Fun, in practice

At the end of January, I wrote a post inspired by Volkswagen’s Fun Theory competition. (If you missed the original post, it’s here: The Fun Theory in Language Learning) As often happens, as soon as I had “fun” on the brain, I started seeing posts and information related to this topic all around me in cyberspace!

Since fun is always a good thing to have on the brain, I’d like to share a few of the blog posts, discussions, and resources that I’ve enjoyed on this topic.

One of ELT Chat’s January 27th Twitter discussions was dedicated to the Role of Humour in the EFL Class. There are a lot of great resource links, and ideas in the Dave Dodgson‘s chat summary.

Bruno Andrade explored the chat topic in greater depth with a post on his own blog. In addition to some excellent guidelines for including humor in class, he suggests some fun activities.

If you’ve ever visited Chiew Pang‘s A CLIL to Climb, you know that he takes his fun seriously! Recently, he introduced a soccer-themed game to practice chemical elements. I think my students will  have a lot of fun using Zondle to create their own games.

Aaron Nelson was inspired by my post to expand on the idea of fun in class with his own post, Spark: Why Make Fun Part of Your Class. I enjoyed his practical tips for making classes enjoyable.

Ceri Jones took the piano stairs video and used it as the basis for a lesson for. Because it’s on her class blog, it’s could also be a fun, ready-made lesson for your students!

Finally, Clive Ellsmore created a Lino It message page based on the question “How do you bring FUN in to the classroom?” The page is full of ideas teachers use to keep their classes fun. Because the page is a work in progress, you can add your own ideas to the collection, too!

Have fun!