Lateral Thinking Stories for the ESL Class

Cockroaches and Ladybugs: Lateral Thinking Stories for the ESL Class: What is lateral thinking?  In 1973 Edward De Bono developed the term “ Lateral Thinking ”. Lateral thinking involves looking at a situati...





In ESL, Lateral Thinking Puzzles are a great resource for thinking, speaking and writing because they are often strange situations which require an explanation.

Teaching Art through English or Teaching English t...

Cockroaches and Ladybugs: Teaching Art through English or Teaching English through Art? CLIL!



This is an old post that has been revisited. All links have been checked and I included the following paper about some things you can do...

Teaching English Creatively

Cockroaches and Ladybugs: Teaching English Creatively: 10 creative ways to teach English that deliver outstanding results is an article that Anna Warren published in The Guardian ...

As a ferver defender of project working and open curriculums, I really like the idea of teaching Language through arts: through painting, music composition, a film project, in role drama or sculpture, always having a real purpose in mind. I was happy to find such a clear article like this because some of the approaches are right now in my teaching portfolio.

Blended Learning

Cockroaches and Ladybugs: Blended Learning:



“We’re currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist... using technologies that have not been invented... in order to solve problems we don't even know are problems yet". Watch the video and reflect about it!

Teaching Maths Through English or English Through Maths: A CLIL approach

Cockroaches and Ladybugs: Teaching Maths Through English or English Through ...:



Are you thinking in doing some CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) next year? Is Maths your favourite subject to do it but the staff of your school thinks that this is a too tough for to be taught in English? Need some good reasons to convince parents and teachers? Or, are you not sure about some "language" issues when teaching maths...?

Here you are some good "references" may help you!

Mind Mapping for Helping Natural Language: Tools

I have been fascinated with mind mapping since I first read  Tony Buzan's   book on this topic many years ago.  

This is a strategy that helps students quickly relate a central word or concept. The mind forms associations almost instantaneously and 'mapping' allows them to write their ideas quicker, using only words or phrases.


Read more about at Cockroaches and Ladybugs: Mind Mapping for Helping Natural Language

Online Authentic Videos for meaningful ESL learnin...

Cockroaches and Ladybugs: Online Authentic Videos for meaningful ESL learning:

One of the most difficult issues to work without published English course books is to find good videos (and listenings) adapted for the ESL ...

With the help of my colleague Patricia Meneses, an awesome Art CLIL teacher and teacher trainer, we did a research in Internet on web pages, You Tube channels or Vimeo channels with videos, short films or commercials suitable to be used in the class with elementary, pre-intermediate and intermediate students.