If whiteboards are the bread and butter of teaching, then power points are surely your knife and fork. If you are unfamiliar with PowerPoint, I suggest you go on YouTube and spend a little time researching how to use simple functions of PowerPoint such as creating transition, animation, adding sound and pictures etc. PowerPoints offer infinite uses and are fun, interactive and informative for pupils.
Firstly, PowerPoints can help you to elicit vocab. I once sat in on a teacher who had prepared a fun class in which the students would learn how to make a cake. But first, he wanted them to write the recipe and in order to do that, he tried to explain the ingredients. Now imagine trying to explain words like vanilla flavouring, baking soda, cocoa powder etc. He spent the entire class trying to go through the ingredients and explain what they meant, the kids sat there for an hour and were utterly confused and bored out of their minds. This was a shame as he had prepared a fun class, but had completely lost the students at the beginning and had wasted the entire class explaining these food products.
The best thing he could have done was to have brought the actual products into class, however for whatever reason, sometimes you cannot always bring the real object into class (especially if your keywords are things like landmarks such as the Eiffel tower). Instead, the teacher could have created a PowerPoint presentation with pictures of the ingredients. In less than a second, the students would have understood what he was talking about and he would have had plenty of time to get the student to write the recipe and bake the cake.
An additional and brilliant use of a PowerPoint is to play games. Below I will present some screenshots of several different PowerPoint games I use in class and I will, of course, explain how to use them. All of the PowerPoints below are included in the TEFL Survival Kit (see TEFL Survival Kit chapter), including many many more!
For lower-level students (3-7 years), PowerPoints not only serve as a great way to elicit and show pictures of the key vocab being taught but can also be used to create cool and interactive animation games. Below is one of my favourite PPT animation games I would use with lower-level students:
A student will first choose a letter. Once they select the letter the PowerPoint takes them to a slide where you can either have typed a question before the class, ask a question or simply show your students a flashcard and they must say the appropriate word or sentence. The student then clicks on the red man which will cause the screen to divert to an animation clip where students receive a certain amount of points. There are a variety of slides with other animations where Mario performs stunts and is awarded additional points.
This is a great way to kill an hour of the class while keeping the students civilized and yet excited and once again – tricked into learning English.
Here’s another great PowerPoint game for younger students (all these PowerPoints are included in the TEFL Survival Kit):
Students listen to the princess singing the name of a colour, one student then runs to the whiteboard and clicks on the colour that is being sung. The catapult then swings a rock at the door cracking it a bit. This repeats for about 10-15 slides until the door is fully broken and the prince saves the damsel in distress.
For higher-level students, PowerPoints are a great way to get students to complete dialogues, monologues, review topics, create and ask each other questions. The most important function for PowerPoints for both younger and older students is that they provide motivation to learn English.
Below is a game that reviews several topics based on the television game Jeopardy.
Remember that once you teach students something you have to constantly review it and incorporate it into your new classes otherwise your students will forget everything you’ve taught them and simply won’t learn anything!
In this game you divide the students into teams, one student comes up and chooses a category and then for how many points (represented by dollars), the higher the points the harder the questions. Let’s say a student chooses body for 100 points. They will be diverted to this screen:
If the student can answer the question, their team receives 100 points. These particular questions are best suited for lower-level students. But just as with everything in teaching, you can adapt any PPT to match the level of your students. Below is an example of the same game but adapted for higher levels:
Let’s say a student chooses the category describing for 200 points, they may be faced with a slide such as:
For a reading class, once you have reached the point in the class when students have written their questions based on the text (see Reading chapter) and are ready to ask the other team their questions, a PowerPoint such as the following one can be used:
This PowerPoint game is based on the popular TV show ‘Deal or No Deal’. A student asks the other team member a question if they get it right that student can choose a number; let’s say they choose the number 12. They would then be presented with the following slide:
For lower-level students, the $7 would indicate how many points their team receives. For higher-level students, I would play it in the same way the show does: the $7 means that the team cannot win 7 points. The two teams keep going until they end up at the last two boxes which represent how many points the teams receive.
Watching TV shows can be argued as doing homework for teachers as practically any game show can be adapted and created using PowerPoint for the purpose of teaching. One of my favourite game shows to watch was ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire’, so I created a PowerPoint game of the show in which I used it to review the Ocean with one of my higher-level classes:
Remember this golden rule: your job is to trick the students into learning English by entertaining them. PowerPoints can help you do this.
If you’re teaching a few simple prepositions such as above, under, beside, in front of, and behind; all you have to do is get the students to be able to say the correct preposition in relation to an object. Now how can you get the students to enjoy doing that? Here’s when a PowerPoint will swoop in and save you valuable lesson planning time and stop you from pulling your hair out, trying to think of how to get students to recite and learn these prepositions. Below is a screenshot from a PowerPoint game that I love to use when having to make students practice and recite simple sentences/dialogues:
To play this PowerPoint first divide the class into five teams, one team for each colour. Then get a student to come to the front, he or she holds two objects in relation to each other such as a pencil and a sharpener, then asks, ‘Where is the pencil?’ The first team that says the correct sentence can move their team’s car one step forward. The first team to cross the finish line wins. It’s always important to rig games and to allow every child equal opportunity to answer (so it’s not always the first person to put their hand up who gets to answer) so that one team does not thrash all the other teams. As with every game, ensure you create classroom atmosphere and drama (such as how a TV game host does). At the end of this PowerPoint game, once a team has won (in this case the yellow team has won), it should end up looking something like this:
Remember one of the goals for the first class with your students was to be able to get them to be comfortable answering questions with you. We do this by teaching and practising the following dialogue:
- Q) Do you know?
- Yes, I know/No I don’t know.
Another way to practice this dialogue other than switching between asking simple questions and speaking gibberish to your students; is to use a PowerPoint game called ‘Reveal the Boxes’. This game can also be used as a starter/filler or to review topic vocab.
To play this PowerPoint game, one student comes up to the front of the class, asks the others if they know what the picture behind the boxes is. At first, the students should answer that they don´t know. Each team the student reveals a part of the picture he or she asks the class whether they know what the picture is. Eventually, as more and more boxes are revealed, someone in the class will eventually be able to guess correctly what the picture is. This is an example of how the game could pan out (can you guess what the picture behind the box is?):
The answer is: a monkey.
A further use for a PowerPoint in class is to create an interesting timer. So many games, activities, writing, worksheets and even simply undertaking tasks such as cleaning the classroom can involve giving the students a set period of time to accomplish them by. Rather than keeping track of the time with your watch or phone, you make the tasks more exciting by using a PowerPoint as a timer. It adds colour and excitement to the classroom and the children themselves can all keep track of the time they have left to finish their task. It also provides children, who are more fidgety and unable to calmly complete tasks, with a visual stimulant. Below is an example screenshot of a timer countdown PowerPoint that I sometimes use:
A vital rule to learn, that is included in the Golden Rules list, is called the 6 Month Rule. This means that once you have played a game or activity, do not play it again for at least six months. Each class you should present the students with new games and activities in order to create variety which in turn keeps the students excited and engaged.
This rule applies also to PowerPoint games, including to some degree with timer countdowns. Now, this you should use a timer countdown once every 6 months. On the contrary, I encourage you to always use this PowerPoint in every class whenever need be. Instead, what you must change, every week, month or so, is the design. Keep the background picture fresh and possibly related to animated films or whatever the students are interested in.
