Using Cartoon Strips to Practise Dialogues

 Need some novel way to enliven your class?

The traditional way of practising dialogue is to have students work in pairs (or groups), prepare their dialogues, then role-play them, maybe in front of the classroom.

Instead of doing that, why don't you get them to prepare a comic strip first (after working on expressions, vocabulary, etc., of course). Either have them do it on the fly in the computer lab, or set it as homework. Later, they can role-play the situations. To make it even more fun, randomly assign the comic strip to a group for them to act it out.

One of the best I've found is ToonDoo. It's quite versatile; you not only have several characters to choose from, but you can easily play around with backdrops, fonts, expressions, etc. You can bet the kids (and the adults, too) will love it!

What do you think? If you need a tutorial, let me know. Leave your comments below by clicking on 'comments' if you don't see the form.

Halloween Thriller! (PE - Body Expression)

Originally a Roman Catholic festival to celebrate the eve of All Saint's Day (1st Nov), Halloween has distorted over the years into a party time related to lighted pumpkins, fancy dress and anything to do with ghosts and horror.

As part of our lesson on body expression in PE, I would like you all to watch the Thriller video of the late Michael Jackson, even though I know all of you must have seen it lots of times. I want you to observe the movements of all the dancers, and the idea is not so much for you to copy their movements but for you to invent some of your own. Remember, you have about three weeks to prepare this!

Unfortunately, they have disallowed us to embed the video here, but you can follow this link to watch it.