Allie teaches English.

What better way to procrastinate on planning EFL classes than writing about them?

Thats what I thought, and thats why I am about to present you with my top five favorite English lessons that I have taught in Chile:

5. The Many Languages of Suriname. This class is based on a photo slide show from the New York Times website on... the many languages spoken in Suriname. I use it to start a conversation about language and how it can be important to a country for both cultural and economic reasons.

4. Social Business. The BBC website has a whole section for English language learners. Fun, huh? I used a 6 minute English segment on Nobel Peace Price Winner Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank, as the basis for a class on social business in which we discuss how the goals of a business and non profit organization can be combined to pull people out of poverty. Then we discuss non profit organizations that the students are aware of in Chile and what else can be done to solve the problem of poverty in their country.

3. Present Simple vs. Present Continuous. This lesson starts with unscrambling sentences that are designed to elicit answers in the present simple and present continuous. I then go on to explain the difference in meaning between the two forms and when to use them. Then I ask the students to either make sentences or write a story with cards with verbs on them and cards that have words that mark time like "usually" or "currently." I finish it off with a soccer themed board game that uses the two forms.

2. Clothing. I taught this lesson to my class of 4-6 year olds. Step one: empty your closet into your backpack. Step 2: Bring your backpack to class. Take about 5 minutes to let the kids guess what could possibly be in your backpack. Exaggeratedly draw all their silly guesses on the white board. Step 3: Take the clothing items out of the bag one by one and have the children repeat the name of the item about 3597402 times. Then say fun stuff like " I wear my pants on my head" and proceed to put your pants on your head while all the children scream "Nooooooooo!" This works best if you have already taught vocabulary for parts of the body. Step 4: Dress the little darlings up in your clothing and have them tell you what they are wearing, on what part of their body, and what color it is. Step 5: Cuteness overload.

1. Going to the Supermarket! This class was designed for children aged 7-12. I've taught it about 4 times and it has lead to by far the most enjoyable teaching experiences I've had in Chile thus far. The lesson comes complete with two sets of cards with pictures and words of food items, info gap and go fish games, coloring activities, shopping lists, and opportunities to practice adjectives and count vs. non count nouns. Wow, who wouldn't have fun?


I like teaching kids, can you tell?


All that said, I really miss teaching immediately useful skills to people in need. For example, there are few things more rewarding than teaching people in need of paying an electricity bill how to read one and how to write a check.


Now I need to plan classes, more on that later.

Besos,
Allie