Well, look no further: we have the answer for you!

In this post, I’m going to share my 5 favourite classroom activities to teach literature in the English as a Foreign Language Classroom. The activities are well-suited for secondary school students, though some may be applicable for younger and/or older students depending on levels.

Where do these activities come from?

All the activities come from our 5/5 rated course Teaching Literature in the Language Classroom.

This interactive, guided course is based on an extensive review of the available research on teaching literature in English as an L2 contexts. It offers a framework for designing activities and lessons, and plenty of practical examples for how to teach different genres (e.g. drama, poetry, novels) in multimodal, engaging ways and in line with the relevant CEFR descriptors.

Activity 1: Book covers

As you know, one key aspect of teaching literature is stimulating the learners’ interest before starting to work on an author or piece of literature. One simple and effective way of doing this is through book covers.

Canonical literary texts often come in different versions and different book covers. Show your learners the different book covers of a book and ask them to speculate on its plot or themes based only on the title and pictures. This can easily be accomplished via Google Images: see this example with Harper Lee’s To kill a mockingbird.

Variation/expansion: show the book covers in the different languages the book has been translated in (possibly the students’ L1 and other foreign languages they study or use).

Activity 2: Walkabouts

When introducing different works by the same author, a good lead-in activity may be a walkabout.

In a walkabout, the teacher prints different texts by the same author and sticks them up around the classroom walls. Students walk around and read the texts. They decide which one they like best and stand next to it. This is best accomplished with short texts such as poems.

Variation for online teaching: virtual walkabouts may be arranged with the use of an interactive document (e.g. Google Doc) where the students read the texts and type their name under their favourite text.

Activity 3: Biographical montage

in this activity, the teacher collects some pictures, places names, dates and/or objects related to the life of an author. She collates them in some form of visual representation, either on the board or online (e.g. through Jamboard) and shows the students. The students have to first guess who the author may be and then the meaning of each element of the montage.

Expansion: competition can be introduced by making this into a guessing game in teams. Basic biographical data to conduct this activity can be found online. For instance, this is a short biography of poet and activist Maya Angelou and the bottom half of this infographic (the «quick facts» section) can be used for a guessing game.

Activity 4: 3 truths 1 lie and fun facts

An engaging way to present some historical background to the work at hand before reading it is through games. One game that lends itself particularly well to this kind of activity is the classic 3 truths 1 lie. The teacher writes 3 truths and 1 lie about, for example, Victorian times, and the students have to identify the lie.

A related idea might be to present a series of fun facts about a specific time period: for example, this list of fun facts about Shakespeare’s theatre might be an engaging introduction to the study of Shakespeare’s plays.

Activity 5: Manipulating the text

While we may think of literary texts as unchangeable, manipulating them may be highly motivational for learners: they have to understand and engage with the text, and use their creativity.

Sample activities include:

• Re-writing the story or part of the story from another character’s point of view

• Re-writing the story or part of the story as if set in the present day

• Changing key events in the story (e.g. What would happen if…)

• Changing key details of a character, such as their age or gender, and re-writing parts of the story. For example, how might Shakespeare’s Henry VIII be different if Henry VIII were a woman?

Would you like to find out more?

I hope you have enjoyed these 5 activities!

If you want to read more about them and learn about dozens more activities to teach literature in a fun, engaging way, try our course Teaching Literature in the Language Classroom for free!

On 5 November, Americans are going to choose between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump for the job of President of the Unites States.

If you have tried looking for ELT lesson plans to teach the US elections, you might have been as surprised as I am to find very little online!

But fear not, for I have scoured the internet and put together this list of resources that you can use to teach the 2024 US elections at different levels.

The list includes lower levels (e.g. A2) and resources appropriate for younger students, as well as more sophisticated and higher level materials.

Video explainers

Let’s start from the basics: what are the US elections and how do they work? Use the following video-based resources to teach the basics:

• Electing a US president in plain English (B1+)
• Election Day 2024 USA – Who Is Running For President (A2) – an interactive quiz for younger learners
• How to become president (A2+)

Reading-based lessons

A good reading comprehension can be an excellent starting point to understand this topic and potentially start a discussion about it:

• Reading comprehension with a focus on scanning (A2/B1)
• Elections around the world in 2024 (multiple levels): select a suitable level and enjoy reading, listening and many more activities about the topic of the several elections that have taken place around the world in 2024
• Reading for beginners (A2)
• Make your own: have you found an article you think can work for your students but it’s a little too difficult? Copy and paste it into Rewordify to simplify and generate lesson activities

Games and group work

• Would you rather? (A2+)
• American elections bingo (A2/B1 and up)
• 12 Ways to Teach the 2024 Election With The New York Times
• Webquest (B1 and up)

Higher levels (B1+ and up)

• TedEd crash course on the US political system
• The Electoral College explained
• Gerrymandering

I hope these lesson plans on the 2024 US elections are useful! Do you have any more resources to share? Tell us in the comments!

Do you want to receive more of these tips every Sunday morning, straight to your inbox, for free? Subscribe to the LanguagEd newsletter and join 8,400 weekly readers!

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​
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And what has that taught me?

Well, loads of things. The main one is that teachers are such a creative bunch.

But another thing, which I will focus on in this guide, is that while assessment rubrics are absolutely fundamental in the oral exam, there are recurrent errors you need to be aware of.

So, in this guide, I’m going to put the knowledge I’ve collected over the years to tell you about 10 errors you should avoid when designing your assessment rubrics for the concorso.

Avoid these and you’ll be in for a chance at a high score at the oral exam!

First things first: what are assessment rubrics?

The first thing we need to tackle is: what are assessment rubrics? And what are their 3 main components, i.e. criteria, levels and descriptors?

Watch our explainer video to find out:

Now that you know what assessment rubrics are, let’s move on to 10 errors you need to avoid to get top marks in your oral exam!

1. Too many criteria

When you plan your assessment rubric, the first thing you need to think about is what your students will be assessed on. In other words, you need to identify the criteria on which you will assess your students.

Say that you’re assessing your students on the speaking task of “telling their partner about their best and worst subject”. You may assess the students’ fluency, grammatical and lexical accuracy, level of participation in the task or ability to manage an interaction.

That’s all well and good, but a mistake I’ve seen far too many times is including too many criteria. Yes, there is such a thing as too many criteria: we are working with school-aged students (and, by extension, their parents, who often want to know the ins and outs of how their child is assessed) and they need to be able to understand and use their assessment rubrics.

Most of the time, 3-4 criteria per task will be more than enough. Your assessment needs to be valid, which brings me to…

2. Irrelevant criteria

If you’re assessing listening skills, your criteria need to be related to… listening, and little else. I always give the example of a listening test whose purpose is to assess the students’ ability to understand the key points of a talk (which is, among other things, a CEFR statement), but then the assessment takes into account the students’ spelling or grammatical accuracy in their written answers. Your criteria need to be relevant and valid. Which, again, brings me to…

3. A lack of alignment between lesson aims and assessment criteria

Pro tip: after you’ve finished writing your lesson plan, go back to your lesson aims. Are your procedures in line with your stated aims? Are your assessment criteria in line with your lesson aims? I often see lesson plans stating language- and content-related lesson aims as well as broader aims about, for example, developing digital or citizenship competences. I have no problem with that, but: if you have an aim, you also have to have a way to assess if that aim has been reached.

4. Criteria inaccessible to students

Drawing on CEFR statements or IELTS descriptors is okay. However, are our students going to understand the criterion “phonological control”? They likely won’t. Make sure your criteria are concepts the students can comprehend.

5. Descriptors written in inaccessible language

This is also valid for your descriptors. Are students going to understand the descriptor “can employ the full range of phonological features in the target language with a high level of control – including prosodic features such as word and sentence stress”? I think you know the answer to that. Grade your language for the CEFR level of your students: if you’re unsure if your language is too difficult, run it through text inspector and then simplify it with Rewordify.

6. Descriptors tackling different things

So let’s say that we have the criterion “fluency” for a speaking activity. There are 3 levels (needs work, good, excellent). These are the descriptors for the 3 levels:

• Needs work: the student cannot use the language quickly and link their ideas well.
• Good: the student speaks mostly without stopping, with good interaction patterns and reformulation strategies
• Excellent: the student speaks well, without stopping and uses their full creativity.

There are various issues with these descriptors, but the main one is: they tackle different things. The first one deals with how quickly the student speaks and their ability to link their ideas; the second one also adds interaction patterns and reformulation strategies; the third one adds creativity. Choose one or two aspects to focus on and then grade them differently for different levels. To see an example of good descriptors, graded for different levels, watch webinar 3 in the on demand webinar course.

7. Descriptors that are too long

Have you ever seen a student spend more than 20 seconds looking at their grade? Exactly. Overly long and convoluted descriptors will not facilitate the students’ engagement with the assessment and, to make things worse, they make it more likely that you will make error no. 6. Stick to one or two short and simple sentences per descriptor.

8. Demotivating labels

“Poor, insufficient, inadequate”: whatever your views of summative assessment, try to phrase your labels in a way that doesn’t only highlight the shortcomings of the student but also the fact that they are on the way to developing (i.e. not all hope is lost), like “improvement needed, in progress, in construction”.

9. Going from right to left

I’m sure this is just an oversight due to the tiredness that we all rightfully feel after studying so hard for our exams. However, when you’re positioning your levels on your assessment grid, make sure they go from the lowest to the highest from left to right, not vice versa.

10. No time allocated for assessment rubrics

The vast majority of lesson plans I’ve reviewed have included at least one between teacher assessment, peer assessment and self-assessment grids (yay, because committees seem to like these). However, the vast majority of lesson plans I’ve reviewed also failed to allocate any time in the description of procedures to explaining and using these assessment grids. This is of course especially important if you’re doing peer and self-assessment (those take *time* for students to understand and complete) but also just teacher assessment: you want to first explain the criteria to your student before they do their task (so they know what they’re being assessed on) and then allocate some time to explain discuss their grades with them.

To learn more about how to design assessment rubrics, with plenty of practical examples, watch webinar 3 in our one demand webinar course!

I hope these 10 dont’s have been useful! Which one are you going to pay special attention to? Let me know in the comments!

As you know, the exam for AB24, AB25 and BB02 will consist of:

Maybe you’ve taken some of our courses, maybe you’ve been preparing for a while, or maybe you’ve just started out.

In any of these circumstances, having doubts and questionsis perfectly normal!

I get questions from teachers every day, so here are some of the most common ones, with practical suggestions.

1. I want to prepare in advance of the oral exam. Should I choose a lesson structure (e.g. ESA, PPP, CBI)?

The starting point is that each teacher will find different approaches useful. My feeling is that if you find the idea of a lesson structure useful, you should try to create a couple of sample lessons with the structures you like. For example, if you choose ESA, you’ll think of a few options for each stage in the lesson that you can then try to adapt when you get the traccia.

Of course you will bear in mind that different structures may adapt better or worse to different topics and part of your preparation might go out of the window depending on the topic you get (like a really unusual or niche one – though fingers crossed you won’t get these!) For example, you can bear in mind that a PPP structure lends itself more to a language (grammar, lexis) topic than a content one (history, literature, culture). Vice versa, you will know that creating a CBI or TBL lesson will work especially well for tracce based on functions, real life tasks or “content” topics like history or culture.

2. Can I start to create my assessment rubrics before the exam?

Your assessment will depend on your aims and on your procedures, so I don’t think you can do that one without having at least a clue of what you’re actually going to do in the lesson. What you can do, however, is try to write assessment rubrics or establish which forms of assessment you would use for your hypothetical ESA or TBL or CBI or whatever other structure.

3. How can I write my lesson aims?

First of all, you need to practise writing lesson aims well. Your lesson aims should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Based. See what I mean here.

You should also practise how to phrase your lesson aims. Your aims will refer to knowledge and skills. Ask yourself the question: by the end of the lesson(s), what will your students know and be able to do? Phrase your aims accordingly: “by the end of the lesson, students will know/be familiar with…”; “by the end of the lesson, students will be able to…” Read a few CEFR descriptors to get ideas.

4. How can I link my lesson aims to the Indicazioni nazionali, CEFR and European Key Competences?

By referring to this extensive guide I wrote about this topic.

5. Where can I find the Indicazioni nazionali in English?

I am not aware of an official English translation of the Indicazioni nazionali. Technically speaking, the Indicazioni nazionali are laws or parts of laws in Italy, so they’re in Italian. In your presentation, you can either provide short extracts from the Indicazioni in Italian and translate them into English as you speak, provide an English translation in writing or provide both versions in writing. Just be careful not to overcrowd your slides with lots of text and make sure that your examiners know what you’re referring to (which can be more difficult if you only provide the English translation in writing).

6. I attended the webinar on teaching culture, literature and history. How can I include the text, context, reader and language approach in different sections of an ESA structure?

The 4 approaches are there to guide you and help you consider 4 angles through which you can develop your lesson plan. You don’t necessarily have to use all of them but it’s good to consider activities that tackle the 4 approaches. The various activities you do can easily fit in an ESA lesson plan. You don’t need to mention explicitly that you’re dealing with one approach or another but you are welcome to explain this as part of the rationale for your lesson plan.

7. I like the TBL lesson structure but I’m worried my committee will want something more traditional: what should I do?

An excellent question, though it can’t be answered to my satisfaction. Some committees are unfortunately known for favouring more traditional teaching methods and lesson structures. These include PPP, using coursebooks, basing the lesson on grammar or lexis aims and so on. This should almost never be interpreted as the right thing to do in real life teaching; nevertheless, you will need to be cynical to pass this oral exam and somewhat conform to the committee’s expectations. This is why the best thing you can do is find out about their expectations and preferences as soon as they start examining.

8. I’m worried about speaking in English. What can I do?

In short: prepare. The more and the better you can prepare your presentation and your answers to the domande disciplinari before the exam, the more confident you will be. Confidence boosts both speaking accuracy and fluency. It will also help you keep your anxiety at bay, which is important because anxiety deprives you of crucial attentional capacity you need to devote to your exam. English proficiency counts for 30 out of 100 points at this exam, so it’s a pretty important area to improve.

Practise presenting a sample lesson plan. Time yourself for 22 minutes and record yourself. Then, listen back to your presentation (dreadful, I know, but an incredibly useful exercise): what did you do well? What can you improve? Re-do your presentation and improve it. Get a colleague you trust to help you review it. Join one of our conversation classes for AB24, AB25, BB02 (these will also help you revise the programma, so it’s a win win) or one of our B2 conversation classes for all the other classi di concorso.

9. Do I have to use real materials (e.g. textbooks, YouTube videos) in my lesson plan?

As a general rule of thumb, the more specific you can be, the better. As you know, there are no official rules for what you have to include in your presentations, so the committee may be fine even with a presentation without references. However, they might not be. To be on the safe side, if you are using a YouTube video or flashcards, it’s good practice to add a reference to them. This can be done in the slide presenting them or in a final slide with a list of references. It is also good to visually present these things because it gives your examiners a tangible flavour of what you’re doing. So, screenshots of the YouTube videos, pictures of exercises, flashcards, screenshots of Quizlet or any other websites, etc: all of these things give your examiners a real taste of what you’re doing and will likely help them follow you better.

10. Is there a PowerPoint template or sample lesson plan I can download?

Yes, we have both! Here is a PowerPoint template:

And here is a sample lesson plan:

You will find loads of other examples connected to various lesson structures in our recorded webinar course.

Bonus question: should I use PowerPoint, Google Slides or Canva to create my lesson plan?

No rule of thumb here either: use whatever you are comfortable with. Make sure your presentation is visually appealing, not overloaded with text in any slide, clear and easy to explain. The content should of course be valued more highly than the form, but a) you are technically also assessed on your ICT skills and b) people will naturally be drawn more towards visually appealing and clear slides. This is an innate kind of bias we all have, so make sure you prepare the layout of your slides in advance. Also, export your presentation in pdf format to make sure it’s readable on whatever computer you are given on your exam. Pdf will ensure that the formatting is kept intact.

And last but not least…

Have faith, you got this!

Good luck, dear teacher

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Join 10,400 teachers (and counting!) who read our Sunday newsletter for teachers!​
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Penned by researcher, teacher educator and LanguagEd’s founder Chiara Bruzzano, the Sunday(ish) newsletter will give you teaching tips, lesson plans, videos, events and much more.
​
​All for free, straight to your inbox every Sunday morning ​
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The article is titled “Io e la scuola: percezione di ansia e benessere degli studenti in ambiente scolastico”. The study seeks to validate a new survey to investigate the construct of test anxiety in secondary school students.

I know many of you have students who suffer from test anxiety and that many of you are suffering from test anxiety for the upcoming concorso, so here goes a little information about it.

What is test anxiety?

Test anxiety refers to the set of phenomenological, physiological, and behavioural responses that accompany concern about possible negative consequences or failure on an examination or similar evaluative situation (Zeidner, 1998).

You might be familiar with this as a teacher or even a student: you worry constantly about a particular test, your palms sweat, you lose sleep… the list goes on.

But is test anxiety always there or does it come and go? Fortunately, it can take both forms. It can be understood as a “trait”, i.e. a personality trait that is pretty constant, or it can arise as a result of specific situations, such a stressful examination.

Is test anxiety the same as general anxiety?

Although the two are related, the answer is no: test anxiety is a specific kind of anxiety (a specific “construct”, in research speak).

Indeed, anxiety as related to education comes in many forms, and research has shown that it can be very situation- and skill-specific.

For example, it exists in the form of Foreign Language Learning Anxiety (a unique set of behaviours, thoughts and feelings that arise from the uniqueness of the language learning process) and on an even more granular level as Foreing Language Listening Anxiety.

People who experience this kind of anxiety are concerned about listening in a foreign language. Interestingly, listening anxiety can be exacerbated by test anxiety when students have to take a listening exam, like IELTS, FCE or the INVALSI.

Why does this matter?

Well, test anxiety is important because it is a key factor in student wellbeing.

And indeed, Italian students seem to suffer from it: in the research study above, 60% of students reported suffering from it. This can hinder their wellbeing at school, with potential negative repercussions on (among other things) mental health and school dropout (where Italy already performs worse than most EU countries).

Further, and if you’re studying for the concorso you’ll be familiar with this, test anxiety can become an issue with the reliability (attendibilità) of the assessment itself. In other words, if we use assessment methods that cause high test anxiety, will our marks capture the students’ true level of learning or will they just be a reflection of how anxious they were?

So, what do we do? Should we just get rid of numerical grades?

Some people have suggested doing away with numerical grades altogether as a grade-based school system only fosters competitiveness and exacerbates test anxiety.

Understandably, this has been met with a lot of skepticism from teachers.

I for one think we can take a more nuanced approach, keeping in mind the nees of specific contexts. Numerical grades and summative assessment can have important functions, the main one being that they give students a true sense of what they have achieved, which helps them develop a sense of progress. This of course needs to be accompanied by an understanding of what the grade means and how to improve: a test of which the student does not understand the marking criteria is unlikely to have a positive impact on learning.

To help students tackle their test anxiety, the first thing to remember is that there are many factors involved in student wellbeing. In the Italian study cited above, a sense of protection worked well to mitigate the students’ test anxiety. This signals that working on a welcoming, inclusive classroom environment can be a starting point to help students with their anxiety.

Another avenue to pursue is that of diversifying our assessment methods. Formative assessment, self assessment and peer assessment can become a part of our assessment routines. Lower stakes, better ability to understand and control one’s learning process, more experiences of success: all factors that can contribute to lowering test anxiety.

Over to you now

So, what is your experience with your students’ test anxiety? Should we completely get rid of numerical marks, like some suggest, or is there still a place for formal, summative assessment in our schools?

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Join 10,400 teachers (and counting!) who read our Sunday newsletter for teachers!​
​
Penned by researcher, teacher educator and LanguagEd’s founder Chiara Bruzzano, the Sunday(ish) newsletter will give you teaching tips, lesson plans, videos, events and much more.
​
​All for free, straight to your inbox every Sunday morning ​
​
You can also opt in to receive our free PowerPoint template for your oral exam of the concorso docenti.

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This lesson plan is based on a short video by comedian Ellen DeGeneres. It develops speaking, the use of “likely” in a sentence, listening comprehension and – crucially – metacognitive knowledge related to listening.

You can read the lesson plan here and download it in pdf format at the end of the article.

Enjoy!

New year’s resolutions: speaking and listening lesson (B2/C1)

1. What are your resolutions for the new year?

• How likely are you to keep them?

• We’re going to watch a video from American comedian Ellen DeGeneres. Watch the video and answer the questions:

1. What does Ellen ask the audience at the beginning of the video?
2. Why is January 1st not a great time to make resolutions?
3. What resolutions did Ellen’s Facebook fans make?

• Now we’re going to talk about the contribution of background knowledge to our listening comprehension. Watch these two sections of the video: 00.00-00.09 and 2.10-2.25. Why does the audience laugh?

Teacher’s notes

Question 1 is ideal for a brainstorming session.

Question 2 can be used to revise the use of “likely” in a sentence (“I am likely/unlikely to…/it is unlikely that I…”): let the students try to answer, then recast their utterances and focus on the form on the board.

Question 3 can be used as guide to the first and second listen. Play the video at least twice and activate the subtitles if needed.

Question 4 develops the students’ metacognition in relation to listening by asking them to reflect on the role of background knowledge in their comprehension. In the first excerpt, 00.00-00.09, the audience laughs because Ellen asks “how many of you kept them [i.e. your resolutions]?”: this is predicated on the widely known assumption that people are bad at keeping resolutions. In the second excerpt, the audience laughs because Ellen DeGeneres is famously gay, so giving up men is of course something that would come easy to her.

Students often struggle to understand why they fail to understand when they listen and as a result end up blaming the speaker (they speak too fast!), the accent or other factors they have no control over. Helping them pinpoint the various factors, like background knowledge, that contribute to listening comprehension, helps them feel more in control of their listening and understand their learning.

Download the lesson plan

Download the lesson plan in pdf format below to use it in class:

It was 2010. I can remember it as if it were yesterday. It was my first day on the job at an accredited language academy and my first time using an Interactive Whiteboard (IWB). I must say I was excited and quite impressed by it. I remember some of my new colleagues who had attended training sessions on how to use this amazing piece of technology giving me some tips and helping me out. I just felt like the potential was tremendous. But after a few months, I realized that most of us simply used the IWB as a regular whiteboard that basically served as the background for us to project slides onto. How many times has this happened in ELT or general education? How many times has a promising new tech tool become quite unimpressive in just a few months?

Perhaps these tools were just fancy ways to do things we already did quite well. I can’t help but wonder if that will be the same fate for other tools. Technology has the potential to revolutionize things, English teaching included. Take ChatGPT, for example. It’s an Artificial Intelligence-powered tool that can write very convincing and original texts about virtually anything. The first time I gave it a try, I thought it would be helpful for generating informative texts but limited by a rigid structure and lack of stylistic variety. However, after playing around with it for days, I was able to:

• Create tasks based on CEFR levels
• Create dialogs based on reading assignments
• Produce feedback comments on language and style
• Get tips on how to conduct an interview based on someone’s CV
• Translate parts of my book into Portuguese
• Produce TV ads, jingles, poems, letters of application, reviews
• Create a fictitious dialog between my cats based on their characteristics

And each one of the tasks above was basically completed in under ONE MINUTE.

Advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR) technology may render traditional language classes obsolete for a select few. Some worry that such tools could be used to cheat on assignments or even write entire books – and they’re probably right. For example, AI-powered language translators and VR simulations with AI non-player characters could allow students to practice language skills in an immersive and interactive environment. Or worse (?). Translating tech will be so advanced that most people will only need a universal translator to travel around the world and communicate seamlessly without knowing a second language. Does that mean that human teachers will not be needed any longer?

If the future of English looks like anything you’d find in a dystopian novel, like 1984 by George Orwell, that might mean teaching and learning the language will be useless or simply prohibited. There will be no need for language teachers. On the other, consider the following: in a possible future scenario, students would receive instructions from a hologram and then put on VR goggles to practice with each other and AI-powered bots in the metaverse. The metaverse would collect data on student interactions and provide immediate AI-powered feedback and performance records. Some students may not even be required to attend physical classes anymore (isn’t that already a reality?)

Despite these advancements, many educators believe that teachers will continue to play a crucial role in guiding and supporting students as they learn. In their book, Neuroscience and Education: Looking out for the Future of Learning (2022), Leonor Bezerra and Ana Luiza Neiva argue that the organization of educational processes, the skills and competencies developed by students, and the types of technology used will change. Still, teachers will remain fundamental to the teaching process. Teachers will probably not lose their job to technology. They might lose their job to teachers who can use new technologies.

There’s good reason to believe that teachers will still be needed to curate materials, check for biases, bond with and encourage students, create positive learning environments, talk to parents, and support their students in many different ways. However human ChatGPT seems, it is a machine and it lacks a significant factor when it comes to teaching and learning, and that is the human factor. Future people might have the option to go to automated schools with AI-powered tech or simply use fast and accurate translating devices to communicate with the world. But many will still want to learn an additional language and boost their cognition. Many will still want to hang out with their friends in class. Many will still need us to guide them through their learning journey.

When I asked ChatGPT what it thought of this text, this is what it answered me. What do you think?

And let’s be honest, towards the end of the school year, the feeling is always the same: tiredness mixed with relief mixed with a little sadness. But mostly relief.

So, if you are looking for a few low-prep activities to end your school year on a high note, have a look at these tried and tested activities for your English language classroom. Just like with our back to school activities, these activities are easily adaptable to most CEFR levels, from A1 to B2 and up.

You can also download these activities in pdf below:

1. Make your own Taboo

Are you familiar with the game Taboo? In teams, a player talks to their teammates and tries to make them guess the word on the player’s card without using the word itself or five additional words listed on the card. As a nice vocabulary revision activity (and to get a little bit of speaking practice in), you can divide students into teams and they can create their own Taboo cards. For lower levels, they might just create cards with words to guess and perhaps one or even no “taboo” words that cannot be used.

2. Three things from this year

At the end of the year, we often want our students to look back on what they’ve learned with a critical eye. This develops their metacognition and those pesky “learning to learn” competences from our good old European Key Competences. Give each student the following three prompts to fill out (use the L1 if you need to):

• The most difficult thing for me this year was…
• The thing I liked the most this year was…
• The thing I still want to learn more about is…

Review their answers and use these as formative feedback for you as well, to help you plan for the following year or reflect on what you have done this year: for example, is there an area that seems to have proved particularly difficult for your students? And why is it phrasal verbs?

3. Create a poster on next year

What do you wish for your next school year? In groups, students can create a paper or digital poster answering this question with short sentences and pictures. Additional prompts to guide them might include:

• What do you want to improve?
• What new things would you like to try?
• How would you like your school to change?

4. Share a gif or meme on your struggles

Sometimes, talking about what we struggle with can be, well… a struggle. Admitting to and articulating our difficulties in the learning process and be an ordeal for students. To take the pressure off, you can use a means that students are familiar with and that according to research has great potential for the ELT classroom: memes and gifs. Create a simple Padlet and ask your students to either find or create a meme or gif in English that answers the question “what was your biggest difficulty in English this year?” Each student uploads their image and then you can review them and discuss them as a class (and have a bit of a laugh while you’re at it!)

5. Write an Instagram review of a book, video or film you liked

If you have Instagram, looking up hashtags like #bookreview or #bookstagram will bring up dozens of book reviews. So, in keeping with the idea of using means that are familia and somewhat appealing to students, you can round up the year by asking them to choose one book, video or film they liked and write a short Instagram post, complete with a photo, about it. These might be books, videos or films you’ve covered in English or you can leave the choice up to them, including anything they may have liked outside of the English classroom.

6. Plan your dream holiday with Where the Hell is Matt?

For close to 20 years now, Matt from YouTube channel Where the Hell is Matt has danced (badly, by his own admission) in dozens of places around the world. Show one of his videos (like this one) to your class or let them find one if you have more independent students and ask them to identify the place they liked the most and tell you why. Then, either in pairs or individually, have them plan a dream holiday to that place: when would they go? Why? How would they get there? What would they do? All the questions you need for a nice little WebQuest and a true task in the TBLT sense – and of course, dreaming a little before the summer holidays can be nice.

7. Create your own LyricsTraining gap fill

Having students create a quiz is always an engaging way of including them in the formative assessment process. With LyricsTraining, students can choose a song they like and either play with the ready-made games on the website (just make sure they choose an appropriate level for them, i.e. “beginner” for lower levels) or create their own gap fill with the “print lyrics” function. If you want to learn more about how to use music for listening, I gave a tutorial on how to use LyricsTraining to improve listening skills and create custom-made exercises for the LanguagEd Day last year – you can still check out the video recording and slides here. And yes, just in case you were wondering, the song I chose for the tutorial is by Måneskin (if you read my newsletter, you’ll know I’m down a Måneskin rabbit hole because so many of their videos and interviews are such interesting tools for language learning for an Italian audience!)

I hope these activities are useful and while you’re here, I also want to say: well done for making it through to the end of the school year! Pat yourself on the back for a job well done (and if you’re going to be working on the end-of-year exams… it’s not quite over yet, but you’re almost there!)

If you use any of the activities, why not let me know how they worked? Get in touch at chiara@languaged.org – I reply to all emails and love hearing from teachers.

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But then, after all is said and done, there is often one big question (among many questions we have related to teaching literature):

how do we assess literature beyond mere text comprehension?

Fear not, because we have collected examples of assessment tasks you can use to assess literature in a video.

Watch the video for some innovative examples of:

• language-based tasks

• non-linguistic tasks

• tasks involving L1 and L2

• tasks based on previously unseen texts

Want to find out more about teaching literature, history and culture in an innovative way, in accordance with the CEFR?

Learn a practical framework to teach literature: try out our bestselling course Teaching Literature in the Language Classroom for free!

Here are some reviews from teachers who have completed the course:

This historic event is going to be marked by a bank holiday in the UK – but even if you don’t get the time off, you might still be searching for some simple lesson plans to teach your students about the Coronation.

Just like we did when Queen Elizabeth II passed, we have decided to scour the internet and bring you the best lesson plans on the Coronation, including some of the controversy surrounding it.

Here they are: they’re mostly full, well-structured presentations with pictures and short, clear explanations and tasks, plus some individual activities and videos.

Some of them are designed for primary or secondary students in the UK but as you will see, you can easily use them with English language students too. We have also looked at them thoroughly to give you an idea of what CEFR level(s) you can use them for.

So, here we go! We’ve divided the resources into lesson plans, activities and videos:

Lesson plans

Introductions to Coronations (suitable for A2 and up): download a PowerPoint presentation with key facts about Coronations, plus teacher’s notes

The Coronation: Assembly (suitable for any level): a simple, picture-based presentation on the Coronation, plus detailed teacher’s notes by Historic Royal Palaces

The Coronation: Values and Symbols (suitable for B1 and up): a presentation on the symbols and values of the Coronation and the Crown. It can be a good springboard for a discussion involving some critical thinking on the “values” embodied by the Crown and its colonialist legacy. You can also download teacher’s notes.

What is a Coronation? (suitable for A1+ and up): key facts about the Coronation, with a bit of history and teacher’s notes by the Royal Collection Trust

Be a part of history and celebrate! (with appropriate vocab scaffolding, this lesson plan is suitable for A2+ and up): a presentation lesson about ways in which people have celebrated coronations historically and how they can celebrate now

King Charles’s Coronation – British Council Learn English Kids (suitable for A2+): a full lesson plan with a video with a worksheet and detailed instrucitons

Activities

The official Coronation website: use this for a webquest (levels A2/B1 and up)

Coronation starter quiz (levels B1 and up): a multiple choice quiz – students can have a set time to look up the answers online!

Coronation Map of Westminster Abbey (levels B1 and up): help your students visualise what’s going to happen at the Coronation with this map

Coronations at the Abbey Fact Sheet (levels B1+ and up): vocab-rich fact sheet with the key points and vocab your students need to know about this historic event

Timeline of Coronations (levels A2+ and up): an excellent timeline of coronations at Westminster Abbey and a good way to revise British history

The pledge of allegiance to the king is nonsense (levels B2+): an authentic text to reflect on the controversial pledge of allegiance

Videos

360° Video: King Charles’s Coronation ceremony virtual tour at Westminster Abbey

The King and The Queen Consort’s Coronation Quiche

King Charles’ coronation could be ‘the final event of its kind’ for the British royals | Jennie Bond

The coronation – What are the costs and who pays?

We hope you find something in here you enjoy and that can help you plan your classes more easily! If you use some of these resources, let us know how your lesson goes in the comments!

Wondering how to structure a culture, literature or history lesson in the English language classroom? Our unique, best-selling course Teaching Literature in the Language Classroom will teach you just that! Try it for free: