepare follow-up questions to ask, too. For example, if your poll question was Do you come from a big family?, you could ask: How many people live in your house? or How many brothers and sisters have you got? Procedure: 1. Tell students you are going to conduct a poll with questions about the topic of the lesson (see the example below). They should reply by clicking the thumbs-up or thumbs-down button. 2. Begin with the first question on your poll. The students should click the thumbs-up button to answer ‘yes’ and the thumbs-down button to answer ‘no’. 3. Ask individual students follow-up questions, as in the example above. 4. Students can reply by turning on their audio and speaking, or by typing their answer into the chatbox.

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Example poll (practising the present simple) Leisure time Do you have a hobby? Do you play a sport? Do you go clubbing? Do you belong to any groups, for example a book club, a choir? Do you eat out often? Do you watch TV every night? Do you go to the cinema often? Do you like reading? Do you go to concerts? Do you exercise every day? Follow-up questions What are your hobbies? What sport do you play? How often do you go clubbing? What groups do you belong to? How often do you eat out? What kind of food do you like? What’s your favourite TV programme? Who is your favourite film star? What are you reading at the moment? What kind of music do you like? What kind of exercise do you do?

Extension: Students make their own polls, either individually or in groups. They can use breakout rooms for this (see Chapter 4, pages 65–82). The polls can then be conducted with the whole class as above or in large groups in breakout rooms.

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How many likes can you get? Aim:

To revise a recently-taught structure

Topic:

Personal information

Time:

10 minutes+

Level: A1+ Language focus: Any Preparation: Prepare a sentence about yourself using a structure you have taught recently and want to revise. Procedure: 1. Tell students they are going to revise a structure (e.g. the past simple). 2. Tell them your sentence, e.g. I didn’t go out last Sunday night. Ask them if it is true for them. They should click the thumbs-up button if it is true for them. 3. Students write their own similar sentence using the structure. They should try and think of a sentence that will be true for many people in the group. 4. Students take turns reading out their sentence. Everyone else clicks the thumbs-up button if their sentence is also true for them. Who can get the most thumbs-up? Variations: ■ This activity can be used to practise a variety of structures, e.g. present continuous, present simple, present perfect, going to, conditionals or modals. ■ Get the student who has read their sentence to ask a follow-up question

once their classmates have clicked the thumbs-up button. This could be a yes/no question, e.g. Did you watch TV?, with the students answering by clicking the thumbs-up or thumbs-down button, or it could be in the form of a wh- question, e.g. What did you do?, with the students answering using the chatbox. ■ Play this as a version of the Never have I ever… game. One student

begins by saying something they have never done, for example, Never have I ever (or I have never ever…) travelled outside the country. Everyone who has done that thing (in this case, travelled outside the country) puts up a thumbs-up or a smiley emoji.

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Would I lie to you? Aim:

To revise a recently-taught structure

Topic:

Personal information

Time:

15 minutes+

Level: A1+ Language focus: Any Preparation: Prepare three sentences about yourself using a structure you have taught recently and want to revise. Two sentences should be true and one should be false. For example, I have ridden a camel, I have never been to Madagascar, I have eaten snails. Procedure: 1. Explain to the students that you are going to tell them three things about yourself: two will be true and one will be false. 2. Say your three sentences. 3. Tell them you are going to read them again with a pause after each one. They should click on the thumbs-up button if they think the sentence is true and the thumbs-down button if they think it is false. 4. Tell them the correct answer. 5. Students write two false sentences and one true sentence about themselves. They must use the structure the class is practising. 6. Nominate students one at a time to read out their sentences. They should read out all three sentences together, then repeat them, pausing after each one for their classmates to click on the thumbs-up or thumbs-down buttons.

Secret identity Aim:

To practise questions

Topic:

Personal information, jobs, life achievements, nationality

Time:

30 minutes+

Level: A2+ Language focus:  y  es/no questions (mainly using be, have, present simple, past simple)

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Preparation: Prepare the names of some famous people. Their identities and achievements should be well known to the students. They can be living now (to practise mainly present tenses) or historical (to practise past tenses). Procedure: 1. Tell the students that you are going to send one of them the name of a famous person. 2. Private message one student with the name of the famous person. That student turns off their camera. 3. Students have to guess the identity of the famous person by asking yes/ no questions. For example, they could ask: Are you living now? Are you a film actor? The student with the name of the person can only reply using the thumbs-up or thumbs-down button. 4. When a student thinks they have guessed, they can suggest a name: Are you …? Variation: As the student is answering the questions, they are looking for a photo of the person whose identity they have. When they turn their camera back on, they show that photo by holding it up, or by holding up their phone.

Call My Bluff Aim:

To practise relative clauses in definitions

Topic:

defining words

Time:

30 minutes+

Level: B1+ Language focus: Relative clauses Preparation: Prepare a list of words you are sure your students won’t know. These should include people (e.g. entomologist, hack, jockey), places (e.g. bunker, lobby, cellar) and things (e.g. whisk, hoe, ladle). Procedure: 1. Send each student one of your prepared words via private message. Tell them to write it in big letters on a piece of paper.

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2. Students look up the meaning of the word and write a definition using who /which/where (e.g. A jockey is a person who rides a horse in a race.). They should also invent three alternative false definitions (e.g. A jockey is a piece of kitchen equipment which is used to beat eggs. / A jockey is a cupboard where sheets and towels are kept, etc.). 3. Nominate one student to begin. They hold up their word and give their four definitions, one after the other. Then they repeat the definitions one at a time. The other students vote for the definition they think is correct by using the thumbs-up button. 4. Move on to the next student.

Chatbox games These activities all use the chatbox feature. After initial set-up and organisation by the teacher, the students can run the activity and make all contributions themselves. Since contributions are typed, there will be a record of what was said at the end. This is valuable material for error correction and feedback: monitor what is being typed and at the end of the activity, draw attention to any errors and ask the students to self-correct.

Cumulative story Aim:

To write a cumulative story

Topic: Any Time:

30 minutes+

Level: A2+ Language focus: Narrative tenses Preparation: Prepare the first sentence of a story, e.g. It was a cold Friday morning in December. Procedure: 1. Tell the students that you are all going write a story together in the chatbox. Assign each student a number. 2. Type the first sentence of the story into the chatbox. 3. Ask Student 1 to type the next sentence, e.g. Maria was shivering as she waited for the bus.

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4. Student 2 goes on with the next line, e.g. A man and a woman joined the queue behind Maria. 5. Continue until the story is finished. Variation: Give the students the first line and the last line of the story, e.g. It was a cold Friday morning in December …………….. ……………….. The man hadn’t stolen her money. It had been in her pocket the whole time! The students build a narrative that takes the reader from the first line to the final outcome.

Don’t finish the word Aim:

Vocabulary practice and spelling

Topic: Any Time:

10 minutes+

Level: B1+ Language focus: Any Preparation: None Procedure: 1. Begin by typing a letter in the chatbox, e.g. b. 2. Nominate a student and tell them to type your letter followed by another, e.g. bo. It should be a letter that can follow the first letter to create a word (e.g. ba, be, bo, br, but not bt or bx) 3. Nominate another student to do the same. They must try to avoid completing a word. So, for example, they could type bor. This is allowed as it is the start of a word, e.g. boring or borrow. However, if they type boa (thinking of boastful), they are ‘out’ as boa is also a word. 4. Students try to keep going as long as possible. The round ends when a student completes a word, or gives an impossible combination of letters. 5. The student who finished the last round begins the next round.

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What’s missing? Aim:

To practise food vocabulary and talk about recipes

Topic: Any Time:

30 minutes+

Level: A1+ Language focus:  f ood vocabulary, yes/no questions (mainly using be, have, need and present continuous) Preparation: None Procedure: 1. Ask students to think of a recipe and to write down all the ingredients needed except one (e.g. eggs, butter, sugar, chocolate but not flour). 2. Give each student a number. Student 1 types their ingredients in the chatbox. 3. The others try to guess the recipe and identify the missing ingredients, e.g. Are you making chocolate sauce? Are you making soufflé? Are you making a chocolate cake? Do you need milk? Do you need flour? etc. 4. When they have guessed correctly, it is the next student’s turn. Variation: This game can be played with other lexical sets, e.g. the sports equipment you need to play a particular sport, the people and things you find in particular parts of a city.

Student-generated gap-fill Aim:

To revise structures or vocabulary

Topic: Any Time:

10 minutes+

Level: A1+ Language focus:  V  erbs or lexical sets that the students have recently learned Preparation: Prepare a list of the vocabulary or verbs you want to practise (e.g. wrote, went, had, saw, ate).

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Procedure: 1. Send one word to each student. 2. Students prepare a sentence using that word, but put a gap where the word should be, e.g. I _____ an email to my penfriend today. 3. Nominate a student. They paste their gapped sentence into the chatbox. 4. The other students type or call out words to fill the gap. The student tells them if they are right or wrong. 5. Continue until everyone has shown their gap-fill sentence. 6. Ask students how many of the original sentences they can remember. 7. Nominate students to call out any sentences they remember. Variation: This can be used as a quick revision activity for any structures or vocabulary you have taught recently and want to revise.

The longest sentence Aim:

To write a complex sentence

Topic: Any Time:

10 minutes+

Level: A1+ Language focus: Any Preparation: None Procedure: 1. Begin by typing a word, e.g. The in the chatbox. Tell students that they are going to try and make a very long sentence. 2. Nominate a student to type your word followed by another, e.g. The cat … 3. Nominate another student to do the same, e.g. The cat sat ... 4. Keep going until a student decides to finish the sentence. Variation: You can focus this activity on practising specific vocabulary or grammar points by specifying words that must be included. Put a list of the words you

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want students to use on a slide and share it with them. Begin a sentence for the students to continue, using those words. Here are some examples: ■ A set of prepositions: on, above, by, next to, under, opposite, between, in

front of, behind, e.g. The cat sat … (on a cushion by the window ….). ■ A lexical set that the students have learned recently, e.g.

furniture: chair, table, sofa, TV, cupboard, bookcase, etc. family members: mother, father, daughter, son, sister, brother, etc. landscape features: hill, wood, path, river, etc. ■ A set of verbs: went, saw, visited, ate, drank, walked, bought, e.g. Last

summer I visited …. ■ A set of conjunctions: and, but, so, then, when, although, in order to, etc.

Idiom match Aim:

To introduce students to English idioms

Topic: English idioms Time:

15 minutes+

Level: B1+ Language focus: Present simple, imperatives Preparation: Prepare a number of idioms and work out where to ‘cut them in half ’. See the examples on page 44 as a guide. Type them out so that you can cut and paste them and send them to students. Procedure: 1. Message each student with half an idiom (both first and second halves) and give each student a number. Use the list of idioms on page 44 or create your own. You can make the game a bit easier by only numbering the students who have the first halves of idioms. 2. Tell them that they are going to play a game to find the missing half of their idiom. 3. Student 1 posts their half idiom in the chatbox, e.g. People in glass houses ….

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4. The student with the matching ending ... shouldn’t throw stones can then post the ending. 5. Students discuss the meaning of the idiom. 6. Student 2 posts their half-idiom, and so on. Idioms People in glass houses.......................... A stitch in time........................................ Don’t cross your bridges....................... A bird in the hand.................................. A bad workman...................................... Don’t count your chickens..................... Don’t put all your eggs.......................... The early bird.......................................... The grass is always greener.................. Two heads...............................................

.........................shouldn’t throw stones. ..............................................saves nine. ................... before you come to them. .....................is worth two in the bush. ........................always blames his tools. ................................. before they hatch. ........................................ in one basket. ................................. catches the worm. .............. on the other side of the fence. .............................. are better than one.

Variation: Ask the person with the matching ending to delay posting while everyone else tries to guess the other half of the idiom. This gives everyone something to do and leads to more discussion. However, depending on your class, some students may find this difficult. You can follow up with a discussion on other countries’ idioms.

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Professional development Questions for reflection ■ Try at least one Q&A/quiz activity using participation buttons and one

chatbox activity. Which did you like best? Which did the students like best? Which did you feel was more successful in generating language? ■ How can you encourage all students to make contributions in the chatbox? What are the benefits and disadvantages of a) an unstructured approach: letting all students contribute at any time, and b) a strictly structured approach, for example, giving each student a number so that they all contribute in order?

Things to try ■ Try to use the tools for monitoring progress and student reaction on a

regular basis. Add some more activities to occupy early finishers. ■ Try using student contributions in the chatbox for error correction and feedback. For example, copy and paste errors that students make into a document. Later in the class, share the (unidentified) errors and ask students to self-correct.

Things to share ■ Share ideas for early finishers with colleagues. Try to build a communal

bank of activities for early finishers. ■ Work with a colleague. Choose an activity to try out. After you have both tried it, meet to discuss how it went. What worked well? What would you change if you did it again?

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3. Shared screen The tools involved Almost all live chat platforms allow you to share what is on your screen with others. This is usually indicated by a button that says ‘Share screen’. The ‘share screen’ function is most often used to share a slide presentation or a document. You can also share webpages or your whole desktop, which may be useful for showing learners how to do something on their computer. Additionally, some platforms allow you to connect and share another device, such as a tablet screen. Finally, there is often a shared whiteboard option, which allows all participants to write or draw on the same blank space.

Technical tips for using shared screen Use large font and big images on slides This is usually good practice anyway, but even more so if your learners are attending your online class using a mobile device with a small screen. Make sure you don’t have too much text on your slides, or lots of little images. If it is absolutely necessary, then you may need to specify to learners that they need to use a device with a screen big enough for them to read what you are sharing.

Check your animations work first If you are making a presentation with slides, check any animations beforehand while sharing your screen. Slide animations (such as appearing or disappearing text or images) do not always work on all platforms. Even if they do work, more complex animations might not. It’s probably best, therefore, to keep animations quite simple and not overuse them.

Check you can share audio for videos or web browsing If you are using video or audio in a presentation or shared web browsing, make sure that the participants can hear it, too. You should check this beforehand. If it’s not working, look for an option that says ‘Share computer’s audio’ or something similar in your platform’s settings.

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Whiteboard tools are clumsy but can be fun The shared whiteboard feature is common to almost all platforms. One problem people find with them is that the tools provided for drawing or typing onto the shared space can be a bit clumsy, especially if more than one person is trying to put something on the board at the same time. Another issue is that it’s slower to put something on the shared whiteboard than it is to type the same thing on a shared document. But this ‘clumsiness’ can make for fun activities, such as collaborative drawings or guessing games.

Teaching tips for shared screen Use shared screen to explain other aspects of your course Many online courses use a learning management system like Moodle or a Google group/class. If this is the case for you, a live session where you share your screen is an ideal way to introduce them to it, and to make sure everyone understands how to get in and what to do.

Turn your video off during a shared screen session When you are sharing your screen, your video is likely to remain on. There may be times, though, when it’s better to turn it off. For example, if you are asking students to study a large image, turning your video off will make the picture the main point of interest. The same goes for shared web browsing or videos. If you want to say something important, turn your video back on again to bring the attention back to you.

Teach students how to share their screen and let them do it Of course, it doesn’t always have to be the teacher sharing their screen. Allowing students to share their screen is the online lesson equivalent of inviting someone to come up to the front of the class. This can be useful for activities such as presentations or show-and-tell.

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Use the whiteboard to let students edit existing images While the whiteboard tools are often a bit tricky or clumsy for doing full drawings, they can be very effective for making simple marks. Uploading an image to the whiteboard and getting students to mark it can be a fun, collaborative task. This works well for activities like marking places on a map, and annotating images with lots of things happening in them.

Create a shared document that everyone can write on Instead of asking people to write answers or words on the whiteboard, create a shared document (for example, a Google doc) and give everyone the link. Collaborative writing tasks or feedback can be written on this document. Then show the document using your ‘share screen’ feature to go over what you or the others have written.

Shared-screen activities Sharing your screen is most commonly used for presentations and explanations of language points (such as grammar), for reading or listening comprehension questions, for feedback and for error correction. In other words, it’s a tool that lends itself particularly well to teacher-fronted activities. In this section we will look at how the shared screen can be used to set up more interactive communicative activities. These will be wholeclass communicative activities: it is not until we move to breakout rooms or combining platforms that information gap and small-group activities can be tried. Nevertheless, engaging and communicative activities can be set up using shared screen tools. One thing the shared screen allows you to do very easily is to share images with the students and use image interaction. These can be used to generate a variety of communicative activities, such as dictation, Q&A practice, vocabulary recall or description.

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Picture dictation Aim:

To practise describing pictures

Topic:

The natural world

Time:

10 minutes

Level: A1 Language focus: Animals and nature, prepositions of place Preparation: Find or create a picture which has a lot of different elements in it, e.g. a river, a mountain, a tree, a lion or a giraffe. Procedure: 1. Students take a piece of paper. Without showing them, describe the picture you have made. Students listen and draw the picture. 2. When you have finished describing the picture, students turn on their cameras and show their pictures. 3. Show them your picture for them to compare with theirs. Ask them to make comparisons, e.g. ‘Your giraffe is nearer the river than mine.’ ‘My lion is at the top of the mountain but yours is halfway up.’ 4. Students take another piece of paper and make a different drawing. They should include four of the items from the original drawing, but not in the same place. 5. Put students into breakout rooms in pairs. Each student now describes their second drawing to their partner. They then compare with the original. Variation: Share a picture with half of the class. The students who can see the picture take turns calling out things to draw. Give them numbers to assign the order. The other students draw the items. At the end, students hold up their pictures. Share the screen with everyone to compare the images they have drawn with the original picture.

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Pet personalities Aim:

To practise describing personalities and habits

Topic:

Pets

Time:

10 minutes

Level: A2+ Language focus:

 djectives of personality (grumpy, friendly, shy, etc.), A present simple questions for habits and routines

Preparation: If you have a pet, find a picture of it to share. If you don’t have a pet, find a picture of an animal that could be your pet. Think of which adjective in Step 1 describes its personality the best. If a different adjective is more suitable, add it to the list. Procedure: 1. Dictate or display a list of adjectives of personality that could apply to pets, e.g. grumpy, friendly, shy, clever, lazy, nervous, enthusiastic. Make sure students understand what they mean. 2. Share the picture of your pet (real or imaginary) and tell the students its name. 3. Tell students they need to ask you questions about the pet. The objective is for them to guess its personality. Example questions could be: Does he/ she sleep a lot? Is he/she nice to visitors? etc. 4. Answer the students’ questions. Make sure everyone has asked at least one question before they guess the adjective. Extension: Students share pictures of their pets for others to guess the personality. They can do this either by holding up a picture so that others can see it or by sending the picture so that the teacher can put it up on the screen.

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How many did you see? Aim:

To teach a vocabulary set

Topic:

House and home

Time:

5 minutes

Level: A1+ Language focus: Words for things in the kitchen (fridge, oven, pot, etc.) Preparation: Find photos or clip art of 10–12 items of vocabulary you want to teach (here, it’s things in the kitchen). Put all of these on a single slide. Then ‘animate’ the images so that they appear and disappear one at a time. If you aren’t sure how to do this, put each picture on a separate slide so that you can ‘click through’ them all quickly. Procedure: 1. Tell the students the vocabulary topic you have chosen to teach. Ask them to call out or type into the chatbox words from that topic. Respond, correcting any spelling errors that come up. 2. Tell students that they are going to see a series of images relating to that topic. They must try to remember all the images they see. Explain that the images are going to go quickly, so they won’t have time to write them down. 3. Show the images quickly. If you’ve animated them on a single slide, click through the animations. If they are on separate slides, click through the slides. Do this quite quickly. 4. Students take a moment to try and write down, from memory, all the images they saw. 5. Play the slides again quickly for students to check their answers. Then go through them once more, eliciting each of the words for the pictures. Variation: This can be done with any lexical set. For future sets, you could nominate a student to create the slide (or slides) and test the rest of the class, including you!

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How do I do this? Aim:

To practise giving instructions

Topic:

Websites

Time:

5 minutes

Level: A2+ Language focus: Imperatives, computer vocabulary (type, write, click, select, etc.) Preparation: Select a website that your students are familiar with and that requires registration or is a bit complicated to navigate (see examples below). Procedure: 1. Explain that you want your students to help you do something online. They will have to take turns giving you instructions. 2. Share your screen and open a web browser. Give the name of the website or service, e.g. Instagram. Ask students what to do first, for example: ‘Type www.instagram.com into the address bar’. As they give you instructions, make corrections or provide words as needed. Make a note of the verbs you give them as you go (e.g. click, sign up, enter, type, select). 3. Follow the instructions, asking them at each step to tell you exactly what you are doing. For the Instagram example, your questions could be: ‘OK, I don’t have an account. What do I do?’ ‘Where do I click?’ ‘What do I do now?’ ‘What information do I write here?’ 4. Once you have signed up, keep asking how things work (e.g. how to upload your first picture). 5. At the end, go back to the welcome screen for the website. Remind the students of the verbs you provided them with during the activity (for example, by reposting them in the chatbox). They write out the instructions they just gave you on how to sign up for the website. Variation: This can work with any site that requires free registration and that you are happy to sign up for. Alternatively, you could ask students to guide you around a site like Wikipedia or YouTube.

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Puzzles and competitions Tools highlighted in earlier sections of this book have allowed competitions and puzzles. The shared screen tool allows the possibility of more verbal collaborative puzzles like bingo, crosswords and wordsearches.

Bingo Aim:

To learn furniture vocabulary

Topic:

Home

Time:

10 minutes

Level: A1 Language focus: Furniture Preparation: Prepare a slide to share with your students. It must have several images of furniture on it, for example, a sofa, an armchair, a chair, washing machine, a table, a desk, a bookcase, a bed, a cupboard, an oven, a TV, a sink, a coffee table, a wardrobe. You can find ready-made sets of images online, but be aware that these may include items you have not taught. Procedure: 1. Display the slide with the pictures on a shared screen. Go over all the words and make sure students understand how to say them. 2. Each student chooses six items and draws rough sketches of them on a 3 x 3 grid on a piece of paper. Do a demonstration with at least one of the pictures. This will be their ‘bingo card’. 3. Tell the students that you are going to call out the names of items. If they have one of the items on their card, they can cross it out. When they have crossed out all six items, they should shout BINGO! 4. When the students are ready, call out the items in random order. Don’t call them out in the order in which they appear on the original visual. 5. When a student hears an item that is on their BINGO card, they cross it off. 6. The first student to cross all six items off on their chart shouts BINGO! This student shows their bingo card to everyone else and says the words for the items they have.

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Variations: ■ Use this game with any lexical set that is easy to draw, e.g. animals, clothes or geographical features. ■ Play bingo with certain groups of numbers, for example, 1–20, or

numbers that are frequently misheard, such as 13/30, 14/40, 15/50, and so on, making it into the classic bingo activity. ■ Instead of calling out the words yourself, assign a student to call them

out. Then you can participate as a player yourself.

Collaborative wordsearch Aim:

To review spelling and vocabulary

Topic: Transport Time:

10 minutes

Level: A1+ Language focus: Transport vocabulary (car, motorcycle, bus, plane, etc.) Preparation: Make a list of 8–12 words that you wish to review (in this case, transport words). Use these to create a wordsearch puzzle. There are a few websites that allow you to do this. Our favourite is Puzzlemaker but a search for ‘online wordsearch maker’ should give other options. Save your wordsearch puzzle as an image on a document that you can share with your students. Procedure: 1. Share your screen and display your wordsearch. Tell students the topic area of the wordsearch (e.g. transport). Tell them how many words are in the wordsearch. 2. Show students how they can use the ‘annotate’ tools to draw on the image you have shared. Give an example by circling one of the words in your wordsearch. 3. Now tell the students it’s their turn. They must look at the wordsearch, and when they see a word they call out ‘Got one!’ Tell them to circle the word they find.

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4. Continue until all the words have been found. Try to ensure that everyone gets a turn. You could specify that no student can call out two words in a row. 5. At the end, stop sharing the wordsearch. Ask students to write down from memory all the words that were in the wordsearch. Variations: ■ Create wordsearches to practise any vocabulary set of words. ■ Nominate one student as the ‘drawer’. The others tell the drawer where the

words are (e.g. ‘It’s in the top right-hand corner; no, in the second row...’)

Dialogue practice The shared screen means that you can post dialogue and sentence completion activities such as gap-fills. Here are some ideas with a more creative slant on these traditional activities.

Same words, different place Aim:

To practise short conversations in different contexts

Topic:

Travel

Time:

10 minutes

Level: A1 Language focus: Asking for something Preparation: Prepare a series of four slides to share with your students. Slide 1 – dialogue (see below) Slide 2 – image of a street Slide 3 – image of the inside of a department store Slide 4 – image of an airport Procedure: 1. Share the following gapped dialogue with the students (Slide 1 on page 57):

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A: Excuse me, do you have a minute? B: Yes, sure. How can I help you? A: Thanks. I’m looking for _____________ (a place or thing) B: What? A: _____________ (give details) B: Ah, yes. I know it. It’s _____________ (give directions)

2. Show Slide 2, the image of a street. Go back to the first slide and elicit what could go in the gaps (e.g. library; next to the supermarket, on the corner, etc). Students practise the dialogue a couple of times with the original dialogue still on the screen as support. 3. Nominate two students to perform the dialogue. This time, display the slide of the street (Slide 2). The students should perform the dialogue from memory. 4. Show Slide 3 (the department store). Tell students they are going to do the same dialogue, but they will need to put different words in the gaps so they are more suitable for the department store (e.g. men’s shoes; next to the sports department). Go back to the initial dialogue and elicit sample answers. 5. Repeat Stage 3 but with the image of the department store in the background. 6. Repeat Stages 3–5 with Slide 4 (the airport). Make sure every student gets a chance to practise the dialogue in at least one of the places on your slides. Variations: ■ Use this activity with pictures of other places, e.g. a shopping mall, a police station, the entrance to a train station or a library. ■ Change the dialogue to practise other simple conversations that can take

place in different places (e.g. asking permission, asking for advice, telling someone the rules).

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What are they saying? Aim:

To write a dialogue

Topic: Any Time:

30+ minutes

Level: A1+ Language focus: Any Preparation: Find a picture of two people talking. Depending on your students’ level and what language you want to practise, this can be very general or more specific, e.g. two people meeting for first time at a party, or an interview. Procedure: 1. Display the picture on the shared screen. Ask students a few questions to lead in: Where are the people? Do they know each other? What do you think they are talking about? 2. Ask the students to help you write a dialogue between the two people. Elicit how the dialogue might begin. Students type their ideas in the chatbox. Help with the language and make corrections as you go. Once you’ve all agreed on the beginning, elicit the next line of dialogue. 3. As each line of dialogue is provided, type them up in a separate document or next to the picture itself. (If you are sharing the picture on a slide, go into the ‘Edit slide’ mode so you can add text.) 4. When the dialogue is finished (three or four turns should be enough), nominate two students to practise it. 5. Give students some time to memorise the dialogue. Then remove or obscure it and ask two students to try saying it again from memory. Variation: ■ As in ‘Same words, different place’ above, you can choose scenes to practise specific or more general language, e.g. invitations, shopping, introductions, etc. ■ To practise introductions, give each student a number. Student 1 begins

with the first line of the dialogue, e.g. Hi, I’m Jo, and types it into the chatbox. Student 2 continues, typing: Hi, Jo! My name’s Alice, and so on.

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Half dialogues Aim:

To complete a dialogue

Topic: Any Time:

20–30 minutes

Level: A1+ Language focus: Any Preparation: Prepare one side of a dialogue to display on the shared screen to practise functional language the students have learned recently. Procedure: 1. Post the incomplete dialogue, for example: A: Hey, you look excited! B: Yes, I’ve just booked our summer holiday! A: Where are you going! B: ……………………………………. A: Wow! Who are you going with? B: ……………………………………. A: And when is that? B: ……………………………………. A: What are you planning to do there? B: ……………………………………. 2. Students complete the dialogue by typing ideas for the missing lines into the chatbox. Help them by acknowledging contributions, and choosing one for each missing line, making or eliciting any necessary corrections. Try not to choose from the same contributors each time, so that as many people as possible can see their work in the final dialogue. Put the students’ contributions into the dialogue so everyone can see. 3. Nominate students to perform the dialogue once it is completed. 4. Students vote for the most exciting/unusual holiday. Variation: The dialogue can be adapted to any situation that students have recently learned, e.g. shopping or booking a hotel.

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Creative writing The shared screen also allows for plenty of creative writing possibilities. Cues and images posted on the shared screen can stimulate students to write creatively. But creative writing doesn’t necessarily mean giving a totally open-ended task. Here we suggest some writing tasks which engage students’ creativity while practising specific language.

Story link-up Aim: To create a story together Topic: Stories Time:

10 minutes

Level: A2+ Language focus: Past tenses Preparation: Find a series of images of items that can form part of the story. For example: an image of a boarding pass for a flight, a ring, a box, a restaurant. Put each image on a different slide to create a slideshow. Procedure: 1. Explain that today the students are going to create a story together orally. The story will be based on various ‘clues’, which you will display on slides. 2. Share your screen and show the first clue (for example, a boarding pass). Ask a student to use the clue to create a sentence that forms the beginning of a story, for example: Tom flew to Madrid. 3. Make a note of the sentence that was called out. Then display the second clue and repeat step 2. The second item should link to the first so that a story begins to develop. Make a note of each of the sentences, and correct as you go, for example: a. boarding pass: Tom flew to Madrid. b. ring: He bought a ring for his girlfriend. c. box: He put the ring into a little box. d. restaurant: They met at a restaurant. Tom was going to propose.

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4. Once you’ve shown all the pictures and elicited a sentence for each one, go back to the first slide. Nominate a student and ask them to retell the story from memory, slide by slide. 5. For homework, students write the story and invent an ending. Extension: ■ Students tell the same story from the perspective of a different person in the story. ■ Students send you images that can form clues for the next time you do

this activity. Use these images in a new slideshow.

Art thoughts Aim:

To write an interior monologue for various portraits

Topic: Art Time:

15–30 minutes

Level: A2+ Language focus: Any Preparation: Find online 8–10 artworks: portraits of people who look as if they are thinking hard. Make these into a collage that you can show in one screen. Number the artworks. You can also find online various examples of artworks that have been altered to show the character’s thoughts, e.g. the ‘classicaldamn’ account on Instagram. Procedure: 1. Show examples from the website on the shared screen. 2. Display the collage of artworks. 3. Students choose one artwork and imagine the thoughts of the people in it. They should post their ideas in the chatbox without mentioning which artwork they are referring to. 4. Students read each other’s ideas and guess the artwork by posting the number. 5. Students say which artwork they were posting about. Extension: Students post alternative thoughts or replies to the ones posted.

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Haiku quiz Aim:

To write a haiku about a place

Topic:

Place description

Time:

15–30 minutes

Level: A2+ Language focus: Place description Preparation: Find several pictures of evocative country scenes, e.g. a winding road with autumn leaves, snowy hilltops with a sunset, etc. Number them. Procedure: 1. Display the numbered pictures on the shared screen. 2. Introduce the haiku form, that is, three lines: short line, longer line, short line. Give an example, such as this famous one by Basho: An ancient pond Suddenly a frog leaps in Splash of water Explain that they are going to try and create a memorable image in just three lines. 3. Students look at the images, choose one and create a haiku. 4. They post the haiku in the chatbox. The others read it and decide which picture it refers to. Variation: ■ Give students a framework to help them write the haiku. For example: What can you see? What is happening? What can you hear? What is the effect? ■ To practise different vocabulary, post town scenes, pictures of rooms,

pictures of scenes of people, etc.

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Round-the-world trip Aim:

To write couplets about a travel experience

Topic:

Travel experiences

Time:

30–40 minutes

Level: A2+ Language focus: Past simple Preparation: Find some pictures to illustrate the rhymes, e.g. people dancing in France, rain in Spain, police in Greece, a man in Japan, a hill in Brazil, a liner in China, someone crying in Korea, hills in Chile. Procedure: 1. Tell the students they have been on a round-the-world trip and are writing a diary of what happened in each country. The rule is that they have to write two lines for each country and the lines have to rhyme. They shouldn’t worry as you will provide the rhymes! 2. Provide two pictures on the screen: a picture that is recognisably France (e.g. the Eiffel Tower) and two people dancing. Elicit the words France and dance. 3. Ask students to use these words to write two rhyming lines about what happened on their visit to France; for example: When I went to France I learned to dance. 4. Then put up the following pairs of rhyming words. Spain, rain; Brazil, hill; China, liner; Korea, tear; Berlin, violin; Japan, man; Greece, police; Seoul, hole; Chile, hilly; Norway, doorway. 5. Students write an account of their round-the-world trip in rhyming couplets. They can post these in chat box for others to read.

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Professional development Questions for reflection ■ How do shared screen activities increase teaching options for you in your

particular teaching situation? ■ What technical and teaching tips have you found most useful? ■ How many of your students are accessing your online course via mobile and

small screens? How will this affect what you share with them in live sessions?

Things to try ■ Look at a website that you want students to use. Plan a session where you

will share your screen and walk through the steps on how to use the website. ■ Try something that challenges you and your students, for example a creative writing activity. How did students react? What did they produce? Were there any surprises? ■ Try one activity from each section. Which did you and your students enjoy most? ■ Look at the Extensions/Variations at the end of each activity. Choose one way of adapting an activity to suit your students or tie into your syllabus and try it out.

Things to share ■ Record a session where you are sharing your screen and explaining how to

use a particular website or tool. You may want to do this on your own first. Share it with your colleagues and/or students. ■ Prepare a short presentation on how to use shared screen and how it increases your options for online activities. Share it with colleagues.

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4. Breakout rooms The tools involved A breakout room is a ‘sub-room’ or private room that can be created within a video conferencing platform. It allows the moderator to put people into groups in separate rooms within the main room, and then bring them back again. Most video conferencing platforms have, or are developing, breakout room possibilities. Once inside the breakout room, participants can see and hear each other just as they can in the main room and can share their screen.

Technical tips for using breakout rooms Remind students to ‘join’ the breakout room On certain platforms, once you have created the breakout room, the students still need to click on a button to ‘join’ it. Make sure you tell them to do this, so that they don’t assume they will automatically go there once you have activated the breakout rooms.

Participants may need to turn audio and or video on again In some platforms, when students go into the breakout rooms they might need to turn on their audio and/or video again. Ask them to make sure they can be heard by their colleagues in the breakout room once the activity starts.

Watch out for people who lose connection Sometimes, people will lose their internet connection while they are in a breakout room. When their connection is restored they will return to the main room and not their breakout room. Keep an eye out for this happening so you can put them back into their proper breakout room.

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Share material for the breakout room before students go in there Sometimes you will want your students to refer to material while they are in the breakout room. At the time of writing, it’s not possible to easily screenshare from your screen into all the breakout rooms. To get around this, share any relevant material with the learners before they go into breakout rooms. This could be via a link to an online folder (for example in Google Drive or Dropbox) or by showing the whole group the material first and asking them to take a photo of it before they go into their breakout rooms.

Teaching tips for breakout rooms Plan the times you want students to use breakout rooms Putting students into breakout rooms to do pairwork isn’t as easy or quick as doing it in the face-to-face classroom, at least at the beginning. When you plan your lesson, decide which parts of the session will take place in breakout rooms. Prepare the instructions for these activities so that you can display them to students before they go into breakout rooms. If you are just starting to use breakout rooms, restrict yourself to using them only once or twice per class (and maybe allotting more time to them).

Make the task specific When you assign a task in a breakout room, give a specific outcome for students to reach. This is good practice in general, but in breakout rooms, where the teacher isn’t immediately visible, it becomes even more important. Instead of vague tasks like ‘Discuss the article’ or ‘Talk about your favourite activities’, use specific tasks such as ‘Make five sentences about things you found interesting or new in the article’ or ‘Make a list of four activities you enjoy doing, and two you don’t enjoy doing’.

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Ask students to prepare to report back If you assign a specific task in the breakout room, it becomes easier to ask students to report back. You can ask them to make notes of what they said so they can paste them into the chatbox in the main room after the activity. Follow up any breakout room activity with some feedback, asking students to report back on what they did.

Circulate and monitor During the breakout room phase, you can enter any breakout room to monitor the activity. Inform students beforehand that you will be doing this, and that you’ll be listening to them do the activity. It’s at this point that you might want to have a pen and notepad ready so you can take notes of good language or errors to give feedback on, just as you would in a face-to-face pairwork or groupwork oral activity.

Breakout room activities The use of breakout rooms greatly extends the possibilities available to you as a language teacher, allowing you to divide students into pairs and small groups instead of being restricted to whole-class interaction. This leads to a much higher rate of student-to-student interaction and speaking practice. Activities can range from small-group discussion to information gap activities and games. The activities in this section are divided into wholegroup discussion activities involving either competition or collaboration. We also include information gap activities where group members take different roles or share information. These are all whole-class/group activities that can be used as group collaboration or competition. Some involve a group working together to compete against other groups, while others involve group members working together to discover what they have in common, to produce a ‘product’ such as a film script, or to describe a character.

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Breakout room quiz races Aim:

Answering a series of general knowledge questions

Topic: Any Time:

20 minutes

Level: A2+ Language focus: Comparatives and superlatives Preparation: Prepare a list of general knowledge questions using the target language you are teaching. Here are some example questions that use comparative and superlative forms. 1. Which has bigger ears: the African or the Asian elephant? (African) 2. What is the slowest animal in the world? (the sloth) 3. What is the fastest animal in the world? (the cheetah) 4. Which animal’s eye is bigger than its brain? (the ostrich) 5. What colour are the spots on the most common kind of ladybird? (black) 6. Which has a more powerful bite: the crocodile or the tiger? (the crocodile) 7. Which is a closer relative to the dinosaur Tyrannosaurus Rex: the chicken or the lizard? (chicken) 8. The Jersey, the Ayrshire and the Holstein are the most common types of which kind of farm animal? (the cow) Procedure: 1. Tell the students they will be doing a quiz of general knowledge questions in groups. They will receive the questions one at a time and will have a time limit to answer each question. They can use the internet to help them answer the questions. 2. Specify that they need to write the answers down on small pieces of paper, one answer per piece of paper. They need to be able to show their answers to their webcam afterwards so you can read them. 3. Assign students to breakout rooms in groups of three or four. 4. One by one, send your questions to the breakout rooms and give them the time limit per questions, e.g. one minute. Students race to find the answer in the time frame. They then assign a scribe to write the answer on a piece of paper.

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5. Bring everyone back to the main room. Go through the answers and get groups to show their answers to the camera. Who can get the most correct answers? Extension: The winning team creates questions for the next quiz.

I spy Aim:

To talk about things in a picture

Topic: Any Time:

5–10 minutes

Level: A1+ Language focus: Can you see ...? / Is there a ...? /Where is the ...? Preparation: Find a photo online with lots of different things happening in it, using the search term 'hidden picture'. Images like ‘Where’s Waldo’ or ‘Eye Spy’ work well. Upload the photo to a site where you can share it easily. Make a list of things to find in the image. Procedure: 1. Give students the link to access the image. Explain that they are going to try to find specific things in the image while they are in the breakout room. 2. Put the students into groups of three or four and send them to the breakout room. They open the image and look at it. Send them, via chat message, the list of things they need to find. 3. Monitor the chatrooms, helping with English as necessary. 4. Call everyone back to the main room and display the image. Call out the different items that students had to find, one at a time. Nominate students to tell you where the item is in the picture. Extension: Students could find their own hidden pictures to repeat the activity in class another day. Alternatively, challenge students to make their own hidden picture by taking a photo with lots of things in it, or by drawing one.

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In common Aim: To find out what students have in common with each other Topic: Any Time:

20 minutes

Level: A1+ Language focus: Pronouns (one, both, neither, all); present perfect Preparation: None Procedure: 1. Write the following sentence stems in the chat (or display on a slide). One of us has ... Both of us have ... Neither of us has … 2. Ask students to make a note of these three stems and explain that they are going to work in pairs to complete the three sentences so they are true about them. Demonstrate an example by doing the activity quickly with a student. You might get sentences like: One of us has visited the USA. Both of us have made pizza. Neither of us has gone scuba diving. 3. Put students in breakout rooms and give them a time limit (e.g. three minutes) to complete the sentences. 4. Call everyone back and elicit examples of what they found. Give feedback and correction as needed. Make a note of what people say. Ask follow-up questions if interesting information comes up. 5. Write in the chat, or on a shared document, the following: One of us has ... Some of us have ... All of us have ... None of us have ... 6. Students repeat the activity in bigger groups of four or five. They complete the sentences with true information. Give a longer time limit (e.g. five minutes). 7. Call everyone back and repeat Stage 4. Make a note of what people say.

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8. Using your notes from Stages 4 and 6, ask questions about what you heard. Students type the names of who you are referring to in the chatbox. For example: Let’s see if you can all remember what we talked about. Who said that they have been to the United States? Type a name in the chatbox if you remember! Variation: You can do this activity with many other structures, such as can for ability (One of us can ...), present simple negative (One of us doesn’t ...) or future with going to (One of us is going to ...).

What are they like? Aim:

Describing people

Topic: Any Time:

15 minutes

Level: A1+ Language focus:

Adjectives, nationalities, age, family, interests and hobbies

Preparation: Find a series of photos of people. Each photo should show one person only, or one person as the main focus. If you wish, use photos of friends of yours (from your social media account), but seek their permission first. Make a slide of all the photos. Procedure: 1. Display the slide of all the photos. Tell the students to take a picture of it. Alternatively, upload it to Google Drive or Dropbox and give them a link so they can look at the image online. 2. Put students into pairs or small groups. In the breakout rooms, they must choose one of the people and create a profile for that person. They need to create a text outlining where this person is from, their age, who is in their family, what they are like and what their interests and hobbies are. 3. Give students a time limit of seven minutes. They should assign a scribe, who will write down the profile.

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4. Call groups back in the main room and show the picture again. Students read out the profiles they created. The others try to guess who the people are. Extension: If you used real friends and family photos from your social media, tell the students how close or far off their descriptions are from reality.

Film scenes Aim:

To prepare and practise a dialogue

Topic: Any Time:

15 minutes

Level: A2+ Language focus: Various, depending on the music Preparation: Find an atmospheric piece of music. This could be a theme to a television show or movie, an instrumental song or an iconic clip of a song from a specific decade. Ensure that the piece of music that can easily evoke a scene. Procedure: 1. In the main room, play students the piece of music for about a minute. Ask them for their reactions. What kind of music is it? Do they know it? Do they like it? 2. Ask students to imagine that this piece of music is from a scene in a film or television show. They listen to it again and think about the following: Who is speaking? Where are they? What is happening? 3. Tell students that they are going to work in pairs to write a dialogue that finishes with this music. Their dialogue must be at least three exchanges long. They should also be prepared to answer the questions from Stage 2 above. 4. Put students into breakout rooms for five to ten minutes to prepare their dialogues. Monitor the breakout rooms. 5. Bring students back to the main room. Nominate pairs to answer the questions about the scene and to read their dialogue. At the end of the dialogue, play the piece of music.

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Variation: Students find their own piece of music for a given theme – for example, horror/action/suspense/romance. They write and perform a dialogue to go with it. At the end, they play the music they have chosen.

Group consensus activities These activities aim to get group members to reconcile different viewpoints and reach a consensus.

Dreamtown Aim: To agree on features of a town that everyone in the group would like to live in Topic:

Town features and facilities, expressing opinions

Time:

30+ minutes

Level: A2+ Language focus:

 here would be ... It should have … I’d like … T It’s important to … I think …, town features, prepositions of place.

Preparation: None Procedure: 1. Explain the task to the students: they will work in groups and their task is to design a town that they would all like to live in. Explain that some things may be more important to some than others. Take a poll with the thumbs-up button by asking questions. Vary the structures to provide a model of the language they may use, for example: ■ How many people think a swimming pool is important? ■ How many people think that it’s important to have a cinema? ■ How many people think there should be a lot of parks? ■ Would you like to have a lot of restaurants? ■ Should the town be in the north of the country? Should the town

be near the sea? 2. Put students in groups in breakout rooms. They discuss their dream town and then work together to produce a map showing how their town would look with essential features.

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3. Students prepare a short presentation about their town that they will give to the class. Each student in the group takes a turn to describe a different aspect of the town. 4. Bring everyone back to the main room. Each group presents their dream town, showing their map and explaining the different features. Extension: Students do a follow-up writing activity – a guide to the town, an advert to come and live there, a report on a tourist website.

Road trip Aim:

To agree on a travel plan

Topic:

Holiday places and activities, suggestions and opinions

Time:

30+ minutes

Level: A2+ Language focus:

W  e could … I’d like to … I think that … How about …? Let’s … Shall we …? Why don’t we …? place description, holiday activities

Preparation: Choose a country for the students to plan a road trip in (or let each group choose their own). Provide them with a list of useful websites (or let the students do the preparation themselves). Procedure: 1. Explain the task to the students: they will work in groups and their task is to plan a road trip that they would all like to do. Explain that some things may be more important to some than others. Take a poll with the thumbs-up button by asking questions such as: ■ How many people like the beach? ■ How many people like walking in the mountains? ■ How many people like historic towns and museums? ■ How many people like adventure sports?

2. Tell students which country they will be focusing on and give them a list of websites to help them plan their itinerary. Alternatively, they could choose their own country once they are in their breakout rooms. They would then research what can be done in that country.

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3. Put students in groups in breakout rooms to research their trip. They discuss their itinerary and the activities they will do en route. 4. Students produce a map of their itinerary, showing their stops and activities during the trip. They prepare a presentation to go with their map. 5. Bring the class back to the main room. Each group presents their road trip – showing their map and explaining what they are going to do at each destination. Extension: Students do a follow-up writing activity: a postcard from the trip, a travel blog or a recommendation to a tourist website.

Role play The activities in this and the following section rely on the members of the group having different information. You can set up role-play activities by private-messaging role cards to different members of the group. Alternatively, provide a list of roles that everyone can see; students then pick their own role.

Difficult customers Aim:

To role-play a restaurant dialogue

Topic:

Food and drink

Time:

20+ minutes

Level: A2+ Language focus:

C  an/Could I/you …? I’d like ..., This is too …/not … enough; food and drink

Preparation: Prepare a link to a menu on a restaurant’s website. Prepare the list of customer and waiter roles to put on a shared screen, for example:

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Customers:

Waiters:

■ You want to know exactly what

■ You are tired and not feeling very well. ■ It’s your first day. You are not sure how

is in each dish. ■ You are in a hurry. ■ Your meal is cold. ■ You don’t like your meal. You would like a refund. ■ They brought the wrong meal – you didn’t order that!

things work. ■ It’s your last day working here – you

have a much better job starting tomorrow. ■ You have just broken up with your partner. You feel like crying.

Customers:

Waiters:

■ You don’t like the table where

■ The chef is in a bad mood and is

you are sitting. ■ You’ve lost your credit card.

putting the food out in the wrong order. ■ You have run out of half the items on the menu.

Procedure: 1. Explain the role play: students will work in breakout rooms in groups of six to eight for a restaurant role play. Approximately one-third of the students will be waiters and two-thirds will be customers. 2. Display the roles on the shared screen and give the students the link to the menu. 3. Put the students in breakout rooms. They decide who will be the customers and who will be the waiters. They each choose a role from the list. 4. They act out the role play with difficult customers and fragile waiters. 5. At the end, bring them back to the main room and invite groups to act out their scenes. Variation: This format can be replicated with different scenarios, for example a hotel scenario with demanding guests and a receptionist with problems, or difficult customers in a travel agent’s and a travel agent with an agenda (e.g. trying to persuade them to buy a certain holiday because they get a commission on it).

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Information-gap games Information-gap activities can be quite elaborate, requiring students to share different and sometimes complex information. This could be personal information or information accessed through websites. You can use different breakout rooms, and you can get students to make their own material for games. It is also possible to set up more complicated information gap and mingling activities by using private messaging and a combination of platforms. This will be explored in the chapter ‘Combining platforms’.

Spot the difference Aim: To describe differences between pictures Topic: Any Time:

10 minutes

Level: A2+ Language focus: There is/are ..., prepositions of place, office vocabulary Preparation: Take a selection of office items (e.g. pens, paper clips, paper, folders, scissors, pencils, erasers) and lay them out on a table. Take a photo of the items. Then remove some items and add others (e.g. take away the pencils, replace them with a stapler) and take a second picture. You should have two photos of the objects but with at least six differences. Upload these photos to a site where you can share them easily. Label the images ‘Photo A’ and ‘Photo B’. Procedure: 1. Teach the words for the office items in your picture with everyone in the main room. 2. Tell the students they are going to do a ‘spot the difference’ exercise in pairs in the breakout room. When they arrive in the breakout room, they will have to agree who is A and who is B. Give them the links to Photos A and B for them to download once they arrive in the room. 3. Explain that once they are in the breakout room and have the images, they must try to find the differences between the pictures. Tell them how many differences there are that they need to find.

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4. Put students in breakout rooms and let them do the activity. Give them three minutes to do it. 5. Call everyone back into the main room and elicit the answers. Give feedback. Then show both pictures for everyone to see. Extension: Students create a similar pair of ‘spot the difference’ pictures, for example of fruit and vegetables, or of things on a bookshelf. Variation: ■ If you don’t want to make your own images for this exercise, a search for ‘spot the difference’ images online should provide you with plenty of ready-made examples (although some of them might be a bit difficult!) ■ This could also be turned into a memory game, where the students look at

Photo A for a while and then they take Photo B to the breakout room. They then try to recall what was in Photo A that has been replaced in Photo B.

Experiences (‘Find someone who …’ variation) Aim:

To practise questions and answers

Topic: Experiences Time:

15 minutes

Level: A2+ Language focus: Present perfect Preparation: Prepare a list of ‘interesting experiences’ and put them on a slide to show learners. See Step 3 for examples. Procedure: 1. Introduce the topic of interesting life experiences by sharing one or two of your own, e.g. Did you know that I’ve been on TV? I was on the news a couple of times ...’ 2. Explain to the students that they are going to do a questionnaire about life experiences. Show a slide with phrases for interesting life experiences, see page 79 for an example:

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be on TV ride an animal travel to an English-speaking country speak in public change the colour of your hair quit a job sleep outside

3. Elicit how you would ask the question to find out if someone had one of these experiences, e.g. Have you ever been on TV? Model this by asking a student the question and then following up with another question. 4. Students to take a photo of the slide or make a note of the experiences listed. 5. Explain that students are going to work in groups in breakout rooms. Their task is to find out how many people have had these experiences in their group. To do this, they will have to ask and answer the questions. 6. Put students into groups of four or five in breakout rooms. Give them a time limit to discover the information about each other. Circulate and monitor. 7. Bring students back into the main room and ask them to feed back. Which group has had the most experiences? Was there a group that had had all of the experiences? Variation: Adapt the activity to practise different structures, such as can for ability (e.g. can swim, can play the drums, can use sign language) or present simple for routines (e.g. gets up before 7 a.m., walks to work/school, has lunch at home).

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What were you doing last night? Aim:

To practise asking questions in the past

Topic:

Crime

Time:

15 minutes

Level: A2+ Language focus: Past continuous Preparation: None Procedure: 1. Tell students they are going to play a detective game. Explain the following situation. Last night there was a robbery at a bank in the city centre. The thieves took over a million dollars in cash. Nobody was hurt. The police believe that the robbery occurred between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. They are investigating the crime scene and interviewing suspects. 2. Nominate two students or ask for volunteers. One of the students is the suspect. The other student is the suspect’s alibi. Tell the suspect and the alibi that they must agree on their story of what the suspect was doing last night. (The suspect will obviously not confess to robbing the shop!) They should agree on facts such as where they were, what time it was, what they were doing, what they were wearing, etc. 3. Tell the other students that they are the officers who will be questioning the suspect. They need to prepare questions that they will ask, first to the suspect and then to the alibi. 4. Put everyone into breakout rooms in pairs. The suspect and alibi should be in the same breakout room. They discuss their story of what the suspect did last night. The other students practise making questions. Circulate and help in the different rooms. 5. Bring everyone back to the main room. Tell the suspect to turn on their camera and audio. Tell the alibi to turn off their camera and audio and also turn off their sound (so they don’t hear the questions). You’ll have to trust the alibi to do this! Everyone else can have both their audio and camera on. 6. Students ask the suspect questions. Allow around 5-6 minutes of questions and remind students to make notes about the suspect’s answers. They will be asking the alibi the same questions to make sure the answers match.

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7. When they have finished, message the alibi and tell them to turn on their video and audio. The suspect must turn off their audio and video – they cannot help the alibi! The students now ask the alibi the same questions to see if the answers match up. At the end, the students vote to decide if they think the suspect is guilty. Variation: For a larger class, have two suspects and two alibis. Repeat the same process as above, but have both suspects answer questions along with their respective alibis. The class then decides who is more guilty.

Clock match Aim:

To practise telling the time

Topic:

Time

Time:

10 minutes

Level: A1–A2 Language focus: Telling the time Preparation: None Procedure: 1. Tell students they need 10 small pieces of paper, each approximately the size of a playing card or a bit smaller. 2. Dictate 10 times to the whole class, for example: 1. 3.30 p.m. 2. 5.10 a.m. 3. 11.15 a.m. 4. 6.05 p.m. 5. 9.00 p.m. 6. 10.50 a.m. 7. 6.20 a.m. 8. 4.35 p.m. 9. 1.40 p.m. 10. 2.00 a.m. For each time, students draw a clock face showing the correct time, each on a separate piece of paper.

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3. Make sure all students have the correct times on their clocks. 4. Explain that students are going to play a matching game in pairs in breakout rooms. Here are the rules. Each student lays their cards face down on the surface in front of them. They take turns asking each other the time and selecting cards to answer. Their dialogue should go like this: A. What time is it? B. [takes paper and shows webcam] It’s [says time]. [takes another piece of paper] What time is it? A. [takes paper and shows webcam] It’s [says time]. If the times match, they both put them aside and continue. If not, the papers go back face down. They repeat the stages above until all times have been matched up 4. Put students into breakout rooms to play the matching game. Set a time limit. 5. Call everyone back to the main room. Find out if any of the pairs matched up all their cards. Variation: This classic memory activity can be done with other vocabulary sets (e.g. animals or clothing). Make sure you choose a set that is relatively easy to draw, as students will be making their own cards.

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Professional development Questions for reflection ■ Breakout rooms are the most complicated tool we have looked at so far.

What problems could arise and what strategies do you think would be most useful for managing their use? ■ How can using breakout rooms enrich your teaching?

Things to try ■ Try a group activity: a competition, a collaboration or a consensus. Take

notes on how you managed it. Would you do anything differently next time? ■ Select an information gap activity to try. Make a mini lesson plan outlining how to stage it. ■ Monitor breakout room activity by entering students’ breakout rooms. Make notes for feedback and error correction. Did you need to intervene in other ways? Why? How?

Things to share ■ Look at the notes you made in the ‘Things to try’ section. Share ideas with

colleagues on: ■ managing group activities ■ staging information gap activities ■ observing in the breakout room and giving feedback.

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5. Combining platforms The tools involved So far in Live Online Teaching we have looked at different aspects of video conferencing tools and platforms. However, your online teaching may well involve using more than one tool or platform. For example, if you want your students to work collaboratively on a document or if you want to be able to share files easily with them, you will find it much easier to use a different platform. The main kinds of supplementary platforms that online language teachers use are listed below.

File-sharing sites File-sharing sites allow users to upload and share files with each other in the cloud. Services like Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive or Amazon Drive are among the biggest and most famous, although new ones regularly become available.

Online document sharing and collaboration Sites such as Google Docs and Office Online allow users to work on the same document or spreadsheet at the same time and see changes as they are made. Dropbox is now offering this service, too.

Private groups on social media platforms Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp allow users to create private groups. Teachers are using these channels more and more frequently as a way of communicating to their classes and sharing information about their courses.

Learning management systems A learning management system (or LMS) is a platform that is specifically designed for use by educational institutions. LMSs are used for course administration and for tracking students’ work. They also have discussion boards where students can post messages or files, they offer the option to create online quizzes within the site, and they have shared spaces where the teacher or students can upload assignments. Moodle is the most widely

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used free LMS, with Blackboard and Canvas also being popular. Note that, while the three tools mentioned above can be relatively easy to set up for an individual, an LMS is more complicated. Most teachers using one will have been given access to it via their institution. However, there are some online sites which have elements of an LMS and are easier for individuals to set up, such as Google Classroom and Edmodo.

Technical tips for combining platforms Choose the platform carefully There are several things to consider when choosing an additional platform to use for your online classroom. Here are some questions to ask yourself when choosing: ■ Is it easy for students to access the platform, even from mobile devices? ■ Are they familiar with it already? ■ Does it allow sharing of images and video? ■ Is it possible for students to edit their contributions to the platform? ■ It is easy to have and distinguish multiple ‘topics’ or ‘discussions’? ■ Is it easy and intuitive to upload documents? ■ Can you create sub-groups and/or can participants send messages to each

other privately? ■ Does it require students to share more personal data than they would

like? What are the privacy policies?

Organise your email addresses If you are going to be using several different platforms as part of your course, it’s a good idea to have (or create) a separate working email address to manage them. Use this address to register for any of the platforms you use. That way you won’t get any system messages or potential advertising from them to your personal email (for the free versions of platforms, you sometimes do have to put up with receiving emails or advertising).

Attend to privacy concerns Before introducing a new tool, check with the students that a) they can all access it and b) they are comfortable with the idea of using it. If you

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are teaching an international group, note that some websites may not be available in certain countries. If you are using platforms and tools that require students to share their personal information, check with them whether they are comfortable with this. If a large percentage of your class feels uncomfortable signing up to a website and submitting personal information for the purpose of doing just one activity in class, then it might be worth reconsidering the activity.

Find good tutorial videos to help learners use the tool Any time you choose a new platform to use with students, you’ll need to show them how to use it. You could do this in a live session, using screen share, and walk them through the process. However, it’s also a good idea to find a good tutorial video on how to register for the platform and share that with the students as well. In addition to helping them get used to the platform, it’s also good listening comprehension!

Check how much space you are allowed, and clean up Many free platforms and tools have a space limit for storing documents, images and videos. This initially seems quite generous, but it can get filled up very quickly. Check the ‘small print’ on any website to see if there is a space limit, and what happens if you exceed it. If there is a space limit, put aside some time at regular intervals to ‘clean up’ your platform by deleting old files and projects. Ideally you should also do this after you finish each course.

Teaching tips for combining platforms Start with a simple task The first time you use a new or different tool (such as a forum, a file-sharing site or a virtual bulletin board), set a very simple first task. This could be something as simple as ‘Post a message to say hello to the group’. Then move on to more complicated tasks. Setting a task that requires new language and use of an unfamiliar tool can be a daunting prospect for learners.

Use deadlines For tasks that will be done asynchronously, set clear and achievable deadlines. Communicate these when you give instructions for a task, and be specific about a time (e.g. ‘Please post your response by 12:00 noon Monday 1 March’).

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Decide when to correct Tasks that are done asynchronously will often be in written form. For tasks that involve submitting a written product at the end (such as those in Collaborative writing projects across platforms on pages 89–94), it’s reasonable to correct the language after students have submitted the finished product. For tasks that involve discussion, such as role plays (see Interactive Homework on pages 95–102 and Mingling on pages 88–119), you may wish to pick out certain mistakes and correct these at the end. It’s best not to correct mistakes while students are chatting (either orally or in synchronous written form) as this interrupts the flow. Do what you would do in a face-to-face speaking activity and note errors to give corrective feedback at the end. Look through your notes and select key areas to focus on. Then put up a list of errors (without naming students) and ask students to selfcorrect before supplying answers and explanations. If you are using social media groups to communicate informally with students, you may not wish to correct at all inside those areas. Regardless of how you do things, make your policy clear to students at the beginning of the course.

Monitor and encourage participation Asynchronous tasks that take time to complete and require participation (e.g. discussions) can quickly drop off if the majority of students do not participate. For this reason, it’s best to check in regularly to monitor them. If people are not participating, sometimes a simple reminder to the group will help. You may need to nudge particularly inactive students individually. If cajoling does not work, consider linking a percentage of the final grade to participation in the tasks.

Encourage and praise In the live online classroom, it’s easier to motivate students by smiling and encouraging them as they try things out. In asynchronous tasks on a different platform this is harder. Even for the most simple of tasks, students sometimes worry they have done something wrong or misunderstood. Because of this it’s important to provide plenty of encouragement and praise at the beginning of a course when students are doing tasks in an unfamiliar environment. Comments like Well done, this is exactly what was needed or Thank you everyone, and well done for posting your comments so quickly, can go a long way in helping students get used to using new platforms.

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Collaborative writing projects across platforms These activities provide the students with a platform or platforms to continue interaction outside the classroom. They focus on writing – a skill which is often practised individually outside the classroom as homework. They provide students with opportunities to construct more extended pieces of writing through a collective enterprise, and to critique, correct and edit each other’s work so by their nature focus on the use of combined platforms to increase the range of possible activities available to you, as none would be possible with a single live teaching platform. The additional platforms necessary are filesharing sites (such as Dropbox or Google docs) and an asynchronous interactive platform with a private messaging facility. The projects exemplify different writing genres such as argument, factual writing and imaginative writing.

Climate change booklet Aim: To work as a group to create a booklet about climate change Topic:

Climate change

Time:

Over a number of days

Level: B1+ Language focus:

C  ause and effect, conditionals, will for prediction, present tenses.

Preparation: Find some online reading or listening material on climate change, specifically on the following topics: What is climate change?; Causes and effects of climate change; Energy and climate change; Transport and climate change; Agriculture and climate change; What you can do on a personal level in daily life. (NB Maley, A. & Peachey, N. (2017) Integrating Global Issues in the Creative English Language Classroom. London: British Council has ideas on these topics, as well as links to further useful sources. It is also worth visiting the ELT Footprint Facebook page which is an ELTon-award-winning resource for teachers on environmental issues and has ideas and resources added/updated regularly.)

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Set up the extra platforms: Dropbox or Google docs plus an extra interactive chat facility if you wish, such as Messenger or a closed Facebook group. Procedure: 1. On your live online platform, put students into small groups of four to eight. Tell them they are going to work together to produce a booklet on climate change. Assign the following topics to each group: A. Causes and effects of climate change B. Energy and climate change C. Transport and climate change D. Agriculture and climate change Provide a list of sources (see below for useful resources). Tell the students that each person in their group will select one topic. (Groups larger than four can have two students working on the same topic.) They should meet first in a breakout room to discuss who will work on which topic. Send the students links to the source material you found in the Preparation stage. They then use the sources, plus any other material they find, to research and write their section, which they will upload to Google docs or Dropbox. They will need a generous amount of time for this – at least a full lesson. If you prefer, students can work individually in their own time rather than on the online platform (students working in pairs can communicate by message or chat). In such cases, set the deadline for the following day. 2. When the groups have uploaded their sections, bring the class back together and give instructions for the next step: Students who have been studying topics A and B work together, and those who have been working on topics C and D work together. They should read and check each other’s work, commenting on: ■ good points ■ any errors they spot ■ the organisation of the piece ■ anything that is unclear ■ anything that could be added

Next, A and C and B and D work together following the same process. Finally, organise the groups into A and D and B and C. At the end of

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this process, they will have all read and commented on each other’s work. Tell them that, when they have all the comments, they should correct/edit their work. Give them a generous time frame in which to do this. You can also monitor at this stage, answering queries and helping with language. Note, though, that it is important for students to develop the ability to self-correct. 3. When students have finished correcting their work, reconvene the lesson and put the students into breakout rooms. They discuss the best way to order the sections in the booklet and put the whole text together, adding any linking sentences between sections to ensure smooth flow. 4. Suggest that learners add a short introduction on ‘What is climate change?’ and a conclusion outlining what can be done to counter climate change on a personal level in daily life. In this final phase of the project, learners should aim to have the whole booklet written in order and laid out with illustrations added. Groups then submit a draft to you so that you can edit and correct their work. Return the edited booklets and give a deadline for submission of the final versions. 5. When the final versions are ready, groups swap booklets and read those produced by other groups. Variation: Other topics which lend themselves to the production of a collaborative persuasive booklet are: Pollution, Wildlife Conservation, The Oceans, and any of the other UN Goals for Sustainable Development.

Tourist brochure Aim: To work as a group to create a tourist brochure about an imaginary country Topic:

Description of tourist activities and facilities

Time:

Over a number of lessons

Level: B1+ Language focus:

P  lace description, making suggestions, expressing possibility

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Preparation: Set up the extra platforms: a file-sharing site like Dropbox or Google docs, plus an extra interactive chat facility if you wish, such as Messenger or a closed Facebook group. You can also find some online tourist information as a source of language. Procedure 1. On your live online platform, put students into small groups of four to six. Explain that they are going to work together to produce a tourist brochure for an imaginary country. Display these two sets of questions: Set A

Set B

1. Where is your imaginary country? 2. What is its name? 3. What is the climate like? 4. When is the best time to visit?

1. What is the capital city? How old is it? What can you do there? 2. Are there any other interesting cities? What can you do there? 3. What is the countryside like? What activities can you do there? (e.g. walking, swimming, boating, hot springs, bungee jumping) 4. Is there a coastline? What resorts are there?

2. Assign each group a breakout room. Tell them that they must come to a consensus on all the questions in A. They must then collaborate as a group to write an introductory paragraph for the brochure based on their answers to the first four questions. Next, they each take one question from B to write a section for the brochure. Set a deadline for them to upload their section to the file-sharing site. Post some ideas for sources. They can use those sources plus any others they find to get examples of typical tourist recommendations and useful language. 3. In the next lesson, when the groups have uploaded their sections, give instructions for the next step: Students must review two projects that they did not write. They should read and check each other’s work, commenting on: ■ good points ■ any errors they spot ■ the organisation of the piece ■ anything that is unclear ■ anything that could be added.

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At the end of this process they will have all read and commented on each other’s work. Tell them that, when they have all the comments, they should correct/edit their work. Give them a deadline to do this. This should be quite generous. 4. In the following lesson, when students have finished correcting their work, put them into breakout rooms. They discuss the best way to order the sections in the brochure and put the whole text together, adding any linking sentences between sections to ensure smooth flow. They discuss layout and addition of illustrations. 5. Groups then submit a draft to you so that you can edit and correct their work. Return the edited brochures and give a deadline for submission of the final versions. 6. When the final versions are ready, groups share brochures and read those produced by other groups. Variation: You can, of course, do this activity with reference to real countries – the students’ own countries if you have a mixed nationality class, or the country you are teaching in. However, the imaginary country scenario leads to more discussion and tends to be more enjoyable. Extension: Students choose some experiences from another group’s brochure. They imagine that they have done them and write a review. (Tripadvisor.com is a useful source for examples of reviews.)

Historical problem page Aim: To work as a group to create a magazine problem page with letters and replies Topic:

Advice

Time:

Over a number of days

Level: B1+ Language focus: Asking for and giving advice Preparation: Set up the extra platforms: a file-sharing site and a messaging facility such as Messenger or a closed Facebook group. You can also find some example problem pages as a source of language.

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Procedure: 1. On your live online platform, put students into small groups of three or four. Make sure there is an even number of groups and give each group a letter: A, B, C, D, etc. Explain that they are going to work together to produce a problem page for a magazine. There is one difference: the people with problems are going to be historical figures. Give them some examples that they might know (depending on culture) and ask learners to suggest what sort of problems they might have had. What might they need advice about? Assign each group a breakout room. Each group must choose a historical character and discuss their problems. Their task is to write a letter from that character to a problem page in a magazine. Set a deadline for them to finish their letters. 2. When students have finished their letters, reconvene the class and give instructions for the next step. Partner the groups: A and B, C and D, etc. The groups exchange letters with their partner group. Each group reads the other group’s letter and drafts a reply with suggestions for solving the problem. Set a deadline for this. Students submit their letters and replies to you for editing and review. The students then provide a clean copy of letters and advice with amendments incorporated. Give a deadline for this. 3. Collect all the letters and replies. Collate them into a problem page. Edit them by removing the names of the historical figures. Put all the names on a separate page. If you wish, you could add a few other historical names as distractors. Set a task: can the students match all the letters to the historical figures who wrote them? 4. In your live online platform, give feedback on the replies and ask students to consider whether they agree with the advice given. Variation: You can do this activity with fictional characters or animals. Extension: Use this activity as part of a much longer project, where students build up a magazine with sections such as a problem page, horoscopes, an article about a famous person (e.g. ‘A day in the life of …’), film reviews, a travel article, etc.

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Interactive homework The activities in this section can be used to vary homework tasks: instead of individual writing, reading or listening tasks, students can interact online in a platform such as WhatsApp, Edmodo or a closed private Facebook group. As with Collaborative writing projects you have just seen (pages 89–94), we recommending combining platforms to increase the range of possible activities available to you. You will need a platform where students can post images as well as text, where you can start a new thread with a pinned post for instructions, and which has a private messaging facility. In the instructions to the tasks, we will refer to this platform as the ‘homework platform’. There are five activities in this section. They have been chosen to provide a range of: ■ tasks: discussion, grammar practice, vocabulary practice, functional

language practice, creative writing ■ task types: discussion, quiz, role play, questionnaire, poem ■ kinds of interaction: critical (i.e. an argument), personal, factual, fanciful

and creative. While each activity has a specific topic, they can all act as templates for other activities (e.g. practising a different structure or a different lexical set).

Part and whole Aim:

To practise a lexical set

Topic:

Animals

Time:

Can be done synchronously or asynchronously

Level: A1+ Language focus: Names of animals Preparation: Using creative commons, find a picture of an animal online. Alternatively, take a photo of your own. Download it onto your computer and use the editing tools to crop out a small part of the image, e.g. an eye, a nose or a tail. (See Figure 5.1 on page 96 as an example.) Post the cropped-out part on the homework platform with the caption What Am I?

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Figure 5.1: A cropped image of part of a giraffe’s head

Procedure: 1. In your live online class, set up the homework. Get everyone to log into the homework platform. Tell them it is an animal and get them to guess what it is. Type your replies as they post, for example: Tatiana:

Is it a sheep?

Teacher: No, it isn’t a sheep! Pedro:

Is it a goat?

Teacher: No, it isn’t a goat, either. Elena:

Is it a giraffe?

Teacher: Yes, it is! Your turn now! 2. Tell learners that their homework is to find and copy a picture of an animal and to crop a small part of it out. You can show them how to do this on your shared screen if needed. Give each student a number. Student 1 will be the first to post their animal. Everyone else will try to guess what it is. Agree a time for everyone to log in. When they have guessed, it is Student 2’s turn. 3. The students should try to use pictures of the animals you have taught them, but if someone chooses an unusual animal, they can learn the word for that, too, by looking it up. 4. Look at what students have written and post corrections or give feedback in class. Variations: ■ This quiz can be used to practise other lexical sets – furniture, vehicles, food and drink, rooms in a house, etc. ■ Rather than pictorial clues give verbal ones, for example:

Teacher: This animal lives in trees.

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Student: Is it a koala?

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In my life Aim:

To practise a grammatical structure

Topic:

Life experiences

Time:

Can be done synchronously or asynchronously

Level: A2+ Language focus:

Present perfect, past simple

Preparation: Prepare a list of topics, e.g. a country, a sport, food, a purchase, work, famous people, a life experience. Post the following in the pinned post on the homework platform (For large classes, subdivide them into smaller groups and create a shared message group for each.): Write a questionnaire with eight questions using Have you ever__________? Use the following topics: a country, a sport, food, a purchase, work, famous people, a life experience, e.g. Have you ever been to France? I will give you each a number. Student 1 posts their questionnaire first. Everyone replies. Student 1 can ask more questions, for example: Have you ever been to France? Yes, I have. When did you go there? Last year. Then it is Student 2’s turn. Procedure: 1. In your live online class, set up the homework. Everyone logs into the homework platform and reads your pinned post. They should answer your example question. Type your replies as they post, for example: Teacher: Have you ever been to France? Marta:

Yes, I have.

Teacher: Where did you go? Marta:

I went to the Dordogne.

2. Tell them you will send them a number. They should write their questionnaires and Student 1 should post theirs first. When everyone has answered and Student 1 has asked some follow-up questions, it is Student 2’s turn.

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3. Give each student a number. 4. Explain that this is their homework for the evening. Agree a time for everyone to log in. 5. Look at what they have all written and post corrections, or give feedback in class. Variations: ■ This activity can be used to practise a number of structures, for example present simple (a questionnaire on habits, routines or hobbies), past simple (a questionnaire on past activities – last weekend, a holiday, when you were five, etc), conditionals (a questionnaire with six questions beginning: What would you do if …?). ■ Students do the questions in a chain. Student 1 asks the first question.

The first student to reply asks the next, and so on. ■ The teacher posts a list of questions. Students write the answers, but

they don’t publish them on the platform. Then they try to guess each other’s answers: everyone guesses Student 1’s answers, then Student 2’s and so on.

The right hotel Aim:

To practise a function

Topic:

Booking a hotel

Time:

Can be done synchronously or asynchronously

Level: A2+ Language focus:

H  ave got, how much, can I/you, I’d like, Where …? + topic vocabulary, e.g. a double/single room.

Preparation: Prepare the guest and receptionist cards. Divide the class in half. Send half the class the guest cards by private message. The other half get the receptionist cards. If you have more than four in the Receptionist half of your class, put them in four groups, one group per hotel and send a shared message with the receptionist cards. For example, if you have eight students as receptionists, send them the receptionist

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cards in pairs. Then post the instructions on the pinned post on the homework platform. Guest cards A. You want to go to London for a long weekend on 1–4 August. You want a hotel near the centre. You need a double room. Your price range is £80–100.

C. You want to go to London for the weekend of 9–10 August. You want a hotel near the centre. You need two double rooms. Your price range is a maximum of £70.

B. You want to go to London for two nights on 5–6 August. You want a hotel near the centre. You need one double and one single room. Your price range is a maximum of £80.

D. You want to go to London for the week of 11–17 August. You want a hotel near the centre. There are six of you: two couples with one child each. You need two triple rooms. Your price range is a maximum of £90.

Receptionist cards Hotel Coco You are in central London in the West End. Your room rates in August are: £100 per night for a double, £80 per night for a single. Vacancies in August: 1–4 August: you have five doubles left. 4–18 August: no vacancies.

Hotel Majestic You are in central London near the British Museum. Your room rates in August are: £70 per night for a double, £60 per night for a single. Vacancies in August: 1–8 August: you have three singles left 9–10 August: you have six singles and six doubles left 11–17 August: no vacancies

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Receptionist cards Hotel Central You are in central London near the river. Your room rates in August are: £80 per night for a double, £60 per night for a single. Vacancies in August: 1–4 August: you have three singles left. 5–6 August: you have six singles and six doubles left. 8–15 August: you have three singles left.

Four Seasons Hotel You are in central London near Parliament. Your room rates in August are: £80 per night for a double, £70 per night for a single. Vacancies in August: 1–4 August: no vacancies 5–11 August: you have one single left. 11–17 August: you have three double rooms left. A child bed can be added to a double room: extra charge £10.

Instructions Half of you have a guest card and half have a receptionist card. There are four hotels. Some hotels may have more than one receptionist. Receptionists: Work with the other receptionist(s) from your hotel. Find a picture of a hotel and post it on your page together with the name of your hotel. Guests: There are four possible hotels: Four Seasons, Majestic, Central and Coco. Contact the hotels to try and book a room. You will probably have to contact more than one hotel. Procedure: 1. In your live online class, set up the homework. Get everyone to log into the homework platform and to read your pinned post. Talk them through what to do. 2. Tell them that this is their homework for the evening. Agree a time for everyone to log in. 3. Look at what they have all written and post corrections or give feedback in class.

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Extension: Students imagine it is the end of their stay in the hotel and write a review of it. For lower-level groups, you could scaffold this by providing cues, for example: Did you enjoy your stay? Why? (e.g. It was comfortable, quiet, convenient, cheap) Why not? (e.g. It was uncomfortable, small, noisy, dirty, expensive). Variations: ■ Following the same principles, set up role plays on other topics or to practise other functions, e.g. ordering a meal in a restaurant, asking for directions. ■ Create an information gap by private message and then bring students

together to interact.

Rom-com Aim:

To write a short story

Topic:

Romance

Time: Can be done synchronously or asynchronously Level: A2+ Language focus: Past simple, pronouns. Preparation: Copy the word list and the example story and put them on the pinned post of your homework platform together with the instructions. Word list met smiled (at) spoke (to) liked messaged went on a date talked fell in love with dreamed about disagreed (with) agreed (with) yelled (at) shouted (at) left cried came back (to) ignored asked refused argued (with) she, her, he, him, it. I, me, we, us, you, they, them (The pronouns they and them can also be used as gender-neutral pronouns.)

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Instructions Write a short story. You can only use the words in the list: see the example. When you have written your story, post it on the forum. Read other people’s stories and comment. Choose one and write a sequel: what happened next? Procedure: 1. In your live online class, set up the homework. Get everyone to log into the homework platform and to read your pinned post. Talk them through the instructions. 2. Tell them that this is their homework for the evening. Agree a time for everyone to log in. 3. Look at what they have all written and post corrections or give feedback in class. 4. You can collect the stories together into an ‘anthology’. Variation: Stories with limited, specified vocabulary are fun to write and give the students support. They can be used to practise specific language – here, pronouns and simple past – by selection of vocabulary and topic, for example: ‘Holiday adventure’ to practise landscape vocabulary and action verbs.

Mingling The activities in this section are a little more complex than Collaborative writing projects across platforms (pages 89–94) and Interactive homework (pages 95–102), using a combination of platforms to enable activities that are often used in the classroom but difficult to replicate in a live online setting, none of which are possible with a single live teaching platform. For mingling activities, a private messaging facility is essential so that students can communicate in pairs without others hearing or seeing what they are saying. If you want to see what they are saying in order to give feedback later, you will need to ask to be included in the messages. The activities may be done for homework or in class, but are best done synchronously. If you are not doing them in class time you will need to specify a start and finish time for the activity.

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The activities are all written in simple language and the role cards have minimal and basic information. This is so that they can be used at lower levels. However, it is easy to add in material to practise a particular structure or to raise the level for more advanced students. Suggestions for doing this are given in the Extension/Variation sections. Suggestions are also given for students at higher levels to add in extra details themselves to flesh out a minimal role card. This is probably a preferable way of doing things since it requires more creativity and thus more investment in the role on the part of the student.

Believe it or not … Aim: To exchange personal information and practise a grammar point Topic: Life experiences, values, preferences, etc. Time: Can be done synchronously or asynchronously Level: A1+ Language focus: Any Preparation: Complete the sentence stems with the structure you want to practise, e.g. present perfect, used to, past simple, going to, etc. For example: Most people have been abroad, More than two people have eaten sushi. Alternatively, complete them with a variety of endings for more general communicative practice. Post the sentences and the instructions in a pinned post on the homework platform. Sentence stems In our class: ■ most people ………………….. ■ more than two people ………………….. ■ only one person ………………….. ■ more people ………………….. than ………………….. ■ everyone ………………….. ■ no one ………………….. ■ three people ………………….. ■ more women than men …………………..

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Instructions Your task is to find out if these statements are true by asking the other people in the group. You need to make questions from the statements: for example, for In our class, most people have been abroad, you would need to ask the question: Have you been abroad? Keep a count of the number of people who answer Yes. If this is more than half the class, the statement is true. 1. Write your questions. 2. Private-message people one at a time asking all the questions. Keep count of the answers. 3. Post the statements with TRUE or FALSE after each one. Procedure: 1. In your live online class, set up the activity. Get everyone to log into the platform and to read your pinned post. Talk them through the instructions. 2. If you are setting this for homework, tell them that this is their homework for the evening. Agree a time for everyone to log in. If it is in class time, let them begin interacting. 3. At the end, check the final statements that students have written. Ask students to give you examples of the questions they wrote, and ask if there were any problems understanding. Give feedback. Variations: ■ This activity will work with a number of grammatical structures. It could also be used to practise vocabulary, e.g. for sports: Most people play a sport, More than two people play tennis. ■ Students complete the sentence stems with the target structure

themselves. Each student then asks different questions and researches different hypotheses.

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Witnesses Aim:

To find the robbers of a jeweller’s shop

Topic:

Describing objects and people

Time: Can be done synchronously or asynchronously Level: A2+ Language focus: Past simple, past continuous Preparation: Prepare the eight role cards and the instructions. Post the scenario and instructions on the platform and private-message the role cards to the students. Scenario A jeweller’s shop in a street in the centre of town was robbed at around 7 p.m. The police are interested in reports of four cars, first seen near the jeweller’s shop, and then seen driving very fast in another part of town. Instructions 1. Read the scenario. 2. I will send you a role card by private message. 3. Private-message one other person and exchange your information about what you saw. 4. Message another person until you have spoken to everyone. 5. Take notes and try to remember the information. 6. When everyone has finished, I will post a quiz. This will tell you the solution! Role cards A. You saw a blue car driving fast at about 7.10 p.m. You were driving to the harbour. The car was coming in the opposite direction, away from the sea. There were two men in the car, one with blond hair and one with long dark hair.

E. You were walking home when you saw a white car driving fast at about 7.15 p.m. There was one man in the car. He had dark hair and a moustache.

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Role cards B. You work in a hairdresser’s near the jeweller’s. You were closing up the shop when you saw two men getting into a blue car at about 7 p.m. One had blond hair and was wearing a red shirt and dark trousers and one had long dark hair and was wearing blue jeans and a hoodie.

F. You were going to a restaurant near the jeweller’s when you saw a man getting into a white car. He had dark hair and a moustache and was wearing a blue jumper and jeans.

C. You were waiting for the bus to go into town when you saw a black car driving fast at about 7.15p.m. There was a bearded man driving the car with a blonde woman passenger.

G. Y  ou were cycling home when you saw a red car driving fast at about 7.10 p.m. It was going towards the harbour. There were two women in the car. One had short dark hair and the other had long blonde hair.

D. You were coming out of a café in a street near the jeweller’s at about 7p.m. when you saw a bearded man and a blonde woman getting into a black car. The man was getting into the driver’s seat. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. The woman was wearing a red dress.

H. You were walking down the street near the jeweller’s when you saw two women getting into a red car at about 7 p.m. One had short dark hair and the other had long blonde hair. One was wearing jeans and the other was wearing a dress.

Procedure: 1. In your live online class, set up the activity. Get everyone to log into the platform and to read your pinned post. Talk them through the instructions. 2. If you are setting this for homework, tell them that this is their homework for the evening. Agree a time for everyone to log in. If it is in class time, let them begin interacting. 3. When they have all talked to everyone, post the following quiz (see page 107) on a shared screen. They can discuss the answers in breakout rooms. Which group/pair can be the first to find the answer?

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Quiz Find the car number plate What colour car did the hairdresser see? .................................................. Where was the red car going? ................................ To the ...................... What was the bearded man doing? ......................................................... How many women were in the red car? .................................................... What time did the hairdresser see the two men? ....................................... How many people were in the white car? .................................................. What colour was the car? The bearded man and the blonde woman were not the thieves. There was more than one person in the car. The car was not going towards the harbour. The getaway car was a …………….. car, licence number …………………… 4. Ask students to share some of the information and questions they wrote in Stage 2 (for example, by copy-pasting them from the private messages or by simply saying the questions they asked). Use these to do any language feedback. 5. Finally, post the answers and the explanation.

Answers Find the car number plate What colour car did the hairdresser see? Where was the red car going? What was the bearded man doing? How many women were in the red car? What time did the hairdresser see the two men? How many people were in the white car?

Blue To the Harbour Driving 2 7 1

The licence number is the first letters of the answers plus the numbers: BHD 271.

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Explanation What colour was the car? The bearded man and the blonde woman were not the thieves. So the car can’t have been black. There was more than one person in the car. So the car can’t have been white. The car was not going towards the harbour. So the car wasn’t red. Therefore, it must have been blue. The getaway vehicle was a blue car, licence number BHD 271. Variation: For higher-level students, add some details to give them more to talk about – but don’t change any of the facts in the original role cards. Alternatively (and preferably), get the students to add some details themselves to flesh out the role card. Make sure they know not to change any of the original details. Examples of what to add: ■ When you saw the car, where were you going and why? ■ What was the weather like? ■ How were you feeling? ■ What was your impression of the personality of the men/women you saw? ■ Add more details about the car, e.g. old/new, its make, etc. ■ Add more details of the people you saw, e.g. old/new, clothes, curly/

straight hair, height, build.

Something in common? Aim:

To find common interests and experiences

Topic: Personal information Time:

Can be done synchronously or asynchronously

Level: A1+ Language focus: Hobbies, sports, likes and dislikes, jobs, holidays, pets, life experiences Present simple and continuous, past simple, would like, like+ -ing

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Preparation: Prepare the eight role cards and the instructions. Post the instructions on the platform and private message the role cards to the students. Instructions You are at a party where you do not know anyone. You will get a role card saying who you are and giving some information about you, e.g. hobbies, family, pets, sports you like. 1. Use the private message to talk to one other person. Start a conversation by telling them your name and asking theirs. Don’t just tell them your information – try to have a natural conversation by asking questions, such as: Do you live in London? Yes, I do now but I used to live in Germany. How about you? I live in Manchester. You can also ask further questions, such as: Do you live in London? Yes, I do now but I used to live in Germany. Oh wow – what did you do there? 2. Look for things that you have in common, for example: Do you like music? Yes, I play the trumpet. Oh so do I!! 3. Make a note of the person’s name and the thing you both have or do, e.g. Robin: plays the trumpet. 4. Post your findings on the group page! Role cards Jo You are a nurse and have two children, Polly and Dan. You also have a cat called Bella. You like skiing and fishing. You live in London now, but you lived in Germany before your children were born. You love travelling and you went on holiday to Italy last year.

Chris You are an engineer. You live on your own and have a dog called Bones. You live in Manchester now but you lived in Spain for a year. You play the violin and you are learning French at evening class. You play rugby. You went to Italy last summer.

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Role cards

Leslie You studied history at university and teach history now. You have one daughter called Emma. You also have a cat called Bella. You lived in Spain for a year but live in Manchester now. You went to Greece on holiday last year. You love art and music – you play the piano. You also enjoy playing tennis.

Jerry You are a journalist and you have two children, Polly and Dan. You also have a dog called Spot. Your hobbies are playing the violin, learning Spanish and cinema. You went to Greece on holiday last year.

Alex You are a journalist and live on your own with a dog called Bones. You like art and you play the guitar. You enjoy skiing and you play in the local football team. You like going to France and have been there several times – the last time was last summer.

Kim You are a police officer. You have two children, Tom and Chris, and a cat called Abby. You live in London now, but you lived in Germany before the children were born. You went to France on holiday last year and you are learning French now. Your hobbies are cinema and tennis.

Sam You are an engineer and have two children called Tom and Chris. Your hobbies are football and fishing. You play the piano. You are also learning Spanish at evening classes, because you would like to live in Spain for a while. You went to Iceland last summer.

Nicky You are a nurse but you studied history at university. You have a dog called Spot and a cat called Abby. You like travelling and went to Iceland last year. You play the guitar and you also play rugby.

Procedure 1. In your live online class, set up the activity. Get everyone to log into the platform and to read your pinned post. Talk them through the instructions. 2. If you are setting this for homework, tell them that this is their homework for the evening. Agree a time for everyone to log in. If it is in class time, let them begin interacting.

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3. If you want to see what they are asking and answering in order to give feedback later, ask to be included in the message – though if they are video chatting as opposed to texting this will not work! 4. Look at what they have all written and post corrections or give feedback in class. 5. Post the list of solutions to the things they have in common.

Solution: things they have in common: Jo and Leslie have cats called Bella. Jo and Alex like skiing. Jo and Sam like fishing. Jo and Chris went on holiday to Italy last year. Jo and Jerry have children called Polly and Dan. Jo and Kim used to live in Germany. Jo and Nicky are nurses. Leslie and Alex like art. Leslie and Sam play the piano. Leslie and Chris live in Manchester but lived in Spain for a year. Leslie and Jerry went to Greece last year. Leslie and Kim play tennis. Leslie and Nicky studied history at university. Alex and Sam play football. Alex and Chris have dogs called Bones. Alex and Jerry are journalists. Alex and Kim went to France last year. Alex and Nicky play the guitar. Sam and Chris are engineers. Sam and Jerry are learning Spanish. Sam and Kim have children called Tom and Chris. Sam and Nicky went to Iceland last year. Chris and Jerry play the violin. Chris and Kim are learning French. Chris and Nicky play rugby. Jerry and Kim like cinema. Jerry and Nicky have a dog called Spot. Kim and Nicky have a cat called Abby.

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Variation: For higher-level students, add some details to give them more to talk about – but don’t change any of the facts in the original role cards. Alternatively (and preferably), students add some details themselves to flesh out the role card. Make sure they know not to change any of the original details. Examples of what to add or ask students to add: ■ If you have a pet, describe it. ■ How old are your children? ■ If you lived in another country, did you like it? What did you like? What

was your job there? ■ What kind of art/music/cinema do you like?

My street Aim:

To find who lives in each house in the street

Topic: Personal information Time:

Can be done synchronously or asynchronously

Level: A1+ Language focus: Jobs, routines: the verb be, present simple Preparation: Prepare or draw an image of a street with 12 houses on it (see image below). This works for up to 12 students. If you have fewer than 12, cut some of the houses and delete the redundant information on the last role card (e.g. if you have eight students, cut the last four houses so that there are eight houses in the street and delete the information about No 9 from No 8’s role card.) If you have more than 12 students, they can play in two groups. Private message each student the following: an image of a row of 12 houses numbered 1–12 (this can be a drawing or a copy of the street of houses) and one of the role cards below. Then prepare the role cards and the instructions. Post the following instructions on the platform and private message the role cards to the students.

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Instructions You have a picture of a street of houses and a role card. Print this out so you can make notes on it as you discover more about the street. You live in one of the houses and you know who lives next door. Try to find who lives in every house in the street and what jobs they do. 1. Write down what you already know, for example: No 1: X and Y: dentist and policeman No 2: A and B: nurse and chef 2. Private-message one other person and tell them about yourself and your neighbours. 3. Listen to their information and add it to the information about the street. Role cards Number 1 Mary

Number 7 Dana and Brian

You are a teacher. A young couple, Anne and Brian, live next door. She is a nurse and he is a police officer.

You live at number 7. You have three-yearold twins, Molly and Matt. Brian is a bus driver and Dana is an artist. Pierre lives at number 6. He is French and works as a chef at Le Bistro, a French restaurant in town. On the other side is Alex, a doctor.

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Role cards Number 2 Anne and Brian

Number 8 Alex

You live at number 2. Anne is a nurse and Brian is a police officer.

You are a doctor and live at number 8.

Mary lives next door at No 1. She is a teacher. On the other side is Ellen. She is retired. She has a black cat.

On the other side, at number 9, are a couple, Jean and Marcus. They live with Jean’s mother. Marcus is a shop assistant and Jean is a taxi driver.

Number 3 Ellen

Number 9 Jean and Marcus

You are retired. You live alone with your black cat, Minnie.

You live at number 9 with Jean’s mother, Susan. Marcus is a shop assistant and Jean is a taxi driver.

Anne and Brian live next door at No 2. Anne is a nurse and Brian is a policemen On the other side are a young couple, Olivia and Ben. Olivia is a dentist and Ben is a builder. They have two children Sam and Ella. They go to primary school.

Next door at number 8 is a doctor, Alex, and on the other side is a couple, Raj and Shireen. They have an Indian restaurant in town.

Number 4 Olivia and Ben

Number 10 Raj and Shireen

You live at No 4. Olivia is a dentist and Ben is a builder. You have two children, Sam and Ella. They go to primary school.

You live at number 10. You have an Indian restaurant in town.

Ellen lives next door at No 3. She is retired and lives alone with her black cat, Minnie. On the other side three students, Rebecca, Tim and Alice, share the house. They go to the university and they all study English.

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Dana and Brian live at number 7. They have three-year-old twins, Molly and Matt. Brian is a bus driver and Dana is an artist.

Jean and Marcus live at number 9 with Jean’s mother Susan. Marcus is a shop assistant and Jean is a taxi driver. Next door at number 11 is Pat, a postman. He has a black-and-white cat.

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Role cards Number 5 Rebecca, Tim and Alice

Number 11 Pat

You are one of three students, Rebecca, Tim and Alice. You share the house at number 5. You all study English at the university.

You live at number 11. You are a postman and you have a black-and-white cat.

Olivia and Ben live at number 4. Olivia is a dentist and Ben is a builder. They have two children, Sam and Ella. They go to primary school. A single man, Pierre, lives next door at number 6. He is French and is a chef at Le Bistro, a French restaurant in town.

At number 12 is a family with three children. The father, Tom, is a firefighter and the mother, Sarah, is a lawyer. The children, Ally, Jo and Lucas, go to secondary school. They have a big dog called Bones. It barks a lot and chases your cat.

Number 6 Pierre

Number 12 Tom and Sarah

You live at number 6. You are French and work as a chef at Le Bistro, a French restaurant in town.

You live at number 12. Tom is a firefighter and Sarah is a lawyer. You have three children, Ally, Jo and Lucas. They go to secondary school. You also have a dog called Bones.

At number 5 there are three students Rebecca, Tim and Alice. They all study English at the university. A couple, Dana and Brian, live at number 7. They have three-year-old twins, Molly and Matt. Brian is a bus driver and Dana is an artist.

Raj and Shireen live at No 10. They have an Indian restaurant in town

Next door at number 11 is Pat, a postman. He has a black-and-white cat.

Procedure: 1. In your live online class, set up the activity. Get everyone to log into the platform and to read your pinned post. Talk them through the instructions. 2. If you are setting this for homework, tell them that this is their homework for the evening. Agree a time for everyone to log in. If it is in class time, let them begin interacting. 3. After they have completed the activity, go through it with them. Ask students to share some of the information and questions they wrote in Stage 2 (for example, by copy-pasting them from the private messages or by simply saying the questions they asked). Use these to do any language feedback.

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4. Give the students the following quiz. Give them time to complete it on their own.

How much can you remember? 1. Who has a black cat? 2. What subject do all the students study? 3. Who goes to primary school and who goes to secondary school? 4. Three people in the street work in restaurants. What type of food can you eat there? 5. Who chases Pat’s cat? 6. Which people have a job that involves driving? 7. Who works in a hospital? 5. Invite students to post their answers in the chatbox. Look at what they have written and invite others to correct their answers if they think they have a different answer. Then give the answer to any they haven’t answered correctly and explain the answer.

Answers 1. Ellen at number 3. 2. English. 3. Sam and Ella at number 4 go to primary school. Ally, Jo and Lucas at number 12 go to secondary school. 4. Pierre at number 6 (French food), Raj and Shireen at number 10 (Indian food). 5. Bones, the dog at number 12. 6. Brian, the bus driver at number 7, Jean, the taxi driver at number 9, and Pat the postman at number 11. 7. Alex, the doctor at number 8, and Anne, the nurse at number 2. Variation: For higher-level students, add some details to give them more to talk about – but don’t change any of the facts in the original role cards. Alternatively, ask the students to add some details themselves to flesh out the role card. Suggest they add in details such as their feelings about their neighbours and anecdotes about things they did together (a party, building work, something helpful), without changinge any of the original details! 116

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The wedding reception Aim:

To share personal information about people

Topic: Memories Time:

Can be done synchronously or asynchronously

Level: A2+ Language focus: Present simple, past simple Preparation: Prepare the eight role cards and the instructions. Post the scenario and instructions on the platform and private message the role cards to the students.

Scenario You are at a wedding reception but you don’t know any of the other guests. Talk to them to find out whether they know the bride (Amy) or the groom (Tim). Find out how they met the bride and groom and chat about your and their memories of the bride or groom.

Instructions 1. Read the scenario. 2. I will send you a role card by private message. 3. Private message one other person and exchange your information about what you know. Then message another person until you have spoken to everyone. 4. Take notes and try to remember the information. 5. When everyone has finished, I will post a quiz. The answers will help you find out where Amy and Tim are going on honeymoon. Role cards Nadia You are Amy’s cousin so you have known her since she was born. She was an adorable baby but quite a naughty little girl – she once painted the dog green while he was asleep!

Hari You went to secondary school with Tim. He was popular at school and was very musical. He was in the school choir and orchestra. He liked playing tricks. Once he put a ‘For Sale’ sign outside the school!

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Role cards Jan Your parents lived in Italy for a few years and so did Amy’s parents. You met her there. You were in the same class at primary school. She was very clever but quite naughty – she once let off a fire extinguisher to see what would happen!

Andy You were at university with Tim. You both studied Law. You sang in the university choir together and went on a concert tour of Germany. He was a very friendly guy and had lots of friends at uni. He liked playing tricks. Once he put socks into the toes of your shoes so you thought they were too small for you!

Sam You went to secondary school with Amy. She was very good at acting – she was in all the school plays! She was also very kind. You arrived at school in Year 4 and didn’t know anyone, but she was very kind and friendly and invited you to her house.

Riku You met Tim in America. You were both working on a summer camp. You became very friendly and went travelling together after the camp finished.

Mika You met Amy at university. You both studied English. She was very lively and had lots of parties! You were both in the university drama club. She was a very good actress.

Casey You and Tim both play in an orchestra together. You play the trombone and he plays the trumpet. He likes playing jokes. Once, at a rehearsal, he changed the music so that half the orchestra were playing one piece and the other half were playing a different piece!

Procedure: 1. In your live online class, set up the activity. Get everyone to log into the platform and to read your pinned ‘Scenario’ and ‘Instructions’ posts. Talk them through the instructions. Send them their role cards by private message. 2. If you are setting it for homework, tell them that this is their homework for the evening. Agree a time for everyone to log in.

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3. When they have all talked to everyone, post the quiz on a shared screen. They discuss the answers in breakout rooms. Which group/pair can be the first to find the answer?

Quiz Find where Amy and Tim are going on honeymoon. 1. What instrument does Tim play? .................................................................... 2. What is the name of Tim’s oldest friend at the reception? .......................... 3. What is Amy good at? ...................................................................................... 4. Where did Amy go to primary school? .......................................................... 5. What did Tim study at university? .................................................................. 6. In which country did Riku meet Tim? ............................................................. 7. Who has known Amy the longest? ................................................................. 8. What animal did Amy paint when she was little? ......................................... 4. Finally, post the answer.

Answers 1. Trumpet 2. Hari 3. Acting 4. Italy 5. Law 6. America 7. Nadia 8. Dog Where Amy and Tim are going on their honeymoon: THAILAND Variation: For higher-level students, ask them to add some details themselves to flesh out the role card , such as anecdotes about things they did together and more character description, their hobbies and likes/dislikes, etc. Make sure they know not to change any of the original details!

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Professional development Questions for reflection ■ How could using a combination of platforms enrich your teaching? Which

of the suggested categories of activities (collaborative writing, interactive homework, mingling games) would be most useful to you and your students? ■ How could you use the considerations for choosing a platform in the ‘Tools and tips’ section to enable you to choose a platform?

Things to try ■ Look at your course syllabus. Choose a topic. How could you adapt one of

the collaborative writing projects to your topic? How would you stage this as student homework over a number of days? ■ Do you normally set individual homework? Try an interactive homework task to practise a structure you are currently teaching. How would you make sure students contributed? ■ Try out a mingling activity. Write yourself a mini-lesson plan before you set it up, carefully staging the activity.

Things to share ■ Work with a colleague. Try a different platform for an activity such as

interactive homework. Discuss it afterwards – which one worked best? ■ Do a collaborative writing project with your students. Share the results with your colleagues. ■ Prepare a mingling game to do with your colleagues. Have fun!

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6. Zooming out Staring at a screen for a long time can be very tiring. The activities in this section aim to get the students away from the screen for a while. Some activities simply provide ways for students to have some off-screen working time. Others focus on exploiting the fact that the students are all in different places and thus have access to a variety of objects and experiences that are not available in a normal classroom. They prompt the students to explore their immediate environment and either report on what they find or bring something to the virtual classroom as a talking point for others. Some activities provide both of the above: students take some off-screen working time and then return and report on their experience.

Offline activities Many activities, such as reading, listening and writing, do not require students to be in the online platform. This activity provides a way of structuring breaks from the screen to do individual work.

Checking in, checking out, checking in Aim:

To assign individual work as a break from the screen

Topic: Any Time:

30 minutes+

Level: A1+ Language focus: Any Preparation: Find a reading, writing or listening task with exercises that can be done individually. Procedure: 1. Occasionally plan lessons in the following way: Students check in online with you as they normally would. Do a warmer or quick review activity and outline the lesson goals. 2. Assign a long reading or listening task, or some exercises that learners can do on their own, away from the screen. Tell students you want them

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to do these away from the computer, but they can come back if they have a question for you. Set a time limit. Turn off your camera. 3. Reconvene the class and turn your camera back on. Check the students’ work. Variation: This also works also for setting group tasks. Divide students up and give them a period of time in which to do the work. Reconvene 30 minutes later for groups to report back and get feedback from you.

Flipping the lesson Aim:

To assign individual work as a break from the screen

Topic: Any Time:

30 minutes+

Level: A1+ Language focus: Any Preparation: Find a vocabulary or grammar task with exercises that can be done individually. Procedure: 1. Occasionally plan lessons in the following way: Students check in online with you as they normally would. Do a warmer or quick review activity and outline the lesson goals. 2. Assign a vocabulary or grammar task, or some exercises that learners can do on their own, away from the screen, from the coursebook or from handouts you have sent your class. Tell students you want them to do these away from the computer, but they can come back if they have a question for you. Set a time limit. Turn off your camera. 3. Reconvene the class and turn your camera back on. Check the students’ work. 4. Then use the live class time to exploit the language used in a communicative activity (see Breakout room activities, pages 67–73). Visit the rooms to monitor performance and take notes of their use of the language they’ve just practised. Bring the class back together for the groups to report back and get feedback from you.

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Exploiting the home environment The activities in this section exploit the fact that everyone is in a different place. They create an information gap for exchange of personal information. When planning activities that exploit the home environment, always be mindful of students’ privacy. No one should feel obliged to show their teacher and classmates around their home. Other options are suggested in the procedure stages of the activities, where appropriate.

Where was I when I last wore this? Aim: To guess what others were doing when they last wore a certain item of clothing. Topic:

Past actions guessing game

Time :

30 minutes+

Level: A2+ Language focus:

P  ast simple, past continuous, clothing vocabulary, places vocabulary, action vocabulary.

Preparation:

 sk students to come to the next class with an item of A clothing to show the group, e.g. a coat, a jumper or a pair of shorts. They could even bring childhood clothes if they have any. Tell them they should choose something that brings back a memory, such as a picnic with friends or a walk on the beach. Select an item yourself. Prepare the slide for Task 1.

Procedure: 1. Display a screen or whiteboard with some example questions: Were you at home? Were you at a party? Were you on the beach? Were you shopping? Were you walking? Were you dancing? 2. Model the task by showing the students your item of clothing. Get them to ask questions using the ideas on the board. You can only answer yes or no. When they have guessed correctly, say a little more about your

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memory of the event, for example, Yes, I was at a picnic! It was my birthday. The weather was lovely, so we had a picnic on the beach. 3. Now the students to do the same thing. Nominate a student to show their item of clothing. When the others have guessed the event, encourage the student to say a bit more about the memory. The student then nominates another student. If you have a small class, you can do this with the whole group, if you have a larger class they can work in smaller groups in breakout rooms. When they come back to the whole group, each small group should report back. 4. While the students are talking, make a note of any errors you hear. After the activity, go through these with the students. Don’t name the students, simply read out the error or share the screen where you have typed the notes and ask the students if they can correct it. 5. After you have been through the errors, the students write a short account of their memory of when they last wore the item of clothing. Extension: Students practise other areas of vocabulary. For example, they practise weather vocabulary by guessing what the weather was like when the student last wore the clothing.

Scavenger hunt Aim: To ask and answer questions about objects Topic:

Object description

Time:

30 minutes+

Level: A2+ Language focus: wh- and yes/no questions, present simple, past simple. Preparation: Make a list of things to find in the house, e.g. something to drink, something red, something from another country. Procedure: 1. Display the first item on your list of things to find, e.g. ‘something red’. The students go off to find something red in their house. 2. When they return, nominate one student. The other students ask the nominated student questions, e.g. Is it a vegetable? Is it a book? Is it a

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type of clothing? The student answers. When the guessers are close to the answer, the student can reveal the answer and show the object. 3. Once the object is revealed, the students can ask wh- questions, e.g. When did you get it? Why do you like it? Who does it belong to? 4. Keep a note of errors and give feedback. Variations: ■ Students play this game in smaller groups in breakout rooms. They each make a list of things to find and take turns asking the others to go and find the objects. ■ Use the activity to practise a specific lexical set by specifying the category

of object students have to find, e.g. a food item, a gadget, a kitchen item or a vegetable.

My recipe Aim:

To describe a recipe

Topic:

Cookery

Time:

30 minutes+

Level: A2+ Language focus: Food, amounts, imperatives, going to Preparation: None, though you could set the activity up the day before by asking students to come to the session with food items necessary for a recipe. Procedure: 1. Introduce vocabulary for cooking actions by miming (e.g. stir, add, mix, boil, etc.) and getting the students to guess the verb. 2. Students go to the kitchen and select items for a recipe (e.g. eggs, milk, cheese, oil). 3. They put them on a table ready to show the others. 4. Nominate a student to show the others their items. 5. The others guess what dish they are making e.g. Are you going to make cheese omelette? 6. When they have guessed correctly, the student tells them the recipe, using the cooking verbs from Stage 1. Then it is the next student’s turn.

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7. Keep a note of errors and give feedback. Extension: Students write up their recipe (or their favourite recipe) and compile a class cookery book.

My favourite place Aim:

To describe places in the house

Topic:

Likes and preferences

Time:

30 minutes+

Level: A2+ Language focus: Furniture, house features, adjectives, like + -ing Preparation: None Procedure: 1. Introduce the activity by sitting in your favourite place in your house and telling the students about it, e.g. This is my favourite place to sit. It’s in the living room. It’s a rocking chair and it’s very comfortable. It’s also by the window, so the sun comes in and it’s very warm and light. I like reading here and also sitting and talking to my family. 2. Display some questions or sentence stems on a shared screen: What piece of furniture is here? What room is it? What is near it? What do you like about being there? Or: This is my favourite place in the house. It’s a ……………. It’s in the ……………. It’s near the ……………. I like …ing here. 3. Ask students about their favourite place in the house. It could be a comfortable chair, a seat on a balcony, or a shady spot in the garden. Tell them that if they would like to, they can go and sit there with their

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camera on. (Note that they will need a mobile device if moving away from their desktop set-up, and a 4G/5G connection if going outside.) 4. Nominate a student to tell the others about their favourite place and why they like it, what they like doing there, etc. 5. Nominate another student to take their turn. 6. Take note of any errors and give feedback. Variation: Students post a picture of their favourite place in their neighbourhood and explain where it is, what they do there and why they like it so much, for example: This is a café near me. I love it because it is by the beach and has a great view. They make very good coffee, too. I like going there with friends and chatting, but I also like going on my own and working. I get a lot of work done when I am there and it doesn’t feel like work!

Hide and seek Aim:

To ask about location

Topic:

Places in a room

Time:

30 minutes+

Level: A1+ Language focus: Furniture, household objects, prepositions, the verb be Preparation: None Procedure: 1. Students hide an object in their room, e.g. behind a cushion or under a chair. 2. Nominate a student to begin. They can either show other students the room with their camera, or, if privacy is a concern, they can list the furniture and objects in the room, for example: TV, cushion, coffee table, carpet, lamp. 3. The other students ask questions, e.g. Is it under the cushion? Is it behind the TV? etc., until one guesses correctly. 4. The student who guessed correctly takes a turn.

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Variation: If students are happy to do so, they can hide themselves in various places around the house, for example, in the kitchen next to the oven, in the bathroom next to the basin, taking their mobile device with them. The others first have to guess which room they are in, and then their location in that room: Are you in the kitchen/bathroom/living room? Are you next to the oven? Are you by the window? etc.

What does this mean to me? Aim:

To ask about past events

Topic:

Objects and their significance

Time:

30 minutes+

Level: A2+ Language focus: Past simple, describing objects, yes/no questions Preparation: Ask students the day before to find an object that has significance for them – a gift or souvenir, for example. Find one of your own as an example. Procedure: 1. Show students an object that has meaning for you. Describe it briefly without saying where you got it or what it means to you, e.g. This is a small sculpture. It shows a family of three people with their arms around each other. 2. The students ask you yes/no questions, e.g. Did you buy it on holiday? Was it a present? 3. Students find an object in their home that has a meaning for them, e.g. something they bought on a memorable trip abroad or a birthday present. 4. Nominate a student to show their object first and briefly describe it. The others try to guess the significance of the object for the owner. 5. Then it is the next student’s turn. 6. Take notes while they are talking and provide feedback.

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Preposition participation Aim:

To practise prepositions

Topic:

Location of objects

Time:

30 minutes+

Level: A1+ Language focus: the verb be, prepositions of place Preparation: None Procedure: 1. Post a preposition on a shared screen or simple say it, e.g. in or on. 2. Students find an object from their home to illustrate the preposition, e.g. The flowers are in the vase. The cat is on my lap. They race to be the first to post a picture of it. The first to do so can say the sentence. 3. Give the next preposition and start a new race! Variation: You can also do this activity with prepositions of movement, such as across or over. Students report or show an action, e.g. I walked across the room.

Getting outside These activities aim to get the students outside in the fresh air and away from the screen, with a task to do while they are enjoying a change of scene. Some activities come with a warning that they are not suitable for younger learners. With older learners who can be outside without parental supervision, make sure that they live in the kind of neighbourhood where they feel safe going outside in the street near their house.

Stretch break Aim: To get students to exercise as a break from the screen Topic: Any Time:

10 minutes+

Level: A1+ Language focus: Any Preparation: None

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Procedure: 1. After a particularly long stretch of working together online, suggest that students take a ‘stretch break’. There are a number of ways of doing this. You could lead the stretches yourself or direct students to a video to follow along. 2. Alternatively, to get students away from their screens altogether, tell them to get up and walk around. Assign a specific small task, for example: ■ Get up, stretch and walk to the nearest door. ■ Get up, stretch and have a drink of water. ■ Get up, stretch and blink five to ten times rapidly. ■ Get up, stretch and look out of the window; focus on something in the

distance and look at it for a while, then walk around the room. ■ Get up, stretch and do a lap around your house.

Extension: Turn the small physical tasks into language practice activities. ■ Get up, stretch and walk to the nearest door, counting the steps. ■ Get up, stretch and look out of the window; focus on something in the

distance. When you come back, describe what you saw. ■ Get up, stretch and walk around naming things you can see in English;

name at least 20 things. ■ Get up and choose a nearby space, tidy it and be prepared to tell us what

you tidied.

Out of my window Aim:

To describe a scene

Topic:

Place description

Time:

30 minutes+

Level: A1+ Language focus: the verb be, prepositions, places in a town Preparation: Take a photo from your window and prepare a description. Ask students to take a photo from their window and be prepared to share.

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Procedure: 1. Show your photo to the students on a shared screen and describe it, for instance: There is a tree in front of the house. Across the street is a white house with a red door. 2. Then all students share their photos on their screens. 3. Choose one and describe it. The students try to decide which photo you are describing. When they think they know, they type an answer into the chatbox. 4. The first student who guesses correctly gets to choose and describe the next photo for the others to guess. 5. Take notes while students are speaking and provide feedback on errors. Variation: Students describe an object they can see from their window, e.g. It’s tall and thin. It has a light on top. (Answer: a lamppost.)

In the ’hood Aim: To describe a view Topic:

Describing a neighbourhood

Time:

30 minutes+

Level: A2+ Language focus: Present and past tenses, prepositions of place Preparation: None. But note: This activity should not be done with younger learners. With older learners who can be outside without parental supervision, you should be certain that they live in the kind of neighbourhood where they feel safe going outside in the street near their house. Procedure: 1. Take your laptop or other mobile device outside and show the students a view from your house. Describe what you can see, for instance: I love the trees in our street. In autumn they have beautiful red leaves. Next door to us lives an older woman and her daughter. She used to be a teacher but she is retired now. Across the street is a lovely family with four-yearold twins. They shout ‘Hello’ to us whenever they see us. The bins are out for collection. Behind us they are building a block of flats. It’s very noisy!

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2. Ask students to take their laptop or phone outside to show the others a view of their street/view from their house. 3. Nominate one student to begin (by private message), but do not say who it is. They describe to the others what they can see. The other students have to guess who is describing their view.

Round the block Aim: To describe a route Topic:

Directions, town places

Time:

60 minutes+

Level: A2+ Language focus: Imperatives, town places, prepositions of place Preparation: None. But note: This activity should not be done with younger learners. With older learners who can be outside without parental supervision, you should be certain that they live in the kind of neighbourhood where they feel safe going outside in the street near their house. Procedure: 1. Students leave the online class and take a short walk around the block. Give them a time to get back. While they are walking, they should prepare a sketch map of their walk and a sequence of directions to describe their walk, for instance: Go out of the house and turn right. Go down the street. At the end, turn right and go up the hill. At the top of the hill there are some traffic lights and across the road is a row of shops: By the traffic lights there is a sushi shop. Next to that is a convenience store, and at the end of the row is a cake shop. Cross the road and go and buy some lunch!! 2. Students take turns to give their directions to the class, who try to draw a map following the directions. When they have finished they can post their maps and compare maps to see who drew them accurately.

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Mobile quiz Aim: To describe scenes Topic:

Describing scenes

Time:

60 minutes+

Level: A2+ Language focus: Past simple, past continuous Preparation: Please note: This activity should not be done with younger learners, unless they do it by looking out their windows. With older learners who can be outside without parental supervision, you should make sure they live in the kind of neighbourhood where they feel safe going outside in the street near their house. Prepare a quiz for the shared screen about what students can see walking down the street, for example: 1) How many people did you see? What were they doing? 2) How many animals did you see/ What were they and what were they doing? 3) Did you hear any music? What was it? 4) Did you see any flowers? What colour were they? 5) What vehicles did you see? What colour were they? What were they doing? (for example: They were parked/waiting at lights/moving.) 6) Did you see any shops or cafés? What kind? Procedure: 1. Give students the quiz you have prepared. Give them time to print out or make notes. Alternatively, they can use their phones to access the platform with the shared screen. 2. Students take a short walk (give them a time to be back) and make notes based on the quiz questions. 3. When they return, they report on their walk, for instance: I saw two men and a woman. One man was walking a dog. One man was painting his fence and the woman was jogging. 4. Ask students: What was the most unusual/interesting thing you saw? What was the nicest? Students reply and then the class votes on who saw the most unusual/interesting/nicest things.

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Sensory poem Aim:

To write a poem about the senses

Topic:

Sensory description

Time:

30 minutes+

Level: A2+ Language focus:

sense verbs: see, hear, feel, smell, noun + -ing, prepositions

Preparation: None Procedure: 1. Students go outside (in their garden or on their balcony/doorstep) with supervision if appropriate for five to ten minutes to sit in silence and think about the following questions: What can you see? What can you hear? What can you smell? What can you feel? 2. When they come back, they discuss what they experienced. 3. On the shared screen, give students a framework to write a poem.

Spring/summer/autumn/winter [morning/afternoon] Hearing: [noun] …ing Sight: [noun] …ing Smell: The scent of [noun] Touch: [noun] [preposition] [noun]

Example 1 Summer afternoon

Example 2 Autumn morning

Birds chirping Butterflies fluttering The scent of flowers The sun on my face

Wind blowing Leaves falling The scent of bonfire smoke A chill in the air

4. Students read out their poems or type them into the chat box for everyone to read. Extension: Collect the poems and make a small souvenir anthology called ‘One Day in Summer’ or ‘One Morning in Autumn’, for example.

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Professional development Questions for reflection ■ How do you normally do reading/listening or grammar/vocabulary activities

online? What sources do you use for them? At which points do you need to be present? How would you organise an online skills activity or an openanswer activity with a balance of offline and online work? ■ How could you manage a reading or listening offline activity to deal with early finishers? Can you think of some enjoyable offline tasks? For example, you might ask students who have finished to listen to some music and think of adjectives to describe it.

Things to try ■ Explore internet resources for listening and reading tasks, and possible

vocabulary and grammar activities for Offline activities on pages 121–122. Make folder within your bookmarks for different levels and ages so you have suitable resources for whichever class you are teaching. If your students are old enough, try presenting them with a choice of few different types of resources to give them some autonomy. ■ Choose an activity from Exploiting the home environment, pages 123–129 to use with your learners. Do you need to adapt it? How? Try it out. What went well? What would you change? ■ Do the same for an activity from Getting outside, pages 129–134.

Things to share ■ Build a list of online resources for Offline activities. Share it with

colleagues to make a communal library. ■ Look back at the activities you tried and the modifications you would suggest and share them with your colleagues.

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Index A abilities 25 acronyms 31 action vocabulary 123 adjective order 19 adjectives 71, 126 adjectives of personality 51 advice 57, 93 age 71 agriculture and climate change 89 amounts 125 animals 55, 82, 94, 95, 96 animals and nature 50 artwork 61 ask and answer questions 34, 124 asking about location and past events 23 asking about past events 23 asking questions in the past 80

B be, the verb 27, 41, 114, 129, 131, 133 booking a hotel 59, 98 break from the screen 121, 122, 129

C can 12, 21, 25, 26, 75 can for ability 71, 79 Can I/you…? 98

can or if/when (1st conditional) 25 Can you see ...? 69 cause and effect 89 causes and effects of climate change 89 climate change 89 clothing vocabulary 123 common interests and experiences 108 comparatives and superlatives 68 complex sentence 42 computer vocabulary 53 conditionals 36, 89, 98 conjunctions 43 cookery 125 country 97 country scenes 62 create a story 60 crime 80 cumulative story 39

D defining words 38 describe a route 132 describe a view 131 describe differences 77 describe scenes 133 describing a neighbourhood 131 describing objects 24, 128 describing objects and people 105 describing people 22, 27, 71

describing personalities and habits 51 describing pictures 50 describing scenes 133 dialogue 58, 59, 72 Did …. ? 23 directions 23, 101, 132 Does it …? 24

E energy and climate change 89 exercise 129 expressing opinions 73

F family 34, 71 famous people 38, 97 farewell wishes 14 food 41, 97, 127 food and drink 75, 96 food vocabulary 21, 41 frequency adverbs 19 function 98 furniture 11, 43, 54, 96, 126, 127 furniture vocabulary 54 future actions 13 future plans 13 future with going to 71

G general knowledge questions 68 get to know each other 10 giving instructions 53

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Index

going to 13, 36, 104, 127 grammar point 103 grammatical structure 97

H haiku 62 Has he/she got ...? Is …? facial features 22 have 27, 38, 41 have got 99 have in common with each other 70 hobbies 110 holiday activities 74 holiday places and activities 74 holidays 34, 108 home 54 house and home 52 house features 126 household chores 21 household objects 127 How about …? 74 How much …? 99

I idioms 43, 44 I’d like … 25, 73, 74, 75, 98 I’d like to … 19, 74 imaginary country 91, 92 imperatives 43, 53, 125, 132 individual work 121, 122 interesting experiences 78 interests and hobbies 71 interior monologue 61 introducing yourself 10 is + -ing 27 Is it ….? 23, 24 Is there a ...? 69

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It could be … 24 item of clothing 123 I think … 73 I think that … 74 It might be … 24 It should have … 73 It’s important to … 73

O

J

P

jobs 37, 108, 112

L Let’s … 74 letters and replies 93, 94 lexical set 11, 12, 43, 52, 55, 125 lexical sets 41, 96 life achievements 37 life experiences 97, 103, 108 like + -ing 108, 128 likes and dislikes 108 likes and preferences 126 listening 33, 123 location 23, 127, 128 location of objects 129

M magazine problem page 93 making guesses 24 menu 75, 76 modals 36 modal verb can 12 music 72

N narrative tenses 39 nationalities 71 nationality 37 noun + -ing 134, 137

objects 24, 105, 124, 125, 128, 129 office vocabulary 77 one of us can ... 71 one of us doesn’t ... 71 one of us is going to ... 71

past continuous 80, 105, 123, 133 past simple 21, 37, 63, 97, 98, 101, 103, 105, 108, 117, 123, 124, 128, 133 past simple questions 23 past tenses 38, 60, 131 people and appearance 22 personal history 21 personal information 21, 36, 37, 103, 108, 112, 117 pets 51, 110 place description 62, 74, 91, 130 places in a room 127 places in a town 130 places in the house 126 places vocabulary 123 poem 95, 134 portraits 61 preferences 103, 126 prepositions 43, 73, 127, 129, 130, 131, 132 prepositions of place 50, 77, 131, 132 present and past questions 23 present continuous 36, 41 present perfect 21, 26, 36, 70, 78, 97, 103

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Index

present simple 21, 24, 26, 36, 37, 43, 79, 98, 112, 117, 124 present simple and continuous 108 present simple negative 71 present simple questions 23 present simple questions for habits and routines 51 pronouns 70, 101, 102

Q questions 20, 21, 23, 34, 38, 68, 78, 80, 126 questions and answers 78

R recently-taught language 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 26 recipes 41 relative clauses 38 relative clauses in definitions 38 reported questions 19 restaurant dialogue 75 romance 73, 101 rooms in a house 96 round off the lesson 13, 14 routines 17, 51, 79, 98, 112

S sense verbs: see, hear, feel, smell 134 sensory description 134 Shall we ...? 74 short story 101, 102

sports 41, 104, 108, 109 sports vocabulary 21 suggestions and opinions 74

T telling the time 81 the natural world 50 There is/are ... 77 There would be ... 73 the senses 134 things in a picture 69 things in the kitchen 52 topic vocabulary 98 tourist activities and facilities 91 tourist brochure 91, 92 town features 73 town features and facilities 73 town places 132 transport and climate 89 transport vocabulary 55 travel 56, 74, 75, 76, 94 travel experiences 63

well-wishing expressions with may 14 Where ... ? 99 Where is the ...? 69 wh- questions 34, 125 Why don't we ...? 74 will for prediction 89 work 97, 118 would like 73, 110

Y yes/no questions 34, 37, 38, 41, 124, 128

U used to 104

V values 103 vehicles 96 verbs 41, 43, 102 vocabulary for location and actions 23 vocabulary practice and spelling 40

W websites 53, 55, 74 We could … 74

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