Categories
Blog Giveaways

Free 1-year subscription to English Teaching Professional PLUS free DimmiDeck!

It’s giveaway time!

To celebrate our returning to the classroom for a new term DimmiDeck are giving away a 1-year digital subscription to the excellent English Teaching Professional magazine.

Plus, the winner will also get a free DimmiDeck Standard Edition enabling them to use all our DimmiDeck activities in their classroom, plus add a few of their own! If you’re new to DimmiDeck, check out our about page for more information.

Click here to enter for free!

Entry is completely free – and by sharing your unique link with your teacher friends they will not only get a chance to win, but you will get an extra three chances to win for each friend who signs up!

What are you waiting for? Sign up for the contest today! Entries will close on Sunday evening and the winner will be announced the following week.

Thank you and good luck!

Anthony and Alessandra

Categories
Games

Tin Can Alley/Shootout

If you’re not using Nerf guns to recycle vocabulary yet, what’s going on?

Categories
Activities

Disaster at the Art Gallery

Disaster at the Art Gallery

A renowned artist has lent the art gallery 12 of his most famous portraits for a special exhibition. There’s only one problem – the exhibition starts in fifteen minutes and you still haven’t set up!

What’s it all about?

I’m a big fan of gallery readings. Focusing on language from a reading text is one of the most effective ways of highlighting new vocabulary and grammar. However, it is really ineffective if the students aren’t engaged in the text.

This is fine for a lot of topics where it’s easy to engage students, but what about those times when it just isn’t going to work?

For this activity I’ve used the example of ‘the passive voice’ as one of those somewhat dull grammar points that is nevertheless important to highlight. This activity, by making the ‘reading’ part of the lesson more of a game, effectively ‘tricks’ your students into noticing the grammar form without having to engage them immediately in a particular topic.

What’s more, there are two options for language study in the same activity – adjectives with -ed/-ing endings or the passive.

Take your pick and slip this fun activity seamlessly into your syllabus!

What You Need

1x DimmiDeck

1x Set of information cards for your chosen language focus

Adjectives with -ed/-ing Endings

or

Passive and Passive Expressions

.. and some blu tack!

Preparation

Cut up the different Picture Information cards from the PDF.

Optional – Remove one of the information cards. As a follow-up activity the students can identify the missing card (as there will be one picture without one) and write it together in the same style as the other descriptions.

Place the DimmiDeck characters from the PDF on walls around the room as the ‘art gallery’.

Lesson Plan

  1. Divide students into two or three small groups.
  2. Divide the information cards equally between the groups (ideally three or four per group).
  3. Explain that they must read their information cards and place them under the correct picture on the wall using blu tack.
  4. After all the cards have been placed (and assuming every picture has just one information card) students must read through and check the work of the other groups.
  5. Clarify the meaning of any new and emerging language.

Now focus on your chosen language point as you normally would. The students have now read the texts in order to complete the task and so you can now bring their attention to the language point. You can then continue with standard practice activity such as a gap fill followed by a production task.

Notes

There’s a lot of scope with this activity to adapt it for all levels and as an introduction to various vocabulary topics. Why not create your own Information Cards for the deck? Create 8-10 new cards each containing a word from a new vocab set, for example, clothing words, to focus on after the match up.

The examples given here are just that – examples! Create your own cards with your own short texts and give your students an alternative to traditional reading exercises.

Categories
Teaching

Don’t Interrupt! How to Correct Correctly

The Correction Dilemma

Few of us would argue that correction is one of the most important things we can provide as language teachers. Taking someone’s own, often carefully crafted response or utterance and helping them to perfect it is something that students often only receive in the classroom. This makes it valuable, desired and ultimately expected by your students.

Categories
DimmiDeck News

Live on Kickstarter – We need your support!

We’ve launched on Kickstarter!

We are now live on Kickstarter!

‘Early Birds’ get a 15% discount on the DimmiDeck – limited to the first 150 backers! We are also offering discounts on double decks, limited edition ‘large’ decks and bulk orders as well as Kickstarter Exclusive Cards (scroll down to see!)

One year in the making

For the past year we have been testing, tweaking and improving the DimmiDeck to reduce preparation time and make our language lessons more engaging and more fun.

We’re so happy with the 50 characters that made it into the final deck. 100s of activities, dozens of games and tonnes of vocabulary. Total engagement with minimal preparation. If you’re a language teacher, you’re going to love this deck of cards!

Not your average flashcard!

Each of the 50 DimmiDeck characters has 9 different vocabulary sets (plus some surprises…) built into each card. The same card can be used for teaching a dozen different words.

Don’t have any time to prepare? No problem, any card you choose will show one of the desired vocab topics. Got a little more time? Check out our ‘quick reference’ guide to varied vocabulary sets (plus a sneak peak at all the cards!)

We need your support!

Kickstarter is ‘all or nothing’. We either reach our goal and print a large run of DimmiDecks for language teachers all over the world, or we don’t.

Support us today and as well as being the first to get your DimmiDeck, you can look forward to free activities and lesson plans, future products that expand on new ideas and vocabulary topics, a community of language teachers sharing activities and advice for free and support from us here at DimmiDeck.

What are you waiting for? Check out our Kickstarter campaign, watch our video, try our free activity ideas, see our productions stills and, most importantly, order your DimmiDeck before the discount expires!

Thank you for your support!

Anthony and Alessandra

Support DimmiDeck – Click Here!

 

 

Categories
Quizzes

The 12 most misused words in English – can you beat our quiz?

There’s much more to teaching than vocabulary and grammar. But secretly, we all like to think we know it all, don’t we? Most English speakers use these words incorrectly on a daily basis.

English teachers we challenge you – how many do you know? Post your scores below!

 

[playbuzz-item url=”//www.playbuzz.com/dimmideck10/the-12-most-misused-words-in-english-can-you-beat-our-quiz”]

Categories
DimmiDeck News

And the Winner of our 1-Year Subscription to English Teaching Professional Magazine is…

Patrice Palmer!

Thanks to the hundreds of you that entered the giveaway.

“Patrice Palmer, M.Ed., M.A., TESL has 20 years’ experience as an ESL Teacher, TESL Trainer, and Curriculum Writer in Canada including 7 years in Hong Kong. Patrice has taught students from 8 to 80 years in a variety of programs such as ESP, EAP, Business English, and language programs for new immigrants in Canada.  Patrice now works as a teacherpreneur (www.teacherpreneur.ca) ​doing the things that she loves such as writing courses, sharing teaching materials, instructional coaching and travelling at any time of the year to conduct short-term training around the world.  Please visit (www.patricepalmer.ca)​  for free ​ESL ​teaching resources.”

Congratulations Patrice! We hope you enjoy the subscription.

Everyone else, stay tuned for future competitions and teaching-related giveaways!

Have a great week!

Anthony

Categories
DimmiDeck News

Happy New Year from DimmiDeck

Happy new year!

We are currently taking a few days off while we prepare to return to Italy after the Christmas break, so there’ll be a smaller blog update this week. Christmas may be over for us in the UK, but in Italy there’s still one big event left to finish off the Christmas period – Epiphany.

Categories
Teaching

Pair ‘Em Up! – A Culture of Collaboration

Pair ‘Em Up!

I wrote an article a while ago about the difficulties that language teachers often face in the classroom with regards to ‘preconceptions of teaching’, which related to the expectations we have when entering a new classroom and how that shapes our engagement in a course.

Categories
DimmiDeck News

DimmiDeck Christmas Giveaway Winner

We’re thrilled to announce the winner of our first giveaway – Lilit Bekaryan! Lilit now joins thousands of enthusiastic, creative teachers who use www.onestopenglish.com every day.

Lilit is a PhD, DELTA and CELTA qualified teacher who teachers at university level in Armenia.

We received entries from all types of English teachers all over the world so thank you for entering! Keep your eyes open for our next giveaway in January!