Tech Thursday: Keep Your Desktop Organised!

Dear readers,

Today I am linking again with the Teaching Trio for their weekly Technology Thursday linky.

I am addicted to wallpaper organisers and am always looking out for pretty, feminine ones ;). A few months ago, I found this beautiful wallpaper organiser on the My Little Paris website, and I had to share it with you:

Click on the images to download :)

It is in French, but you can easily change the headers on any photo editor. For the font addicts out there, the font used is AMATIC and you can download it here :)

I also love this wallpaper for when I'm on holiday... or for those days when I wish I was on holiday ;)

Guess which wallpaper I am using right now?!

Feel free to comment below if you have found other wallpaper organisers you love :)

Thanks for reading and don't forget to check out other bloggers' tech tips by clicking on the button below:

Plickers

Last week, I found out about a really cool App called Plickers through Luv My Kinders and it is amazing! You first need to register on their website, and print and laminate a set of cards. There are various packs to choose from and the cards look like this:



You then create your classes, allocate a card number for each child, type your multiple choice or true-false questions and you're away!

Each side of the shape on a card is labelled A, B, C or D. As you ask your question, pupils hold the shape so that the letter they have selected is at the top of the shape. You then scan the room with your iPad and it will instantly pick up the pupils' answers! How cool is this?!

You can see straight away how many children got the correct answer and the names of the pupils will show up in green or red accordingly.

What could be improved: at the moment, you cannot view an individual child's data, making it quite hard to evaluate a child's progress. However, this is a feature they are likely to add very soon due to the number of teachers asking for it! If you too think this would be a great feature, please vote on their forum here.

Sunday Scoop!

Dear readers,

I am linking up again with the Teaching Trio for their Sunday Scoop. So let's take a peek at my week:

Have to do:

q Need I say more?!

q Last Friday, we noticed that our chest freezer accidently switched off as the plug  slightly pulled out of its socket. It had already started to thaw so EVERYTHING had to be taken out to be cooked immediately!!! Yes, all 10 kilos of meat!!! Needless to say that I have been cooking all weekend, on top of marking & grading my pupils' exams. Luckily, I LOVE cooking and it made a pretty good excuse to emerge from my pile of exam papers every now and then!

q Tomorrow, I have to go to attend our yearly French curriculum meeting for international schools in Kenya. I am not looking forward to the 6 hour journey on bumpy roads, but I love to spend time with other teachers and share ideas :)
 

Hope to do:

q The weather has been beautiful this weekend so we enjoyed a very nice Sunday lunch in the garden:)

 Who's eating the cherry tomatoes??!
 

With all the cooking I have been doing, we now have lots of yummy food waiting to be eaten :) so I'm hoping that we'll make the most of our second weekend off and enjoy another lunch al fresco!

q I want to add 'Pin it' and 'Scroll to the top' buttons to my blog so I'm hoping to do that this week. I have saved a few tutorials and just need to find some time to tick these items off my blog's to-do list!

 

Happy to do:

A couple of months ago, I left my computer cable plugged in overnight and the charger overheated... As I live in a remote part of Kenya, I haven't been able to buy a replacement, but one of my colleague's come to the rescue and is coming back tonight with my new cable!!! I can't wait to start using all the clip arts I have been purchasing and get a new TpT product done in the next few weeks :)

Thanks for reading! Visit the Teaching Trio to see what other bloggers are up to this week (click on the image below!)

iFakeText

iFakeText is a great website which enables you & your pupils to create fake iPhone text conversations such as this one:

You can use this site to create a dialogue to introduce a certain topic, or get the pupils to create their own fake text messages. They can screenshot their text conversations and upload them onto Padlet or a similar platform for you to assess their work.

What could be improved: the accents will not show up properly when using the download option, so pupils will need to screenshot their conversations instead :(



TECH THURSDAY: HOW TO FIND ANY WEB FONT YOU LIKE

Dear readers,

Today I am linking with the wonderful Teaching Trio for their weekly linky called Technology Thursday. There is a different focus each week and this week, we are sharing great tech tips so keep reading!!!

As some of you might have noticed, I recently updated my blog design to make it look more personal. As well as the rather boring header, one of the things I didn't like about my original blog template was the title fonts, they were plain and very small...

I had used Whatfontis  and What the Font! successfully in the past to find a font I loved from a document or a picture, but I wasn't getting anywhere with finding the web font I wanted for my blog titles. Then I discovered Fount, a button which you simply drag onto your bookmarks bar and... voilà!!! All you need to do then is to click on the button every time you see a font you love and hover over the font with the mouse. A window will appear and tell you which font, size, weight & style are used on the page!!!

This button is compatible with Safari, Chrome, Firefox & IE8+.

Thanks for reading and don't forget to check out other bloggers' tech tips by clicking on the button below:

 

*FREE* FILM RESOURCES!

Les Films du Préau is a great website with TONS of FREE film resources including posters, trailers, clips, reading materials, accompanying worksheets and more!!!  If you are looking for resources to go with a film you already have, or if you want to show short extracts for language practice, this site is the one for you! There are so many films to choose from!

Click on the image below to access the site :)

MY FIRST SUNDAY SCOOP!

I am really excited to join my first linky party! I am linking up with the Teaching Trio for their Sunday Scoop! 

Have to do:

q I've just had a week's break so I had to clear my desk before starting work tomorrow. Done! Phew ;)

q My Year 8 / Grade 7 pupils will be doing exams at the start of the week, so I guess I'll be marking & grading from Wednesday onwards :(

q I have read a lot of scoops and noticed that laundry is top of the to-do list. Well it's time for a little confession... One of the luxuries of working in Kenya is that I get a full-time house help AND a gardener so I can take no credit for having a very clean house & a beautiful garden ;).

Jokes apart, sitting in the sun is really a 'have to do' as, whilst most of my colleagues have enjoyed a week at the coast perfecting their tan, I have been sitting at my computer pulling my hair out trying to give my blog a little makeover, so I am going to look rather pale in the staff room tomorrow :/

Hope to do:

q I have just created a Facebook page for my blog and I am hoping to create a cover page and profile picture for it.

q I am not very good at keeping up with a schedule so I'm just trying to give myself a SMART target by hoping to post at least twice this week!    

Happy to do:

q Although this means I will have a lot of work at the end of the week, I shall enjoy those extra free periods I'll have whilst my Year 8 / Grade 7 pupils are sitting their exams!

Thanks for reading! Visit the Teaching Trio to see what other bloggers are up to this week (click on the image below!)

Make Dice App & a *FREEBIE*!

Dear readers,

Today, I want to talk about an App which I LOVE: Make Dice. Make Dice is a great App to use in the language classroom for vocabulary or grammar practice. The free version enables you to create dice with words, whilst the full version ($2.99) will also allow you to create dice with pictures, which is great for reviewing topic-based vocabulary. I love using the App with verbs and tenses, but the choices are endless!

I love that you can customise the dice so that they perfectly match what you want to teach your pupils. Another advantage is that you can differentiate by making your dice more or less complex depending on your pupils' ability, something you cannot do by purchasing ready-made packs of language dice. It is also a cheaper alternative!

What could be improved: the App is ULTRA sensitive and even the tiniest movement of a child writing on the table will make the dice 'roll', making it quite frustrating at times! Therefore, you ideally want to use this App as a 1:1 activity.

Now for the FREEBIE!

Click on the image below to download ;)

This is a worksheet I created for pupils to practise irregular verbs in all 3 tenses using the App. The pupils were given 3 dice with:

• Subject pronouns
• Irregular Verbs
• Past, present & future (repeated so that you have 6 sides!)

However, I am sharing the editable ppt file so you can adapt it how you like!

Newly Updated Classroom Language Flashcards / Posters

Hi everyone!

I have been busy updating my set of 19 Classroom Language Flashcards / Posters lately. I really like the new, more colorful design and hope you'll like it too! Take a peek:

These posters are a simple yet effective way of getting pupils to speak the language in the classroom. Combined with my *FREE* Speaking Punch Cards, they encourage pupils to not only use French when they're completing an exercise, but to use it more spontaneously in the lesson. Once their entire card is punched, pupils receive a small prize (any form of incentive works!).

I find that this reward system particularly motivates the ones who don't necessarily get the highest grades in the class and it is their way of having a real sense of achievement. Boys really love any form of oral work and you'll be amazed at how enthusiastic they become about speaking French all the time!

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