Hi Cristina, It’ s an honour for me to have you on TEACHERS TALK. Your blog has been awarded“ Featured Blog of the Month” by the British Council three times. Congratulations! Your amazing work inspires so many other teachers to be creative in class. But what drives you to create new and innovative lesson plans?
That’ s a good question and I have two answers for that. The first thing that comes to my mind is“ because I want to have fun” but I understand that this answer is probably not politically correct so, quite frankly, although most textbooks are good they tend to be quite repetitive and often they don’ t connect 100 % with my students’ needs. So, I design activities based on their textbook content, but making them more interactive, interesting and visually more appealing.
You are famous for bringing textbooks“ to life” by using technologies. Which three( or 2) websites / platforms would you recommend to our readers as being userfriendly and easy to utilise even by teachers who know very little about technologies?
Right now, I’ d suggest Spark Adobe, Playbuzz and for collaborative projects I would most definitely recommend Google Drive.
Image Credit:| Cristina Cabal
You often take part in workshops where you help many ESL teachers to modernise their lessons. What are the biggest challenges they usually face and share with you?
For me it’ s a pleasure to run these workshops because they go from showing a poorly disguised panic to using new technologies to displaying an enthusiasm only comparable to a child given the latest gadget. So, they really want to start integrating technology into their classes, they really want to use new tools to create their own content, they just don’ t know how to go about it. And that’ s my role, to teach them how to do it and help them be creative; so when the workshop finishes, they have some activities to use in their next class, activities that they have created, and that’ s the“ aha” feeling that will boost their motivation to continue designing their own activities.
Games and competitions play an important role in your lessons. Which game would you recommend that requires the least preparation and materials?
A game that works really well, requires no preparation and is highly adaptable is the Tic-Tac- Toe( also called Noughts and Crosses). You can revise grammar, vocabulary, phonetics; you can use it to practise speaking, for writing activities... etc. The only limit is your imagination!
Apart from playing games what other methods do you use to encourage your students to be creative?
I believe that giving your students the opportunity to experience success in their learning process is a boost to their motivation. Right now, I am doing lots of collaborative projects where students are responsible for their own learning. They need to present in front of the class and the results are amazing. Sometimes I want to stand up, give them a big hug and thank them for their effort.
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