What was the first ELT book you bought?

Mine was Jim Scrivener’s Learning Teaching. Not only did I learn so much from these 400 pages of great content but I also loved the video material and photocopiable worksheets. I’ve been using some of these activities for years!


One of my favourites is Carol and Ted.

I’ve used this picture story numerous times. Typically, I’d cut up the storyboard into 16 pieces, give them to students and ask them to order the photos and tell the story. Then they would read the sentences provided in the book and check.

Making the activity more online-friendly..

Although I’m now teaching exclusively online, I don’t want to stop using this brilliant storyboard. So, I’ve adapted the activity for my online classes, using one of my favourite tools: Google Jamboard.

I’ve used Snipping tool (for Windows) which allowed me to capture 16 screenshots; one for each picture. I’ve inserted the jumbled picture story into jamboard. I’ve made a few copies of the jam, changed settings to anyone with the link can edit and created shareable links. Whoever has access to the board, can move the pictures around like this:

I’ve written a lesson plan and created some worksheets, some of which have audio hyperlinks. I’ve recorded myself reading the sentences written in the book; I’ve made a slower and a faster version. And a couple of micro-recordings.

Jim Scrivener has kindly given me permission to share my adapted version of Carol and Ted with my blog readers.

Notes:

  1. The lesson plan is just a suggested procedure of course. As you will see, it is quite flexible. The idea is that you or your students can choose what they want/need to focus on after the listening and storytelling stages. Too democratic? Feel free to use a different lesson structure.
  2. Don’t get overwhelmed by the number of handouts! You don’t need all of them . You (or your students) can choose the ones you want to use.
  3. Appropriate for lower-level learners (A2-B1).
  4. If there’s anything wrong or something doesn’t work, apologies in advance. Send me a message and I’ll fix it!

You can download my lesson plan and materials here:

lesson_planDownload
regular verbs_gapfill_student’s-copyDownload
past-ed-pron_-student–Download
past-ed-endings-teacher’s copyDownload
irregular verbs-student’s-copy-Download
irregular verbs teacher’s copyDownload
connected speech practice_student’s copyDownload
connected speech-practice-teacher’s-copy-Download
collocations_colligations_teacher’s copy_and linkDownload
Carol and Ted picture storyDownload

Link to jamboard – you need to make your own copy and change the settings to everyone with the link can edit, before you share it with  your students. Make as many copies as you need for your class(es).

Hope you find something you can use.

Once again, special thanks to Jim Scrivener for writing this great book for teachers and for allowing me to share my adaptation of Carol and Ted here.

References

Scrivener, J. (2011), Learning Teaching, The Essential Guide to English Language Teaching, Oxford, Macmillan.

Creative Commons License

This work by Rachel Tsateri is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.