Englisch – School of Schenk

Looking back on 2020 – lesson ideas

Over the last years I have always used Leo Sellivan’s excellent “News Quiz” for my classes in the first week of January. While waiting for Leo’s lexical ideas on 2020, I stumbled over a nice video in my Twitter timeline today. The video inspired me to come up with a few communicative lesson ideas IContinue reading “Looking back on 2020 – lesson ideas”

Text-based compositions – NEU!

Zusammen mit meinem Kollegen Lennart Keding (Wir beide sind die “Lehrer mit ovalen Köpfen” aus dem School-of-Schenk-Podcast) habe ich ein Erklärvideo zur neuen Form der Text-based composition (TBC) gebastelt. Die TBC ist eine obligatorische Aufsatzform in der Abiprüfung im Fach Englisch an allen beruflichen Gymnasien in BW. Zusätzlich haben wir zu dieser Aufgabenform eine MusteraufgabeContinue reading “Text-based compositions – NEU!”

Songwriting

Am Ende des Schuljahres kann man den DVD-Player heißlaufen lassen oder man befördert seine Schüler*innen raus aus der Komfortzone in ein herausforderndes Projekt. Dieses Jahr habe ich einen Deutschkurs und einen Englischkurs herausgefordert, ihre eigenen Songs in der jeweiligen Sprache zu schreiben und zu produzieren. Nach einer 90-minütigen Einführung in mögliche Zugänge zum Songwriting (Padlet)Continue reading “Songwriting”

A proper student podcast

Being an avid podcast listener for over 8 years now, I’ve long been also playing around with the format in the classroom. However, my first attempts were rather feeble, as I lacked the tools to have students create and distribute audio properly. The first big step towards real podcasting I could take when Audioboom launchedContinue reading “A proper student podcast”

A template to create faux social media profiles

Today I‘d like to share a Keynote template I made. Your students can use it to create Instagram-like social media profiles. These can serve as rich prompts for presentations or discussions. An obvious use case would be to create a social media profile for a character in a book or a film. What photos wouldContinue reading “A template to create faux social media profiles”

Lost in translation

In my upper-intermediate class I suggested that the students use an online translation app to check up on their own writing. The response baffled me: Surely the level of quality of these apps was so low, they couldn‘t be helpful at all. Everybody seemed to know that the results of machine translations were only funnyContinue reading “Lost in translation”

Questions on a text – the sketchnote way

Working with questions on a text found in any coursebook is a dreary business. They are supposed to check the students’ understanding of the aforementioned text and make them work and engage with it. The problem is, well, they don’t. In reality these questions are the pinnacle of pseudo-learning. Are they a viable way ofContinue reading “Questions on a text – the sketchnote way”

Digital trifft analog im Leseförderprojekt

Seit 2 Jahren gibt es bei uns im Schulhaus an verschiedenen Orten Bücherregale und Büchertische, wo sich Schülerinnen jederzeit und spontan Bücher mitnehmen und ausleihen können. Sind die Bücher ausgelesen, werden sie einfach wieder zurückgestellt. Ziel dieses Leseförderprojektes mit dem Namen “Leseräume” ist es, Bücher so leicht wie möglich zugänglich zu machen (keine Ausleihscheine o.Ä.),Continue reading “Digital trifft analog im Leseförderprojekt”

Erklärvideo Pro/Con-Compositions

In diesem Video versuche ich zu erklären, wie man eine Pro/Con-Composition (Abi Aufgabe 3) aufbaut.

Charades

Charades is a mobile game that lends itself fantastically to the EFL classroom. It’s wonderfully communicative, fun and easy to play. You just have to divide the class into smaller groups. As a player you simply select a category, hold your device up to your forehead so that your classmates can see the word or phrase but you can’t – andContinue reading “Charades”

listening comprehension woes

The compulsory listening comprehension tests we have in our country are a daunting task for many of my students – not least because they are so completely different from real life situations. The tasks are stripped from almost any kind of helpful context, always ask only for specific details (instead of more general information), andContinue reading “listening comprehension woes”

Student Podcasting

I love to have my students create podcasts to improve their speaking skills. I give them a topic and some links to online resources to do research on the topic. The assignment is to have an intelligent conversation about the topic with a partner. The students are supposed to record their conversations on their mobileContinue reading “Student Podcasting”