Digital calendar

This year I tried "My Advent" to make a digital advent calendar with puns. If you enjoy puns of various kinds, feel free to check it out. First door is December 1st and last December 18th (that's the last day of school here). 

Inspiration is found in the funny posts of "The Language Nerds" on Instagram. 

Link to calendar

Good podcasts for high school students

Podcasts appropriate for high school students/ESL learners:

A way with words 

Grammar girl

Espresso English Podcast

The Allusionist

Bear Brook - New Hampshire Public Radio

Criminal 

This American Life

Serial

Freakonomics Radio

The Radio Vagabond

NPR: Youth Radio

BBC Documentary

Scientific American




Articles about how listening to podcasts can improve literacy:

Mindshift - How Listening to Podcasts helps Students Read and Learn


How Podcasts Can Improve Literacy in the Classroom

Word of the week - garish

20 historical words that we should bring back

Oh, are you feeling crapulous? :)

Word of the week - forte

Bookmarks with quotes

READ by pnillaelander

Bookmarks with quotes by pnillaelander

A new favorite of mine - Semantris

Semantris is a new encounter for me and I easily spent 30 minutes like 30 seconds yesterday trying to stop the blocks from advancing upwards...a great deal of fun and educational too! Put your vocabulary to use! Try it out!

Link to Semantris

Making emoji exit tickets

Somehow I still like exit tickets in a paper version, I like the feel of having my students' thoughts in my hand after a lesson. Sitting down and carefully reading and reflecting about the previous lesson. Here is the latest version of an exit ticket - making use of emojis. :)

Emoji exit ticket by pnillaelander

Mystery Skype with students in Bilbao, Spain

Today we had an opportunity to mystery Skype with students from the north of Spain, Bilbao, and much to the delight of my students we had a fantastic time asking and answering questions! Catrina MacDonald was guiding the Spanish students. We saw this session as a preparation for our Skypeathon which is put in motion on November 28 at 12 pm. 

Padlet - colors, patterns and clothing

Summary of scientific article

Words and sentences from scientific article

Getting started with Flipgrid

Getting Started with Flipgrid from Flipgrid on Vimeo.

New bookmarks with good quotes

READ by pnillaelander

Bookmarks with quotes by pnillaelander

Flipgrid presentation

Have not used FlipGrid yet? Well, try now! Here is a presentation in case you are not still familiar with the awesome video response platform.

 

Classroom screen - this I will give a try in August

On Facebook I saw that Patricia Diaz recommended "Classroom Screen" and after taking a look I do think it's something that I can use in my classroom, starting in August. Usually I have made good use of the whiteboard but since I'm using my computer every lesson it would probably be a good idea to use this to project onto the board instead. I like the features that you can use but also hope for more neutral backgrounds as they might be a bit distracting from the content.

End of year reflections

The school year has come to an end and I am off on my summer break tomorrow. Looking back on the year I have a few comments to make.

For me, this school year has been fantastic in many ways. First of all, I got the chance to start at Bäckängsgymnasiet, the biggest high school in town with around 520 students, in August as of last year. I have taught five courses in English and gotten to know many wonderful students and teachers along the way. The year has given me possibilities of working with new and old digital tools and to emphasize the importance of evaluating sources even more than before. My love for English has grown deeper and the zest for evolving as a teacher is as big as it will probably ever get!

The biggest event of the year was the Skypeathon that took place in March. It was an enormous task of organizing the close to 35 calls with regards to classes, groups, staff, time differences, continents and so on, but we managed and it was a huge success! In November we will give it another shot, this time however looking at around 12 hours and not 24. More about this in the fall.

When it comes to digital tools used during the year, I often return to my favorites Canva, ThingLink, Kahoot, Socrative, Google Forms and Presentations, Sway and Flipgrid. Right now I am a Flipgrid ambassador and I am trying to spread the word about the great tool as much as my energy levels right now allow me. If you want to try Flipgrid you can enter the code PERNILLA to get a FREE upgrade to Fligrid Classroom. The promotion is valid to September 30.

My objectives for the next school year is to work even more with digital tools and I am also looking forward to going back to teaching History again! Another thing on my list is to take a university course about ICT and languages. The Global Read Aloud awaits in October (reading "A Monster Calls" by Patrick Ness and then in November the Skypeathon, to name but a few things....

But now, I am closing down the laptop for the summer and I will be back in early August again...

With that said, I wish you...

ever! :) /Pernilla

Snapshot from today - the bookmarks

I have to admit that I like laminating things, and the latest to go through the machine were the bookmarks that the previous entry showed. New ideas pop up once in a while so there are also always something new to laminate.....love it!

Bookmarks for my students - READ!

READ by pnillaelander

Some very good educational channels on YouTube

Some of my favorite channels on YouTube have a good focus on the educational aspect. Here is my current top ten list: 

* Ted Ed
* Tedx Youth
* Tedx
* Amy Poehler's Smart Girls
* SoulPancake
* Upworthy
* Anglophenia
* Story Corps
* Mental Floss
* Crash Course