Category Archives: Activities

15 Sources of Canada Day Activities


Written by - John Allan @mrpottz

Canada Day Celebrations with lots of flags and people
Created with ChatGPT.

Well, it is June and there is no better time to introduce the Canada Day holiday to your students.  I have searched the web and have asked colleagues about favourites for teaching about Canada and Canada Day.  Since150 would put this post way over the maximum word count, I have pulled together 15.  I hope this helps you and your students with your holiday preparation.   The resources are listed in alphabetical order. If you have any that I have missed please add them through the comments feature below.

Happy Canada Day! Continue reading →

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Bringing holidays into the classroom: Ramadan


Written by - Laila Al-Sbeinati @lailasbeinati
image source: bigstockphoto.com

I often think about newcomers to Canada, and specifically those coming from challenging circumstances who are building a new life in a new land. How are they settling into their new environment? Are they adjusting? Managing? Dealing? Healing?

Many of these newcomers are from the Middle East and are observing Ramadan, a holy month that’s observed by millions of Muslims around the world, where the central focus is fasting. Continue reading →

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Word Order Makes It in Kahoot’s Jumble Game


Written by - Cecilia Aponte-de-Hanna

Have you tried Kahoot’s new jumble game? It’s fun!

If you are an avid reader of TESL Ontario blogs, you would know Nadeen wrote about it in October 2015 – so yes! Kahoot has been around for a long time. You can read her blog here: Use Kahoot to spice up your lesson.

Now for the newness, which soon will be ‘the has been’ since technology moves faster than a speeding bullet (sorry . . . Superman).

Pick from an existing activity

The new Jumble game is great for students at any level who need to practice word order or any other type of sentence structure. Continue reading →

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Change the routine without disrupting the class – take a virtual field trip!


Written by - John Allan @mrpottz
students in a classroom wearing virtual visors
Created with ChatGPT.

In the interest of planning a class field trip, I was reading the blog post, 25+ Field Trips for English Language Learners. She provides a variety of opportunities for live field trips. I am considering a few of these ideas.  However, I teach in a situation that has several obstacles to taking students on field trips.  Climate, cultural norms, transportation, scheduling, catering and budget can be issues in the Middle East.  I am sure that if you are reading this in Canada, you can identify with a few of these issues. Even if you do resolve the budget, scheduling, transportation, permissions and climate issues, then you are normally limited to locations 100km from your centre. Continue reading →

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Synchronous Word Clouds . . . At Last!


Written by - Cecilia Aponte-de-Hanna
image source: bigstockphoto.com

Not too long ago I created an activity with my students where I asked them to write three types of literary genres they enjoy the most. The task involved writing three words on index cards. I then asked them to meet in groups to share their words. Group by group, they would come to the podium and add their words on Wordle.net  – adding each word repeatedly at times and only once other times. At the end, I would let WordleTM do its thing.  The result was a collective word cloud that would visualize the commonalities among everyone in my class. Continue reading →

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English is the worst!


Written by - Laila Al-Sbeinati @lailasbeinati
image source: bigstockphoto.com

We’ve all been there and heard it – “Why are these two words spelled the same but sound different?” or “Why do I need a comma there? You might have answered, “Because you don’t want to eat your mom; it’s “I want to eat, mom.””

I came across this humorous article Continue reading →

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Cans, Wants, and Wills


Written by - Cecilia Aponte-de-Hanna

Concept image of a Calendar with the text: Lessons Learned

This activity is meant to be a student’s journey to self-regulation (see Schunk & Zimmerman, 1997). The activity can take place at any time during the school term and is meant to awaken in students the desire to achieve their goals one step at a time. Hence, the process to self-regulation is the goal. Continue reading →

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Add fun to your vocabulary lessons with Quizlet Live


Written by - John Allan @mrpottz
students playing Quizlet Live
Created with ChatGPT

Quizlet Live is the latest feature on the Quizlet suite.  This is in addition to current learning activities which include: flashcards, test, learn, spell, as well as two games: gravity and match. In May of 2015 I posted about the attributes of Quizlet from a teacher-developer’s perspective. More recently, Continue reading →

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