Zunal

This tool is excellent for students to learn new topics. I like the fact that you as a teacher can include videos, articles, images, files and anything you want and your students will learn new information and also practice through a task.

I created a web quest about Helen Keller, you can also create web quests about other famous people. This web quest is excellent for adults or teenagers with an intermediate or low intermediate level of English.

This activity is perfect to work with the topics of inspirational people, famous people, overcoming obstacles or simply it is useful for students to expand their knowledge.

This is the link:

http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=241436

Puzzles

1. Word Seach Puzzle.

Here you will see the puzzle I created. It is for beginners and it is about adjectives. 

The idea is that students look for the adjectives (different types of adjectives) and after they do the puzzle create sentences with those adjectives. This is excellent to practice adjectives and practice how to use them.

2. Criss Cross Puzzle

Here it is my puzzle. It is about guessing the animal and it is for beginners too. 

The idea is that students practice vocabulary about animals by guessing the animals. 

read write think

This tool is really creative and useful for teachers and students. You can find a lot of resources for your classes.

Here is an explanation of how I would use 3 different resources of this program:

1) Theme poems:

Theme poems are excellent to work with descriptions through poetry. This is excellent to practice synonyms and adjectives. 

Here you will find an example of a theme poem about flowers and as a teacher I would use this to show them an example and then students can create one.

Teachers can also introduce a topic using this kind of poem.

2) Acrostic poems:

An excellent idea is to use this tool to work with values. Students can express ideas about what do certain values mean for them by writing this kind of poem. 

I would use the following poem created by me to show the students an example and after a little talk on values they can create some poems about different values like respect, honesty, tolerance, and others.

3) Postcard creator:

I found this resource excellent to work with the topic of trips.

In order to practice the topic of trips to places of Costa Rica or other countries, students can write a postcard to a friend or family member describing the activities they have done in that trip, how they feel in the trip and any description of that trip. The activity can be focused on a certain tense (past, present progressive, future...) and it is ideal for intermediate students. 

I would use this following postcard that I created to give them an example of what they have to do.

Voki in the class

Voki

This tool is excellent to work on listening and oral skills. Here are some ideas to use this great resource in your classrooms.

1) Listening exercise.

Go to this link: 

http://www.voki.com/pickup.php?scid=9526044&height=267&width=200

Here you will find a voki avatar that talks about food. This exercise is for beginners, it can be adapt for any level.

Give the students the following worksheet and play the avatar 2 times or more. The first time, the students only have to listen and the second time, they have to work on the worksheet. 

Worksheet:

Fill in the blanks.

Isn’t food ____________________ greatest pleasures? Do you know anyone who doesn’t like food? I don’t. There ____________________ delicious food in the world. You ____________________ whole lifetime eating a different dish every day. What’s the tastiest food in the world? This ____________________ difficult question to answer. My taste in food keeps changing. Sometimes my favorite is a dessert, but then I ____________________ and go for a spicy curry. It’s great that countries have so many different dishes. Do ____________________ national dish is best? Nowadays we have to be careful ____________________ eat. Fast food is not good for us.

This is just one idea of listening, but with this same text you can do more listening tasks or why not writing or speaking tasks? 

2) Pronunciation tasks.

You as a professor can be very creative with this program. This can be a very useful tool for a pronunciation teacher. An idea is to work with  identification  of sounds (minimal pairs) using a text or just the words. 

3) Other ideas.

You can use this program to introduce a topic to the class, to begin a discussion in the class by introducing a topic and then a question or something like that, and to make the students present a biography after investigating for example about a singer, president, or actor. Students can also introduce themselves in the first class of a course using this program in class, also, they can present a writing (short story, poem) to the class after the whole process of writing. 

Ideas to use story bird in the class

Story Bird

This program is so artistic! A good idea is to use it for storytelling because of its artistic images. 

My task

Go to this link: 

http://storybird.com/books/the-adventures-of-candy-the-giraffe/?token=b4x5hf8ysu

That book that you are going to see is for an activity. It is an oral activity (you can use these programs to apply oral activities not only written ones). The idea is to give the students that title : "The Adventures of Candy the Giraffe" and they will create a story  as a group taking into account that title and also those images too. Each student has to say a sentence using the image that the teacher presents to him/her. At the end, they created the story as a group orally. This is useful to practice the past tense also.

This activity is for intermediate students. 

Ideas to use storyjumper in the class

Story Jumper

This web site is excellent  for teachers and students (story bird and zoo burst too) because they can be very creative while using it. An aspect that teachers can take advantage of is that you can upload and use pictures from your computer. So, a good idea is to use this site to create stories or works using your own pictures taken by you. 

Here it is my task:

First of all, go to this link, here you will find a work that teachers can use to teach the topic: "basic descriptions". This task is for beginners and a good idea to present this topic in a creative way: 

http://www.storyjumper.com/book/index/13996322/Basic-Descriptions

You will see that I used my own photos that I personally took. You will also notice that there are the instructions of a practice for the students.

I would use this to teach this topic and then I would tell the students to take photos in any place they want (their house, a park, the street...) and using this program (story jumper) create something unique. They have to upload their photos and add their descriptions.

This activity is appropriate for beginners because it only involves simple sentences in present, basic adjectives and objects. 

This activity can be applied to intermediate students using more challenging pictures like landscapes or places. 

More ideas:

Students can create stories using photos that they took. Also, you as a teacher can present different topics with photos you took too. Besides the example I already present, you can also teach the topics "parts of the house", "food", "family", "art" and any topic in which you can involve real photos. 

Ideas to use zoo burst in the class

Zoo Burst

This program is very funny and is perfect to teach in a different way (students will not get bored) because of its images. 

My task

First of all go to this link: 

http://www.zooburst.com/zb_books-viewer.php?book=zb01_5316d499f39ae

There you will find a work created by me about the topic: "hobbies". This is perfect to teach this topic to beginners or intermediate students. After the presentation of the topic, there is a part of sharing the hobbies of the students with the class and then the last part is an activity to practice this topic. Students have to choose between the two images that are presented there and imagine they were there last weekend and write about which activities they did in that place. The idea is that they present that using this program, zoo burst.

You can use this program to present any topic you want. And you can use this tool and the other two (story bird and story jumper) not only for storytelling, but also instead of a power point presentation, to play a game with the class or just to let the students present a writing (poem, stories...) in a different way.

Teachers and students can use their creativity when using these programs, and creativity is an esential part of nowadays education.